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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 8967098" data-attributes="member: 6690965">My ideal game would not have meaningfully different mechanics if we snapped all of the fiction off, and labeled them "Actions A" through "Action Omega" and players could sit down given the same scenario, written in this terrible world on a dry spreadsheet, and meaningfully debate "I prefer a Theta opening into a Q gambit," vs. "the consistency of alternating R and C is worth avoiding that risk, even though it is slower."The fiction is the fun thing we apply both because it's really hard to write a bunch of actions devoid of any inspiration, and to string those actions into a narrative. It is, ideally, useful because it will align neatly enough with those actions to help players conceptualize them (that's why I do calls to simulation) but it has nothing ultimately to say about the game, except in retrospect. In TTRPGs, unlike conventional board games, the fiction also has a unique ability, in that it informs the entirely player controlled victory conditions of many iterated games played over unbounded time.You've migrated my criticism from SCs to BitD, so let's start by addressing SCs.The more we lean in to this, the less carefully political I'm going to be with my language and define some terms usefully for my point. Assume game as I defined the term earlier: a limited system of interlocking rules, where players will make interesting decisions contextualized by an agreed on goal. A trivial game has either one or an arbitrarily high number of optimal strategies. A decision cannot be interesting if it does not impact the player's position relative to the goal, either because any other decision would have resulted in the same outcome or because it was trivial. A player who can make interesting decisions is said to have agency.SCs are first, poorly defined to their proponent's advantage: are they a framework applied to a situation secretly, a stated set of target DCs and appropriate skills, a custom designed game with individual rules for the expenditure of resources and the accumulation of minor advantages, subject to skill DCs that are specified outside of the SC's stated level when an action declaration calls for one, etc, etc.Assuming for the moment one of the simplest SC structure that gets brought up, let's propose the players will  succeed if they get 3 success before 3 failures, they will all roll at least once, and a list of skills that are applicable with the appropriate Easy, Medium and Hard DCs are laid out. Currently, the game is trivial, based on comparing player's modifiers and the available skill checks to determine the most statistically likely outcome.Possible complications from this point involve designing a custom game, most of which entail allowing another skill to be used if a success is rolled, or modifying the target of a future check. The game now requires more intensive calculation, and is likely still trivial, but may offer a higher risk strategy that could be preferred over a lower risk one. Further design, say adding a maximum number of checks, decreases the likelihood the game is trivial, but the number of viable strategies remains low and the reasons for preferring them are clear.Further complications might include allowing any skill to be relevant, perhaps at a higher DC than the specified skills: the game remains trivial. Allowing any skill with an argument toward a specific DC: persuasion of the GM is outside the scope of the game, but assuming it can be done consistently or that the resultant DC is not hidden nor forced once persuasion is attempted, the game remains trivial.You could vary the number of success necessary to achieve the goal or failures available: if the information is player facing, the game remains trivial. You could conceal the DCs, required successes or required failures from the players: the players cannot make interesting decisions. You could add immediate win or immediate loss conditions: if known to the players, it is possible as above the game is not trivial, because the players can now advance a two strategies. Unfortunately this is ad hoc game design, and without careful analysis, it's more likely you've just shifted the optimal strategy to "attempt to get the 3 success, until the likelihood falls lower than the iterated probability of achieving instantaneous success" which remains trivial. If unknown to the players, it can't be factored in to any interesting decisions they might make.Perhaps you might allow the expenditure of a resource for a known bonus and/or automatic success: this is the first time the SC is not trivial. The larger game being played is now interesting, the player must decide on the amount of resources they can expend to achieve this particular problem in the larger scheme of their resource schedule, the distribution of resources spent across the party. You've invented spell slots, which have the potential to be interesting depending on the resource schedule, but aren't a unique strength of SCs.Fundamentally, skill challenges provide less agency than a large set of specified actions. There are simply more lines of play available and more cases to be made for one line of play over the other.I'm less confident in my ability to critique BitD (and not immediately convinced the gameplay loop is trivial or lacks agency), particularly given I've been told my play experiences were not normative, but you have given me the precisely the inverse set of relevant information that I would need to do so here. It is not meaningful to the gameplay decision making I'm talking about that those situations were narratively different if they were resolved the same way, which of course they almost certainly weren't: the set of choices available likely varied considerably between them. I would need that list of choices to evaluate them as games.I think I have a clear way to think about our disagreement. You seem to be proposing that the list of available actions (imagine an action here includes not just the player declaration, but the possible consequences of that declaration) should be assembled each turn by consulting the fictional state for inspiration. I contend all possible actions on all possible board states should be specified before the game begins, and the fiction should be inspired by evaluating the set of actions which are available in the current board from turn to turn.</blockquote>

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