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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9343840" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm pretty sure I don't like that term because it is binary thinking.  It suggests that there is one thing and one thing only going on, and as my argument tried to show that is almost never the case.  I prefer terms like "core gameplay", "process of play" or "core gameplay loops" because they encompass the potential diversity of how the game is played and what goes into it.It's not so much just that I think "There is no such thing as character skill" is demonstrably false, as it is that I think you follow up your contradiction of my term by making a rough stab at defining it which is then self-contradictory.  If there was no such thing as character skill then you couldn't define it.   When I use the term I mean such things as the literal bonuses that are on a character sheet, and which encompasses such things as skill check or an attack roll or a saving throw or an amount of hit points or a proficiency bonus or a set of moves and abilities a character may employ in the fiction or to modify the meta-fiction.   Yes, this is "just assets" a player has access to and if you want to call "character skill" something like "character assets" I don't mind, but the fact is that a character can have a +4 bonus to horseback riding that is independent of the player's skill at riding a horse.  That is a meaningful thing and a meaningful distinction.The question is inherently flawed.  It's like asking, "What is 2+2?" and then being upset that the answer isn't "yes" or "no".  Core gameplay isn't about one thing, but in an RPG almost always involves a minigame where both character skill and player skill are inputs.  Heck, core gameplay rarely is actually a single loop of play, as RPGs are almost always inherently collections of minigames each with their own core loop of play.  When an RPG doesn't have multiple minigames, it begins to have a very board game like feel to it, often with play where the roleplaying feels irrelevant.I mean, all of that is false and it's not obvious to me why it isn't obviously false aside from this flawed framework of "core activity" you are unnaturally imposing over play.  As an obvious example, in a combat with many tactical options it matters how the player chooses to play the character.  This is true in a tabletop RPG or whether we are playing something like World of Warcraft or Diablo or Bloodbowl or Settlers of Cataan or whatever.  But at the same time, you can do everything right as a player and make all the right tactical and strategic decisions and still "roll a 1" and miss the attack.  A lot of the skill of playing is managing the randomness, both in reducing the random factor and having a plan for recovering from or dealing with the inevitable runs of bad luck.   The player skill doesn't become irrelevant just because there is a random factor, and to suggest that either we are playing something like Chess with no obvious fortune mechanic or else player skill doesn't matter is so bizarre I can't imagine where that idea comes from except lack of experience with gaming.I don't see how that follows.By explaining and often writing down formally the process of play and how I will adjudicate their propositions, and by being consistent about it over time so that players gain trust in the process and see that it is fair and accomplishing its purpose.  For example, by seeing that the charismatic player with a low charisma character isn't advantaged in social situations compared to a less charismatic player with a high charisma character, but by providing situations were skillful social play matters.  I tend to think of this as "secret dialog options" where the player if they've picked up the right clues and figure out things to say that give them a massive advantage in a social encounter.  This tends to cause conversations to have a literary verisimilitude quality because NPCs tend to behave in ways that would be explicable in the transcript of play such as changing their mind because plausible reasons have been presented to them or the PC has demonstrated plausible leverage. But even then, you can still "roll a 1".</blockquote>

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