Crimson Longinus
Legend
Skill challenges, group checks* and other forms of extended contests certainly have their uses, and I occasionally employ them, though probably far more infrequently than many others here. I feel they're most useful for abstracting extended activity exact details of which you're not interested in modelling. Travel is a common use.
* Seriously 5e's group checks are very similar to skill challenges, I don't know why people are not similarly enamoured with them...
However, the central claim of the OP was that skill challenges "centre the fiction". I don't really see this, it is almost the opposite. This is very "mechanics first" way to handle things. You have the mechanic framework as a starting point, and then you weave fiction on top of that to justify skill uses and invent what success and failures mean. Now people here certainly have given excellent examples of how to do that in a way that compelling fiction is generated. I think this is mostly due their skill and experience, and perhaps aided by importing principles, guidance and approaches from other games. The actual printed text IIRC is pretty sparse about how the fiction and mechanics are connected.
The "traditional" approach is for the GM to come up with the fictional situation and then trying to honestly and consistently represent this via mechanics. To me this me seem far more "centred to the fiction". If fictionally it makes sense that the problem is solved via one genius move or escalates into unmitigated catastrophe by an idiotic one, then so be it. In this approach such following of the fiction with integrity is not prevented by rigid mechanics that dictate predetermined amount of checks.
And I don't buy the notion that the latter is (or at least has to be) just GM arbitrarily deciding when the issue is solved. It is not arbitrary. The GM sets up the fiction and is constrained by honestly following it, just like in the skill challenge they set up the complexity of the challenge and are constrained by it.
And sure, things that were not predetermined might become relevant and the GM might need to ad hoc decide them. But similarly in skill challenge the GM has to make such decisions. When does the fictional positioning warrant the use of a skill? What additional complications failures bring? What additional avenues of gaining further progress the successes open? Especially if played in non-scripted, no-myth mode advocated by many I feel the GM must make far more such decisions and they will shape the course of the fiction far more than in an approach where the GM is just trying to honestly present a prepped situation.
* Seriously 5e's group checks are very similar to skill challenges, I don't know why people are not similarly enamoured with them...

However, the central claim of the OP was that skill challenges "centre the fiction". I don't really see this, it is almost the opposite. This is very "mechanics first" way to handle things. You have the mechanic framework as a starting point, and then you weave fiction on top of that to justify skill uses and invent what success and failures mean. Now people here certainly have given excellent examples of how to do that in a way that compelling fiction is generated. I think this is mostly due their skill and experience, and perhaps aided by importing principles, guidance and approaches from other games. The actual printed text IIRC is pretty sparse about how the fiction and mechanics are connected.
The "traditional" approach is for the GM to come up with the fictional situation and then trying to honestly and consistently represent this via mechanics. To me this me seem far more "centred to the fiction". If fictionally it makes sense that the problem is solved via one genius move or escalates into unmitigated catastrophe by an idiotic one, then so be it. In this approach such following of the fiction with integrity is not prevented by rigid mechanics that dictate predetermined amount of checks.
And I don't buy the notion that the latter is (or at least has to be) just GM arbitrarily deciding when the issue is solved. It is not arbitrary. The GM sets up the fiction and is constrained by honestly following it, just like in the skill challenge they set up the complexity of the challenge and are constrained by it.
And sure, things that were not predetermined might become relevant and the GM might need to ad hoc decide them. But similarly in skill challenge the GM has to make such decisions. When does the fictional positioning warrant the use of a skill? What additional complications failures bring? What additional avenues of gaining further progress the successes open? Especially if played in non-scripted, no-myth mode advocated by many I feel the GM must make far more such decisions and they will shape the course of the fiction far more than in an approach where the GM is just trying to honestly present a prepped situation.
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