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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8301325" data-attributes="member: 71699">The rift is between my view and others. A GM could certainly use force unskillfully which would very likely mean it was dissatisfying to players and limited their opportunities to play skillfully. On the other hand, a GM could use force skillfully to elevate the challenges and open up opportunities for players to play skillfully. I have witnessed both. Remember that I regard any time a DM decides as much on par.I am not saying that decisions are undifferentiated, or equal in quality, I am saying that any DM decision is open to being skillful or unskillful, elevating or deflating to player skill. As a thought experiment, I imagine a vast number of DMs faced with the same putatively constrained and obliged decision, and I believe they will make a diversity of decisions... possibly as many as one per DM.That doesn't mean that I disagree thatExcept that I wouldn't put it as not compatible because it is compatible, albeit the nature of the compatibility is to limit skill. Remember that when I think of skill, I don't think of it as simply present or absent. Skill-constructs must include playing unskillfully (or less skillfully, is a better way to put it). So what is happening with the approaches you are thinking of (or when any approach is wielded badly) is that there is absolutely still skill, it is just a worse or more limited skill. As soon as we say that there is some skill, no matter how little, we have let skill in the door. That is different to my mind from excluding the possibility of skill.*It might be that other posters do not mean to exclude the possibility of skill, and all they mean is that skill is diminished or limited by some approaches (or by any approach wielded badly, right?). The thing about skill however, is that it is relative not absolute. Say in the whole world the most skillful Chess player was what is currently Elo 800. Well then, we should not think 700 so very bad. (Of course the scale would recalibrate, but let's imagine we have some planets of alien cohorts that do better, so that we know that in truth humans are terrible at Chess. Or maybe some kind of Chess-playing machines...)There are a few caveats to that. Some kinds of activity really do have a skill cap. Players reach it. We have no idea if they could show greater skill on the dimensions those activities stress. Other activities step outside human capability. No player can show skill... they are just inhumanely difficult. However, I do not believe that is where we are with RPG.*EDIT an exception is where no choice by players or outcome of mechanics is allowed to stick: the DM overwrites them all. I would exclude that from being RPG, seeing as it amounts to a monologue.</blockquote>

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