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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6565120" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Right, the powers (generally "in-combat") are generally very player-empowering. This is the part I wish was the case with out of combat stuff.I'm unsure how to take this. Isn't that the point of those details? As a player, it's your responsibility to account for them. All the details that you need to account for are all in the open. If you don't account for them, some things will be blocked.An easy example: say you make players write down what gear they have. I think this is something that many tables do (we'll say 50%). The party comes up against a cliff they must climb down. The get the idea to get a rope and tie it to something at the top to help anchor people who scale down. The GM asks if anyone has a rope. The party checks, and nobody does. The party therefore can't use their rope plan.This is a roadblock of that plan. And it's because of a detail. But now you get to see what they do. Do they all climb down individually? Does that mean one of them falls and gets hurt? Does that mean a healing spell is used? Does that mean they have one less spell when they need it later?The only way to know just how important the impact of a detail is is to see what happens when the players account for it (or don't). Forgetting that rope could lead to a PC death, for all we know. And that's just one example. There are many that I'm sure I make my players keep track of that not even 50% of tables do (outfits, bedding or tents [in case it gets cold], arrows, daggers, food, etc.). All these things can lead to very interesting situations. Players that run out of food might actually decide to find pesky goblin tribes in the area to barter with or loot so they don't starve. Or, hell, they might have to eat goblin. Or slow down while they hunt and gather food, which might have other effects (what with weather, the setting continuing to evolve, etc.).And these are just basic exploration details. While 4e has some rules on these sorts of things, I'd definitely consider the non-combat rules ill-defined, especially by comparison to it's fairly concrete combat rules (outside of the huge realm of stunting). And that's a shame, because I'd really like my players to be more empowered when making decisions instead of everything being filtered through me.I agree that the skill challenge is a good system. Many, many people have problems with it, but I feel I can get it to shine in actual play in both 4e and in my RPG. And yet, I feel that it might be even stronger in my RPG, where the skill DCs and uses are spelled out to players. They know the DCs, they know their bonuses, and they can make (and even plan for) very informed decisions about what they want to do.It's very transparent, just like 4e combat. And I wish 4e had done that more with it's non-combat stuff.This is an interesting point to make, because it is definitely harder to make it abstract once it's detailed than go the other way around (without writing up a couple sets of rules). I can see how this would indeed be a big point in its favor for certain groups that prefer that approach. It just makes the rules seem very... clouded. And very "rulings, not rules." And I'm not much of a fan for either, honestly.True, it can lead to this. I think the flip side is that the abstract rules make it so that player actions might now be filtered through the GM, and that's not something I much like (because I'm lazy!). But I definitely understand why people would like the more abstract approach. I guess I just don't see it as transparent still. Thank you for the reply <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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