@Ovinomancer
The quantum superposition and allowing 'rolls' or other methods for the players to interact with the setting are merely tools for making the world seem real and limitless. In theory I could have extensive encyclopaedic amount of information about the setting that could be uncovered. Like if someone asked about a real world animal I could just open its Wikipedia page and see details about its physiology and behaviour. Well, for a fictional setting I'm not actually going to produce all that beforehand, extra details can be generated as needed. This produces the same outcome, the play area is not artificially restricted, you don't see that the set is just a cardboard cut out by looking it from a new angle. And how this relates to the pacing, is that instead of trying to keep the players 'on the track' and herding them into 'right direction' (which of course still are things that will be subtly done) one can also just alter/create new aspects of the story around the things the players take interest int. Like have you ever had a situation where the players fixate on some throwaway detail you didn't mean to be important and ignore the plot you had preplanned? Well, instead of waiting that the players get the hint that they're wasting their time exploring the dead end or just flat out telling them that, another option is to
make the thing they're interested in to be important. This has a lot to do with the pacing. Go with the flow instead of trying to fight against it. This of course again is just one tool in GMs toolbox and should be used sparingly, so please don't start to argue how this leads to directionless gameplay where every item the players show interest in suddenly becomes the One Ring. That's not how it goes. When used in conjunction with more traditional preplanned elements this leads to gameplay where there are no lulls and dead ends, where the story unfolds organically and the world seems real and much larger than it actually is.
And this little tangent of ours has gone for quite a while now without having much to do with the topic of the thread. My stance on skills is that they're an important facet of the characters' capabilities and the players choose them for a reason. Players generally are pleased when they get to use their skills. So let them!