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Message: <blockquote data-quote="niklinna" data-source="post: 8655004" data-attributes="member: 71235">That the stakes can change doesn't mean you don't know what they are. Unless the DM specifically hides them! If there were no fiction—first—a skill challenge would be nothing more than, for example: "Okay, so you have to pass 5 skill checks at DC 15 before you fail 3. You can use Persuasion, Intimidation, and Survival. Go!" And I'd wager that even in writing an adventure the author doesn't think of something like that first. They'll think of the fictional situation, first, and then try to put the mechanical details of the skill challenge in to support that.My reading of the 4e text is that the DM sets a default DC for all the skill checks, provides the applicable skills (that are relevant to the fiction), and # successes / failures. There is explicit text about handling when players come up with approaches that are out of the box, with different skills, etc.Even in the basic case, though, the players are free to take whatever actions they like as seems plausible in the fiction—first—and then map that onto skill checks. They could just pick some skills and roll dice without describing what they do, of course, but then they're missing out on most of the fun. They could also pick a skill first, and then decide how they go about using it, but that's really little different than, "John's good at persuading, let him do the talking".Compare to my description of dramatic skill challenges in Torg Eternity, which are rigidly scripted in terms of the exact skills in the exact order they must be performed. Even then, while the mechanics of the thing clearly step forward to upstage the fiction during play, some fiction motivated the setup and scripting, and the fiction is what gets described to the players before the players are given the rigid mechanics of how to deal with it. That is, the fiction comes first.To me, it does mean what it intuitively sounds like. Fiction comes first, and then you deal with mechanics.</blockquote>

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