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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5465016" data-attributes="member: 26473">That's a really great question, Mallus, and the answer for me is to choose a rules system that creates a plausible physics engine for the game-world which produces results which make intuitive sense.Flashing Blades works for me as a swashbuckling simulator because the combat rules mimic the back-and-forth of fencing without requiring me to know the difference between a froissement and a coulé, and choosing to parry and counter, or sidestepping a lunge versus ducking under a slash, statisfies my intuitive sense of how such a battle should play out. The application of resistance rolls for resolving the use of interpersonal skills also makes intuitive sense - it's satisfying in that the rules create a reasonable structure for using an adventurer's skills and abilities tempered by the complementary abilities of a non-player character. (As an aside, I think the one-sided nature of Diplomacy in d20 games fails this test, which is the underlying reason why this skill stretches plausability for some gamers.)I don't need to be a polymath to make this system work in such a way that it produces those intuitive results. (As another aside, the earliest creators of D&D were well-read, which I think influenced their approach to making-stuff-up - they were comfortable coming up with something plausible to fit the sorts of situations which arose in their games.)Everything I know about skill challenges in 4e comes from reading posts on gaming forums - one of these days I'll sit down with a copy of 4e at Borders . . . uh, I mean Barnes and Noble . . . and read how these things are supposed to work for myself - but from the examples I've seen, in this thread and elsewhere, it seems like many of the objections come from the idea that while skill challenges are no more abstract than hit points or armor class in modeling the physics of the D&D game-world, the results may be intuitively unsatisfying, even for situations which are outside a given player's "practical areas of expertise."WIth respect to pemerton's examples in this thread, I was a park ranger who worked on backcountry bear management in the Sierra Nevada and encountered wild bears on a regular basis, and I taught marine biology in an aquarium where I worked with the animal care staff who trained sea lions; as a ranger I built weirs and puncheons in and around streams and wet meadows as well. Not too surprisingly, both examples snap my suspenders of disbelief pretty hard. But putting aside the fact that I bring an uncommon collection of skills and experiences to the table relative to these examples, neither result satisfies me on an intuitive level - it all comes across as haphazardly post hoc in a way that other rule abstractions don't.Like quite a few gamers, D&D hit points used to bug me. I wanted a hit to be a hit, not a blow narrowly dodged - I mean, 'hit' is right there in the name, for heaven's sake! After a while I got comfortable with the abstraction they represented, and I even came to see them as a pretty elegant solution for what they are intended to simulate, even if I found the terminology a bit wonky. The relationship between the physics of the game-world and the actions of the players tracks - you drop into a pit and end up with just a sore hip after a fall that might kill most men, you take a massive blow on your shield that leaves your arm numb and your shoulder aching, and then *WHAM!* you find yourself bleeding on the floor when a stone block falls from the ceiling. The attrition of hit points, and the result when there burned up, is intuitively satisfying.If I understand what I've read, I think skill challenges can be used to achieve similar results if, as was noted in this thread, the dungeon master is willing to say no to some of the more off-the-wall suggestons (*coughcoughComeAndGetItcoughcough*), provided that intutive sense of 'rightness' (what is usually called 'verisimilitude') is in any way important to the experience everyone at the table. Frex, I think making a successful Knowledge skill check to remember something about bears or masonry useful to the task at hand is a great way to fold the adventurer's abilities into the final solution of the task, but while rationalizing whatever random <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> the players come up with is fine for gonzo fantasy, I don't think it works very well in many games.Your distance traveled over fuel consumed may vary.</blockquote>

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