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That is the point, though. There's no and can't be no skilled play in D&D, because the only possible skill being expressed is players' ability to please the GM who pretends to be impartial. Some even go further and gaslight themselves into thinking that they are actually impartial, and their...

How this improvised trap is actually made? What roll (if any) should be made? What will be the DC? What makes a trap made out of a rope and a bow legitimate, and one made out of old ration another PC had in the backpack not?

The difference is that in a Story Now game no one pretends like there's anything more than "this sounds cool!" to GM's decision making and everybody understands that the actions the characters take are only vaguely correlated with whether they succeed or not. The goal of the process is to have...

...it started with OSR, which heavily prides itself on players coming up with creative solutions to problems. Like, things covered by a combat mini-game are only a small part of the gamist concerns. If it was the entirety of the appeal, they would be playing wargames, not RPGs.

Now I'm thinking about it, maybe fairness and bias are secondary concerns. Expertise (or, rather, complete lack of one) is more important. Let's say I'm running a game where PCs are officers in the orc resistance, defending from the invading armies of the Iron Kingdom. They come up with a plan...

If you only allow for actions explicitly stated in PHB, and basically turn it into an overcomplicated boardgame, yeah, it will be a fair and unbiased test of skill, I guess. Would be a pretty different game, though. It all flies out of the window the moment one of the players decides to, say...

Also blorb-style, which I'm completely unfamiliar with, but at first glance it looks like it can enable skill play. Those I can name. No, that's not what I mean. Like, for example, a competition where participants submits screenshots of their Dark Souls characters and judges, well, judge their...

Being able to compare and contrast the skill level of different people (or teams) is, I think, a prerequisite. A leaderboard is competitive by definition. Not existence per se, but a possibility of existence of a leaderboard. I have a bunch of small indie fighting games on my hard drive that I...

Yeah, maybe. A skill that is impossible to test (and one that bears exactly zero difference on the outcome of the game anyway) What a ranked competitive leaderboard for dnd would even look like?

Let's say a system uses custom D6s, with one Circle, two Squares and three Crosses. If you roll at least one Circle, it's a full success. If you roll at least one Square, but no Circles, it's a success at a cost. Otherwise it's a failure. Is this a comparison?

I can imagine an RPG that includes a genuine test of skill. Well, I can name some: Dread involves Jenga, my beloved MUJIK IS DEAD is all about player's skill at weaving established issues the character has into a coherent narration, my Swashbuckling! hinges upon one's ability to come up with...

The way I see it if A) GM can just conjure an obstacle from thin air B) It's impossible to distinguish obstacles conjured from thin air and obstacles prepared beforehand Then, as I said, the only limiting factor is GM's willingness to conjure obstacles from thin air. PCs defeated five goblins...

Absolutely none. You might be unwilling to conjure ten thousand tarrasques, doesn't change the fact that your will is the only limiting factor at play. And can a player take a look at the encounter at hand, calculate the CR and say "hey, this encounter is way too easy" (or "this encounter is...

This is awesome, thank you

Yeah, but other games don't try to pretend like it's anything other than GM letting the PCs win. And idk about "extreme bad faith". The difference between adding one goblin, hell, one HP to an existing goblin and conjuring ten thousand tarrasques is non-existent.

I must admit, maybe I just chalk up people being bad to them not understanding the game, but pretty much every time I had a some variant of this interaction with them: -- I shoot goblin with my crossbow! -- ...you have firebolt on your character sheet, it does more damage, and you have higher...

I'm not sure this line can be drawn. A level designer doesn't participate in the game and has no ability to change stuff on the fly. A game master can and players cannot tell the difference between something invented right on the spot and something prepared beforehand. If, say, monster list and...

I'm not sure if this analogy applies, to be honest. A) Test is (at least supposed to be) non-arbitrary. Yes, teacher can set harder questions, but it's not like they feasibly can ask first-graders about eigenvectors. B) Teacher is (at least supposed to be) to have a greater expertise in the...

Let's say you are playing a game of Warhammer for an agreed upon number of points, and you see your opponent placing a tad too many models to the table. You can check their army list and say: "Hey, there's only 3 tactical squads in your list, why are there four on the table?" (note: they are not...

It was intended to be an OR operation (which, when negated, becomes AND): a test of skill to be legitimate should be either not arbitrary or be set in stone. A fight in a game like dnd is both completely arbitrary (there's no reason there's ten goblins, and not fifty, or five) and impossible to...