I missed this one when he posted it, but back in July Ryan Macklin wrote a blog post that talks about the difference between “adventure games” and “story games.” Whether one is enamored of that particular pair of labels or not, I think he’s on to something when he says:

• Adventure Games test competence
• Story Games manage pace

I’d be most pleased to be able to test competence and manage pace in the same game, but good examples of games that do both well don’t spring mind, save perhaps for Gumshoe, but as a game that explicitly refuses to test competence in the critical cases, and which has no mechanisms at all for managing pace, maybe it only suggests itself because of the way I have been writing and running Gumshoe as I work on Eternal Lies (the Trail of Cthulhu campaign that Will and I are co-writing for Pelgrane).

Anyway, check out Ryan’s post, and if you think of a game that both tests competence and manages pace well, in the same package, drop a note on the comments.