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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8306565" data-attributes="member: 71699">Taking your view that "it has to be something you can become more skilled at in a way that is clear to everyone at the table". Games deliberately limit freedom of skill expression to a representative set, ensuring a common vernacular of play (players can parse and address one another's expressions). Limited that way, they are then able to formulate statements or scales for ranking expressions, and/or define states where some participants' skills are prevailing.I wonder if the distinction you are drawing attention to in your second paragraph is one between skill-in-the-moment and aggregations of skill? What I mean is, that if I abandon concern for consequences to express skill in the moment, then down the line my aggregated skill might seem lower. Strategy typically envisions a cascade of skillful moves that will lead to a tipping of the balance decisively in one's favour. (That's not all there is to strategy, and the word has an elusive meaning, but that is often part of it.)Say I call your distinction one between skill-in-the-moment and meta-skill. I have the skill of the act in the moment, judged now. And against that I have the skill as best possible move for the cascade, judged later. An interesting segue, is that those adverse consequences might amount to greater opportunities down the line for skill-in-the-moment - better prepared foes, fewer resources - harder fights!To see how radical that separation of skill-concerns could be: one could come to the counter-intuitive idea that failing to husband resources evidences, and results in, greater skill. (Although that is rhetorical sleight-of-hand, because it is not showing greater meta-skill, only greater skill-in-the-moment.) That might then be taken to be an agenda of play: skill-now, i.e. maximise skill-in-the-moment!</blockquote>

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