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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8287273" data-attributes="member: 71699">I didn't separate them in my words that you quoted, nor intend them to be separated. You might be referring to game mechanics. Sicart defined mechanics neatly as "methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world" and in much discussion of games, mechanics are understood to arise from rules, but to be something on top of them. A game mechanic might be built out of multiple rules and other game components. I'd like to preserve this distinction as it does a lot of work.Example. One rule might be that fireball has a range of 150'. The game mechanic for fireball is the whole thing: the area of effect, the spell slot used in casting, the saving throw of the targets, the damage and halved damage, the damage type.Or maybe my above was wrong, but so far we are in a good degree of alignment.Absolutely agree. These elements can be prepared in advance, or they sometimes are developed on the fly and then recorded for consistence if  returned to.Agreed and I feel this has broad application. I can well understand groups who discount skillful use of stochastic mechanics. However, over the span of a campaign, using them well takes tremendous skill... much to the advantage of the characters. It's key sin is perhaps engaging with the written rules and their entailed mechanics, rather than with the fiction... but then we would be rather at risk of separating out the fiction from the rules and mechanics and all the looseness, imperatives, and such that comes with.The fact that one group is disinterested in achieving their ends through stochastic mechanics, doesn't mean that another group that enjoys them is not being skillful. "Skilled play" as written about by Gygax encompasses players using the tools at their disposal intelligently... whatever those tools may be. And a DM knowing that - to offer surpassing challenge. Thus to your point, a different paradigm might shift the properties of skillful play. This is where I suppose the skill challenge mechanics of 4e are rather interesting.</blockquote>

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