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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8299162" data-attributes="member: 42582">We're agreed on this.I'm not a huge fan of the quotes as jargon - I don't mind them as scare quotes - but I do think that Gygaxian "skilled play" is a special case that there is benefit in recognising as a special case.There are two reasons I think this.(1) It has had such a big influence on the hobby - it cast such a shadow, especially but not only on D&D play - that I think we have to recognise that and start our analysis with an awareness of that.To put the same point slightly differently: RPGs have inherited an obsession with geography, architecture, maps and the like; and have inherited assumptions about how combat should be resolved via a distinctive minigame in which fictional positioning plays perhaps a modest, even significant but never determinative role; and we can't understand the obsession and the assumption except by reference to how Gygaxian skilled play works, and the premises it rests on.In thirty years time maybe this first reason of mine will have evaporated; but I just don't think it has yet. I just find myself in too many threads where discovering a secret door is taken to self-evidently be a different way of extrapolating the fiction from killing on Orc with a sword blow, hence warranting a completely different approach to framing and to action resolution.(2) This second reason relates to the discussion [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] and I were having in the other thread, and picks up on your leveraging of the system to achieve player goals within the scope of the game.I think that skilled play is primarily a matter of agenda - what are we all doing when we sit down to play this RPG - rather than actual moments of play. Thus I think it makes sense to say that my play of this "skilled play" game was unskilled - that's why I lost! And because of this, I think it makes sense to contrast RPGs in which players will lose if they don't play with skill (classic D&D is an example; so is my new favourite example, The Green Knight) and RPGs of which this is not true (Burning Wheel was my example in the other thread; others include Prince Valiant and Cthulhu Dark, neither of which actually has much room for leveraging the system in any event beyond declaring actions).I can sit down to play Burning Wheel where my agenda is inhabiting my character and have a great time. The game will work. Checks will be framed and resolved. Some will be successes; some, perhaps more, will be failures. My character will be twisted and turned and perhaps tortured. This is the game doing the thing it's meant to do.If I sit down to a game of classic D&D and try and play it like that, it will be a total disaster (unless the GM fudges and/or manipulates a lot of the fiction, in which case we're out of classic D&D and into DL/2nd ed AD&D territory).*************************************************************Now here's an interesting question that arises from my (2) and tries to step out of the shadow of my (1). What might RPGs where the agenda is and has to be "skilled play" look like, if they don't look like Gygaxian D&D? I don't know Gamma World to know how different, if at all, it is from Gygax. T&T is more random but in many respects is pretty similar.The Green Knight is completely different. For me (and this is almost certainly a fact about me, not anything about the state of the RPG hobby) it's been a real eye-opener to see that a "skilled play" game can be so radically different from Gygaxian play, and also very different from something like Burning Wheel played from a (not essential, but possible) skilled play perspective.</blockquote>

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