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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8276011" data-attributes="member: 7023840">There was no confusion; this is why I choose not to answer your posts. But you have been repeatedly using me (aka, the OP) as some sort of stalking horse for your own positions. I do not appreciate that. So to ensure a more perfect understanding-Imagine that someone on the internet says, "That's defamation,"* and someone else replies, "Well, it's a public figure, so it requires actual malice." Here's the thing- "actual malice" is jargon. It's a technical term. It doesn't mean malice.*Because they always do on the internet.Imagine that you go to the doctor. The doctor says you have fracture. You reply, "Oh no, I thought it was just a break!" The doctor replies, "Um, for your purposes, it's the same thing." Again, technical terms. Jargon.A friend is discussing art nouveau. You look at the work being discussed and say, "That's not new. That's from the 1800s." Jargon.I purposefully put a disclaimer at the the top of the OP, and I bolded it, and I wrote, NECESSARY DISCLAIMER (PLEASE READ) to make sure that any possible confusion would be addressed. To make sure that anyone who read this would know that I was discussing a term other people use as jargon (a term of art, technical term, defined term) and is not the same as just the word "skilled."To ensure that there was no confusion, I also ended the post by saying (with underlining) "I want to emphasize that I am not advocating for any style of play."Further, I wrote a followup (which you have quoted) that says, "First, please remember that in writing the OP, I was being descriptive, not normative. I am not advocating for any particular play style. Instead, I was looking at the origins of 'skilled play' because I think that the assumptions inherent in it underlie a few conversations I see that keep popping up here. Second, 'skilled play' is jargon- a term of art. It is describing a certain approach to TTRPGs, and does not mean that other ways of playing are not skilled."Theoretically, I could have invented my own term (Snarfian Player-Based Play? Actual Malice Aforethought Dice-Independent Meta Gaming?), but given that I have seen this term repeatedly used and understood, I thought it would be easiest to simply use it.Of course, I assumed that there might be a person, here or there, who would latch on to the skilled part of the term and assume that this was some sort of argument about  “Quien Es Mas Macho?”** which is why I went through the effort to state all of that and put in all of those disclaimers. Because that's not the point of the thread; the point was that I thought it was interesting that (IMO) this modality of play tends to exist in the background of conversations that people still have. And I thought it would be fascinating to explore that angle in a thread.**Richard Simmons.To the extent you feel it is necessary to assert that the way that you are playing is actually the One True Way to have fun and be skilled, I am not going to argue with you. Have fun! But if you just want to argue with a term of art that I didn't invent, and/or use this as an opportunity to rubbish the way that other people like to play (by calling it second-guessing the DM), I'd ask that you start your own thread to fully develop those ideas, instead of referring to my OP in a way that doesn't quite match what I said. Thanks!</blockquote>

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