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So you would not run the night infiltration as a skill challenge? I think the example you give is an example of poor GMing. For me it breaks the principle of "no double jeopardy"--if you've failed to convince him once, you don't get to keep rolling. It also runs afoul of the idea that rolls...

At most I am explaining why I have these preferences. Doesn't the GM set the stakes of the SC at their discretion? Consider: "Outer grounds. Sneak across DC 12. On failure of <5 a guard investigates. On a failure of 5+ a guard rings the alarm". Here the stakes are set by the text; the...

Well, no. At any point in either, decisions can be made for mechanical or fictional reasons. Usually it will be some combination of the two. Moving to a determinate structure like a SC heightens the importance of mechanical reasons, for me, in a way that I find unsatisfying. I get the idea. But...

Sometimes. In the sweet old lady case I would anticipate better outcomes on persuade than intimidate. In the warlord case I would probably let the paladin do it. Well, yes...it appears forced precisely because it wasn't so hard to adjudicate. Running single checks works well and gives the DM...

That's true, I could pretend to make choices based on what is most beneficial in the fiction while knowing that mechanically I am making the odds worse. I find that disconnect hard to manage and I would prefer mechanics that don't require it.

Is your assumption that I am ok with the DM fudging whenever they want for whatever reason?

Because the skill challenge structure has flattened the task from, as an example, "get past the compounds outer defenses" to "get 3 successes". In the first case, I don't have the skill challenge structure, so I worry--will Hunt make a lot of noise? Will it draw more guards? Do the guards have...

Yes, in my experience. It can be both. But they may be weighted differently. Long form Adventure Paths are not structured to go off script too much, yeah. But sandbox games are. I don't understand this sentence.

Right--and the skill challenge mechanic is broken (for certain preferences) because it decouples resolution from the fiction. Regarding your example: the combat sequence being slow to resolve even when the outcome is obvious is a failing of the game system. Imo. The others are just questions...

Well, first, a number of people have stated explicitly that they are not making this claim. And second, this is of course true, but it gets into Oberani fallacy territory. The fact that a good GM can bypass the restrictive skill challenge structure doesn't make it a good structure.

Not what I said. In my experience, in games with skill challenges or progress clocks, I'm making decisions for my PC based on what I think will fill the clock the fastest. The game becomes "how do I convince the GM Hunt is relevant" rather than "how would my character overcome this obstacle"...

No. That is why I said they have to have a minimum amount of plausibility. Once that has been reached though, anything goes. "Not knowing" here means they are relying on the world rather than the mechanics to inform their decision making. That leads to more reasonable actions in the context of...

It isn't about being hidden or not. It's about whether the player's action declarations make a significant difference in resolving the obstacle or not. In the skill challenge case, they will always need N checks, so clever solutions or approaches the GM hadn't thought of don't mean anything. As...

When Revenge was rereleased for the 20th anniversary, it pulled $40 million. A New Hope could be even higher.

I'm confused. The quote was "if culture can explain/provide whatever explanations we need for groups of sentient beings to "be" a certain way, why do we even need bioessentialism?" If they have a different physiology, then that isn't culture. Is your idea that they can have different...

If it is all cultural, why not have everyone be human?

Hm? The rule in question is the one printed in 5e24.

Hmm. I get what you're saying. But I also would value (some idea of) fairness quite highly as a player and GM. I have to be selective to find GMs that realize it, though.

The material is very brief. I don't think having to look in an old PHB for the information is a good solution. If anything it reinforces that the designers thought that information was no longer relevant. I'm not saying it is an intractable problem. But we are all familiar with issues caused by...

My thought is more that the drift in reference frame can cause a disconnect at the table. As @Micah Sweet says, 5e24 doesn't tell us much about species. That isn't an issue for people who have been playing for decades because the text was there before. But if you come into the game now, you...