I have 1 real problem player and one player that is having problems with 4th.
The problem with them is they walk into the game with the "I hate 4th edition" thinking before they ever get their. When you enter a game like that, you cannot enjoy the game.

This goes back to this

The System is Unimportant
The System is All Important

If you want to run around and bash monsters: you want 4e
If you want a game with dramatic over the top Hollywood moves: you want 4e
If you want a game where team play is the goal: You want 4e
If you want to run a game were it is all intrigue and simple skill usage: You want 4e

If you want a run around an possible kill monsters in one swing with your Min/Max Character: you want 3e
If you want a game with a complex skill system that can be easily abused: you want 3e
If you a random group of characters to go on adventures and one had better be a cleric: you want 3e
If you want to run a game were it is all intrigue and slow advancement unless the DM is really nice: You want 3e

It is all about the flavor

If you like 4e great, spread the word
If you like 3e [or any other edition] great, but relies that 4e is here to stay and quit giving us that like it grief.

BTW: if there are any groups in the Riverside aria that want a 30+ Veteran player who hates 4e let me know you can have him.

There are rules in 4E for just that situation - Diplomacy, Bluff, etc are all skills that you can roll dice to resolve situations with. While I can understand why you might find this to be lacking when you compare it to the amount of rules that cover combat, most of the complaints about D&D4E being "combat heavy" that I've read online have dealt with the fact that there isn't (for example) a set of rules for crafting items, or cooking a meal, or pretty much anything that isn't typically used in direct opposition to someone else.

Ultimately, Dungeons and Dragons *is* focused (mechanically) towards combat situations...it would be foolhardy to argue otherwise. It did, after all, begin as an optional set of rules for a tabletop wargame. I find it lazy and disingenuous, however, to say that the *only* thing that you can do in D&D4E is fight things -- though I agree that someone who wants deep mechanics for non-combat situations would be better served to find another game system to use.

Complaining about a lack of dedicated, deep RP rules is like copmlaining about the lack of dedicated, deep RP rules in your average Halo or Mario game. It's simply not what they're designed for. If I want to play an RPG video game, I'm gonna go grab Mass Effect or Final Fantasy. If I want to simply blow things up, I grab Halo. If I want to stimp on turtles and collect coins, I play Mario

Bull

I think the main problem with D&D 4e from a roleplaying angle is that most people looking for the options they had in 3.X only bought or read the core D&D line. Which is designed for noobs. PHB2, MM2, and DMG 2 is where all those options your used to start showing up. Then you have WOTC claiming "we changed everything but its the same game" WHAT??? how can, brain melting... On top of that you watch the DM commentary on the Robot Chicken and his example of 4e roleplaying is TERRIBLE!!!!! apparently anything that isnt covered by the rules is roleplaying! WTF! and this from the CREATIVE DESIGNER of 4e. This just shows me that there is a disconnect between the designers and some fans. Those fans just need to wake up and try other games, honestly the D&D they want will never exist as long as the same people are designing it. There are a 1000 systems out there get out and try one.



And this is exactly why I don't want Shadowrun to use the D&D 4e rules.

Sure, but what is the "confrontation"? D&D, although 4E is a smidge better than previous editions IMO, is infamously anemic in the area of rolling dice inside a confrontation other than when the confrontation is combat.

Because cooking can indeed be a confrontation.

Shadowrun is sort of getting there, too. It was an early adopter of allowing for a character focused on something other than hurting people. But it's still confused and it's implementation is uneven and clunky. IMO that's the core problem with the Matrix rules [in the core]. It has all those nitty-gritty detailed rules about comlink Response and System and agents and program levels etc. that prior SR editions are gummed up with, but it failed to deliver the framework (lightweight or otherwise) to use those details or the Matrix. More framework (the basic Skills section is a start) and less detailed crap that gets is the way and serves as fodder for rules lawyering and other arguments and time wasted flipping pages.

Yes, there is a another way other then the control freak of SR and the shrug of D&D. A solid, extensible framework that is a tool to use rather than an enclosure.

D&D 3rd edition? I'm not exactly sure how that qualifies as a "complex skill system"?

While I concede that there are indeed situations where you might need to compare the ability of two people when cooking, weaving, or dancing, D&D4E does a reasonably good job of ensuring that most of the time when you are going to want to contest something with someone else there is a rule on how you should roll dice to determine the outcome. (Personally, I thought that they should have included rules for things like crafting and other "noncombat" abilities in PHB3 rather than the Hybrid Class rules).

Like Bull said, though, D&D is probably not the system for people who don't want to spend a significant amount of game time fighting...and it never really has been. In a similar vein, the original Changeling would be a poor choice for running hypertactical combat stories.



I feel pretty much the same way with the implementation of the Matrix in SR (and this is coming from someone who plays the hacker type in both of my SR groups). If I were to nail down where I think that the Matrix rules go wrong, though, it's in trying to make the Matrix work in a manner consistent with how computers work now. Imagine how someone in 1950 would write rules for how Computer Warfare Specialists would operate in the year 2000...IN THE FUTURE!!! Odds are that they would have very little in common with how computers *really* operated 10 years ago. Hell, look at how archaic (overall) the Matrix rules were in SR1 compared to how computers actually worked in 2005 (I need to be PHYSICALLY PLUGGED IN?!?), and that was a difference of only 16 years.

You can actually have your cake and eat it too...if you are willing to open wide. Having that solid support for non-combat skills (my experience has set the bar much higher than what D&D provides) doesn't preclude very tactical combat. But to keep it manageable most people have to be willing to acknowledge that there is a difference between having a tactical sub-game and a very rules bulky sub-game, and be willing to sacrifice the later.




I think it is pretty generous to describe the Matrix as anything approaching consistent with how computers work now.

But the root of the problem is still in delving into those hard nuts and bolts details. Keep it a level up from there, keep it to what it can do, not how it does it. Then leave it up to the players at the table to imagine (or ignore) the details in the way that suits them the best.

That way you don't need to make the trade off between trying to describe something that a computer user of 2005 can relate to it and some computing paradigm that is alien to the computer user of 2005 (and probably the laws of physics to boot) but somehow makes sense to the author.

You haver sepent an hour and a half wating for someone to spend his skill points.
We had one guy who would always make his INT his first or second highest stat and then put 1 point here and one point there. It only got worse when he got our group to say that if you put 1 point into a Cross Class skill it becomes a "Level-0" Skill, but you are now considered "Trained" in it.
or
The Elf Rouge with a 20 Dex, Trained in Stealth and then manages to gets a Cloak of Eleven Kind at 4th level.


With 4th there are only Trained Skills and Untrained Skills and only 2 Require Training
1] Acrobatics: You are Required to be Tained in it to avoid Falling Damage
2] Arcana: You are Required to be Tained in it to Detect Magic

That is true. Now given that I played a number of years of 3e/3.5e, shouldn't the question occur to you as to why I have never spent an hour and a half waiting for someone to spend those points?

It is a bit fiddly with character creation (limiting it to allocating in blocks of 4 points during character creation and the number of decisions to make drops drastically). But that + a painfully indecisive player hardly constitutes a "complex skill system". Overall I'd argue it is the opposite, there isn't much to the system overall to justify having even a marginally fiddly Skill point allocation. D&D 4E has just acknowledged this and brought character creation/advancement more in line with the rest of it.

That and the Matrix rules dont fall inline with the rest of the rules... With Star Wars Saga at leased hacking works the same as bluff. I'm actually working on a list of changes I want to make to SR4 most of which are based on the Ubiquity rules. My new non-combat Matrix test is Logic+Computers+Program vs a Threshold = System, successes count against the threshold and failures count for moving the system up to passive alert. I should point out the TN has been moved from 5 to 4 in this hack as Ubiquity uses 50/50 dice.

He is one of the reasons we started when it comes to character creation in SR we started to say "Whats Your Concept?" and then make the character gor him.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding your post; You propose rolling the same pool multiple times, at least System times, just to get in, before trying to actually accomplish anything? I've found extended tests the weakest part of skills core of SR4. By weak I mean "rolling-rolling-rolling before anything of note happens, slowing down my game" weak. Your suggestion, as I read it, sounds even worse.

Generally no real action happens till I get into the system so single pass/fail roll, and outside of situations that I can't actually imagine at the moment he's getting in no matter what is rolled. Because generally speaking outside = *snore* and inside = the action.

What do you plan to do for in-combat rolls? SR4 is closer to melding the two but it didn't come together.

You have to understand Ubiquity. 4+ is a success and you need 1-5 successes depending on the average, you can always take the average rather than roll in Ubiquity.

So take my example a system is generally rated 1-6 (not System + Firewall, just System) so you will need 1-6 successes on your dice to do the thing you want to do in one action.
Your dice pool is your Logic+Computers+Program Rating. So a really good Hacker with a good program should be around 15+ dice giving you 7+ successes and more than enough to beat your rating 6 system.

Example I want to find the files on the top secret project for X. The system is a rating 6 our hacker gets 7 successes finds the data and begins to download it in one roll and one turn.
The thing I am adding that is not part of Ubiquity would be to count the failures. I'm not sure how the chart would work yet but perhaps after 20 failures the system goes to passive alert.

For in-combat rolls I plan to make it work exactly as the meat world after Ubiquity modification, which basicly just lowers the dice pool on defense and combines dodge+soak into the same roll.

I'm trying for unified quick rules so we can get on with the mission.

[edit] note my example above assumes you already logged on to the system with enough permissions

Nope, that's not the issue. I read the other thread where you mentioned Ubiquity, generally speaking no problem with that (not having to roll for a roughly 50/50 test does strike me as odd but I'm giving that a free pass *shrug* ). The issue is the potential for multiple die rolls where the result of each is "nothing happens". EDIT: Especially when the net result of a bunch of rolls can be a cockblock for the meat of the action ever happening.



What I mean is non-combat Matrix actions happening during non-Matrix combat action. Or, put another way, how do you do the conflict from the SR 1e/2e cover? If that isn't handled well, and I'm not convinced any edition of SR has yet, you are coming up short. This rolling, rolling, rolling might work there (EDIT: although issues with cockblocks may still apply). Is it a countdown, or they just have to beat the Threshold on a single roll and they succeed?

The issue on the cover

1. Roll Initiative
2. Go in Initiative order
3. On the hackers turn he can attempt the hack, if he gets enough successes he gets in, if not count those success toward the total needed and he can try to add more on his next initiative pass. So I would call it a countdown

[edit] I wouldnt seporate the hacking from the normal game, just have the ICE insert itself into the normal combat initiative order if triggered.

[edit2] to answer your other question, the success would stack, so nothing may happen for one round but each round you should be making progress. In most cases if your competent and not on an Ultraviolet system you should be able to just take the average and move on without rolling.

What if there was no ICE triggered?

I don't understand what "I wouldnt seporate the hacking from the normal game" means?

Well lets say Dodger needs to download a file but they get caught in a firefight while hes plugging in. Assuming he can take the average to beat the threasholds it would be 2 tests, 1 to logon and 1 to find the file in question. That would require 2 combat action phases + whatever time the GM decides he needs to actually download the whole file. If he cant take the average to beat the system it may take more than one round to logon or find the file in question but the thresholds should not be set so high that this happens to a competent hacker.

What I ment by the previous statement is there is no mini-game. The Hacker doesnt get his own mini-game on his combat phase and everyone sits around, combat happens during the hacking, its all one initiative cycle. If the hacker only got one pass he'll have to wait to find that file till everyone rolls initiative again.

Do you treat Decker rounds the same as meatspace rounds ??
ie, Deckers don't do things in Decker timescales, which is usually faster than meatspace time [thoughtspeed being faster than meatspeed]

Yes

It's my standard character design method...
...Concept -> wordy description for attributes -> attributes -> wordy description of skills -> skills

What I've done, and keep in mind combat is a little different an actions are scripted ahead to a degree and resolve simultaneously (have you played Wings of War? a lot like that), is that it is a mini-game intruder vs system/human admin countdown (on both sides, winner is the one that reduces the other side to zero, first). The actions are in lockstep with the meat combat but meat combat can, and often has multiple discrete steps/hacker action. This isn't to say that the meat characters are doing more, in fact the opposite is likely to be coloured as so. So it is just that the scale of discrete game mechanic actions to in-game world actions is different between Matrix and meat, with the Matrix actions somewhat more visualized to allow the people at the table more leeway to describe what is going on, fitting with how they are comfortable with envisioning the nuts and bolts of the computer tech (see my post above).

Also the outcome of the mini-game is reduce the other side to zero and you get what you wanted (plus unwanted side-effects scaled to how much you were reduced, like some level of injury from a fried brain or an inconvenient twist such as the opponent gained a clue about the meat behind the icon and is going to show up inconveniently later or you missed some piece of the paydata that you came for), partial success before you bailed or were reduced to zero gets you something good and something bad again in rough proportion. Again, much more a framework, a tool for the GM and the players at the table rather than numerous dictated details encoded in the rules.

If you are familiar with the Mouse Guard RPG, I shamelessly ripped the core concept of the mini-game from there and then adapted it to work along side more detailed combat plus some different partial victory/defeat consequences. EDIT: Had to make some modifications/tweaks to up The Scary some, too. Mouse Guard isn't aimed at evoking in players the gut wrenching and grim mood that I envision for a dystopian future. On the other hand I kept the team aspects, so lesser skilled tag-alongs aren't tourists but aren't total boat anchors either, thus more opportunity for whole party excisions with detailed action in moderately dangerous regions of the Matrix.

This mini-game is the same as if there was no meat combat going on when the GM makes the director decision to focus in on the action and draw out the scene. Otherwise the whole conflict, to accomplish what the player wants, is single roll or single versus roll and move on.

P.S. As a bonus a ripped down version, where the opponent isn't rolling and there is only you counting down the 'opponent', is included for 'dumb' tech. So you can use it for contemporary, and even 20th century levels of tech, in combat. I wouldn't bother with it outside combat though, just one roll and move on, as in combat it's just a pacing mechanism to keep meat combat and 'hacking' in sync.

I thought this was about D&D 4e

A thread naming oversight by Redjack. The discussion originated as a discussion about a hypothetical post-CGL company replacing SR4 with another system, D&D 4e was mentioned.



But if you want it to be about D&D just treat my last post as the bar for solid support of non-shooting-people-in-the-face to measure D&D's relatively anemic support up against, and therefore why D&D would be a poor fit for SR. *cough*

Why we chose not to go to 4e

Will never play 4e. It's a video game version of D&D based off MMOGs.

WHich were based on CRPGs, which were based on D&D, which were based on miniatures gaming.

Your argument is flawed, though your opinion is not

Bull

Yeah, saying it's genuinely video game and MMO based is not really true at all. There's obvious roles in place, but it's really just a and RPG w/ minis combat more than anything else. I'd make a more direct comparison to stuff like clix games. Limited number of abilities per character, often dependent on bloodied status or healing surges, sorta like how clix abilities change up as the unit takes damage etc. Gygax and crew really were just building upon a legacy of kill-the-dudes-and-raid-the-castle skirmish rules, so it's not all that strange to see things come around full circle.

Personally, I think there's room in gaming for a franchise that's rather combat heavy but systemically light in other areas. Roleplaying doesn't necessarily need much dice support to happen, after all, and some people aren't really that much into getting in character to begin with. If I were to criticize 4th ED, I would complain more about how the Powers system lends a rather predictable mindset to most battles: You burn your encounter powers then resort to daily powers if necessary and then just stick with at-will. I'll grant you that it's actually not all that much less interesting in practice than most systems (I would argue that it's better than most and some fun stuff can happen when players set things up for each other well), but when your system is so predicated on combat it'd be nice if it was a cut above what it currently is. With that said, it's a good enough game that I'm hard pressed to come up with ideas to fix that. So, overall, I think it's a pretty good game and most of the criticisms I see tend to be of the apples to oranges variety and stem from irreconcilable differences in taste.

Complaining about the D&D rules being combat centric is like complaining water is wet. Reading that post I picture the author saying "This new glass of water? It is wet!" Like it is some sort of discovery, some sort of surprise that a glass of water is wet....implying prior ones weren't.

Nobody has ever answerd this question

And what is wrong with that?

Actually, that's exactly the point I was making, circular and ludicrous as it may be. MMOGs copy the combat aspect of D&D which sees how popular MMOGs are and ditches the RP and setting for a table top version of the MMOG. Laaaaame.

Regardless of your mechanics rules in Shadowrun, it is a much richer world with a cool history with greater potential for world influence, RP, and things other than hack'n'slash... which is fun and fun in Shadowrun, too. It's just not the whole game.

Mesh

As I stated in another thread, for me, it's totally cool that they tried to define roles and give players a reason to build their characters a specific way. The problem is that they force you to pick a role and build your character around it no matter how silly or unlikely that may be. Character stats revolve around combat with non-combat situations (which is totally different than just roleplaying situations) being a pain in the ass to figure out or fit into your character. Hell, just being able to talk to people with Comprehend Languages, for example, is a struggle. You have to spend a small fortune and waste a ton of time to perform that "ritual." If it's not an ability to be used in combat, it's delegated to rituals, and nearly every single ritual has ridiculous pricetags and mandatory downtime associated with them.

It's one thing to have a game system that focused on combat, it's quite another to have a system that only focuses on combat.

The game also constrains characters so much in the name of game balance, but in reality it's just as broken and prone to abuse as any other system. The things you can do with a polearm and a not-even-intentionally-munched-out character build, for instance, is sickening. Some classes (which I dislike on general principle) are way overpowered while others are overly constrained. If you're going to cripple players and their ability to be as creative as they'd like, you should at least make sure the payoff for doing that is worthwhile. 4e doesn't deliver in that regard at all.

I'm not saying that I liked 3e any better, either. The rules bloat that game developed was even worse than 2nd edition. But the point remains.

10gp is a fortune???
5th level: "That is a small amout of cash."
10th level: "Thats pocket change."
15th Level: "I don't carry any thing that small!"
[Yes I know its residium not GP]

It is if you prefer low level games, and that's one of the dirt cheap rituals, too.

I have only played only low level 4E games so far, actually I've never played or dm'd anything beyond level 3 yet, and I do not agree that 10gp would be a fortune.

This made me laugh, because it is so true.

One couple I game with (D&D 3.5). They are not much into RP but they love a good dungeon crawl and epic combat. And hey so do I sometimes, that's why I play with them. They are also serious WoW junkies. One night we were in the middle of a very nasty combat during a Gygaxian dungeon crawl. Both of them were wearing shirts that said "Eat,Sleep, WoW". Anyway the topic of switching to 4e came up. That both stating vehemently that they would never play 4E. I asked why. Their answer? "Because it is too much like WoW, and turns it into nothing but a minis combat game." They are good friends, but sometimes I can only shake my head.

Exactly my opinion on 4E. Is it combat-centric? Sure. Is it dungeon crawl-focused? Hell yes. Because, you know, this is what D&D is about. Just because they tried to make it into a kind of universal rules set with d20 (failing miserably, in my opinion) doesn't mean it always has to be this way. 4E is a great game for the kind of campaign it was created for, and that's a lot more than I can say about many other games out there.

That's the thing...
...D&D is a product of its time - and that time was for dungeon crawling adventures and wargame variants.

When you play a boardgame, you rarely complain about the focus on combat, and inability to sweettalk the opposition...
...Because that's the way the game is played.

D&D4E, in many ways, has just gone back to its roots.
The people complaining have spent time playing RPGs where characters can do other things, and want D&D4E to have caught up - in which case it's not the game for them.

Hey there are boardgames games that allow for that. Conquest of the empire, Samauri Swords, Settlers of Cataan.....etc..etc...

When a game promotes itself and is identified as the pinnacle of the RPG scene, one might actually expect roleplaying to be a viable and important option thereof. D&D 4e is not a roleplaying game. It's a combat simulator with roleplaying scenarios handled as obtuse and asinine "skill challenges" that, surprise surprise, rely entirely upon the luck of d20 rolls and, for all intents and purposes, appears to have been specifically crafted to be so annoying that no one would want to bother using them. "Here, roll d20 100 times. If you succeed 75 times, you win!"

/suicideattempt

I've been playing D&D since second edition and I've loved it the entire way along. People complain the 4.0 is too combat based and the rules only apply to fighting and in my opinion that is a GREAT thing. If you look back at 1st and 2nd edtion D&D, there were very few rules for social situations and it was up to the players and their role-playing to come out of a social situation successful. Around 3e, which I still love. It began to suck the role-playing out of it and replaced it with roll-playing. I understand the need for that, because not everyone can talk the way they want their character too, but it just take alot away to me. So as a DM for 4e, I don't use skill challenges(which ticks off a few of my players, but oh well) and I take social situations and strategies back to what they were, role-playing. The rules only need to be their for combat anyway. At least that's my opinion. I shouldn;t need to roll to lie to the gaurd, my DM and I should know my character well enough to know whether or not the gaurd believes me, and actually role-play out the scenario. I hate the fact thatyou can spin the perfect lie, then it all falls apart because of a bad roll. it just seems silly.

So by that logic D&D and AD&D are not roleplaying games becouse thier are no rules for role playing at all, just sugestions.

<shrugs>

Think whatever the hell you want. People are allowed to dislike D&D 4th Edition if they feel it does a shitty job of being an actual roleplaying game instead of just a video game simulator. A poor one at that. If you enjoy that sort of thing, more power to you. But I'm not going to call it an RPG when, after years of development and experience, they instead choose to embrace that one, tiny aspect of RPGs and all but completely ignore and outright annoy people who want to indulge in the brunt of it. It's called a "roleplaying game" for a reason.

For me, combat rules are there to help resolve conflicts that arise as part of the actual roleplaying experience. The world doesn't revolve around it in fantasy any more than it does in real life. This is not so in D&D. Practically all it is now is a dungeon/map experience where every move is resolved through combat. If you're not killing something, you may as well not even be playing the game. At best, you have one or two pages of "rules" (all designed to be annoying as Hell) to help you "rollplay" through those apparently inconsiderate moments where combat isn't practical. You know, like talking to the king so he can tell you where the next impossible dungeon filled to the brim with an idiotic array of random monsters is located. All so you can get the gold to buy that new Generic Weapon of Mechanical Bonus +3 so you can kill even bigger random monsters in even more stupid and completely unbelieveable dungeons.

If you like it, fine. I don't. I think it's absolute shit. And if Shadowrun ever adopts it as its core engine (which, by the way, is what the discussion is about), that'll very likely be the day I forever give up the greatest roleplaying game of all time. Because it'll no longer be a roleplaying game at all. Just like D&D 4e.

I play Battltech, Star Fleet Battles, and WH40k
In all three of them we roll play a little and they are not "RPGs"
I have seen Role Play playing Monopoly.
Both of the new books have whole sections deticated to Roleplaying.

As far as the Skill Chalages:
They are thier to encurage roleplay and interaction.
Each player takes a turn trying to get past the challage.
In the other systems if you had a player who sat in the background and did nothing out of combat he did nothing, now he must interact with the world other than smashing goblins.

No. You don't encourage anything through the use of tedium and repetitively useless rolling of the dice. Well, that's not accurate. You encourage people not to do it.


No. Now all he does is roll some dice and ruin everyone's chances of succeeding because he was one of those douchebags who grew up only playing video games and so-called "RPGs" like D&D where roleplaying was something to be spat upon, so all he wanted to do was smash goblins. And in a game that revolves entirely around combat, it's no surprise that he doesn't have a single roleplaying-ish ability on his sheet to speak of. Well, unless you want to count the forced increase to all of his skills despite a complete and utter lack of attention (or even noticing that they exist due to their complete lack of uselessness).

Forcing him to roll dice doesn't do jack for changing any of that, except add to the tedium of the whole thing, and forcing someone who has no business being a part of something to be a part of it for... no real reason other than "don't just sit there, roll some dice because that's so much fun, honest"ness. Not that it matters, since the only time it comes up is, again, when you're trying to ask the king where to go get some more treasure for some random dungeon, or trying to save the princess (which, incidently, is only there so the GM can show how awesome he is by "proving" that roleplaying really is a part of the game, omg!) without having to do anything other than roll a couple of dice so you can get that sweet new magic item that lets you kill even bettererer.

It forces the Group to interact. At fist it is only to roll 1d20, then they start to think of ways to get a modifier in thier benifit, then when one of the groups figurs out that if they try to help the other guy, then they start talking to each other about making plans and then they start role playing with each other.
The other thing about the skill challages that I forgot for the longest was if they can come with a way to bypass the Skill Chalage without rolling a single die they can.
Soon Skill Challanges just a set up for the players to make them think and some times thay can be the most fun part of the game. especialy when mixed in with a combat.

No it doesn't. Being part of a group "forces" that by its nature. If a person doesn't want to sit on their ass, they can think of ways to contribute all on their own. Well, assuming the game actually encouraged that and had options outside of combat.

All skill challenges do is force everyone to be a part of the tedious, useless, repetitive rollplaying (that's not a typo, by the way). No actual roleplaying is required or expected. You just roll your dice a bunch of time and add the number. As long as you get some completely random threshold out of some equally random number of required rolls, you succeed. Yay! No thinking, no interaction, nothing. Hell, you get more damn interaction out of combat in D&D than you do skill challenges. There's no variation either. It's always the same thing over and over. One skill, one modifier, a bucket of dice, and that's it. "Hurry up," the game system screams, "get this over with so we can go kill some random dragon that's apparently trapped in this tiny room in a dungeon with no exits big enough for it and, honestly, has no logical reason for being here other than to give you a bunch of treasure so you can move down to the next level."

I don't know who you have been playing with, but I have had more than once spent more than a hour with a Skill Challenge that had a dozen rolls and all the rest was roleplay. One of my Players [after he was the one who made the challenge successful] now like the Skill Challenges more than monster smashing.
I guess it depends on how you run them.

Skill challenges are totally inane. All they ever consist of is rolling the exact same die, using the exact same skill, and adding the exact same modifier X amounts of times. Because, apparently, just doing it once isn't enough for whatever stupid reason. It's much more important to make it "challenging" and "realistic" by adding another random bit of randomness to a completely random and asinine system which does nothing to encourage roleplaying (quite the opposite).

All your alleged example proves is that you can ignore the game system and roleplay despite it, which isn't proof at all. Quite the contrary, really. Skill challenges are neither required nor an encouragement thereof.

I like 3.5 as in 4th you cant have as much fun. Full stop. Every time I've paled 4th I've gone 3.5 was more fun.

One of the examples of what I am talking about. [All of the Bracketed thing are how it has been before 3e or 4e]

The Party is trying to get information about the bandits

Player A [Rouge]: I go and talk to the local guild about the bandits. He goes and starts talking to locals about were the Thieves Guild is, after talking and we roleplay talking to a few of them he is given a Streetwise Check DC: 15 he has a +2 for his CHA, +5 for being Trained and I give him a +2 for some of the money he passed around. He rolls better than a 6 and find the location. [Earlier Edition: There is a 20% chance of him finding it that actually requires no roleplay and there is normally no way to improve it.]
-This takes 5-15 minutes of Roleplay.

Player B [Fighter]: Starts to talk to some of the local garrison. Once more we roll play him talking to them and also passes them a few coins. He makes his Streetwise DC: 15 and he has no bonus for CHA, but he is trained and giving him a +2 he needs a 8 or better. [Earlier Edition: There is a Reaction roll made that has a 50/50 chance of success and with no CHA adjustment is remains 50/50]
-This takes 5-15 minutes of Roleplay.

Player C [Warlord] and Player D [Wizard]: Both decide to go to hall of records to look for a map or something. After talking to the old lady that is in charge eventually getting their way into the records room and starts looking around. After a looking around for a while the Warlord decides that he has a worse roll, INT +1, Trained +5, he decides he is going to help the Wizard. {Aid Another Action Skill Check DC: 10} he succeeds and the Wizard now rolls his History, INT +4, Trained +5, and +2 for being an Eladrin, The Warlords Aid Another Action adds another +2 giving him a +13 on the roll.
[Earlier Edition: I don’t even know what the other editions did other than it was either their or not.]
-This takes 10-20 minutes of Roleplay.

Each players got to interact with NPCs and got to do something and feels that they contributed.

Yah I see where 4e destroyed Roleplaying.