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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7905932" data-attributes="member: 42582">This isn't true. 4e's skill challenges would have been very innovative in the 90s - the first system I know of to use that sort of close scene resolution is Maelstrom Storytelling (Hubris Games) from 1997 and it became more widely known when used by Robin Laws for HeroWars in 1999/.2000 (? I think - around then anyway).When picked up by 4e about a decade later it was no longer wildly innovative, but there are features of the skill challenge design which I think are distinctively strong compared to some similar resolution systems - eg to borrow a phrase (I'm pretty sure) from Vincent Baker it has IIEE (intent, initiation, execution, effect) "with teeth" - that is to say, whereas some closed scene resolution allows actions to be resolved without establishing what is actually happening in the fiction (Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits can have this issue, and Vincent Baker has written about it mostly with reference to dissatisfaction with his own game In A Wicked Age) a skill challenge (unless run completely degenerately) can't have this issue because Player 2 can't declare an action until s/he knows what the situation is his/her PC is engaging with, and that can't happen until the GM narrates the consequence of Player 1's declared action, and the GM can't do that until s/he knows what Player 1's PC actually did.</blockquote>