Doug McCrae
Legend
I agree, and I think this is a very clear statement of that style. A Guide to Dungeon Mastering Part II by Lewis Pulsipher in White Dwarf #35 (Nov 1982):Lewis Pulsipher is (was? I'm talking about stuff he weote 40 years ago) the best advocate I know of the wargaming/"skilled play" style of D&D (Gygax is the second best I know)
D&D is a game, the players expect to have some fun, and from this arises the unwritten rule that governs every good D&D game: if the players are wary, intelligent, and imaginative, and therefore play well, they should succeed… Your job is to make the game exciting and challenging... In the ideal session the players should escape almost literally sweating with fright, but perhaps with some reward and with no one dead (or at least, with no one irrevocably annihilated).
A couple of things about it strike me as a bit strange. There are many games that have an element of chance, such as poker. A poker player can do everything right and still lose, if they're unlucky. So why shouldn't that also be true of D&D?
Pulsipher puts a surprising amount of emphasis on making the players feel strong emotion. That's something I associate more with a story-oriented style. In sports and games, nail-biting tension may occur but mostly it doesn't. And if it does it's down to the actions and abilities of the competitors, not a supposedly neutral arbiter.