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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5419260" data-attributes="member: 58197">A game outside of skirmish-level combat.D&amp;D has rules for stuff out of combat, but those rules are mostly disconnected elements floating off on their own. The combat rules, on the other hand, form a self-contained, tactically interesting, carefully built mini-game. That's why 4E feels so combat-focused, despite having arguably more rules support for noncombat situations than any previous edition--it's not the absolute level of support, but the contrast between the combat rules and the rest of the system.Skill challenges were an attempt to develop social and exploration encounters in the same way, but as written they fall pretty flat. There are very seldom any meaningful choices to be made in a by-the-book skill challenge. You pick the best skill you can find an excuse to use, and then it's all up to the dice. When skill challenges work, it's usually because the DM either a) took the basic framework and built an ad hoc mini-game on top of it, or b) successfully concealed from the players that a skill challenge was going on at all. In both cases, the DM is doing the heavy lifting. The rules are providing about as much entertainment as BECMI's rules provide for a duel between two vanilla fighters.What I would like to see is an effort to build a more substantial framework for social, exploration, and other types of noncombat encounters. I'm not asking for anything as heavy or mechanically rigid as the combat rules, mind you. Social encounters in particular need a lightweight approach to keep the rules from bogging down the roleplaying. But I would still like to have a system which offers meaningful choices between the various skills, and which actively helps the DM construct engaging noncombat scenarios.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5419260, member: 58197"] A game outside of skirmish-level combat. D&D has [i]rules[/i] for stuff out of combat, but those rules are mostly disconnected elements floating off on their own. The combat rules, on the other hand, form a self-contained, tactically interesting, carefully built mini-game. That's why 4E feels so combat-focused, despite having arguably more rules support for noncombat situations than any previous edition--it's not the absolute level of support, but the contrast between the combat rules and the rest of the system. Skill challenges were an attempt to develop social and exploration encounters in the same way, but as written they fall pretty flat. There are very seldom any meaningful choices to be made in a by-the-book skill challenge. You pick the best skill you can find an excuse to use, and then it's all up to the dice. When skill challenges work, it's usually because the DM either a) took the basic framework and built an ad hoc mini-game on top of it, or b) successfully concealed from the players that a skill challenge was going on at all. In both cases, the DM is doing the heavy lifting. The rules are providing about as much entertainment as BECMI's rules provide for a duel between two vanilla fighters. What I would like to see is an effort to build a more substantial framework for social, exploration, and other types of noncombat encounters. I'm not asking for anything as heavy or mechanically rigid as the combat rules, mind you. Social encounters in particular need a lightweight approach to keep the rules from bogging down the roleplaying. But I would still like to have a system which offers meaningful choices between the various skills, and which actively helps the DM construct engaging noncombat scenarios. [/QUOTE]

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