How Do You Narrate/Present Skill Challenges

[LostSoul]

And basically I think that is a built in game design flaw, designers not trusting the players to be bright and innovative and creative and instead saying, well, we'll just roll the dice as a mechanical method of problem solving.

It's a different sort of mechanic that supports some techniques, not necessarily a design flaw.

As a DM, there are a couple of things I really like about skill challenges.

1. I am forced to be proactive with the NPCs and really create a conflict.

2. I don't know what is going to happen. The end result is up in the air.

If the system was about the DM deciding what happens - a good system, one that you really have to have good mechanics to replace - then I, as DM, would not be so surprised with the results at the end of the challenge.

See, I think the rules are there not to prevent someone being a dick ("I shot you!" "No you didn't!") but to give everyone results that no one would have come up with on their own, but ones that everyone thinks are cool. A creative channel.

When the players begin a skill challenge, each roll carries a penalty for failure and the success of the PC's intent on a success. That failure/success has to tie into the description of their action - "I'm trying to convince the Duke that he should lend us some troops to fight the goblins." "Okay, what do you say?" "I tell him that he's an idiot if he thinks that he can ignore the massing force." "Okay, roll Intimidate."

Failure: That could mean the Duke gets pissed off at the PCs. Something I did not consider at the beginning of the challenge, a result that arises from the player roleplaying the PC and me (the DM) roleplaying the NPC.

Success: That could mean that the Duke needs to reassess his position. Maybe I throw out a line like, "You might be right. My advisors could be wrong about this." Hang on, what have I just done? I've created an adivsor, never before even considered, who might be a crap one, or maybe working for the goblins.


That's where I think the beauty of the skill challenge lies. The interaction between the roleplaying and the dice create a space where creativity blooms.

 

[Thasmodious]

You didn't need a die roll to do your thinking for you, you played it out yourself.

And basically I think that is a built in game design flaw, designers not trusting the players to be bright and innovative and creative and instead saying, well, we'll just roll the dice as a mechanical method of problem solving.

It's not a flaw, it's a philosophy. Having mechanical support means that ultimately it's about the characters, not the players. It's an age old RP question. Do you let the clever player playing the dumb barbarian handle all the puzzles and reward him for being clever? Do you let the smooth talking actor playing the inept wizard RP for the group instead of the bard played by the socially inept guy? It's about making the game about the character's abilities not the players. The mechanic that allows the RP to weight these things is the "DM's best friend" the circumstance modifier.

You'll find a lot of groups RP everything, too, but also enjoy the mechanics that support the visions of our characters and to us that makes the RP grounded In Game and not in the OOC skills of the players. My brother often likes to play high charisma "face" types, but he really he has to be in the mood to deliver some prime in-character RP. His character is talking to the duke, though, not him, and he built his character this way for a reason. When he does deliver some especially good RP to the scene, it results in a circumstance bonus to the skill check.

 

[FireLance]

I don't explicitly tell the players, "This is a skill challenge." However, I do 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?" Then, I ask each player what he wants his PC to do to help achieve the objective.

 

[malraux]

This is simply brilliant. Consider this well and truly stolen.

(You should copyright this before it ends up in 4.5E! - Or DMG2/3/4...).

I haven't read it in detail but Mearl's newest article on skill challenges describes something like this, but having it function like the disease track. Certainly the next time I have a trap in game thats what I'll do. (so at baseline, the trap is normal, if the characters succeed once maybe it takes a -2 to attack and damage, then weakened, then fires every other round, then disabled. Failure goes to +2 attack/damage, fires twice a round, etc).

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks for this thread. Since I have a time limit on my skill challenges, I let the PCs know that it's a skill challenge with X turns in it. That's it, the rest is role-playing using my notes as a reference.

I've read Mearls' article and the awesome Obsidian system Travis developed on these boards, and skill challenges seem...well...simple.

I'm considering the following rules with my skill challenges, which I think will change how I narrate them.

PCs always have an incentive to take action: As with the Obsidian system I always impose a maximum # of turns a skill challenge lasts. There is a push for everyone to get involved and the sense of urgency mostly washes over the worry about hurting the party is the standard successes before failures apporach in the DMG.

Consequences for skill check failures: Costs gold or a healing surge, combat results, inconvenience later on, make an enemy, close use of another skill, etc. Not every failure has to have a cost, but a couple makes it more interesting - note that these don't unfavorably affect the rest of the skill challenge.

Increase the "complexity" of skill terrain: I think the best format for describing my vision for a skill challenge is a map of connected skills - some open new ones, others close skills, others you can opt to increase the DC for an extra result. This takes more upfront work and is comparable to designing a small dungeon.

 

[Umbran]

So far, my players don't know what a "skill challenge" is. The system, to me, is simply a formalized framework for what I basically already did for years.

Narrate a situation, ask the players what they want to do. They tell me. Some dice are rolled. I figure the impact, tell them results. Lather, rinse, repeat until complete. It is all dealt with in a narrative format - the words "skill challenge" have never been used at my table.

 

[fba827]

I *want* to not formally declare skill challenges, and keep it an informal structure to resolving noncombat situations. That is my prefered/ideal way to handle them, personally.

However, in practice, at the table I either have to formally declare it as such (or the players have a harder time comprehending possible options for them) - or - I can't call it a skill challenge (by definition) and instead it is a series of skill checks to get something done.

 

[CPT PLAYDOH]

I take an extremely light touch Stoat and let them role play it. Everything that can possibly be role played.
We use describe and demonstrate and only use dice if someone doesn't know what to do or how to proceed.

For instance if they are tracking something through the woods then I show them pictures of the tracks. They figure out what made the tracks and the best way to do the tracking.

If it's a puzzle then I give them the puzzle and let them do it themselves, like in a video game.

If they need clues or the players can't figure it out then we might turn to dice.
(Then again they might fail at it, or have to come back at it later on when they've figured out something they missed before.)
Otherwise they demonstrate the skills and initiative and creativity necessary for problem solving.
And so solve the challenge for themselves.

Having number rolls for everything seems like having a video game cheat code to me.
And to me defeats the point of role play. As a matter of fact it's not really role play at all, it's go up to the challenge and then roll dice instead of figure it out for yourself (there are obvious exceptions of course, things that cannot be demonstrated properly by the players).

I keep up with all that in background and award experience for clever solutions or actions later on. But I never say this is a skill challenge, instead I give them a problem and they deal with it themselves.

I do like the fact that 4E attempts to address these things and expand the game, but in the old days we just called this role playing. And you did it by talking about it or showing what you were gonna do.

You didn't need a die roll to do your thinking for you, you played it out yourself.

And basically I think that is a built in game design flaw, designers not trusting the players to be bright and innovative and creative and instead saying, well, we'll just roll the dice as a mechanical method of problem solving. this is an attempt to mechanize everything, when just letting people think would be a far better course of action to pursue. Plus people get better at all kinds of skills with actual practice, die rolling the results robs players of the ability to think creatively and act innovatively, letting them fall upon the crutch of their own method of escaping skillful use of capabilities. Player's don't really practice their own capabilities of problem solving or challenge redress, they die roll to avoid the real effort. Of course there are exceptions, you cannot fight a real dragon, so you die roll it, but you can easily try to convince a DM playing the part of the dragon that your argument is persuasive if you actually try a real and valid argument rather than just saying, I'll die roll to show you how brilliant my argument is. Really? You can't just devise a brilliant argument? Can anyone really envision being in a difficult negotiation and saying to the other party, "hey, my argument is really, really great, and I've got the die rolls to prove how skillful and brilliant an orator I am." And then the other guy going, "Really, show me, show me! And do I get a saving throw, or am I gonna have to really think about the gravity of your numbers?" I think certain unchallenged RP game paradigm theorems are the result of overstressing artificial mathematical and mechanical assumptions over any recognizable semblance of reality to the point of near ridiculousness.

Imagine if you were playing an interesting video game, or were playing a sport, or taking part in a play, and instead of having to resolve a difficult problem or situation by action or innovation you just hit a button to simulate random number generation and the numbers, not your actions, thoughts, innovation, experimentation, or ideas, decided whether you actually solved the problem or overcame the challenge, or not? How would that be interesting, and for how long? And how is that "challenging to the point of requiring a skill?" What skill, die rolling? You're not really role playing a skill, you're roll playing a random number generation of an approximation of a skill if you did in fact exhibit a real skill (but you don't, neither on the part of player, or character), which you're not because what you are really exhibiting is a numerical substitute for what you would have done had you really role played the skill.

I like the idea of skill challenges, very much, (of course they are really as old as the game itself) but I don't like a mechanic in which the method of problem solving is to die roll the problem to death.

Numbers are not actions, dice are not methods of problem solving, a flick of the wrist is not a real skill of any kind in most situations, and statistical variation is not a pathway towards innovation or overcoming "challenges."

It's just a mechanic, not a solution.

Bravo! I concur with you on this subject. Dice rolls are great, but they should not supplant the importance of role-playing in D&D ( an RPG!).

 

[Breezly]

In terms of tracking their progress, I've kind of discarded the PHB method of X Successes before Y Failures. Instead I have a positive and negative number in mind. Each success adds one and each failure subtracts one. If they ever get to the positive number they win and if they ever reach the negative number they fail. So tracking it might look like this if my target for success was 4:

success (1) failure (0) failure (-1) success (0) success (1) success (2) failure (1) success (2) success (3) success(4)-> Win.

Rel, I am not so sure this works for all challenges. In your example, and story hour, I think this works well as an abstract way to get through an 'unstructured' challenge. The players are scrambling to get through a maze of tunnels that you do not need to map out. However, for other more structured challenges, I like the method, and examples, I have seen in the PHB and published articles where success and failure is measured and results can influence the next roll.

As an example, say you had a level one skill challenge to get through a forest. With the 4 success before three failure method you would have at most 7 rolls, with possible successes and failures impacting the following rolls, thus likely reducing the amount. This gives the DM a pretty finite structure to work with. Using your example, you could have any number of rolls and have the party lost forever. I exaggerate, but to use your example where 3 is the target number: Success(1), Success(2), Failure(1), Success(2), Failure(1), Success(2), Failure(1), Failure(0), Success(1), Success(2)...etc.

At this point, you could possible be caught in a loop and lose the players. DM experience will probably steer you away from this, but I just wanted to point out a possible flaw.

To the OP, I try to tell the Skill Challenge as part of the story, not so much announcing it, but try to weave it through. "You are walking through the woods and notice a worn path. (Success). As you wander, you slip into a sinkhole (Failure), You notice a break in the trees and this shortens the journey (Success), etc. But, as some have mentioned, it can depend upon your mood how flowery and descriptive you get.

--Breezly

 

[Dausuul]

Although I'm normally in favor of rules transparency, I don't announce skill challenges. I just start asking people what they're doing and giving them skill checks to roll. If I announce "Okay, people, skill challenge," everyone (at least everyone who's read the DMG, which is most of my players) immediately slots the situation into the skill challenge system; which is not really what I want.

To me, the point of a skill challenge is to provide a framework for the DM to judge success or failure, not to shape the players' tactical decisions. I want the players thinking about the situation, not the rules; as much as possible, they should be thinking about what they're doing and coming up with clever ideas. If their ideas are clever enough, they get a bonus on their skill checks. They may not even have to roll. But if I say, "Skill challenge," then they stop thinking up clever ideas and just look for the highest skill number they can bring to bear on the situation.

Moreover, by not announcing a skill challenge as such, I can bend the mechanics to fit the situation. Many of my "skill challenges" are only loosely based on the mechanic in the DMG. I don't want to give my players a false understanding of how the rules are going to work.