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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chris_Nightwing" data-source="post: 6043680" data-attributes="member: 882">During my brief tenure as a DM for 4E, I tried a couple of alternative skill challenge frameworks:The Markov Chain (or disease track)The skill challenge has a goal that must be reached in a certain number of steps. Imagine a staircase: a success advances the group up one step towards the goal, a narrow failure leaves them on the same step and a bad failure pushes them back down again. The challenge might go on indefinitely, so it can be worth introducing a limit on how many total checks can be made before your progress is assessed. It's possible to have 'save steps' at which your progress cannot get any worse, 'hazard steps' which trigger a combat or other complication upon reaching them, indeed the path can even split into separate staircases, requiring the party to decide which way they ought to channel their resources.A simple example might be obtaining permission to speak with the king. Let's say there are four steps, and the party starts at step two: they are in the capital city. To advance to the next step, they have to decide how they might find a contact who could arrange for them to speak with the king, a noble or magistrate for instance. A success or use of some background ability reveals this contact, so they reach step three, a slight failure and they have wasted time/resources or annoyed a noble, a bad failure and they are thrown out of the city on some minor charge. Step three to four is likely doing a favour for this contact - the DM could get very creative here, as it might involve a fight or payment or subquest. Should they succeed, they reach the king, should the horrible failure occur then that particular contact can no longer help them, or doesn't want to.These challenges play out ad-hoc, in that the nature of each step changes as the players determine the fiction, though they can be run strictly according to the DM's wishes, such that links between steps can only be traversed with particular skills or on the performance of particular subquests.The Clock is TickingThis isn't that far different from the above or the classic skill challenge. I use this when there are multiple things that need to be achieved in parallel, particularly as it involves the whole party working together. There are a number of tasks, each one requiring a number of successes to complete, and a total number of available rounds (not combat-length rounds) to achieve as much as possible. On a player's turn they pick a task, suggest something that might help to achieve that task and spend a resource or make a check. I would generally disallow the use of the same skill twice on a given task, even for different players, and sometimes once a player was locked into a task it had to be seen through to the end. If you've played the boardgame 'Shadows Over Camelot' it was a bit like that - multiple tasks, players throwing things at them, bad stuff trying to stop them.A simple example might be a town fire: there are babies to be rescued, important buildings to save from the fire, looting to be had (if you want) and so on.Again, these were adjudicated fairly ad-hoc, with only the tasks decided in advance, but you could codify them very stricly as a DM if you desired.Now, I think these frameworks are quite broad, but they don't really suit the Oregon Trail style that I think the OP was looking for. That's achievable, provided you have rules for hazards, weather systems and so on - I think the Markov Chain style can be suited to this, with major landmarks representing locked-in steps, weather, terrain and skills determining progress, time and rations as your resources. Bear in mind that ultimately, the only long-term resources you can hit a party with as punishment are XP (which you can reduce based on time taken to complete a task), time (which is only relevant if the story says so) and physical possessions, such as GP. HP, HD, spells, they can all be recovered with time, which again, is only sometimes relevant.Also be wary, the mention of how cool a Rogue ought to be at getting around combats to achieve goals: combats involve the whole party, for the most part, even Rogues. Rogues sneaking off and thieving involves nobody else, indeed it often can't involve anyone else due to the nature of the task, and it's difficult to balance Rogue time with rest of the party time unless what they achieve is only part of a bigger scheme.</blockquote>

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