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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8299346" data-attributes="member: 71699">When you bracket "of the fiction" in connection with skilled play, do you mean the shared imaginary world in which game action takes place? And do you have in mind players making choices and DM extemporising outside of, or in ways that might even have a determining role upon the outcome of, the designed game mechanics that are represented in RAW? I am wondering if you feel that the telling stories part of RPG can be skillful?You spoke above of the virtue of greater concord among the players. On my mind in this thread is that this is more a matter of what others have called agendas, principles and techniques, than it is of mechanical game RAW. I think some of those agendas, principles and techniques are represented in the written material, and some are brought in by players.If we believe that a suite of agendas-principles-techniques are effective in producing cohesion among a cohort of players playing a game, then it seems to me that we must believe that an alternative suite will lead to a different cohort playing that game in a different way from the first group. Thus we believe that one game can be played in different ways depending on suite chosen, unless we have a suitability-thesis that stipulates that a game-artifact will be more suitable for some suites over others. An issue here is that the interpreted parts of the game-artifact are usually crucial (the rules!) and there is ample evidence of players grasping, enacting and upholding rules in different ways. So one problem to resolve is whether a stable identity can be assigned to game-artifact? Or possibly a stable-enough-identity (although I am suspicious any time it is proposed that some features of a thing be overlooked, as science has shown repeatedly that glossed-over features can turn out to have significant ramifications).</blockquote>

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