Manbearcat
Legend
While I understand that is your more broad concern (and a legitimate one in any endeavor), I was honing on the more specific concern outlined below with respect to GM experience and acuity leading to a more provocative, functional Skill Challenge.
Originally Posted by Starfox
The problem I was trying to focus on is that it becomes harder to narrate a series of events if you make that series very long, as skill challenges tend to do. Many rolls -> many narrative steps - > small progress in each step -> hard to narrate. If you are better at narrating this problem will kick in later, if you are worse, it will kick in sooner. For each of us there is a limit on how long a progression of events can be before we run into repetition narrating it. A GM with little imagination will have that "one rock, another rock" approach" I used above and run out of steam quickly. A better GM can run a long skill challenge without becoming repetitive. The more skill and familiarity with the situation you have, the more variety you can add, but there is always a limit. The trick is to keep the resolution mechanic long enough to be an interesting challenge yet short enough not to lose narrative tension.
And I was then noting that, yes, while is true, the same contention/concern holds sway over the execution of every other element of GMing. Providing non-challenging conflicts is poor GMing. Framing/presenting content completely decoupled from players' overt signals is poor GMing, being paralyzed and unable to improvise when players do something well off the grid of your expectations is poor GMing, misrepresenting real-world phenomena that is supposed to be derivative of real-world phenomena (and not rendered askew due to "but magic" or high fantasy) such that your players have no fundamental basis for engagement (primarily engineering or physics issues) is poor GMing. Running unexciting, stagnant combats is poor GMing. Not knowing the rules of the system such that the players want to stay away from the resolution mechanics is poor GMing. There are plenty more ares of poor GMing that require experience, introspection and skill development. I just don't see why this one area is a specific or unique problem.
And beyond that, again, as I said in post upthread. The challenge needs to be evolving. You need to be introducing new complications. If you don't have enough genre and stakes relevant complications to functionally and coherently evolve the narrative, then (i) shorten the challenge, (ii) consult relevant material for immediate inspiration, (iii) work on broadening your knowledge base so you can deploy on the fly!
Skill Challenges are a framework to organize non-combat conflict resolution such that (i) all players (rather than a single player strategically predominating) deploy their archetypical resources (such that the challenge causes their chosen thematic archetype to emerge with time) in resolving genre-relevant scenes. Its a construct built (ii) to provide a tangible means for dramatic pacing/structuring of conflicts (iii) and to assert finality of scene resolution, thus (iv) propelling the narrative through the interfacing of codified mechanics and creativity (rather than alternative means that may involve convincing the GM to make a favorable ruling, while the GM has conflict of interest, on a strategic power play...or outright GM fiat). Like anything else, all of those take groomed skill (player-side as well as GM-side) to do well. I'm better today than I was yesterday and I expect to be better next year than I am today. And I've certainly had instances of doing a poor job in my GMing tenure (with respect to all of the above) that were due to a lack of skillful execution on my end. Like anything else, I worked to get better. And I did.
But to the broader point, I'll agree all day that rules need to be concise, coherent, transparent, accessible (at the table) and require as little mental overhead and table handling time as possible while still producing the play experience you're looking for.
