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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5953888" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that you are underestimating two features of skill challenges that distinguish them from free roleplaying mediated by checks with DCs set by GM judgement.First, the DCs aren't just set by GM judgement. They're mandated by a system which scales them to level. That is, the main constraint on DCs is a metagame one, with the expectation that narration will then fall into line with that (where this is an issue - often it's not). This is not unlike the pass/fail cycle in HeroQuest revised establishing the DCs on a metagame basis.Second, there is a fixed number of successes required before a defined number of failures. This means that the GM is obliged to keep the scene alive for a certain duration.In a Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits, no matter how devastating a player's Dismissal spoken for his/her PC, if it doesn't empty the opponent's body of argument the duel goes on - the GM is obliged to narrate some complication or reason that keep the Duel alive. And in a Hero Wars/Quest extended contest, a similar dynamic applies - until a winner is established via mechanics, the scene has to be narrated so as to keep it alive and unresolved.Likewise with a skill challenge. The technique for doing this (although the rulebooks for 4e don't explain this, even though they present examples that only work by drawing on this technique) is to introduce new complications or twists that are introduced on a metagame basis, rather than just being "organic" extrapolations from the ordinarily established fiction (eg in response to the Dismissal in BW, or to the overwhelmingly wonderful Diplomacy check in a 4e skill challenge, "I hear what you say, and your reason is beyond question. But I swore an oath to my late father, and from that I cannot budge" - now the players have to think of a way to have their PCs get the NPC released from the oath, or to reinterpret it).The first of these features - metagame setting of DCs - is what gives players agency. The DCs aren't just GM fiat, they're set having regard to the underlying maths of the game and a certain desired pacing.The second of these features - metagame-driven adjudication by the GM - is what makes these sorts of mechanics generate unexpected results in play, that no one (GM or player) anticipated in advance. LostSoul posted a nice example on these boards some time ago, where the skill challenge mechanics create narrative space and unexpected outcomes even when the player had virtually no chance of losing:The playtest, as it currently stands, doesn't have the sort of mechanics - for DC setting, for establishing parameters for adjudication - that would permit this sort of result to be produced in a way that is surprising to both players and GM.</blockquote>

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