For the sake of argument, I am going to branch this out into two different SC. In the first SC, the players are doing what the DMG 1 suggests -- they are picking skills and rolling dice.
This is not (unfortunately IMO) what the DMG1 suggests. They suggest picking primary skills that directly effect the success and secondary skills that indirectly effect the success or failure. They even suggest some skill uses be auto-failures (their example: Intimidating the King).
In the second SC, the players are doing what VB suggests -- they do not even know that they are in a SC.
The DMG1 isn't clear about whether a skill challenge is to be announced or not.
SC1: Either the PCs have no one to ask (as there is no one in the set-up description), or their decision to use Bluff and Streetwise "cause" someone to appear. Or they have nothing to do with the world itself, but are simply the highest stats the PC has.
One PC chooses to bound like a grasshopper. How is this relevant? Perhaps the bandits are afraid of obviously insane people. Perhaps all that bounding makes him tired, so that he rests at just the right time, so as to miss the bandits. Perhaps the nose picker sees an "omen" in the shape of his booger that tells him to go the other way.
The only reason not to use a skill is a "failure of imagination" on the part of someone.
The advice is to allow reasonable uses of skills outside of the framework of the skill challenge setup. Implicitly this is left up to that common sense we learned back in 1E.
Unless the world around the PCs, and interaction with that world, is a prime determinant, player choice is compromised. Highest stats are all that matter. This is, as I understand it, the majority of where Ariosto's complaint lies.
And it is this lack of understanding of even the initial skill challenge system that leaves people such as myself frustrated. Pointing to bad play within a skill challenge and then stating "4E skill challenges are bad!" is the equivalent to seeing each player have their character step one after another into a death trap in the tomb of horrors and claiming that "1E is bad!"
SC2: The players just think that they are asking around. The skill checks might even be made by the DM in secret.
Asking around might lead the PCs to believe that the best way is to go across the Running River and take the Other Road. Crossing the Running River might require swimming or wading across a ford. It might include other encounters. Perhaps enough people have taken this route that the bandits now have a scout along it that the players must slip by or deal with.
In this case, player choice is very important. Players are not simply given information, but must decide how to act upon it. Moreover, there is not a static DC for the skill challenge; what the players choose to do determines the various DCs, and the various numbers of checks they must make, in order to succeed.
The problem, of course, is that this is no longer a skill challenge as defined in 4e (at least not as initially defined). There is little difference between this and freeform play.
The difference is that I have prepped some of my adjudication of possible courses of action ahead of time instead of waiting until we play and doing so on the fly. Just like 1E modules that gave consequences for particular courses of action. Different styles. Some prefer prep, other work better on the fly.
Worse, the residual effect of designing skill challenges to move PCs along from one combat encounter to the next might rear its ugly head -- the poor neophyte DM cuts short the drama of the action because, along the way, the PCs have made three successful skill checks. No longer is there a need to swim/ford the river, or avoid that bandit scout.
No one can account for bad DMs. The same DM in your example could do the same thing in freeform play by deciding he's bored and not understanding dramatic pacing.
If one chooses to forgo the structure in order to fulfill the dramatic potential of events, then why is this considered a SC at all? This is, from what I can gather, the other part of Ariosto's complaint.
A scene and its dramatic potential does not have to end just because the dicy (pun intended) parts have stopped rolling.
In neither SC1 or SC2 is the result better than that from freeform play, and in both cases it may be substantially worse. The less the "skill challenge" resembles a "skill challenge", the better it is in terms of actual play.
Never said it was better than freeform play, just different. And it could be substantially worse just as easily as freeform play can be substantially worse. Just play with a DM that doesn't share your idea of common sense when a 1E module leaves all plan outcomes up to common sense. Very frustrating. I agree with the last statement above. Players who know that a skill challenge is taking place are akin to Dorothy seeing the old man behind the curtain.
Where, then, is the benefit of the mechanic?
It gives DMs who wish to be prepared and have structure to have a framework to hang upon. It gives a structure to rewarding players for good play outside of combat. It formalizes the idea for a new DM that D&D is not just a combat miniatures game.
This leads us to another observation: The best skill challenges are not resolved as skill challenges.
In the case of SC2, the mechanic should be there only as a "hand holding" measure to guide the DM and players back into freeform play once they've become stuck. Unfortunately, AFICT, this is not how the mechanic is presented (although I would be happy to hear otherwise).
It is still a resolution system. There is an end to my skill challenge, just not an end before other encounters begin. The mechanic is presented this way through example via WotC published adventures. The inspiration for mine cam from
Demon Queen's Enclave.
It is certainly not how this supposed "holy grail" of game mechanics is seen described here on EN World.
"Holy grail" would infer that it is the
best mechanic to use. It is just a tool that can be used to good or ill effect. Other methods are just as effective and may be more desirable to one's personal preferences. Maybe whoever else is giving you this hype and the holy grail has soured your mind to hearing more about good uses of skill challenges. But I see a great potential in their use and will continue to advocate for their use in fun ways.
Ideally, any form of complex skill check should map in a way similar to combat; failures make overall success more difficult, successes make the overall task less difficult. Decisions that the players make now should lead directly into how difficult subesquent checks are, and the result of each success and/or failure should change the situation.
The DM must consider how each skill attempt, no matter its outcome, will affect the situation as a whole. And, to make the whole seem like more than just an exercise in die rolling to get from point A to point B, the DM must include the means for the players to discover that their actions have larger consequences.
Agree. This is the kind of thought I'm trying to improve upon when building a skill challenge.
Skill Challenges, as presented, are a step toward integrating skill checks into complex interactions with the game milieu. They are a step towards complex skill use in freeform play.
However, they are not there yet. They have a long way to go.
And dismissing their value in infancy is no way to up their potential. That's why I keep advocating for better use of SCs.
