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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7733977" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I think the relative numbers of people who understood and used the 4e skill challenge stuff as well as you do/did, and those that gave up in confusion and frustration would argue otherwise. I mean, I consider myself fairly proficient at this sort of thing and I gave up on it.  ....just saying.In all honesty, compared to games like Fate or Cortex+, where the player can actually create mechanical artifacts in play.... I don't see a whole lot of mechanical difference between a 4e skill challenge and a sequence of 3e rolls towards a goal. There's a little bit of fluff in the rules, but to my eye its just telling the DM to be a little more upfront about how many rolls he expects to see before he lets the PCs succeed. AFAICT, and I know we disagree on this, its a minor fence around rule 0. After all, all this "interaction" stuff was just delay in the designers eyes, who wanted you to skip past the guards and get "straight to the action" or whatever that slogan was. ::shrug:: Water under the bridge.I think it has to do with D&D's basic deficiency in defining any "tactical" out-of-combat conflict resolution mechanics (as mentioned above.) To bring it back around to the OP, its really not that D&D is too focused on combat...its that its only focused on combat. Its the only sphere of play with strong, clear conflict resolution mechanics to cover almost every possible in-game situation. Until people start talking, then we drop into DM fiat, always have, and I see no signs that it will change. In the end, mainstream D&D is rather like porn. Whatever "plot" there is really just dressing around the "real action" and carries about as much weight and depth. I've given up pretending otherwise, but hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, someday that might change....also, didn't that "Use acrobatics to impress the king" thing come originally from a WOTC employee talking about how to justify a skill use in a challenge?"</blockquote>

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