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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 6779028" data-attributes="member: 2656">IMO the major failing of the original skill challenge mechanic was making participation obligatory, being insufficiently clear in what was an appropriate situation for a skill challenge in terms of scope, and having a too narrow and rigid choice of relevant skills in many cases. Now many printed examples of skill challenges shouldn't be skill challenges at all as they are too narrow and more appropriate to one or more skill checks. One sign of this is difficulty in coming up with interesting consequences for "failure", which is essential for the skill challenge mechanic.Even printed skill challenges with an appropriately large scope tended to be too rigid in their treatment of skills and insufficiently dynamic in evolving the situation appropriately in response to the actions of the PCs.All of which leads to players seeking to spam their best skills and desperately trying to avoid using their worst skills and hence the "spam your best skill" complaint about the skill challenge mechanic.I want variant challenge mechanics that encourage all players to try to engage the situation in ways that don't make it counterproductive. Nobody wants to have the PC that dooms the skill challenge to failure by lacking a decent chance of positively engaging in it.I personally think there's room for more specialised challenge mechanics for situations like chases, races and other time-sensitive tasks, where the hard time limit is supposed to be  the dominating factor.Dynamic skill challenges are inherently difficult to devise and run, I don't see any way of making it easy to reconnect the abstract mechanics to the fiction. If no-one involves cares much, everything can be kept abstract and low key, as zooming in is inappropriate. Not all skill challenges will seize the imaginations of the players, and the referee should note interest or lack or interest take appropriate action. IMO this "appropriate action" is to expand on material that interests the players and downplay material that doesn't. (The referee(s) have the right to enjoy the game as well, if they are really invested in material the players seem to be rejecting it may be time to discuss the issues out of character to try and resolve them honestly. )</blockquote>

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