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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8271029" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, in the 4e SC scenario the fiction must evolve in a way which comports with the mechanical structure, and vice versa. That is, you failed a stealth check, clearly that check was an attempt by the player to have his PC evolve the fiction in a given way "I sneak past the town watch patrol, sticking to the shadows." Now, in the 5e version of this everything is the same, except we have no idea what the valence of this action is. In 4e you failed, the guards clearly didn't literally catch you red-handed, because the SC structure says "you don't fail completely until 3 failures" but equally clearly you are FICTIONALLY closer to that point. In 5e I cannot even make a statement about what the significance of that failure is, I have literally nothing to go on. If the GM decides "OK, the guards are a bit more suspicious now" what does that even mean? How many checks must I pass or fail before the jig is up or I achieve my goal?I don't see any abstraction here in the 4e case. I am not sure what "without process sim details" means. There are fictional details. There HAVE to be. This is quite clearly laid out in, at least later versions, of the SC rules. Every time a check happens, the fiction evolves to a new state, which is a logical consequence of the previous state.Beyond that, the rules of 4e are also pretty loosely structured in some sense, SCs are merely one type of mechanics, and you CAN simply go 'free form' or in some situations the GM might just say "OK, the challenge is over, the fictional state has evolved to a point where further tally of success and failure on this task is no longer coherent with any fiction." This might happen if the player decides after two failures to give up and go home. Probably the GM should treat this like any other action resolution and state what the outcome will be. Maybe the SC goes to fail state, or maybe it just becomes moot. Maybe a different SC comes into play, or whatever. If we were discussing BitD things are more hard and fast, the 'score' must proceed to an endpoint, I suspect (maybe I'm wrong). In Dungeon World threats continue to evolve on the fronts engaged, so a 'doom' might come about based on failure to complete some activity, but DW structures things rather differently at this level, so comparison is harder.</blockquote>

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