Matthew J. Finch

All right.

Uh, so this is the question: "I just finished reading Matt Finch's Old School Primer.

I love the podcast, but I have my feet pretty set in minimalist narrative games rather than the OSR.

One thing the primer talked about, and I've heard y'all talk about on the podcast a few times now, is the idea of player skill." Just wanna pause here.

Where do you think the line is? Is the 10-foot pole just a bad example, or is that sort of institutional knowledge part of the charm?" Uh, so uh, again, this example here is just one from 2008.

I'm sure there are, uh, better examples to provide about player skill nowadays.

Um, I think the a- the original goal here for, um, Matt Finch was to illustrate using a purely mechanical framework like, uh, uh, target numbers and, and skill checks, uh- Versus using the narrative to, uh, a- and, and items and thinking about how to use those using your mind.

I agree that it's not a very good example because although, yeah, the players used, quote-unquote, "skill" to probe the darkness, um, a lot of times that's just kind of autopilot.