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[Primitive Screwhead]

Hey Stalker0! Thanks for this system.

My last session, which I wish I had written down, revolved around 3 skill challenges.

Two of them were diplomatic encounters, but I did not have the issue that Ismaul and Neubert refer to.. but that was more due to how I set up the challenges.

The first challenge was gaining the assistance of the leaders of a monastry. Instead of starting the challenge in the audience chamber, I started is as the group entered the monastry. The three 'rounds' lasted about half an hour each and the first two took place during the tour and waiting to enter the audience chamber.

The Rogue snuck off to find incriminating evidence, the Bard talked to monks about the history of the place, the Pirate intimidated a couple of folks... lots of crazy stuff.

For the first skill challenge the group did, it worked out well for both the players and the PCs.

Later the group attempted to negotiate a truce with the Ragesian Army and I broke the rounds up the same way, altho this time I gave the PCs the choice of when they went into the audience chamber. They chose to do a fair amount of prep work and spent two 'rounds' before entering the camp.
The group received a partial success, but triggered an alternate plot when the Pirate tried to intimidate the General.


All three skill challenges went very well and the system is quite resiliant.
I did not exclude skills, if the player could pitch its use I would go with it. I did have a list of ideas of what could be done in advance and tossed them on the table in order to get things started.

For instance, the truce talks were really the third round of a larger skill challenge in which the PC's gained the assistance of the Monks and improved the defenses of the village, which were the two other skill challenges for the night. They built on this by having some monks scout out the camp, them set some of the more offensive minded ones to act as a distraction/cavalry if things went badly.



I tried to build sense of idendity by having sub-plots that would start/spin-off based on which skills are used. The General was described as a mongol/viking brutally violent man. Intimidating him under the flag of truce and in front of his subordinates is not, generally, a smart thing to do. I had decided he would suffer one insult due to the PC's having defeated him in combat earlier. THe second intimidate check, however, would encourage him to trigger an ambush once the group made it out of the camp.