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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8736526" data-attributes="member: 82106">So, I'm not sure which sources you have read, as there is DMG1, DMG1 with errata, DMG2, and Rules Compendium. DMG2 and RC, especially DMG2, discuss the DYNAMIC NATURE of challenges. If a GM is simply presenting a static situation as an SC, where each PC, or each succeeding check, faces the exact same situation as the previous ones, then you really aren't using them as intended. An SC is a STORY, there's a plot, characters, and conflict. Its a small story, but not trivially so. Certainly at each check the situation has evolved and what moves make sense, the fiction around them, the possible benefits of success and consequences of failure are going to keep changing. So, it doesn't boil down to 'players picking a list of action' etc. Each time some action happens in the challenge, new fiction is introduced, the story progresses, and the PCs move closer to, or further away from, their goal (but always in a direction which reaches towards some kind of climax where everything hangs on a single check, possibly in both directions. This is a trait that isn't NECESSARILY shared with other techniques, though some permutations of BitD clocks will do it. The SC is a 'ratchet', things always get 'hotter', until the situation 'boils over' and the story comes to a conclusion. Its actually quite clever! I would argue that most situations which don't seem to work super well as SCs probably are sub-optimal for play in a TTRPG! GMs in such games really SHOULD be aiming for that 'boiling over' kind of effect.</blockquote>

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