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<blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8654548" data-attributes="member: 71235">I'll add a bit of contrast here by way of introducing another damn niche game folks likely haven't played. Feel free to ask for further detail!4e skill challenges are basically defined by # of successes / failures that end the challenge, and an open list of skills that best apply. The players get to choose what actions they take in the fiction, which leads to the skill checks. Those might even be skills not on the list, if it makes sense to the DM how they would work.Torg Eternity has a similar seeming thing called dramatic skill challenges (because drama makes things better!). In these, you have 4 ordered steps, labeled A, B, C, D, and each one has a specific skill that must be used with the equivalent of a DC to pass it. Sometimes a step will say you can use one or two alternate skills. Torg uses a deck of cards for initiative instead of dice rolls, and each card has some of those 4 letters on it; you can do a given step during the round only if that letter comes up on the initiative card. (Players have a hand of cards too, some of which can be played to manipulate the initiative card or allow for a given step to be performed.) Sometimes the challenge will describe what the skill test represents: for example, Find to discover a secret lever, Science to defuse a bomb. The whole thing is both rigidly scripted and defined overtly in terms of mechanics.Torg Eternity does handle drama/story stuff in other ways, but its dramatic skill challenges work directly against fiction-first play and are clearly, as they say, gamist foremost, as is combat in general.Edit: Added minor clarification.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="niklinna, post: 8654548, member: 71235"] I'll add a bit of contrast here by way of introducing another damn niche game folks likely haven't played. Feel free to ask for further detail! 4e skill challenges are basically defined by # of successes / failures that end the challenge, and an open list of skills that best apply. The players get to choose what actions they take in the fiction, which leads to the skill checks. Those might even be skills not on the list, if it makes sense to the DM how they would work. Torg Eternity has a similar seeming thing called [I]dramatic[/I] skill challenges (because drama makes things better!). In these, you have 4 ordered steps, labeled A, B, C, D, and each one has a specific skill that must be used with the equivalent of a DC to pass it. Sometimes a step will say you can use one or two alternate skills. Torg uses a deck of cards for initiative instead of dice rolls, and each card has some of those 4 letters on it; you can do a given step during the round only if that letter comes up on the initiative card. (Players have a hand of cards too, some of which can be played to manipulate the initiative card or allow for a given step to be performed.) Sometimes the challenge will describe what the skill test represents: for example, Find to discover a secret lever, Science to defuse a bomb. The whole thing is both rigidly scripted and defined overtly in terms of mechanics. Torg Eternity does handle drama/story stuff in other ways, but its dramatic skill challenges work directly against fiction-first play and are clearly, as they say, gamist foremost, as is combat in general. Edit: Added minor clarification. [/QUOTE]

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