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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8735787" data-attributes="member: 42582">Taken at face value, I don't see how what you say here is different from any other dice-based RPG resolution system.But as per [USER=71235]@niklinna[/USER] reply to you, I'm not sure why we should take your post at face value given that it completely disregards the relevance of the fiction, although it is the fiction that is key to RPGing. And as per the OP, the fiction in a skill challenge is not mere colour - it is crucial to the resolution. If you want to "tumble your way through a problem" then you need to declare actions that will establish fiction that makes tumbling salient.In the Marut's skill challenge that I posted about upthread, the fighter wanted to be able to fight the Tarrasque without interference from the Maruts. So the fighter's player declared Intimidate - not a strong skill for him. In the fiction, he explained to the Maruts, with no mincing of words, that he was there to defeat the Tarrasque and they'd best not get in his way. At the table, the player spent an action point to get his success when his initial roll failed. Having changed the fiction so that he could fight his way through the problem, he commenced to do so. The other PCs continued the job of bringing the Maruts around to their way of seeing the situation.You assert that this is poor, low agency gameplay. But to me it looks like good and high agency gameplay: good, in the sense that at the table it was interesting, with high stakes (what were the Maruts going to make of the PCs' attempt to stop the Tarrasque; would they end up joining the fight on the Tarrasque's side?); and high agency, in that the players got to impose their will onto the fiction in a range of ways (persuading the Maruts; defeating the Tarrasque; and in the process helping settle the larger question of whether or not the Dusk War is upon us).See what I've written just above. How is this a bad game? How are the choices not meaningful? They're as meaningful as anything I've heard about in D&D play. Far more meaningful than whether or not to Dimension Door out of a collapsing tunnel ([USER=7033472]@FallenRX[/USER]'s example from upthread) which on its face does not seem very compelling to me. 4e is not oriented towards that sort of nitty-gritty operational play. That's not to say it can't handle collapsing tunnels, but if that's the main sort of thing a table wants to focus on in play then there are better iterations of D&D to handle it (eg B/X or AD&D).</blockquote>

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