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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4169200" data-attributes="member: 42582">The notion of "the answer" here is unhelpful. A skill challenge is not about the players guessing something the GM is keeping secret (eg what skill to use). It is about the players, using their PCs as the medium, taking control of the storyline of the game.As others have said, this is obviously not true.Consider a social challenge, and suppose one of the PC's actions is to feed the courtier to their Sphere of Annihilation - this is clearly a decision, by the player, not to engage in the challenge, and would change the focus of play to something else.If there is any doubt as to whether the action in question is meant to be a move in the challenge or a repudiation of the challenge, the GM can always ask the player.Who said this? Harr didn't, for example.The system is a way of improving (for certain RPGing preferences) the way that non-combat challenges are resolved. No one has ever suggested (at least to me) that HeroWars would turn a bad GM into a good one - but this does not mean that the HeroWars mechanics are not better than those of 3E for facilitating a certain sort of play.Are you comparing the mooted system for 4e with other known systems of this sort, such as HeroWars? If so, there is no problem in divorcing the goal from the precise skills used - and there is no such thing as "intended skills". The point of the mechanic is to allow the players to shape the story by narrating the relevance of the skills they wish to use.Of course if the events narrated in the game do not matter to the GM and players (ie if it is no part of their pleasure in RPGing to make any sort of point - be it aesthetic, thematic, whatever - through the story that they narrate) then that GM and those players won't especially care for skill challenges. But in such a case they presumably they wouldn't care for whatever it is - presumalby a mixture of GM-fiat and drama-driven action resolution with few guidelines - that the skill challenge is replacing. So there is no net loss.There is only a loss for those with simulationist preferences. But this is so obviously the case with 4e that it can hardly be a surprise that its non-simulationism extends to its non-combat mechanics.</blockquote>

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