Alternatives to map-and-key

[Crimson Longinus]

What examples were you thinking of? Because this isn't my experience.

There was a long discussion about this in the giant D&D conservatism thread.

Acausal complications might make the player vary of taking actions the character wouldn't. And in some games players can decide stakes for their action declarations, that do not causally follow from the actions of their character. "My intent is to open the safe to find the incriminating document" etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You said characters are not in challenge. Then why are we using challenge mechanics? What does it represent? To me the point of roleplaying games is the fiction, and the purpose of the mechanics is to represent the fiction. If they are not doing that, why are we having them?

What I'm saying is that 'Skill Challenge' is not a diegetic construct. Characters do not look around and say "boy, I'm in a skill challenge, I'm going to need to find a way to roll Athletics a whole bunch!" They don't understand the world that way, it isn't organized that way, and the fiction doesn't read that way. The players and the GM decide "well, Throndir wants to get to the mountain to save his friend, and it is going to be difficult, so we'll call that an SC of complexity 5, since it is an important goal for him that has a lot of thematic weight." Now things just happen to Throndir, and he does things, makes plans, whatever. The GM will be thinking "OK, he's got 6 successes and one failure. Throndir, you are approaching the Cliffs of Nin, once you reach the top, you will be near the peak of the mountain, but their are pteridactyls circling the cliffs, and your boots are wet from that incident back at the stream." This is not rocket science, and the fiction does not need to be bent, spindled, and mutilated to make it work!

But it is not. Because the fiction is in service of the rules and new fiction must be generated to satisfy the rules. Characters must take certain number of successful actions, and it does not really matter what they are, or should they have greater or lesser impact in the given situation. Fiction is invented why this did or did not resolve the situation dictated by the number of mechanical steps required.

First of all, I will repeat, the fiction is binding. So if at this point in a challenge there is only one more check to pass to either succeed or fail the challenge, doesn't that pretty much mean that the situation has come to a head? We will advance the fiction to such a head! What else would you do? I think what your problem here is, is that you CANNOT CONCEIVE OF a kind of play where the 'map', the path that the story can take through the fiction, is not already laid out in front of you. So your mind rebels. You think "but, I must deal with 7 more rooms, here they are on the map!" but such a thing doesn't really exist in the sort of play where these constructs are used.

Lets imagine an SC that represents a journey from here to there, and at the start of the SC some sort of fiction is presented, a situation, and that obstacle logically leads to a lot of action, a bunch of checks, and whatnot. Now the players have amassed all but one of their required successes, and they're on day 1 of the 10 day journey. What's the problem? Sure, the next 9 days are pretty uneventful. What is the problem with that?

To me it suggest that you do not have very imaginative players or that the GM is railroading by shutting down their ideas to satisfy the structure of the skill challenge mechanism. And of course the former might be due the players being trained by the latter. They do not bother to try to come up with anything creative, as all that matter that they roll anything and generate the successes.

I stop it with this garbage. I'm tired of this BS argument. It simply clearly indicates you have not played using these techniques and can't seem to wrap your head around them. That's fine, everyone does their thing, but your inability to appreciate my thing is not license to crap on it.

I'm in this thread to have a, hopefully interesting, discussion of what the different techniques are for establishing fiction and navigating through the game. Can we talk about that, or is this thread simply going to be another in the endless series of wars against anything that doesn't match the expectations and desires of a certain group of posters? You decide!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You have to assume the point of the mechanic is not to try and succeed at the challenge. The goal is to see what happens as a result of the character wanting/trying something, not to act as an agent of the character trying to get the thing (a thing very muddied in skill challenges, because they were presented as an alternative mechanic toward that end originally).

I don't think I agree. The players are attempting to get their characters through the challenge successfully. They are simply operating within the confines of a set of game rules! Those rules let them propose solutions to obstacles presented by the GM which are germane to the challenge at hand (extraneous stuff could happen, though this is atypical play IME, it would simply not bear on the challenge). Of course players often advocate for solutions that are mechanically more reliable for them. That is actually what the mechanics of 4e are for, is to say "yeah, you are really good at Athletics, this is the type of solution you choose to problems, when possible." There ARE other considerations though! Role Play is a thing! In more Narrativist oriented games, GMs also organize challenges that have obstacles that are horns of a dilemma, or personally costly, etc. The point being to examine, elaborate, and 'forge' the nature of the character. All this stuff comes into play. Challenges can be a great mechanic for this. They can also simply be difficult little mini-games in and of themselves. That type are usually more 'nailed down' by the GM ahead of time.

So, I agree that SCs were not fully explicated or maybe understood by WotC in all their dimensions on day one. I don't find that makes them 'muddied', they are rather clear in their execution. The rules saw some significant refinement over time, but they work quite well.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What I'm saying is that 'Skill Challenge' is not a diegetic construct. Characters do not look around and say "boy, I'm in a skill challenge, I'm going to need to find a way to roll Athletics a whole bunch!" They don't understand the world that way, it isn't organized that way, and the fiction doesn't read that way. The players and the GM decide "well, Throndir wants to get to the mountain to save his friend, and it is going to be difficult, so we'll call that an SC of complexity 5, since it is an important goal for him that has a lot of thematic weight." Now things just happen to Throndir, and he does things, makes plans, whatever. The GM will be thinking "OK, he's got 6 successes and one failure. Throndir, you are approaching the Cliffs of Nin, once you reach the top, you will be near the peak of the mountain, but their are pteridactyls circling the cliffs, and your boots are wet from that incident back at the stream." This is not rocket science, and the fiction does not need to be bent, spindled, and mutilated to make it work!

But the player knows that it is a skill challenge, and if athletics is their best skill they will probably want to roll it six times. (Boring, but optimal.)

And ultimately it doesn't matter that much what they do. The goal is to get on top, and six successes will get them there. So they might roll animal handling to distract to calm the pterodactyls, stealth to move past them, crafting to add nails to their shoes so that climbing is easier, athletics to climb, medicine to drug pterodactyl fodder with sleeping drugs or whatever. But it is really just colour. None of these tactics is better or worse, except in the boring way that you should invent things that use your best skills and spam them repeatedly if at all possible.

First of all, I will repeat, the fiction is binding. So if at this point in a challenge there is only one more check to pass to either succeed or fail the challenge, doesn't that pretty much mean that the situation has come to a head? We will advance the fiction to such a head! What else would you do?

Right. So here is the mechanics first thinking. Next success will complete the challenge so that we direct the fiction so that it does.

I think what your problem here is, is that you CANNOT CONCEIVE OF a kind of play where the 'map', the path that the story can take through the fiction, is not already laid out in front of you. So your mind rebels. You think "but, I must deal with 7 more rooms, here they are on the map!" but such a thing doesn't really exist in the sort of play where these constructs are used.

Lets imagine an SC that represents a journey from here to there, and at the start of the SC some sort of fiction is presented, a situation, and that obstacle logically leads to a lot of action, a bunch of checks, and whatnot. Now the players have amassed all but one of their required successes, and they're on day 1 of the 10 day journey. What's the problem? Sure, the next 9 days are pretty uneventful. What is the problem with that?

I can conceive it just fine. The problem for me is that the fiction is just colour, an afterthought. If you have predetermined obstacles, then you need to actually engage with the situation, and have actual solution to them. And some solutions are better than others, so what you decide to do actually matters. In skill challenge it really doesn't.

I stop it with this garbage. I'm tired of this BS argument. It simply clearly indicates you have not played using these techniques and can't seem to wrap your head around them. That's fine, everyone does their thing, but your inability to appreciate my thing is not license to crap on it.

I'm in this thread to have a, hopefully interesting, discussion of what the different techniques are for establishing fiction and navigating through the game. Can we talk about that, or is this thread simply going to be another in the endless series of wars against anything that doesn't match the expectations and desires of a certain group of posters? You decide!

It is not a war against anything. I am sure skill challenges are a good structure for prompting creative storytelling and I don't hate them. But like everything, they also have trade-offs, which you are unwilling to recognise. This is what turns these threads into such endless debates, it is not that people do think that these techniques aren't valid, they are. It just that the proponents of them cannot accept any flaw or shortcoming in them. I think it would be much more constructive to drop such point blank denials, and at least consider the possibility that people who point these out are not just haters but are trying to have a conversation. I think @soviet had a good response, which recognised the flaws in skill challenge and they had formulated an upgrade that at least aimed to address some of them.

My own game Other Worlds has a similar 'sequence of conflicts' mechanism called Set Pieces which IMHO is much more effective. It's conflict resolution so a bit different but fundamentally the two sides take it in turns making rolls that either escalate or resolve the situation.

In other words, on my go I can choose to escalate this duel (or diplomatic negotiation, or car chase, or whatever) by taking an action that seeks to give me a bonus to the rest of the situation going forward ('I have the high ground!') or gives the other side a penalty going forward ('You're disarmed!'). Jockeying for position, essentially.

Or, I can move to resolve the overall conflict by taking a course of action that would be definitive one way or the other - going for the death blow that might leave you open to a counterattack, threatening to blow up the negotiations if you don't get your way, trying a death-defying stunt that if it succeeds will let you escape your pursuers, etc.

Because it puts this pacing tool of 'do things carry on building up or is this the moment of truth' in the hand of the participants, it avoids a lot of the artificialness and stops the situation dragging on beyond people's appetite for it.

This sounds interesting, would it be possible to have an example which illustrates how it works? I think at glance this instantly seems better to me than skill challenges. The possibility of a decisive action makes it far more interesting right away, and changes the whole dynamic away from slogging trough predetermined number of checks.

 

[soviet]

This sounds interesting, would it be possible to have an example which illustrates how it works? I think at glance this instantly seems better to me than skill challenges. The possibility of a decisive action makes it far more interesting right away, and changes the whole dynamic away from slogging trough predetermined number of checks.

Thanks. I don't have a detailed example but I can share the very brief one from the book. Obviously it's missing the context of the chapter but you can (if you wish) download a free rules summary from DTRPG. I guess a key bit of context is that when you win a conflict you can either gain a temporary ability yourself or impose a temporary flaw on the other side. These are added as a bonus or penalty when applicable, meaning that for example smashing up a ship's guns will give it a significant penalty on all future attempts to resolve things through shooting, and successfully stealthing from en enemy ship's sensors will give you a significant bonus on all future attempts to resolve things through stealth. So the nature of the final resolution is very dependent on the steps that lead up to it - you can't just spam diplomacy or firepower or whatever if your opponent has taken steps to neuter those abilities during the conflict.


Example Set Piece: Dogfight at Tetris Nova

The infamous Sheridan Heist and the crew of his ship, The Wraith, are engaged in a vicious dogfight with Drake Amorous’s heavy warship, The Behemoth. Given the history between the two captains, the group decide to resolve the confrontation as a full-on set piece. Both pilots have the same overall objective: to outfly, and thus humiliate, the other side.

Round One – Opening Salvos (Escalate)

The GM goes first and has the Behemoth fire at The Wraith, trying to disable its primary weapons systems. If she wins, the duel won’t be over, but Sheridan’s ability to fight back will be severely compromised. Sheridan’s player in turn decides that he is trying to dodge the incoming fire and respond with a devastating barrage of his own. Both sides narrate back and forth for a few moments and then pick up the dice. The GM wins the roll and so gives The Wraith a new flaw: Smashed-Up Quad Cannons 52.

Round Two – Out of the Frying Pan... (Escalate)

It is now Sheridan’s go. He decides to escalate the conflict even further by flying straight into a nearby asteroid field! Drake will be forced to pursue if he wants to keep up the chase. The group decide to handle this as a simple opposed piloting check; the loser chickens out first and gets his ship knocked around into the bargain. This time Ian wins the roll and the GM assigns Drake himself a new flaw: Blind Fury 47. He’s so desperate for revenge after this fresh humiliation that he’s not thinking clearly any more.

Round Three – Gone! (Escalate)

On Drake’s turn he decides to become much more aggressive. The GM describes him flying The Behemoth dangerously close to The Wraith’s aft thrusters while Sheridan’s player describes his various attempts to shake him off. Eventually Drake moves in for the ram (using Blind Fury as a supporting ability, no less!) and Sheridan responds by trying to activate his Stealth Field and disappear from his screens at the last minute. Sheridan wins the roll and the GM gives him the temporary ability Invisible to Sensors 45. ‘Where did he go?’cries Drake, smashing his fist against his control panel in frustration.

Round Four – All or Nothing (Resolve)

It is now Sheridan’s turn. He decides to take advantage of his present invisibility and move to a final resolution of the conflict. Using his Perform Risky Manoeuvre ability he will do a full 180 degree loop and jettison his entire cargo right into Drake’s face. This is a risky manoeuvre all right – he’s launching a full frontal assault with improvised weapons while flying upside down at top speed into the guns of another ship at point blank range. If it doesn’t succeed in blowing Drake out of the sky, Sheridan will almost certainly get shot down himself by the return fire. Sheridan uses Invisible to Sensors as his biggest supporting ability and uses a spotlight point to go all in with the rest of his abilities. He does not receive a negative trait penalty for Smashed-Up Quad Cannons because he is not using them as part of his manoeuvre. Drake, however, does receive a penalty for Blind Fury, and may also receive a circumstance penalty for the surprise value of the attack. After the total ratings have been calculated and the final stakes have been clarified, both sides cross their fingers for luck and then reach for the dice

 

[soviet]

But the player knows that it is a skill challenge, and if athletics is their best skill they will probably want to roll it six times. (Boring, but optimal.)

And ultimately it doesn't matter that much what they do. The goal is to get on top, and six successes will get them there. So they might roll animal handling to distract to calm the pterodactyls, stealth to move past them, crafting to add nails to their shoes so that climbing is easier, athletics to climb, medicine to drug pterodactyl fodder with sleeping drugs or whatever. But it is really just colour. None of these tactics is better or worse, except in the boring way that you should invent things that use your best skills and spam them repeatedly if at all possible.

I think there is an excluded middle here between 'the player isn't invested in any particular outcome for his character' and 'the player will do anything to win the roll, no matter how degenerate or hollow'. When I play D&D sure I try to use my best abilities but I also try to resolve things how they make sense in the fiction, having my Barbarian sweet talk his way out of things even when Intimidate is my higher score, or fighting would be my better option, or the Cleric is better at Diplomacy and I could run and get him instead.

I don't remember the rules for SCs too clearly (and they changed anyway) but weren't there different DCs for different approaches? So it isn't necessarily just colour or just about spamming your best skill. We also used to run them that you couldn't just spam the same thing each time, each action had to be a different skill or at least the same skill used in a very different way. I don't know if that's RAW or not.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Thanks. I don't have a detailed example but I can share the very brief one from the book. Obviously it's missing the context of the chapter but you can (if you wish) download a free rules summary from DTRPG. I guess a key bit of context is that when you win a conflict you can either gain a temporary ability yourself or impose a temporary flaw on the other side. These are added as a bonus or penalty when applicable, meaning that for example smashing up a ship's guns will give it a significant penalty on all future attempts to resolve things through shooting, and successfully stealthing from en enemy ship's sensors will give you a significant bonus on all future attempts to resolve things through stealth. So the nature of the final resolution is very dependent on the steps that lead up to it - you can't just spam diplomacy or firepower or whatever if your opponent has taken steps to neuter those abilities during the conflict.

Thank you for the explanation and example. This seems good to me; that the different approaches produce different outcomes and that there is not a set number of checks for the conflict but instead an action to resolve makes it far better than the skill challenges to me.

(I also downloaded your free preview and I read it once I have time.)

I think there is an excluded middle here between 'the player isn't invested in any particular outcome for his character' and 'the player will do anything to win the roll, no matter how degenerate or hollow'. When I play D&D sure I try to use my best abilities but I also try to resolve things how they make sense in the fiction, having my Barbarian sweet talk his way out of things even when Intimidate is my higher score, or fighting would be my better option, or the Cleric is better at Diplomacy and I could run and get him instead.

I don't remember the rules for SCs too clearly (and they changed anyway) but weren't there different DCs for different approaches? So it isn't necessarily just colour or just about spamming your best skill. We also used to run them that you couldn't just spam the same thing each time, each action had to be a different skill or at least the same skill used in a very different way. I don't know if that's RAW or not.

Sure, you have a point. I don't think the rules prohibited the use of the same skill, but I'm not absolutely sure, and there were different version of the skill challenge rules in different book.

And players don't always need to play optimally, but I also feel that generally the rules should be designed so that it still produces interesting gameplay if they do. And I think the skill challenges being so transparent about the successes and failures needed makes it very apparent what is optimal in a way more complicated and nuanced situation perhaps wouldn't.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But the player knows that it is a skill challenge, and if athletics is their best skill they will probably want to roll it six times. (Boring, but optimal.)

OK, but if a GM is lazy and unimaginative to the point of just describing some fiction that always lets you do one thing to solve every problem, I'm not sure I see how that is a problem with game system. I could just as easily sit around and tell you to roll Athletics again and again in 5e, I don't need a skill challenge to make me a rotten GM.

And ultimately it doesn't matter that much what they do. The goal is to get on top, and six successes will get them there. So they might roll animal handling to distract to calm the pterodactyls, stealth to move past them, crafting to add nails to their shoes so that climbing is easier, athletics to climb, medicine to drug pterodactyl fodder with sleeping drugs or whatever. But it is really just colour. None of these tactics is better or worse, except in the boring way that you should invent things that use your best skills and spam them repeatedly if at all possible.

OK, now, how about in 5e? Why is it that the same sequence of actions would not be 'just color'? I'm utterly mystified! I mean, if the point of playing an RPG is not to play through these things, have fun, find out how your character does whatever they do, etc. then I don't know what it IS about!

ALL, IMHO that SCs are about is regulating and explicating stakes in play so that we know "well, if I can pass 6 checks, then I can get to the top of the mountain", but the player is not in charge of what those 6 checks ARE. They may have some say in the matter, by maybe choosing to catch and ride a pteridactyl instead of climb the cliff, but all the SC is saying is there's a point where this particular sequence has been 'played enough'.

Right. So here is the mechanics first thinking. Next success will complete the challenge so that we direct the fiction so that it does.

I don't understand what the fixation is on the number of dice rolls. A 5e GM could declare the exact same number of dice rolls got you to the exact same point. All that is true in an SC is that the player already knows that, so they can make some game level decisions about how they play things. I don't see this as 'mechanics first', it is simply making a playable game that isn't just asking someone for things. Now, you can also do this with a 'map & key' kind of format, there are such many obstacles between you and your goal. Nobody calls that 'mechanics first thinking'.

I can conceive it just fine. The problem for me is that the fiction is just colour, an afterthought. If you have predetermined obstacles, then you need to actually engage with the situation, and have actual solution to them. And some solutions are better than others, so what you decide to do actually matters. In skill challenge it really doesn't.

I entirely disagree. If you can't find a way past the obstacles in an SC, then you FAIL THE SC. The only way to get past them is to engage with the fiction, figure out what needs to be done, and do it.

It is not a war against anything. I am sure skill challenges are a good structure for prompting creative storytelling and I don't hate them. But like everything, they also have trade-offs, which you are unwilling to recognise. This is what turns these threads into such endless debates, it is not that people do think that these techniques aren't valid, they are. It just that the proponents of them cannot accept any flaw or shortcoming in them. I think it would be much more constructive to drop such point blank denials, and at least consider the possibility that people who point these out are not just haters but are trying to have a conversation. I think @soviet had a good response, which recognised the flaws in skill challenge and they had formulated an upgrade that at least aimed to address some of them.

I assure you, I am not at all closed-minded, nobody who knows me would think that. I haven't criticized any other techniques, nor do I think badly of using them. But when I get people telling me that a certain way of doing things is unimaginative and treats the fiction as irrelevant AND I BLEEPING WELL KNOW BETTER, then yeah, I'm going to disagree with them. Honestly, I want to say that you might look in the mirror, but frankly I am uninterested in this sort of debate.

@soviet has an interesting perspective. I don't know how his game works. It could be interesting, but maybe he and I have had somewhat different experiences. His points still seem to me to point towards there being some expectation of certain fixed things happening where I don't have that expectation. I'm not sure. I think we could profitably dig into that.

This sounds interesting, would it be possible to have an example which illustrates how it works? I think at glance this instantly seems better to me than skill challenges. The possibility of a decisive action makes it far more interesting right away, and changes the whole dynamic away from slogging trough predetermined number of checks.

Yeah, I don't get a sense of the 'game' side of it from the description. Like, there must be some sort of set of trade offs between one type of choice or the other, and those must change on balance depending on the situation.

 

[soviet]

OK, but if a GM is lazy and unimaginative to the point of just describing some fiction that always lets you do one thing to solve every problem, I'm not sure I see how that is a problem with game system. I could just as easily sit around and tell you to roll Athletics again and again in 5e, I don't need a skill challenge to make me a rotten GM.

I agree with this. Skill challenges and similar mechanics are just a way of applying slightly more structure to regular play in order to make a particular long-form sequence more transparent and gameable. Without such a structure, these sequences are ultimatelly resolved by the GM, who after a certain (arbitrary) number of player actions just decides 'OK the NPCs are convinced now' or 'No, you've tried but you can't figure out how to fix the ship with the parts you have'. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but the structure of a SC provides an alternative, more gameable, approach.

I have definitely seen criticisms of skill challenges before that boil down to 'the game rules don't stop me from ruining the game, so I will'. And I've seen the same criticism applied to things like player narration and invention of world details. Ultimately all games rely on a certain amount of good faith from all parties.

@soviet has an interesting perspective. I don't know how his game works. It could be interesting, but maybe he and I have had somewhat different experiences. His points still seem to me to point towards there being some expectation of certain fixed things happening where I don't have that expectation. I'm not sure. I think we could profitably dig into that.

Yeah, I don't get a sense of the 'game' side of it from the description. Like, there must be some sort of set of trade offs between one type of choice or the other, and those must change on balance depending on the situation.

Not sure what games you have experience with but it's along the lines of FATE or HeroQuest. Characters have player-created narrative descriptors as abilities (Follow the Jedi Code, Spork-Bending Telekinesis, Never Back Down) and apply them (with modifiers for appropriateness) to freeform conflicts with negotiated stakes.

The set pieces in my game are entirely freeform, the two sides take turns deciding 'escalate or resolve' until one side chooses resolve. There are guidelines for what I call storyboarded set pieces where the phases of a particular conflict might actually be set in advance - for example, the face-off/quick draw/shots fired sequence of a wild west gunfight, or the prosecution case/defence case/final speeches sequence of a criminal trial. But these are less common.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

OK, but if a GM is lazy and unimaginative to the point of just describing some fiction that always lets you do one thing to solve every problem, I'm not sure I see how that is a problem with game system. I could just as easily sit around and tell you to roll Athletics again and again in 5e, I don't need a skill challenge to make me a rotten GM.

But that's what skill challenge rules say, They have set of skills you can use and then set of secondary skills that might face higher DC. It even says:

"Characters must make a
check on their turn using one of the identified primary
skills (usually with a moderate DC) or they must use
a different skill, if they can come up with a way to
use it to contribute to the challenge (with a hard DC).
A secondary skill can be used only once by a single
character in any given skill challenge."

And:

"When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge,
let that player’s character use any skill the player
wants. As long as the player or you can come up with
a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge,
go for it."

So by the rules as written just spamming you best skill, if it was one of the primary skills of the challenge is how it works, and the GM is not supposed to invent reasons why it cannot be done. So yeah, it is the fault of the rules.

OK, now, how about in 5e? Why is it that the same sequence of actions would not be 'just color'? I'm utterly mystified! I mean, if the point of playing an RPG is not to play through these things, have fun, find out how your character does whatever they do, etc. then I don't know what it IS about!

ALL, IMHO that SCs are about is regulating and explicating stakes in play so that we know "well, if I can pass 6 checks, then I can get to the top of the mountain", but the player is not in charge of what those 6 checks ARE. They may have some say in the matter, by maybe choosing to catch and ride a pteridactyl instead of climb the cliff, but all the SC is saying is there's a point where this particular sequence has been 'played enough'.

I don't understand what the fixation is on the number of dice rolls. A 5e GM could declare the exact same number of dice rolls got you to the exact same point. All that is true in an SC is that the player already knows that, so they can make some game level decisions about how they play things. I don't see this as 'mechanics first', it is simply making a playable game that isn't just asking someone for things. Now, you can also do this with a 'map & key' kind of format, there are such many obstacles between you and your goal. Nobody calls that 'mechanics first thinking'.

Because if the number of rolls (and the universal DC too) is fixed from the get go, then it really doesn't matter what you do. There are no better or worse choices, apart choosing the skills which you have biggest numbers in. It does not require thinking about the situation, engaging with it.

I recently ran a prison escape in my 5e game. I guess it could have been a skill challenge. It wasn't. There was predetermined obstacles. Door, locking mechanism out of reach, a guards with predetermined locations, the location of the key etc. And different actions had different DCs depending on the actual diegetic difficulty of that specific thing in the fiction. What specific actions they took mattered, what items they had managed to smuggle in mattered. And they actually ended up trying two differEnt approaches, as the first one failed, but not badly enough that the guards noticed. And the first attempt had way less "steps" than their second, way more complicated and risky attempt that nevertheless succeeded did.

First attempt:
1) The bard uses mage hand to pick the out of reach locking mechanism with the lockpicks the rogue had smuggled in. (fail)
Next steps would have probably been
2) Rush the guard and kill/knock him unconscious.
3+) Get out of the building

Second attempt:
1) The rogue taunts the guard to get him come close.
2) The rogue kills the guard with one strike with a poison needle she had smuggled in (super risky, but amazingly succeeded)
3) The bard and the barbarian bend the bars of the door as now there is no guard looking (super hard, but they manage to bend them a little.)
4) The rogue, the smallest and nimblest member of the party tries to squeeze through the slightly bent bars. (success)
5) As the guard has no keys, the rogue picks the locking mechanism. (success)
6+) Get out of the building.

I entirely disagree. If you can't find a way past the obstacles in an SC, then you FAIL THE SC. The only way to get past them is to engage with the fiction, figure out what needs to be done, and do it.

That's not what the rules say. They just need to roll the required number of successes on the skills determined for the skill challenge. Then you somehow describe how this overcomes the obstacles.

I assure you, I am not at all closed-minded, nobody who knows me would think that. I haven't criticized any other techniques, nor do I think badly of using them. But when I get people telling me that a certain way of doing things is unimaginative and treats the fiction as irrelevant AND I BLEEPING WELL KNOW BETTER, then yeah, I'm going to disagree with them. Honestly, I want to say that you might look in the mirror, but frankly I am uninterested in this sort of debate.

Perhaps you run skill challenges better than what the rules as written suggest. In fact, I am pretty sure that anyone who has had significant success with them is doing so. But this is not due the published rules, it is due you inventing your own rules that have some slight structural similarity to 4e skill challenges.