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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8729509" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think your last sentence is a bit like saying "Other than action economy and hit point attrition, I don't really see how D&D combat is different from freeform combat resolution." I mean it's kind-of true, but the other than is carrying an awful lot of weight!Again, you seem to be describing an approach in which the GM decides when the scene is done, and what that consists in.Skill challenge resolution, like other close scene resolution frameworks, is an alternative to that. The GM doesn't decide when the scene is done. The GM's narration is constrained by the underlying structure. Eg if a check fails, the GM has to narrate a failure; but if that failure doesn't end the challenge, the way the failure is narrated has to leave the fiction sufficiently open that success is still a fictional possibility.[USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] gave an example of this, in what I believe was one of his earliest posts on these boards:The point of the example is that, whereas there is a tendency to think of failure narration along the lines of the first disjunct (failed your riding check = you've fallen off your horse), skill challenge narration, if it is to work, needs to look more like the second disjunct. Rather than failure being narrated in terms of an action the PC failed to successfully perform, it's normally better handled as a goal the PC failed to successfully achieve - and this can be narrated by introducing new elements into the fiction, like the river canyon in Manbearcat's example.Another example I've given - narrating failed Diplomacy not as you speak insulting words but the NPC nods, feeling the force of your request, but replies "Unfortunately I already made a promise to so-and-so that I would do such-and-such, so while I sympathise I can't help you at this time". Or, if the Diplomacy check involves a crowd, narrating failure as You start to make your case, calling on your best oratorical skills - but it starts to rain, and the weather drowns out your words.In each case, the scene isn't done yet: the PC can negotiate, or jump, the canyon; the PC(s) can try and work around the promise or persuade the NPC to break it; the PCs can try and control the weather, or move everyone indoors; etc.Managing the fiction, and adding to it, in these sorts of ways is a key aspect of skilful GMing of a skill challenge.EDIT: [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] and [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] makes some very similar points to this post in posts 26 and 27. Whether the players (via their PCs) attain their goal from the scene is not up to the GM. This is what Campbell calls "finality" and what Manbearcat is getting at with his "finite GM budget". Whether the players attain their goal is dependent on their checks. The GM's job is not to decide whether or not they get it, but to provide the narration of success or of failure as the individual checks, and the overall unfolding of successes vs failures, dictates.</blockquote>

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