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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8484636" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well... Is that the best way to look at it? I would say that an SC is just a 'valence establishing mechanism'. Either in or out of an SC the GM describes some fiction (the scene at this point) and then the player says something like &quot;Well, I want to achieve X by doing Y.&quot; The GM then calls for a check of some sort (skill, attribute, I guess possibly he might rule that the player is using an item, a power, or even a ritual, though those kinds of things would PROBABLY be explicitly declared by the player). Once the check passes or fails the fiction evolves in such a way that either the character's intent is met, or not. In the case of an SC an overall success/failure end state of the encounter may also be achieved based on the current tally. I think the above is a bit more explicit than your version and helps surface the major difference with 5e, which is that 5e has neither a rule that binds the GM to any particular result, nor a mechanical framework to establish valence. I mean, a childish example with 5e could be that the GM calls for a Charisma check to convince an NPC of something, and when the player succeeds, he could just call out &quot;well, best 2 out of 3&quot; and ask for another one! Obviously that's not cool, but it is exactly in keeping with the rules, and GMs are almost encouraged, certainly motivated, to carry out less explicit versions of basically that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8484636, member: 82106"] Well... Is that the best way to look at it? I would say that an SC is just a 'valence establishing mechanism'. Either in or out of an SC the GM describes some fiction (the scene at this point) and then the player says something like "Well, I want to achieve X by doing Y." The GM then calls for a check of some sort (skill, attribute, I guess possibly he might rule that the player is using an item, a power, or even a ritual, though those kinds of things would PROBABLY be explicitly declared by the player). Once the check passes or fails the fiction evolves in such a way that either the character's intent is met, or not. In the case of an SC an overall success/failure end state of the encounter may also be achieved based on the current tally. I think the above is a bit more explicit than your version and helps surface the major difference with 5e, which is that 5e has neither a rule that binds the GM to any particular result, nor a mechanical framework to establish valence. I mean, a childish example with 5e could be that the GM calls for a Charisma check to convince an NPC of something, and when the player succeeds, he could just call out "well, best 2 out of 3" and ask for another one! Obviously that's not cool, but it is exactly in keeping with the rules, and GMs are almost encouraged, certainly motivated, to carry out less explicit versions of basically that. [/QUOTE]

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