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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5965315" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree completely. The GM has to be framing scenes that the players will engage - including with clear stakes. (Combat has an advantage here, because the stakes are so obvious - fight or you'll die!)If the players don't care what happens, then there is no skill challenge, and the GM can just narrate what happens. The flipside is true, too - in my game, if there is no opposition to the PCs from within the gameworld, then there is no need for a skill challenge. It's just free roleplaying. (And plenty of social encounters happen like this in my game.)As I currently run them, gear occupies the same functional space as powers - it is a limited-use resource that players can draw upon to supplement skill checks, open up the space for skill checks, etc. I mentioned upthread the example of the wizard player using a possession power to open up the possibility of an Arcana check to learn a password. A parallel example involving gear occurred in a challenge where the chaos sorcerer was being pursued on his flying carpet by a flight of hobgoblin wyvern-riders. He was carrying a few vials of pure elemental fire that he had recovered from the Elemental Chaos, and he tried to use the energy of the fire to give his carpet a boost to speed. Once again, this opened up the space for an Arcana check - when his check failed - and was the 3rd failure in the challenge - the elemental fire exploded in his face and caused his carpet to crash.My approach is similar, although I will also use narration to try and force checks - not necessarily of any predefined skill, but narrating a situation (eg "The hobgoblins are about to catch you - what are you going to do?") that will provoke the player into having his/her PC do something in response.I would say that, as I run them, skill challenges have two mechanical dimensions - skill checks, and power use (which includes action point expenditure, and which functionally plays a bit like BW artha).  If I had to look for a third dimension, I would nominate something non-mechanical, namely, the pressure on the PCs (and therefore the players) generated by the narated fiction.While I'm not sure that this is the sort of dimension you are looking for, it is important. It is that narration (that reflects the underlying mechanical unfolding of "N before 3") which pushes the players to do things - non-diplomancers to nevertheless talk, desparate sorcerers to try and speed up their carpet by catalysing elemental fire, dwarven Warpriests to shove their hands into forges.A damage-based system would have to generate similar pressures. In BW, the Duel of Wits does this because both sides are inflicting losses on each others' body of argument. But, in a reforging scenario, how do you frame the forge and artefact as inflicting damage on the PC? Because without this, there is no pressure that will produce dramatic calls.Yes, this is what I'm questioning in questioning the damage approach.Except a failed skill check costs the party 1 hp. So it's not two parties trying to wear one another down. It's one party engaging a situation and wearing down both pools depending on what happens.</blockquote>

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