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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8302919" data-attributes="member: 71699">The might be clearer for you from my more recent post, or maybe not <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />This outlines how one might like to see the game played - what one cherishes. It can't wholly answer the question of whether players are being skillful. In the cases you outlined, you nominated various dimensions for skill. So we would need to model tasks in terms of those dimensions. That isn't as straightforward as it sounds.Character level has pros and cons. We're subjecting players to tasks of arbitrary difficulty (in some respects a good thing) by which I mean that we do not expect tasks to become monotonically more difficult with level. Notoriously early character levels tend to be more difficult. On our side is that the system is stochastic so a weaker player should stall at some random task where their ability fails to afford them enough protection, while a stronger player should go on. Luck isn't an issue here so long as the sample includes enough performances.What is an issue is that as you point out we have no idea how well differing DMs enforce this scale. So we don't know the true difficulty of any of the tasks, and hence we don't know the true skillfulness of any of the performances. (Where true means something like - were all players in the world subjected to these tasks under DMs of constant ruthlessness.)Agreed that one can form intuitions about what one sees in different games. That is frequently (maybe almost always) confounded with goals and expectations in those games.I had the thought to start a thread collecting canonical skills (or if you like, task types). It sounds like it would be possible and maybe worthwhile.Up thread I reached a view that skill-constructs had meaning only within each RPG context. Where influenced by you I counted contexts as including agendas+principles+techniques, and of course rules and the mechanics that arise from them. Therefore I moved on to questioning how one might approach divining skill?Above you conclude that - "that really doesn't look like skilled play in the Gygaxian sense" - but I am questioning, does it look like skill in any sense?Yes of course, and it is straightforward enough. The crispest example is charop in 3rd edition. If you build Pun Pun, the rest of the game can't possibly be taxing. Arguably, building Pun Pun obviates any skill in play after session 0. However, to build Pun Pun itself takes skill.As the soft and hard moves are not specified, your group might well have a good grasp of what you will uphold as valid. Another group might have a very different grasp. There is nothing in RAW that proves the other group is mistaken. This is a general problem with the meaning for rules (that because TTRPG rules must be grasped, enacted and upheld by players, they are subject to meaning issues).It is different however from roll d20, see 12, add written down modifier of +3, get 15, apply 15. As you perhaps are saying, it is a set with an infinite number of members.</blockquote>

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