What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[violence in the media]

We've had this argument before and I still stick to the belief that skill systems are being used to force a roll for boring things (Climb checks, I'm looking at you) or are simply mechanics for flavor's sake (Knowledge checks)..

I was once in a GURPS game where a climb roll literally meant the difference between life and death. We were usually relieved when we were attacked by opponents with deadly weapons, because they were often a lot less dangerous than environmental encounters. We nearly starved to death during a blizzard in the mountains after our mule froze to death and we could no longer carry all of our food supplies.

echo

I've got to admit that I'm kind of a fan of those sorts of environmental challenges and get frustrated with games that allow you to skip off into the wilderness with no preparation or plan. Part of becoming higher level is gaining the ability to shrug off those necessities that limit lesser beings--not just being able to do bigger special effects.

Getting into or out of these caves, for example, can be a more interesting challenge than the creature you wind up fighting in it.

Vertical cave in northern Alabama

Peacock Springs, Florida

So, what's the best way to resolve these sort of things? I mean, when you have no rules for environmental hazards, you get Mother-May-I. Which usually means nothing bad happens because no MC wants to arbitrarily doom the party in a catastropic mountaineering failure or declare them all dead from dehydration. (I have played with people that explicitly made decisions on the basis that the MC wouldn't kill off the whole party and end the game.) On the other hand, a lot of environmental rules are fiddly and weird and not very accessible and wind up not getting used either.

I mean, if an off-target teleport to a frozen wasteland can't lead to a fight for survival unless there are actual yetis involved, what are we even doing with the rest of the gameworld in the first place?