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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9751393" data-attributes="member: 42582">Often we agree, but on this occasion we don't.On the issue of ranking: there can be a "known best player" without an official leaderboard. In my main university RPG group, everyone knew which player was the best at deploying the Rolemaster spell rules; he was also (subsequent to attaining this recognition) an Australia-Asia-Pacific championship-level MtG player (I can't remember exactly which tournaments he competed in and won, but he was pretty serious and pretty good). In my current group, everyone knows which player is the best at character optimisation; unsurprisingly, he did postgraduate study in optimisation theory, when we played Rolemaster had various spreadsheets and pivot tables that let him make statistically optimal allocations of attack and defence bonuses, and he has made a very nice living (with a very nice house in a very nice suburb) working in the financial services sector.As skills get "softer" and less technical I accept there can be more room for disagreement even in local ranking contexts. But "skilled play" is normally focused on reasonably "hard", technical wargaming (or, at least, wargame-esque) skills.As for self-imposed rules, some are less asinine than others. When playing bridge, for instance, not looking at others' hands is not an asinine rule: part of what it means to have skill at bridge is to be able to infer others' hands from your hand, from the bidding, and from the play; and doing this is part of the fun of playing. In the context of traditional "skilled play", the dungeon map and key are a secret that are meant to be worked out via play, not by just reading the GM's notes.Not "metagaming", on the other hand, is a different thing because it pushes against technically skilled play: whereas mapping, using detection spells well, and the like are skills that can be deployed (whether well or poorly) to learn the secrets of the dungeon, choosing not to use your knowledge of the nature of the threats that the dungeon poses isn't possible while trying to use your skill to overcome those threats. That's why classic D&D doesn't have any "no metagaming" rule.Broken builds are different again. To me, they generally seem to be a consequence of PC build rules being designed with the goal of "modelling" characters, and then permitting degenerate combinations. Better-designed build rules, and/or agreements about limits to be observed in PC building (which are similar to points-limits in wargame army building) seem to be the solution here.I mean, the idea of winning a MtG tournament by tearing up a Chaos Orb is, in a sense, clever - but I think it's also recognised by everyone as pretty degenerate. Choosing not to play like that isn't asinine.</blockquote>

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