Traveling Skill Challenge Advice

[Caliber]

The new Skill Challenge mechanic introduced in 4E is a great idea, IMO, but I've had some trouble translating it to the table during play. I've had some pretty dismal failures, and also some quite excellent successes in play. That said, my best Skill Challenges have involved investigations, tracking down and discovering important pieces of info.

Converse-wise, my worst failures have been in the travel Skill Challenges, which often seem included when the party treks over some distance of wilderness. I have another one of these coming up next Thursday for my game night and I wanted to know if anyone had some tips for these types of challenges? If you want to see the specific one I'll be running, it is the one at the beginning of The Lost Mines of Karak

Spoiler

Navigating the Thornwaste

.

My problems mainly seem to revolve around a few issues:
1) success/failure doesn't seem very delineated. Lose a healing surge? Unless combat directly follows the Challenge, how does this have any affect? I mean, won't they simply regain the surge after a night's rest? Moreover, one surge has little affect unless a full day's battle lies ahead, and even then I'm not sure how much effect it would have.

2) narration is difficult. If they are flubbing rolls in an investigatory Skill Challenge I can have witnesses clamming up, claiming they can't remember. I can feed them bad clues, cause distractions, whatever. How do I depict their failures in this type of Challenge? How do I depict their successes?

3) the goal is nebulous. This is related to point 2 above, but in an investigatory Challenge, they keep looking until they find the info they need, or at least they find some info they think they need. While it would seem that travel Challenges would work similarly (keep trying until you get where you're going) my group often seems more reluctant to attempt any actions to get where they're going. I lay this mostly on problems in narrating the Challenge though.

So ... any advice?

 

[Dausuul]

Possibly this should be merged with my thread on Exploration Hazards?

I'm currently thinking about how to make travel an interesting sub-game. I think it has to go beyond the standard skill challenge system. One thing I think is an absolute requirement, there must be a mechanic for PCs to die of dysentery.

 

[LostSoul]

Treat the environment as a character.

 

[Dausuul]

Treat the environment as a character.

Would you like to elaborate on that a bit?

 

[LostSoul]

Sure.

The Thornwaste should be a character in its own right. This means it has goals and beliefs and personality traits and all that sort of thing.

I imagine that it wants to hurt, kill, or stop the PCs.

It takes "actions" to achieve its goals. These can be obvious actions, like thorny vines snaking out and attacking PCs, or less obvious. The PCs come around a bend and find the path blocked by thick thorny brambles; cutting through might sap their strength, get them cut up, or worse (if they're poisoned). If the PCs backtrack, they might find it very difficult to pick up their trail as it "seems" as though the bush has overgrown that area.

Now if you add some character to the Thornwaste - some kind of belief, like "I am an acient bramble, and anyone who enters must pay homage to me or I will destroy them" - then you can use that and play off of it. Someone might make a Nature check, you reveal this information, and then the PCs can approach the challenge from an entirely different direction.

If you treat it like a character it'll be easier to come up with challenges the PCs have to face.

As far as Healing Surges go, don't let them rest in the Thornwaste. They can hack out a clearing and rest, sure, but the terrain shifts and it leads wandering monsters towards that clearing like white blood cells fighting an infection.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

@Lost Soul: That's a really interesting approach to defining challenges. Thanks!

 

[Pbartender]

1) success/failure doesn't seem very delineated. Lose a healing surge? Unless combat directly follows the Challenge, how does this have any affect? I mean, won't they simply regain the surge after a night's rest? Moreover, one surge has little affect unless a full day's battle lies ahead, and even then I'm not sure how much effect it would have.

Remember, a skill challenge, no matter how long it lasts in-game, can still be considered a single encounter. Technically, the PCs may not get to rest until they either succeed or fail at the challenge.

In that context... Sure, they can take an extended rest after the challenge is over and get all those surges back, but it will delay them for another 6 hours or more.

2) narration is difficult. If they are flubbing rolls in an investigatory Skill Challenge I can have witnesses clamming up, claiming they can't remember. I can feed them bad clues, cause distractions, whatever. How do I depict their failures in this type of Challenge? How do I depict their successes?

3) the goal is nebulous. This is related to point 2 above, but in an investigatory Challenge, they keep looking until they find the info they need, or at least they find some info they think they need. While it would seem that travel Challenges would work similarly (keep trying until you get where you're going) my group often seems more reluctant to attempt any actions to get where they're going. I lay this mostly on problems in narrating the Challenge though.

The problem is that challenges for traveling are typically reactive, whereas something like an investigation is proactive on the player's part.

The trick, I've found, is to present the various checks in the challenge as obstacles that need to be overcome, thereby giving the PCs the chance to be proactive. For example:

"It's early in the afternoon on the first day. You've been walking for hours with no end to the brambles in sight. The sun beats down on you, and the loose gravel beneath your feet makes you slip and stumble. It's exhausting. What do you do?"

"It's been days since you last saw fresh water, and your supplies are beginning to run low. What do you do?"

"Ahead, you see an unexpected fork in the road. What do you do?"

"The brambles grow higher and thicker and higher and thicker until they close over you forming a canopy that block out the sun. Without it to guide you, you're losing your sense of direction. What do you do?"

And so on... the big advantage I've found, is that while usually there is an obvious skill to use (Endurance to fend off exhaustion), often players will come up with innovative ways to use other skills in place of it (Intimidation boot-camp style, to convince the party that they aren't really exhausted).

 

[Caliber]

Those are some great ideas guys. Very keen inside into the proactive/reactive difference between the types of the skill challenges; you identified my difficulty better than I was able to.

I like the idea of considering nature as a character in opposition to the party, gives it a real us vs the world feeling. Maybe I'll sit down and writeup a few things that could happen to sift into the challenge.

Keep the ideas coming guys, this has been really useful to me already.