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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6242517" data-attributes="member: 6696971">And quite literally, the moment I read the DMG Index and found 'Skill Challenges', I flipped there.  The very first thing I thought of was one of my very favorites: "Dogs in the Vineyard.  WotC is trying to move D&D into the world of unified conflict resolution for narrative trajectory and Story Now agenda.  X successes or y failures is just the analogue to 'insufficient dice in your pool to See the decisive Raise.'  Use of a Primary Skill being locked out from further usage is the analogue to 'exhausting Acuity, Body, Heart, Will, Trait (et al) dice from your pool.'  Secondary Skills are just 'Belongings, Relationships, or Traits' that find their way into play due to the evolving narrative which augment Primary Skill checks (dice pools).  The standard back and forth is the analogue to 'Raises and Sees' with the DCs arrangement as the GM's passive dice pool outcome to the complication/adversity.  Healing Surge loss for micro-failures and/or worse for macro-failure is the analogue to post-conflict 'Fallout.'"Then I thought "you know, like 1s coming up on Fallout Dice leading to character improvement, if they would have given XP solely for failures in Skill Challenges, that would have created great narrative tension within player choice and a better impetus to try to invoke sub-optimal skills."Then, before reading the PHB I thought (predicting that they surely didn't), it would have been very cool if they would have gone all out and just turned D&D 4e into a fully unified conflict resolution framework replete 'Escalations' and 'Reversals.'   After I had digested all of the DMG and PHB advice about Passing Time (the abridged version would be "don't waste time where there is no conflict") and getting to the Encounters ("the conflict) and the PHB 'How Do You Play' about the game being a product of player's responding to the GM composed Combat and Noncombat Encounter Challenges and the "Get to the Fun" section  (circumventing a mundane exchange with a gate guard to 'get to the conflict') I thought of  Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard GM advice: "Every moment, drive  play toward conflict".  Then I looked at the mechanisms for powers (keywords and guiding, but mutable/malleable flavor text) and the broad descriptor Skill system.Then I fully noted that the unified framework of classes and resource schemes pushes play toward the Encounter (the scene of conflict) and its resolution as the nexus of narrative output.  Later looked at all of the class/race resources and I thought "wow, that is a lot of authority vested in the players to fluctuate their stance at their discretion...ardent deep immersionists that demand actor stance exclusively are going to flip their lids."Then I did a lot of other things (playtested the combat engine and fell in love with its balance, dynamism and precise encounter budgeting, quest system) and I was amazed at how great it was...but knew it was going to be enormously controversial.Nowhere did I think (nor did it turn out in my homegame's play...even with brand new players unacquainted to TTRPGs) WotC's focus/emphasis was exclusively or even primarily on encounter level gamism.  Certainly it was there (the same as it can be for DitV if played in that way), and what was there was fantastic.  However, I didn't remotely consider the adverbs of "primarily" or "exclusively", equating to emphasis.</blockquote>

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