I think that in some games... the one I have most strongly in mind is Blades in the Dark (which prompted the stolen car quote, I believe)... the mechanics that you can use skillfully support playing dangerously. Blades empowers players to be bold and daring and to come through.
In our campaign that just ended, I played a Lurk and one of my first playbook abilities was the Daredevil ability. This means whenever the character takes a Desperate Action, he gets +1d on the roll. He also suffers a -1d to any Resistance rolls against consequences, but that also ramps up the danger. Plus, Desperate actions give you a point of XP as well, so I am rewarded with XP and an extra die when I take actions that are highly dangerous, and they actually become more so because my ability to Resist is lessened.
So I think that although there can be conflict between Skilled Play and other play goals.... and I've seen enough brave and hearty fighters in D&D go full turtle mode at the sign of a trap or when they're down to 7 HP to know this happens..... it doesn't need to be the case. It may or may not, depending on the game and the mechanics in question.
There's a resemblance, here, to the 4e D&D paladin's Valiant Strike, which grants a to hit bonus equal to the number of adjacent foes. So the player is rewarded for taking the dangerous action. And the upshot is that the PC is valiant!, just like it says on the tin.
Relating this to "skilled play" - if the skillful deployment of player-side resources and capabilities (eg Daredevil, Valiant Strike, etc) produces thematically significant play which can drive the story forward, then we have skillful play in service of a "story now" agenda. I think 4e D&D has this; I suspect BitD does too (you would know much better than me!); Burning Wheel can exhibit it, but BW can also be played with much less attention to skillful deployment (I'm looking at myself here).
When I think of "skilled play", though, I think of more than the mere skillful deployment of those player-side resources and capabilities. I think of a game which puts that skillful deployment front-and-centre, and is forcing the skilled play decisions to be made constantly and at the cost of all else. The skilled play comes closer to being an end than a mere means.
Burning Wheel is interesting, in my view, because it may be (outside TB/TB2e) the heaviest 'Story Now' game I know - and certainly one which is intended to improve with skilled play.
My experience is you're correct that it's not fiction first - because an absolutely valid line of thought for a skilled BW player is to want to succeed (or fail!) at a certain difficulty of check required for advancement. BW responds extremely well to those kinds of considerations - a session can develop from 'how to earn a check' leading into player-side protagonism and classic Story Now play.
That development you describe results - at least as I've experienced it - from the rules for consequence-narration and for framing. Both are rules that operate on the GM - so the player doesn't have to self-consciously change their orientation or thinking or aspiration, but gets led "naturally" into the protagonistic and thematic play by the GM's presentation of the fiction.
BW is by no means unique in having clear and important rules that govern the GM's presentation of the fiction. But I think it makes the importance and the effect of those rules very clear, and is perhaps distinctive in that fashion. (Apocalypse World is maybe just as clear in this respect. Not every RPG, even every story now RPG, is.)
I've never seen players shooting for kudos from earning checks in BW though. I've only seen the fiction be thing which ultimately matters - so no Step on Up, despite there being skilled play.
Agreed.
Also, as well as the kudos aspect, there's what I call - for lack of a better word - the
focus aspect. That's why I've put this reply in the same post as replying to
@hawkeyefan. In BW, the player might start with the "how can I earn a check" orientation you describe. But the play of the game will pull them into the fiction-embedded (even if not fiction first), protagonistic orientation that is classic story now. And the GM-side rules around framing and consequence narration generate the pull and then maintain that focus.
But if the GM's presentation of the fiction is done according to different principles - eg with a focus on the severity of obstacles, or Gygaxian "never giving a free lunch", or debilitating consequences that have no particularly
thematic logic - then the players' focus will remain fixed on managing those challenges and not getting hosed by them. Because if, as a player, you let your protagonistic inhabitation dominate over your skilled play, it'll be game over!
As I think everyone in this thread knows, the actual "solution" to this problem adapted by classic D&D was for the GM to fudge the obstacles, so that players could worry about Tanis's love for Kitiara (am I getting that right?) rather than optimising his choices as a combat archer without the result being that Tanis gets eaten by an otyugh. I personally think the Burning Wheel solution is superior.
And in relation to Torchbearer, I'm not yet seeing where the scope is, in play, for players to lean into theme and protagonism without that constant risk of hosing as a result. In Burning Wheel, having no shoes and Resources 0 can be tough and even tragic; but in Torchbearer it can very easily be fatal by dint of operation of the system. I think that's a big difference.
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