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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4136028" data-attributes="member: 42582">The petty and pedantic part of me wants to say that the above sentence depends for its truth upon taking "rules set" to have your preferred narrower meaning, and thus, as a reason in favour of giving "rules" that meaning begs the question.I nevertheless see your point (I think), but I worry a little about the contrary situation - that some groups find themselves trying to do things with particular RPG systems that those systems just won't sustain, because the systems are written assuming that certain rules (= guidelines) are being used, but do not quite have the gumption to call these out as rules rather than as (mere) guidelines. The guidelines are therefore departed from to the detriment of the play experience (compared to what might be achieved using a different system with rules adapted to delivering the desired play experience).So I'm not as worried as I get the sense that you are that D&D is becoming a little more precise in identifying the sort of play experience its designers feel confident that it can deliver.A simple one that comes to mind in the context of D&D: "playing my alignment" is a cloak for all sorts of anti-social behaviour at the gaming table which, once alignment is not part of the game system, is stripped away. The player is exposed as simply choosing to run a character in a manner that is annoying for everyone else at the table.Sure. But the two aren't entirely distinct. If the net consequence of being expressive, from the point of view of action resolution, is nothing - I still just roll the d20 - then the game itself gives me no particular incentive to be expressive. I may of course choose to be expressive nevertheless, but that expression does not ramify into the game itself.On the other hand, in a framework in which the degree and content of my expressiveness is actually relevant to the evaluation of my skill check - for example, it helps determine whether or not it makes a legitimate contribution to resolution of the challenge, and perhaps the degree of that contribution (by helping settle the difficulty of my check) - then I have a good reason to be expressive. By being expressive I am actually shaping the gameworld.My original sentence contained, where you have elided, the following parantehtical elaboration: "which requires describing not just the action but various of its consequences, plus elements of the gameworld context in which it occurs". This is what I am trying to say is new. I think my previous paragraph elaborated it a little bit. As opposed to simply declaring a check (taking it to be evident how it will contribute to his or her PCs attainment of a desired goal) a player is encouraged to explain how the check will lead to success, by becoming more involved in shaping the context of the challenge.Of course, inventive play is possible in a more traditional skill system (RQ, RM, 3E). But (to draw a connection to Lost Soul's notion of "succeeding at 100 checks and yet failing overall") I think in those traditional skill systems it is assumed that the checks are simply interacting with a pre-planned set of possibilities determined by the GM. Success or failure conditions are under the GM's control (eg, to refer back to Harr's example, the GM will have set the difficulty of cutting the rope and the consequences - perhaps as a set of % chances - of doing so and having the trapped body fall to the ground).I see the "skill challenge" model as giving the players much more scope to determine the success conditions, because (i) if we know that 6 successes are enough, whatever exactly they consist in, and (ii) the players get to choose which skills to use (provided they make a narratively plausible case as to relevance) then inventiveness and a rich player engagement with the broader context is unleashed without the players having to worry that their PCs will fall foul of the GM's predetermined matrix of possibilities.I can see why you ask this - I think that Lost Soul is probably right to say yes, and that you and Mallus perhaps wrong when you suggest not. Picking up your subsequent response to Lost Soul:The player doesn't have to be able to move things around in the gameworld, in order to bring it about that climbing the wall leads to Escape from Sembia. Assuming that the gameworld is not described down to the last detail (eg the location, movement, spot check and initiative of every guard is not pre-determined at every moment of gametime) then the player, with a successful athletics check, could look at the GM's map of Sembia and explain which walls are being climbed and which rooves traversed in the course of the PC making his or her way out of the city. If some of those ways go past places which are known by the GM to have guards, then (depending on the degree of success, perhaps, and what else is going on with other player's checks) one would know that either those guards weren't looking very hard, or were outrun, or that the PC successfully jumped out-of-sight, or whatever.This may count as "creating what was not there before" (eg an inobservant guard rather than an eagle-eyed one) but that does not seem detrimental to the gameworld in terms of the elements it is made up of - no more than a successful combat might have created a dead guard rather than a living one, albeit via something a little less FiTM).In the case of the dungeon crawl, I don't think it will be about a more abstract dungeon with the players giving rise to secret doors or not. I think rather it will be about the players and the GMs jointly working with what is there in the dungeon. For example, if the PCs are looking for a way out, and a player makes a Search check as part of the challenge, but there are no secret doors in the dungeon, then the PCs instead find a small crack in the wall - or perhaps, if the players are more inventive, a faded diagram drawn on the wall in chalk - and then subsequent skill challenges build on this result (eg Dungeoneering to enlarge the crack, or Decipher Script to interpret the chalk map, or whatever).In your locked gate scenario, what contribution to success does the player indicate is going to arise from opening the gate? Well, to what extent is the GM prepared to help him or her out by providing some material for the players to work with? It seems appropriate for the GM to tell the player, upon his or her PC successfully opening the gate and proceeding through it, that it leads to a dead end. In response to that, it seems open to the player to explain how this nevertheless constitutes a success in the skill challenge: as the party head off in the opposite direction from the dead end, the gate (cunningly left open) creates a false trail that leads the guards away from the real direction of escape and lulls them into a false sense of security, thinking that they have the escapees trapped.If the players can't come up with some such explanation, then (having failed at the narrative challenge) the PCs don't get the benefit of a succes.This is another illustration of what I mean by "describing not just the action but various of its consequences, plus elements of the gameworld context in which it occurs."In one sense I might agree with you: if there is no net change in narrative control, then it becomes less clear how (if at all) the 4e system differs from the 3E one.My feeling, however, from what I've read, is that there is intended to be a difference and that narrative control is therefore being redistributed. An earlier paragraph indicates why I think this must be so - it cannot be otherwise if (i) a small and pre-determined number of successes is sufficient and (ii) the players get to choose to any significant extent which skills will be used to achieve those successess.I worry a little that the DMG may balk at the hurdle of explaining how it is meant to work, however. Hopefully I'll be proved wrong in this respect - traditionally D&D has had a lot of trouble expressly stating any limits on the GM's narrative authority, but maybe another sacred cow is going to be slaughtered.This relates back to my exchange upthread with Stormbringer. I agree with Lost Soul that a challenge for the PCs need not be the same sort of challenge for the players (without necessarily saying I would be happy with his particular pantry-kitchen fridge example - everyone draws the limits slighly differently! - although it is slightly odd that one might balk at this, yet takes for granted that when one's PC swings at the drow's head the GM may reply that you actually hit the drow in the foot).</blockquote>

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