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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7348123" data-attributes="member: 97077">The way I do them it would be something like this structure:1. Overall Goal (XP value for non-combat challenge)2. #Complications to Overcome to Achieve Goal3. What Victory and Defeat Looks LikeOnce you've framed the Overall Goal for the players and telegraphed what Victory and Defeat Look Like, you present complications. You might do that one by one or in total and let them choose the order in which they deal with them, whichever makes the most sense and is the easiest to manage. The number of Complications might be equal to the number of PCs (or twice the number of PCs for a more difficult challenge). Or you might peg it to one or two Complications per Ability Score, meaning that the complication might speak to a particular means of resolution which allows you to present a wider variety of things to overcome. (The PCs might not resolve the complication in a way you might expect though, so don't get attached to a particular complication getting resolved via a task appropriate to the ability score you staked out.)The PCs state a task to resolve a complication. You adjudicate as normal. You might do success at a cost here though if you want the Overall Goal to be achieved. This is good if the challenge is a bottleneck of some kind - the PCs can still fail all the checks, but succeed on goal. It just costs them - maybe time, hit points, hit dice, gold, contacts, makes future challenges more difficult, etc. Whatever makes sense.When they've achieved the goal or failed, narrate accordingly and describe the environment as it stands after that. Award XP if applicable and carry on!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7348123, member: 97077"] The way I do them it would be something like this structure: 1. Overall Goal (XP value for non-combat challenge) 2. #Complications to Overcome to Achieve Goal 3. What Victory and Defeat Looks Like Once you've framed the Overall Goal for the players and telegraphed what Victory and Defeat Look Like, you present complications. You might do that one by one or in total and let them choose the order in which they deal with them, whichever makes the most sense and is the easiest to manage. The number of Complications might be equal to the number of PCs (or twice the number of PCs for a more difficult challenge). Or you might peg it to one or two Complications per Ability Score, meaning that the complication might speak to a particular means of resolution which allows you to present a wider variety of things to overcome. (The PCs might not resolve the complication in a way you might expect though, so don't get attached to a particular complication getting resolved via a task appropriate to the ability score you staked out.) The PCs state a task to resolve a complication. You adjudicate as normal. You might do success at a cost here though if you want the Overall Goal to be achieved. This is good if the challenge is a bottleneck of some kind - the PCs can still fail all the checks, but succeed on goal. It just costs them - maybe time, hit points, hit dice, gold, contacts, makes future challenges more difficult, etc. Whatever makes sense. When they've achieved the goal or failed, narrate accordingly and describe the environment as it stands after that. Award XP if applicable and carry on! [/QUOTE]

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