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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9100413" data-attributes="member: 42582">To the best of my knowledge, the first system to toggle between simple and extended resolution, depending on mood, stakes, pacing etc, was Prince Valiant - in 1989, so 20 years before 4e D&D.It's a feature of HeroWars (2000), Burning Wheel (revised is 2005) and then 4e. Probably other systems too that I'm just not familiar with.And I don't think it's unclear in 4e. The DMG states the relevant principle (pp 72-3):A skill challenge can serve as an encounter in and of itself, or it can be combined with monsters as part of a combat encounter. . . . Set the complexity based on how significant you want the challenge to be. If you expect it to carry the same weight as a combat encounter, a complexity of 5 makes sense. . . . For quicker, less significant challenges, or for challenges that work as part of a combat encounter, set the complexity lower. Is This a Challenge? It’s not a skill challenge every time you call for a skill check. When an obstacle takes only one roll to resolve, it’s not a challenge. One Diplomacy check to haggle with the merchant, one Athletics check to climb out of the pit trap, one Religion check to figure out whose sacred tome contains the parable—none of these constitutes a skill challenge. . . .In other words, just like in other systems that toggle between simple and extended resolution, it's about pacing and stakes - how significant is this thing,I realise that's controversial for those who think it's the job of the system to tell the participants, without any need for decision, how significant something is. But by the time 4e was published it was not a new piece of game technology. This is also part of the reason that 4e is a useful vehicle for narrativist/"story now" play.Clearly using skill challenges isn't antithetical to the play of 4e D&D, given that they are one of its two fundamental action resolution components (the other being its combat rules).If you're complaining that the DMG doesn't do as much as it might to advise GMs on how to engage in those fictional "explanations", I agree and have posted as much for over a decade. Here's a post of mine complaining about it, from January 2011 (I found it by searching for my earliest mention of the Rules Compendium, but it's quite likely I posted the complaint prior to the Rules Compendium reproducing the problem):But as you can see there, the examples model it even though they don't explain what it is that they're modelling.I know some people insist that adjudication must be by way of an impartial referee knowing the obstacle in advance, and then complain that skill challenges are broken because when you adjudicate them in that fashion they break down. I put these people in the same corner as those who turn up to play Rolemaster, insist that rolling to attack must be done with a d20, and then complain that they always miss (on most RM combat charts, the first significant damage is found at results of 80+).</blockquote>

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