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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8298377" data-attributes="member: 71699">I don't have a settled position on this. One challenge is that players vary within cohorts as well as across them. The cheater is a notorious example. My current view on games is to think about them as tools. Just as most people know the use of a hammer, and will use it to drive in nails, it is possible to use a hammer in other ways. A hammer might come with instructions for use, and that will help produce conformity (without guaranteeing it).Unfortunately, RPGs are rather more fuzzy than hammers. Whereas the properties of matter offer a graspable object that persists in its form whatever we think of it - for hammers - with games players have a role in determining properties. A great example is "Opponent loses next turn" (the original text of Time Walk) which some players grasped and enacted as instant victory.Thus I feel that where "skilled play" might do work, is with regard to how players embracing it might conform their play. It then operates at the layer of techniques or principles, where it informs a predisposition as to how to grasp what the game rules entail, and how they should be used. Including what might happen outside the scope of the written game rules.</blockquote>