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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4134761" data-attributes="member: 4937">'Cannot' is a very strong word.  Nothing prevents you from using similar mechanics for anything at all.  I would argue that 3E is the closest D&D has ever had to a unified combat and skill resolution system.  Virtually everything could be concieved as a skill with a bonus and a target difficulty and you rolled a d20 to provide the fortune mechanic.  All the mechanics had the sequence, 'Proposition->Fortune->Resolution', with D&D's resolution being somewhat closer to fortune at the end in that the players described a specific action and the after fortune resolution could be as simple 'yes-no'.  Third party games extended this concept further to make combat more skill like (M&M) or the notoriously independent spell subsystem more skill like (Elements of Magic).Fortune at the end tends to support simulationism.  For example, games we consider more realistic tend to let you make more concrete propositions - 'I strike at the dragon's head' rather than simply 'I attack the dragon'.  The closer you get to fortune at the beginning, the closer you are getting to classic nar-play, where what the fortune is really determining is how much narrative authority you have in the scene and not what is going to happen.  In narrative play, the person who gains narrative authority gets to decide what is going to happen and the players cooperate to fulfill that vision. Superficially, this isn't going to change.  In fact, its so fundamental to D&D's core gameplay that I thought it inconceivable that it would change.  Everything we've heard so far would still allow you to do classic dungeon crawling where in theory you could go for hours without ever leaving a round by round simulation, mixing combat actions or skill actions as required (sometimes in the same turn) and spending concrete resources like actions, powers, and hit points to achieve goals. But it seems that they are going to drop in a new subsystem for resolving abstract challenges using skill checks to determine something like narrative authority.  In this system:1) The NPC's don't get a turn.  They are opposing the players actions with rolls of thier own.  The players succeed or fail regardless of what the NPC's do because the NPC's don't do anything until we know whether the PC's succeed or fail.2) Narrative success allows the PC's to determine the shape of the map.  The secret door comes into being because you successfully made a search check.  The building has a basement because you successfully made a history check.  The cart pulls into the alley and blocks pursuit because you successfully made an atheletics check.   This happens instead of there is a secret door you can find because you successfully made a search check.3) There doesn't at this time appear to be unity between the skill system and the combat system.  For example, it doesn't appear that the orc gaurds appear and are convienently slaughtered because you successfully made an attack check (although they could, it would be wierd).   Likewise, it doesn't appear that the 'skill challenge' system is unified with the magic system (now largely unified with the combat system).   You don't 'Escape Sembia' by putting the guards to sleep with a sleep spell, or at least it doesn't appear that way at this time.  So unlike the traditional dungeon play, it doesn't look like a formal 'skill challenge' can alternate or combine combat and skill checks from round to round - at least not in a free form manner according to player choice.  (I could design a skill challenge where say the 5th, 6th, and 8th interval of play where combat rounds, but it would be me making the choices.) For me, I can see playing 'D&D' with nothing but skill challenges if that was your thing.  I think it would feel incredibly cludgy compared to a system actually designed for that sort of thing, but I can see how it would be done and that some people would enjoy it.  But I seriously doubt there is this huge untapped market of narrativist players that are suddenly going to convert to D&D.  In my experience, very few players and referees can pull off this sort of thing in a sustained fashion, and my feeling is that narrativist play typically fails at either creating a story or being a good game.  In some ways it is true that it is purer roleplaying than other styles of RPGs, but then so is 'playing house' and 'cops and robbers' - and I graduated from that because of the same sort of limitations I find in nar play.</blockquote>

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