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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8303607" data-attributes="member: 16814">To the general point that there's an idea of multiple types of skilled play, this is both obvious and obfuscating.  Obviously, different games, with different system structures, will admit to different kinds of skilled play.  However, this doesn't mean that any demonstration of skill at something is the same as skilled play.  You will note that those advancing these arguments are also loathe to even put a definitional statement forward, instead relying on the "I know it when I see it."  This is obfuscatory, though, because it allows preference to seep into the conversation -- the desire to label one's own play as skilled rather than a critical analysis of what skilled play means as an approach.  It's starting at the end and working towards the beginning.Skilled play is about using the system artifacts -- mechanics, current fictional positioning, player/gm roles and constraints -- and leveraging those.  What leveraging means is straighforward -- you take what you can and stack as much in your favor as possible.  Good systems for skilled play have meaningful decisions points -- places where you can do many things, many of which are viable, but that all have differing costs or likelihoods.  This creates a landscape where skillful decision making and even risk taking creates play where the players have more control over whether they reach their goals or not.  What fights against this are any black box processes or where the GM can exert fiat decisions that do not include these player leveragings as binding inputs.  So, if the GM is deciding that this outcome is better for story than that outcome, this fights against skilled play.  Similarly, if play is about the player acting out their character and the GM using their own judgement as to whether or not this is sufficient for the player to achieve their goal, then this also fights against skilled play.  This latter fights because the system is opaque to the players -- there's nothing there to leverage within the system.  Instead, the player has to leverage things outside of the system, like the social landscape between players at the table, social expectations, and even social manipulation.  Skill here is knowing how to use these outside the system things to get the GM to agree that you can get what you wanted.  And, as I've noted, there's plenty of skill here, but this doesn't mean that it's skilled play -- the paradigm is broken because you're outside the system.  And this being outside the system can be trivially shown because there's no difference in how it works regardless of the system you're using -- it works the same in 2e as in Traveler as in FATE.  If the "system" is convincing your GM, then it's not skilled play, even if you are very skilled at convincing your GM with your skillful funny accent.</blockquote>

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