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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6587344" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Quick (yeah right) play example and analysis for 4e.  I'll try to do a DW one as well but likely won't have time.  Sblocking for space.[sblock][/sblock]This is a little ways into the conflict where Saerie was traversing down the mountain river,  looking for a civilized village to beseech them to take on the orphaned children.  This is an example of proper failure (forward) in this Skill Challenge.  Let us take a look under the hood into both my GMing and the mechanics:1)  The dramatic complication she was traversing when she failed this primary check was obviously a waterfall.  She noticed it via an auto-success with her (very high) Perception check.  Success with complications in 4e require the GM to bring out about what is the equivalent of a "soft move" in Dungeon World.  The fiction needs to move forward in an interesting, thematic way which places a decision before the player on how to tackle this new threat.  A lot of these complications will fall under the broad rubric of the DW soft move:So now she has to navigate it.  It isn't too terribly steep, so she decides to ride it out with Athletics + a Secondary Skill augment from Perception.  She fails the medium DC despite the high Athletics check and the augment (needed a 4 or better).2)  All of my SC failures produce Healing Surge loss so they are the equivalent of the DW hard move:However, in SCs, the fiction always has to change so there is also another move to create a decision-point for the PC.  As I hope is clear in the fiction, one would be the "Reveal an Unwelcome Truth" move or the "Use a monster, danger, location" move depending on how the player approaches the situation.  Of note here, at the outset of play, she overtly signaled that she wanted the primary antagonists to be bandits, sinister fey, tainted wild things.  These marauders (bandits) didn't exist before this complication.  Their band played a primary role in play from this point forward.   Like most of my D&D games, this one was fairly "no myth" with a low resolution setting and backstory with the "blanks" filled in during play once things are formally established on-screen.  This is mandate in indie "Story Now" play.Of further note here, due to the fiction that immediately preceded it, I require a Primary Skill Endurance check (medium DC) from her before we proceed to the present situation (Turn their move back on them - in this case the attempt to ride out the waterfall).  She knows a failure will typically be a loss of a Healing Surge.  However, I overtly stipulate to her that these failures (from the failed Athletics check and the pending Endurance check) will yield loss of real heroic reserves (HPs) rather than latent heroic reserves (HSs) if this does indeed turn into a violent confrontation.  So, in chronology, this knock-on complication is immediate fallout of her failed Athletics check with the Reveal an Unwelcome Truth (possibly Use a Monster if things turn violent) complication, which escalates things and moves the fiction forward in an interesting/threatening way.  This is precisely how things should snowball in a 4e Skill Challenge and especially so given the declared stakes and goal of this challenge.3)  She passes her Primary Skill Endurance check so she is down one Healing Surge or 25 % of her HPs if things turn violent.  Further, she is halfway home at 4/8 success (1/2 hard DCs passed), 1/3 failures, 2/3 SS used, 2 advantages remaining.  She forgoes even thinking about a prospective parley.  This is surely for a few reasons:  (1) the bad guys are clearly very bad and have shown their hand fairly dramatically with their actions and words and (2) she is a woman of action, not words (PC build shows this well enough).  Nonetheless, if she would have tried to parley, I would have certainly honored the action declaration and we would have "found out what happens."  I would have surely pulled out my remaining hard DC available to escalate things, but if she would have succeeded, the fiction would have changed to her advantage and she would have earned success 5.  So things turn violent.  I let her know the mechanical stakes beforehand (the fictional stakes are obvious).  This will be a nested combat.  Success will earn her Primary Skill success number 5/8.  I think the combat goes something like this:a)  She stabs the guy threatening her onshore with a dagger to the knee.  She knee it was a minion and stipulated that she didn't want him dead, just lamed and out of the fight.b)  She action-pointed and used an arrow to stunt the boiling pot over the spit and AoE several of the bad guys around the fire and then used Mighty Sprint to scale a tree.c)  She dueled a big mean man in the tree for a bit while avoiding/taking some ranged fire, they both end up falling out of the tree.  She gets up and finishes him off before he can kill her.d)  She kills another minion (who was taking cover behind the tents) with her bow and the leader of the band (warlord-ey action-multiplier) skedaddles into the forest in terror.So success 5.She can't let this guy go for fear that he will get reinforcements and chase her through the mountains that they know but she doesn't.  This turns into another nested challenge (SC complexity 1)  for either success 6 or failure 2.  The guy temporarily escapes from her (failed Athletics check to climb a tree and get a vantage point to snipe him), disappearing into a large crevice in the hardpan of a dried river-bed.  This ends up being the backdoor to the marauders massive complex.  She pursues and ends up stalking this guy through the tunnels, avoiding trapped deadfalls and other contingencies that the raiders had set up.  She succeeds at the SC1 so the guy is killed by one of the deadfalls in his panicked hurry before he can rally the bad guys.  She gains an intricate fishbone necklace from the dead raider that helps her later in parleying with the people of the village.So success 6.That leads to her taking a short rest (recovery of encounter powers and spending HS to recover HPs) and initiating a parley with the lamed, but alive, marauder at the high DC:and my response:So that is 7/8 success with both of my hard DCs used.She ties the guy to the raft and he helps her navigate the branching, downstream tributaries which lead to the bay and the civilized island village within it.  Relying on her knowledge of this sort of geography, it is very akin to her homeland of Brokenstone Vale in the Feywild, she uses her Nature check to avoid hazards.Other cool stuff happens (including an awesome midnight battle on the bay with a sea monster where Saerie and a  father had to protect the man's - minion - daughter from death...this fight is definitely something that can't be done legitimately in prior editions...the minion and terrain interaction rules enormously shine here to make it dynamic, thematic and exciting as all hell).  But let us stick to this.This conflict features 4e's illusionism-averse machinery quite intensely.  Transparent GMing procedures.  Transparent, coherent resolution mechanics (in this case the Skill Challenge mechanics, including nested challenges - DMG2).  Informed (both mechanically and fictional-positioning-wise) thematic decision-points and attendant player action declarations.  Honored, dramatic, genre-coherent results of micro-checks and the macro-stakes explicated at the outset.</blockquote>

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