My ideal game would not have meaningfully different mechanics if we snapped all of the fiction off, and labeled them "Actions A" through "Action Omega" and players could sit down given the same scenario, written in this terrible world on a dry spreadsheet, and meaningfully debate "I prefer a Theta opening into a Q gambit," vs. "the consistency of alternating R and C is worth avoiding that risk, even though it is slower."
The fiction is the fun thing we apply both because it's really hard to write a bunch of actions devoid of any inspiration, and to string those actions into a narrative. It is, ideally, useful because it will align neatly enough with those actions to help players conceptualize them (that's why I do calls to simulation) but it has nothing ultimately to say about the game, except in retrospect. In TTRPGs, unlike conventional board games, the fiction also has a unique ability, in that it informs the entirely player controlled victory conditions of many iterated games played over unbounded time.
Well, yeah, I think the fiction is more important than that. It supplies the queues that allow the players to reason about "well, this guy is very tough, he grew up on the street and he's got a nasty rep, Intimidation is going to be tough, but he loves his suds and holds forth at the Old Red Barn, so maybe we can buy him some drinks and sweet talk him!" The players have now established via generally understood tropes and fantasy/adventure game genre logic that one option has a higher DC than the other. Of course, they may still opt for Intimidate owing to various other fictional factors (the bar is too public, the half-orc has a huge bonus in Intimidation, etc.). These are certainly the sorts of things I aim for as a GM, to depict a situation in a way that allows this kind of level of tactics to come out.
You've migrated my criticism from SCs to BitD, so let's start by addressing SCs.
Fair enough, though IMHO most arguments apply to all of these sorts of resolution systems.
The more we lean in to this, the less carefully political I'm going to be with my language and define some terms usefully for my point. Assume game as I defined the term earlier: a limited system of interlocking rules, where players will make interesting decisions contextualized by an agreed on goal. A trivial game has either one or an arbitrarily high number of optimal strategies. A decision cannot be interesting if it does not impact the player's position relative to the goal, either because any other decision would have resulted in the same outcome or because it was trivial. A player who can make interesting decisions is said to have agency.
You're fine, I don't generally rely on trying to argue semantics unless there's some urgent need to. I'll accept the above.
SCs are first, poorly defined to their proponent's advantage: are they a framework applied to a situation secretly, a stated set of target DCs and appropriate skills, a custom designed game with individual rules for the expenditure of resources and the accumulation of minor advantages, subject to skill DCs that are specified outside of the SC's stated level when an action declaration calls for one, etc, etc.
I am referencing the Rules Compendium SC text. It does state that it is up to the GM as to whether the SC is declared or not. Frankly, from my perspective of having an interest in RPGs as games, I don't think it really makes sense not to declare them.
4e PbP thread has a number of examples, and I note that none of them are covert in any way. Obviously you may object that the rules don't mandate this, but I would counter argue that if there is a good practice that works well, then it validates the utility of the mechanics. The RC does not mention any 'custom designed game', although DMG2 gives an example of an 'SC' which is highly customized. Again, I won't argue that custom mechanics validate SCs if you won't argue the opposite. The use of resources in SCs is touched on, though the rules do not spell out every possibility. Likewise there is a discussion of possible penalties, outcomes, etc. An SC is an encounter within 4e's overall system, so it carries all the same significance there as a fight, or a puzzle. The DCs for an SC are precisely stated and the GM is instructed to provide the players with a specific number of 'advantages' (generally activated by secondary skills, specific fictional actions, or resource usage) that can lower some DCs or give other specific mechanical effects. Additionally the entire rich panoply of 4e conditions, damage/healing/HS mechanics, Page 42, etc. are all potentially in play. These things are all pretty well spelled-out in their own rules sections.
Assuming for the moment one of the simplest SC structure that gets brought up, let's propose the players will succeed if they get 3 success before 3 failures, they will all roll at least once, and a list of skills that are applicable with the appropriate Easy, Medium and Hard DCs are laid out. Currently, the game is trivial, based on comparing player's modifiers and the available skill checks to determine the most statistically likely outcome.
Not to quibble, complexity 1 is 4 successes before 3 failures, and is suitable for IMHO situations that are basically elaborations of a skill check, and would generally involve one, or two obstacles, fictionally. The RC describes it as "equivalent to defeating a single monster in combat." RC lists this as having 4 moderate DCs typically, and no advantages are granted by the GM, nor are any hard DCs typical. Remember, ingredient 1 of an SC is a GOAL, which is a fictional end state condition desired by the players.
The SC should have, roughly, 7 skills designated by the GM, 2-3 of which are secondary. Primary skills in a C1 challenge can usually contribute one success each, but this is not a hard rule, it could be loosened based on the fictional situation. Likewise secondary skills can either contribute 1 success, or grant some other advantage, unlock another skill, etc. Generally if a player proposes some non-designated skill and describes how it can contribute to success, it will be treated as a secondary skill. I would just note that I personally am not all that wedded to this part of the design, frankly fiction should provide adequate guidance in most cases, but I think it makes sense to designate specific secondary use possibilities that are thematic.
Finally every SC has consequences, both for individual failures, and for overall failure. In the case of the example of a C1 challenge, probably there's just a straightforward consequence for overall failure, but individual check failures COULD have some consequence. One option is to reduce the reward for success, or introduce a complication that follows.
Possible complications from this point involve designing a custom game, most of which entail allowing another skill to be used if a success is rolled, or modifying the target of a future check. The game now requires more intensive calculation, and is likely still trivial, but may offer a higher risk strategy that could be preferred over a lower risk one. Further design, say adding a maximum number of checks, decreases the likelihood the game is trivial, but the number of viable strategies remains low and the reasons for preferring them are clear.
Possibly. The universe of potential uses for SCs is large, so what you are saying is certainly reasonable. However, its quite likely that for higher complexity challenges they may well have 'stages' which take place as separate scenes with different constraints and strategies. An SC is not 'time bound' and is not restricted to one scene. Certainly these more complex SCs are likely to be, obviously, C4 or C5 and thus have more tools than the C1 we discussed above.
Further complications might include allowing any skill to be relevant, perhaps at a higher DC than the specified skills: the game remains trivial. Allowing any skill with an argument toward a specific DC: persuasion of the GM is outside the scope of the game, but assuming it can be done consistently or that the resultant DC is not hidden nor forced once persuasion is attempted, the game remains trivial.
But you write this as if you think any skill check can be deployed at any time simply because it is a relevant skill for the SC. I don't agree that this is the case. FICTION can provide many different possible types of situation. You may not be able to deploy Arcana until after you have deployed Thievery, for example, or you could spend 10 minutes and make a bunch of noise using Magic Missile, or a Knock Ritual. I would be more inclined to agree that the rules are loose here, but there are specific examples and patterns that are outlined in the RC text.
You could vary the number of success necessary to achieve the goal or failures available: if the information is player facing, the game remains trivial. You could conceal the DCs, required successes or required failures from the players: the players cannot make interesting decisions. You could add immediate win or immediate loss conditions: if known to the players, it is possible as above the game is not trivial, because the players can now advance a two strategies. Unfortunately this is ad hoc game design, and without careful analysis, it's more likely you've just shifted the optimal strategy to "attempt to get the 3 success, until the likelihood falls lower than the iterated probability of achieving instantaneous success" which remains trivial. If unknown to the players, it can't be factored in to any interesting decisions they might make.
The rules are quite explicit about successes and failures, your choices are C1 through C5, with C1 requiring 4 successes, and C5 requiring 12. In all cases 3 failures equates to an overall failure, although the GM is supposed to give out advantages, up to 6 for a C5, which CAN have the effect of removing a failure instead of granting a success. There is no explicit design consideration for 'immediate win', though most SCs have fairly obvious 'you lost' options. These are not generally spelled out. I'm not against some SCs having a 'you win' button, I would generally tie it to some significant concession or resource expenditure.
Perhaps you might allow the expenditure of a resource for a known bonus and/or automatic success: this is the first time the SC is not trivial. The larger game being played is now interesting, the player must decide on the amount of resources they can expend to achieve this particular problem in the larger scheme of their resource schedule, the distribution of resources spent across the party. You've invented spell slots, which have the potential to be interesting depending on the resource schedule, but aren't a unique strength of SCs.
As I say, there are examples of doing these things in DMG2 and RC, maybe elsewhere as well, but there are not hard and fast rules relating to exactly what sort of expenditure might be considered sufficient to, say, garner an automatic success. Frankly I think at-will or encounter power use is basically just another skill, daily use, when fictionally appropriate could grant auto-success. Powers are also good choices for the GM to grant advantages. Rituals IMHO MOSTLY grant a full success, and probably have some other benefit as well, but it depends on the situation.
Fundamentally, skill challenges provide less agency than a large set of specified actions. There are simply more lines of play available and more cases to be made for one line of play over the other.
I don't see how this statement can be supported. AT WORST an SC is no different from a bunch of unstructured checks in terms of strategy.
I'm less confident in my ability to critique BitD (and not immediately convinced the gameplay loop is trivial or lacks agency), particularly given I've been told my play experiences were not normative, but you have given me the precisely the inverse set of relevant information that I would need to do so here. It is not meaningful to the gameplay decision making I'm talking about that those situations were narratively different if they were resolved the same way, which of course they almost certainly weren't: the set of choices available likely varied considerably between them. I would need that list of choices to evaluate them as games.
Yes, the specific choices and order of choices varied, of course. As with SCs though, the overall structure of a score in BitD is fairly 'set'. It will contain somewhere between around 5 and up to perhaps 12 obstacles, some of which may require multiple successes in order to retire a clock, though clocks are not required for gauging an obstacle, and can also serve auxiliary purposes, like counting down to the introduction of some external threat/complication. This may evolve dynamically depending on how well the PCs perform at various stages (IE in our Ironhook Prison break Takeo failed a check and this created a new set of obstacles). BitD is structured such that there are USUALLY at least choices like "push and expend 2 stress for an extra die, or don't push and just roll your base dice." This takes skill to manage. There's no point in NOT spending stress up to a point, but its risky to push it, and can also require DTAs to remove.
I think I have a clear way to think about our disagreement. You seem to be proposing that the list of available actions (imagine an action here includes not just the player declaration, but the possible consequences of that declaration) should be assembled each turn by consulting the fictional state for inspiration. I contend all possible actions on all possible board states should be specified before the game begins, and the fiction should be inspired by evaluating the set of actions which are available in the current board from turn to turn.
IMHO what you are asking for is very rare to non-existent in RPGs, and when it HAS existed it tended to be in the early classic D&D period where the "all possible board states" you refer to was a dungeon map and key coupled with the exploration and combat rules, and maybe the parley and evasion/pursuit rules. Its a very limited universe of play. In fact the entire 'narrative movement' in terms of RPGs was a reaction to that limited universe and a desire to move past its boundaries. At first of course the early RPGers simply thought "well, this works in the dungeon, it will work everywhere!" Heh! they should have talked to Dave Arneson, he knew better and NEVER left the dungeon! In fact he just moved on from D&D as he full well knew what it could and couldn't do, being deeply versed in Role Play as an art itself, and a pretty solid game designer.
Thus we got PfS, which I contend is an attempt to 'simulate the world so well that play becomes dramatic', but BRP/RQ, RM, etc. etc. etc. proved that story also futile, though it did allow for some interesting different play. This lead directly to other attempts, like 2e's "well, just have the referee force everything to be a story." That too was not well-received by many, with the true trad people disgusted by GM Force, and the narrativists pointing to the Impossible thing before breakfast (IE that if the GM owns the fiction and the players own the characters, narrative cannot result). Finally we got things like 4e and PbtAs, and FitDs that provide ways for the players to match the characters with the fiction, with the Czege Principle being the tricky part, but its doable.
My point is, you can have what you want, but the game you can make with that is dungeon mazes, or something very very similar. It won't be games full of complex social interaction and any sort of deep character development. It will be, potentially, a good game, though IME people quickly tire of this sort of play and often move on. Even Gary clearly wanted something new by the late '80s.
