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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5510730" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that this somewhat exaggerates the difficulty. Both Maelstrom Storytelling and HeroQuest 2nd ed give better guidelines, for example, and neither of those games is published by a company with the same resources and design capacity as WotC.I think that the 4e designers are trying to hint at the greater depth that you (Crazy Jerome) are looking for, but doing a fairly bad job of it.I think that there is some scope to introduce mutliple dimensions of player decision-making while still focusing on skill checks as the principle mechanic for resolution, via either (i) secondary skill checks, or (ii) primary skill checks with secondary consequences.AbdulAlhazred gives the example of unlocking new skills. This is a distinct dimension of decision-making, resembling some of what you talk about in your example of using culture/resources/circles to move the ground to circumstances more fertile for an Intimidate check. Certain uses of advantages might also be deployed in a similar vein - obtaining the advantage might require shifting the circumstances in certain ways, or an advantage might be expended to achieve such a result.DMG2 also gives some ideas about how to bring extra player resources into the mix, which don't necessarily add new mechanical axes but do add new dimensions to the decision-making - for example, it provides an equivalence between gp spent and successful aid-another checks, and also tries to deal with encounter and daily powers, and rituals, as meaningful contributors to a skill challenge.In my view, then, before new mechanical axes are introduced, what is needed is a thorough and systematic attempt to bring all this existing stuff together and give a coherent account from the designers as to how they see it all working, and how a GM and players can work through it in the course of resolving a skill challenge. For example, do the designers envisage skill challenges permitting anything like a "quick take" in Maelstrom - where a player can make a check that is distinct from the overall resolution of the scene in order to lock-in some more local outcome - or not? And what would be required to secure such a result (eg spending an action point)? I'd like some of these basic questions to be sorted out.</blockquote>

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