The adventure might in fact have no function in the overall story arc at all, but instead just be a side quest or even a red herring. Doesn't mean playing it through will be any less fun in the here and now.
This is true. There are a few things about that of course. Some games are more focused on a specific story arc or maybe the players have a desire to focus mostly in a certain direction, in which case they would at best spend a brief time on a side-quest. Now, it might still be worth several encounters. It COULD be a red herring and yes it might not be dull to play through. Again, depends on exactly how focused the players are. Some games are also just not mechanically well-suited for undirected play, others are.
The Tibet scene in Indiana Jones was obviously important enough to that story that they bothered filming it and having the actors play it all through rather than just have a character relate it as exposition at some point.
Right, and it might well be important enough to play through in detail in a game too, or it might be left as a single quick prefatory SC. I doubt it would be an interlude, although I guess you could play a game like that as long as the players are comfortable with almost no mechanics, since interludes in my game are diceless.
So for a similar scene in a D&D game, I'd say play it through in detail. Don't just reduce it to a skill challenge, as that kinda cheapens the whole thing. Play out the combat, play out the role-play, play out the exploration (though in that particular scene there really isn't much) - in short, take the time!
But this is the point, time is different in a movie and an RPG. It could be different in different RPGs. There's no one-size-fits-all answer. IME the most interesting stuff is the stuff that speaks most closely to the player's concerns, so I don't usually spend a lot of focus on other stuff unless people decide it really is interesting enough for them to start incorporating it into their story arc. Movies are 2 hours or so long and have a 'rhythm' they want to keep of rising and falling action, so each scene is tailored to that need. In
Raiders of the Lost Ark it so happened that the scene in question worked well as an early bit of rising tension. In an RPG it might have mostly come across as a long digression, though I suspect at least the action part would have been played out. Remember, even the movie had travel vignettes and things, there are definitely things worth leaving out of play at the table, or minimizing.
I don't think this is your intention, but when you describe this it comes across as though you just want to blast through the campaign and get on to the next one.
No, but endless weeks of shopping and chit chat aren't really my main style. I think if you look at the techniques of the really talented GMs you'll see that they all spend relatively little time on this kind of thing, and mostly get at the action of the game, the meat of it. Now, depending on the game, that might be combat, spying, or something completely different.
When pemerton describes a skill challenge from one of his games he makes it sound very complex and involved and time-consuming, but my reading of the 4e DMG along with some adventure modules gives me the impression that a skill challenge would normally be pretty fast at the table - a goal is set, the players state how they're approaching it and what they're doing, the dice are rolled (and then adjusted or rerolled based on how the players make use of the mechanical benefits of their PCs), and the DM tells them how they did. If you're saying you could boil the main action of a whole adventure down to several skill challenges that also means you could easily do the whole adventure in one session; though likely skipping over a huge amount of interesting detail in the process.
Well, I wouldn't generalize TOO much on the length of an SC. You can do short ones, or long ones, but I think a complexity five 4e SC is likely to take a while. It requires a setup, at least a dozen checks, each with a transition of the narrative significant enough to warrant using a different skill (at least potentially), an equal number of decision points, etc. Consider a 5x5 by 5 round combat (the nominal 4e combat) requires something like an hour and will have probably about 30 attack rolls and maybe 5 saves. So a complex SC should take 30-45 minutes, though some might be shorter and a few longer.
I would think an adventure spans at least a level usually, and in 4e that's probably around 7 or so encounters, maybe 2 sessions. If it was all SCs it would probably be at least 4 to 6 hours of encounter play. None of this counts outright exploration. HoML considers exploration either part of an SC or possible an interlude.
Quite the opposite to my stance, which is that if I can take something relatively trivial such as finding a map or crossing a desert and make a decent playable adventure out of it, I will.
So - the ongoing story has somehow determined there's a map needs finding in a mansion? OK, that mansion's about to become a full adventure site; and out comes Tegal Manor...
In other words I'm looking for interesting and fun ways to keep the campaign going longer, not to make it shorter.
I find that I'd rather get the thing moving. I don't want to hurriedly end it, but I don't need a given campaign to run for many years or something. If it did then it would probably consist of a number of largely disconnected story arcs, like mini-campaigns. I can come up with new material pretty easily, I don't feel like I need to milk what I have. In fact I've got YEARS, maybe DECADES worth of ideas and locations stored up in my notes, my brain, etc. I could fire off a new campaign a week if I had the time and energy.
