How do you present your Skill Challenges

[RavenSinger]

I've been poking around the boards trying to get some ideas on how to run my skill challenges better. I run a bi-weekly campaign in my own world, but I'm using the outline of "Rescue at Rivenroar" for the first adventure. I have run a few skill challenges, with varying levels of success (the interrogation of the hobgoblin, the finding of the hobgoblin hideout, etc.). The thing I can't get around is how to present them to the players. Do you say, "This is a skill challenge to see what information you can get out of the prisoner." Or can/should you be more subtle than that. I would hope the latter, but then not everyone would know what was going on (I fear).

I saw in the "Skill challenges not so cool" thread this quote from Cadfan:

. . .the trick is often to make sure the players don't know they're in a skill challenge.

They know they're making skill checks, but you do the success/fail stuff behind the screen, and use it without their knowledge to guide how you roleplaying the encounter.

This sounds great to me, but how does it work in the game? How do you set it up? Maybe I'm a bone-head, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to present the challenge without interrupting the flow of the story. I guess I'm too used to saying, "Okay, roll initiative."

Any and all helpful suggestions and examples are very much appreciated!
--RS

 

[teach]

The way I introduce a skill challenge is by letting them know what the challenge is. I'm not familiar with rescue at rivenroar, so here's one that I have run. Say the players are trying to get an item and have been told it's in a forbidden zone of a city. So I give them hints about ways in as they gather information about the forbidden zone (rolling history, religion, streetwise and diplomacy checks all the while, see they're already in the skill challenge) that then lead to further skill checks (bluffing or intimidating guards or government officials, stealth checks, perception to notice gaps in the walls around the zones, etc.) All these checks give most of the players a chance to shine, and half the time, the players are halfway into a skill challenge when they turn to me and go "hey, is this a skill challenge?" Which I think shows that the skill challenge has been successful at least as a role playing encounter. I try to have the success of one role (and how I describe teh success) lead to the next skill used, which gives the skill challenge a good flow, i think.

 

[FireLance]

Step One: Ensure that the players have an objective. This could be one that they came up with themselves, e.g. "We want to interrogate the hobgoblin", one that you hint at, e.g. "As you kill the last kobold, you hear a menacing growl. You realize that the bear that the kobolds had been keeping prisoner has escaped" (the PCs may either fight the bear or attempt a skill challenge to calm it down), or one that you state explicitly, e.g. "How will you persuade the Duke to agree to your proposal?"

Step Two: Ask each player what he wants his PC to do to help achieve the objective.

Step Three: Translate what the players say into a skill check, e.g. "I threaten the hobgoblin" could be an Intimidate check. "I speak soothingly to the bear" could be a Nature check. "I try to get a sense of the Duke's current mood" could be an Insight check.

Step Four: Decide whether what the player proposes to do will contribute towards the objective. If it seems reasonable, make it a Moderate skill check. If it seems unlikely or counter-productive, make it a Hard check or even an automatic failure. If it seems very effective, make it an Easy check or even an automatic success. For example, a Heal check to treat the bear's injuries might be require a Moderate skill check. A cleric using healing word on the bear might be an automatic success, but making loud noises to scare the bear off might be a Hard Intimidate check or even an automatic failure.

Step Five: Have the players make their skill checks and narrate the results. If the check is successful, convey a sense of progress towards achieving the objective. If the check is unsuccessful, describe what setbacks have occured. If the skill challenge is not over, go back to Step Two.

 

[RavenSinger]

Thanks for your input, fellas. I appreciate your description of Step 1, Firelance, which really goes to the heart of my question. How do you get in to the challenge itself. What I understand is that there must be an objective, and there are three ways (possibly more) that the objective can be presented: by the players themselves, implicitly (i.e. by describing the situation only), or explicitly (by directly asking players what they want to do to achieve the objective).

So, my follow up question is which way do you find yourself using more, and/or are more comfortable with using? Or, do you not really think about it and go with whatever feels right?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I usually do it implicitly by describing the scene and letting it play out. Usually my Skill Challenges too aren't the only things going on too, there could be combat, dialogue, etc. going on and interspersed throughout or these moments of dice-rolling that slowly add up to the conclusion of the Skill Challenge.

The players don't know how many successes or failures they have or how many they need. But they may gain some insight into it by the narrative, ie: during a chase scene if the person their chasing is pulling away they know their doing badly.

 

[FireLance]

I usually ask the question, "What do you want to do?" when I want to prompt the players to define their own objectives.

For players that require a bit more hand-holding (meaning: they can't decide on an objective after a few minutes' discussion), I may list a few of the more obvious options, e.g. fight the bear, or try to calm it down.

For players who still have trouble picking an objective, I may just flat-out ask, "Do you want to [whatever]?"

 

[Hymness]

This thread is really useful, but again, I only saw examples of diplomacy, bluff, intimidate skill challenges. It's easier to figure out how does it work in this way.

But what about skill challenges that require athletics, acrobatics, perception and the like, more "action" skill checks? I just can't figure out how to run it. Maybe you guys do have some examples of this kind of skill challenges?

See a circle room where for any reasons players got trapped in. An enemy breaks the wall at the top of the room (let figure the room has about 20 squares high) and water begins to flow in the room. There are some fragile stairways around the room (i'm improvising all this) and some stairs could be broken so it might need acrobatics checks for balance for unstable stairs and athletics checks to jump the broken stairs. At some point it might be possible to climb the wall (athletics). There might be a chain pending from the center of the ceiling, so it would need acrobatics/athletics check to jump from the wall grabbing the chain. Finally, players could balance from the chain to jump through some kind of hole/window to safety (athletics/acrobatics). There might be some use of endurance if players would like to float on the water while it's filling the room, and i'd like a perception check somewhere but can't find.

Well, enough for the example. How do you run this kind of skill challenge? Do you make the players roll the dice separately before doing any action? Like "Okay, tell me what you want to do to escape" so one player roll all the dices in front of me before his character does anything, and I tell up to where he can go? I just don't understand I suppose. I can't figure It would have been nice in the DMG if they would have described this kind of skill challenges as they described "The negotiation"...

Sorry for bad spelling, i'm not used to type so much in english!

Hymn'

edit: Okay I know, failure for this challenge means death, but it's just as an example.

 

[Nebulous]

I usually do it implicitly by describing the scene and letting it play out. Usually my Skill Challenges too aren't the only things going on too, there could be combat, dialogue, etc. going on and interspersed throughout or these moments of dice-rolling that slowly add up to the conclusion of the Skill Challenge.

The players don't know how many successes or failures they have or how many they need. But they may gain some insight into it by the narrative, ie: during a chase scene if the person their chasing is pulling away they know their doing badly.

I cannot shake the feeling that skill challenges can be completely done by the DM without a real roll, just like they were in the original days of D&D. Sure, you can take some arbitrary checks from the characters, and then the DM applies those rolls to the situation. Roll high...get what you want. Roll poor...you botch the attempt, or partially fail the challenge.

My experiences with skill challenges have not been particularly positive. If it all boils down to the DM hiding all the info behind the screen, why not just make it all up in the first place? The players won't know.

An enemy breaks the wall at the top of the room (let figure the room has about 20 squares high) and water begins to flow in the room. There are some fragile stairways around the room (i'm improvising all this) and some stairs could be broken so it might need acrobatics checks for balance for unstable stairs and athletics checks to jump the broken stairs. At some point it might be possible to climb the wall (athletics). There might be a chain pending from the center of the ceiling, so it would need acrobatics/athletics check to jump from the wall grabbing the chain. Finally, players could balance from the chain to jump through some kind of hole/window to safety (athletics/acrobatics). There might be some use of endurance if players would like to float on the water while it's filling the room, and i'd like a perception check somewhere but can't find.

This is what i mean-- the situation you described here sounds like a lot of fun, and can be replicated in the game, round by round without having to add a certain amount of successes or failures or additional arbitrary rules. When forced into a bad situation, the PCs are naturally going to try to get of it, and the DM is going to know ahead of time what the viable routes of escape are (excluding stone to mud and crazy stuff like that; except you can't cast that spell in 4e in 1 round!)

 

[James McMurray]

When a situation that requires a skill challenge arises, we describe the challenge, give its complexity, primary skills, and DCs. Initiative is rolled (or we just go around the table) and people explain what they're doing then roll the appropriate check.

Not all information is handed out, just the basic outlines. For example, the only way to find out that a successful Insight check will tell you that Intimidate is an automatic failure is to make a successful Insight check.

For the example given, I wouldn't run it as a skill challenge. It's too cut and dried. There is one way out and presumably one way to disarm the trap. Skill challenges to me are for situations where there are tons of options, but one clear goal. For that scene I'd just set a deadline, ask them what they're doing, and go around the table making rolls. If they get to the top of the stairs or shut down the water flow in time, they're good to go.

Of course, I'd also have the bad guys shooting arrows downt he shaft at them, to give them a little more to think about.

 

[cmbarona]

Our DM uses very little subtlety when presenting us with a skill challenge. Usually, a situation comes up and he says, "I'm going to treat this as a sklll challenge of complexity X. Your main skills will be _____." If it's a case where all of us will be participating, or where combat is involved, we roll initiative.

I think we're still getting used to the concept of skill challenges and how exactly to run them, but in the meantime, this cut-and-dry style lets us know exactly where we stand in relation to our goal, and we can act according to that knowledge.

Other methods may be more narratively exciting, but until we run enough of these to get used to running them, this works for us.