How Do You Narrate/Present Skill Challenges

[Goblyn]

In our game we've found skill challenges to be useful in that they give the players another option in the face of seemingly impending combat. In this case it was the players who asked if they could use a skill challenge to avoid an unwanted fight ... something that is way beyond the purview of a simple skill-roll(which is what would have been used before). The PCs managed to scare off some wolves who were going to attack the camp. It worked well.

 

[Stoat]

To answer my own question:

So far, I've tried to weave the skill challenges into the flow of the game without calling them out too explicitly. I get a read on what the players hope to accomplish and I start calling for relevant skill checks. I'm not in the habit of saying, "this is a Skill Challenge!" the way I say, "roll Initiative!" I try not to give the players a lot of details about what skills to use.

I've had Felon's experience. A challenge centered around tracking some wererats in a city turned into an exercise in fairly mindless dice rolling. They players seemed to have a hard time expressing what they wanted to do, and I had a hard time describing the action back to them.

On the other hand, we had a lot of fun with a challenge centered around convincing a spoiled noble to buy some siege equipment for the party. The players got into the NPC's head, played off his personality, and connected their skill rolls very closely to the action.

I've come to prefer Stalker0's Obsidian system to the WotC system, at least for social-type challenges. It feels a little more freeform, and I like that it accounts for partial successes.

Another question. A lot of WotC challenges used nested skills: A successful History roll doesn't count as a success, but opens up a one-time Intimidate check. Other times, the balance between success and failure changes: making a difficult Diplomacy check counts as two successes, but failing that check negates a success and counts as a failure.

How much info do you give your players about these kinds of details? Do they know in advance that the History check won't count as a success, or that the the Diplomacy check carries greater risks and rewards?

 

[Rel]

Rel, I am not so sure this works for all challenges...

Well, yes and no.

What I mean is that you have a good point that theoretically you could do this "two steps forward, two steps back" kind of thing all session and never get anywhere. But in practice I'd put a stop to things far sooner.

This goes hand in hand with the fairly loose way that I run skill challenges. I don't plan them out extensively in advance (although I did weave the encounters that I wanted to have in the last session into the skill challenge format). And when doing something like this on the fly, if it becomes apparent that they aren't making much progress then I'd rather go ahead and have them fail the challenge and move on to something else than to keep going round after round with it.

From a mathematical standpoint however that's fairly unlikely. The odds are weighted in the favor of the PC's anyway but runs of bad luck do happen that can cause them to fail early or late in the challenge. Anyway, you make a good point in terms of it being a possibility but I guess my thinking is that I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I wanted to make one other point about why I opt for the "this is a skill challenge" method of presentation, because when I first heard of the concept I never saw myself doing it that way.

I have a good group of players. They are thoughtful, smart and cautious. And sometimes that really bites us in the ass (I include myself when I'm a player in this dynamic). We have a tendency to look at a problem from as many angles as possible and consider a variety of solutions, some of them WAY out of the box. This is a great ability to have but it can bring a session grinding to a halt. Over the years my participation in various one shot games at Game Days and GenCon, I've trained myself out of this bad habit a bit and adopted a bit more of a "A good plan (or a bad one or none at all) now is better than a perfect plan that we arrive at after an hour of discussion."

When I've been the GM I enjoy listening to the players puzzle things out. But there are frequent moments in those discussions when I would like to jump into the conversation and give them a hint of some kind. But I can't do that, right? That'd be cheating! I mean I say that a bit tongue in cheek because I can do whatever I want as the GM. But it still feels a bit like cheating to me if I just give them a hint.

This is where skill challenges come in for me. Announcing the skill challenge is my way of saying, "Stop planning and start rolling." At that point the game stops being them discussing their options amongst themselves and becomes interactive with me. If they succeed in a skill check then I suddenly have a very good reason to give them the hint that I wanted to give them earlier. And if they fail then something detrimental happens, which from my perspective is better than nothing happening at all.

This is why I make the one requirement before starting a skill challenge be "identify your goal". Because that's probably the most productive part of the planning process we too often get bogged down in. Once the goal is identified then the rest tends to devolve further and further into wild speculation as to what methods for getting there will work or won't work. So when the players say, "We want to find our way out of these mines" NOW we've got a clear goal they wish to work toward and rather than them puzzle over each intersection I can simply say, "skill challenge!" and the dice start rolling.

The key after that is good narration. If all you do is have them roll from a prescribed list of skills and try to beat a number X times then that's going to be fairly dull. It's important to encourage the players to explain the manner in which they are using a skill (I encourage this by giving a small bonus to the roll for a good explanation) and to take a few moments to describe the outcome. I include in that some narration of how this outcome might open up some new skills to be used or close off others from being used. The applicable skills changing in mid-challenge like this helps keep things fresh and shift the focus from player to player.

Hmm, I didn't know this was going to be that long when I started typing but it encapsulates the shift in my perspective on skill challenges from something that I didn't see much use for to something that I now thing can be used in some pretty brilliant ways.

 

[Zaukrie]

To those DMs that don't like using dice rolls in the non-combat part of their games:

Why do you use dice rolls in the combat part? If you want to reward good roleplaying by just saying "good job - you succeed", why not do that with good combat tactics also?

 

[Breezly]

To those DMs that don't like using dice rolls in the non-combat part of their games:

Why do you use dice rolls in the combat part? If you want to reward good roleplaying by just saying "good job - you succeed", why not do that with good combat tactics also?

Ah, I see this group may include me. What I should clarify is that I do make them roll the dice as part of the skill challenge, I just don't explicitly say, Make a nature check, make an endurance check. I try to weave the dice rolling into a narrative of some sort, as Rel mentions above. I suppose it is an attempt to keep the mood of the game going by incorporating dice/skill mechanics into a role-play situation. I understand Rel's point above that you need to kick the players into gear a bit and get them off the over-planning loop.

I like the flexibility of Rel's skill challenges and I will utilize this in dealing with unexpected situations. But, I also like a planned out skill challenge with a set goal to facilitate a structured goal.

I hope that clarifies. Though this reminds me why I don't participate in many threads...sometimes what I think I said is not what I actually said (typed).

--Breezly

 

[Jack7]

To those DMs that don't like using dice rolls in the non-combat part of their games:

Why do you use dice rolls in the combat part? If you want to reward good roleplaying by just saying "good job - you succeed", why not do that with good combat tactics also?

You ask an excellent question Z about something I've been working on for a long time. See the Tactical Repertoire.

But in a more general sense I can answer this question in two basic ways because most of the other answers would be variations on these two.

1. To role play a skill challenge you must describe and or demonstrate your actions. You cannot demonstrate a combat against a dragon because no such thing really exists, and no human being can emulate hitting you with his three hundred pound tail, biting you with jaws that could in effect swallow you, grabbing you with claws that can completely encircle you and flying thirty yards up and then dropping you on your head to split your skull. You could describe your actions, and then dragons, but not demonstrate them or prove them by real action. So some things are beyond the realm of "normative role play" (which is a sort of assumed mental imagination based upon things we can all relate to, or at least conceive of) and into the realm of purely theoretical role-play (which is what math is really all about anyways, numbers are really just abstract images of real things, but the real things are rarely described, they are just assumed - you don't say 6+1017 what? you just usually say 6+1017 and assume the reality of your factors and answers.) Which leads to number two.

2. Enemies can counter your tactics. That is in situations of combat you are fighting living foes (for the most part, programmed automatons and undead notwithstanding) and therefore they can react, counter, and overcome even your best efforts. So it is not like an exercise against an "inanimate challenge."

So, because there are things basically beyond realistic role play (I say that with a certain sense of self-aware irony), and because enemies can counter your tactics and efforts, there must sometimes be a method of determining chance for things that cannot be empirically demonstrated, or for things that can be theoretically countered even if they were demonstrable.

However I have been working for a long time on a method of diceless combat for some combat situations.
Other situations, due to situational circumstances, I have not figured a way to totally eliminate the dice as a mechanical example/method of friction and resistance in combat role play.

But to reduce everything to unnecessary die play simply because certain aspects must be open to some method of chance or theoretical resolution is to totally misunderstand what role play actually is.

It's like saying because a man can move about in a wheelchair as an artificial means of travel then a wheelchair should be his only or best method of travel no matter what the circumstance.

Sometimes do what you are forced to do, or employ the only method available, but one should never confuse what one is forced to do with what is either natural, or best. Nor restrict oneself to what is artificial and limited, simply because that's the way the habit has evolved.

P.S.: By the way, I forgot to mention.

You can turn the question around and ask, "Well, since combat is die rolled then why isn't everything die rolled?"

And then the implication becomes, well, why have a game in which any human capability on the part of the player is exercised at all, short of die rolling? Why not turn the game into a purely mathematical exercise in which chance determines every play aspect so that the point of the game then becomes "rolling things and not doing stuff."

 

[LostSoul]

I'm not sure I agree with your first point, Jack7. I think we can know as much about the dragon as we can about the way Duke Foozlebottom will deal with adventurers asking for a favour. Foozlebottom doesn't exist and the place he lives in doesn't exist. We have no way to demonstrate his actions or prove them by real action.

We can concieve of him, but we can also concieve of the dragon in the same way. I guess I don't see a difference between the two.


I do agree with your second point. That's why I like to roll the dice only to resolve conflicts between characters.

 

[Jack7]

I'm not sure I agree with your first point, Jack7. I think we can know as much about the dragon as we can about the way Duke Foozlebottom will deal with adventurers asking for a favour. Foozlebottom doesn't exist and the place he lives in doesn't exist. We have no way to demonstrate his actions or prove them by real action.

I agree with you (to a degree) and I'm not saying that the Duke or his fictional kingdom is real. Not really real. But they are relatable to our natural human experience.

Some things though, like dragons, are not real. (Though they may have a parallel relationship to things like Komodo dragons.)

So I'm saying it is a matter of degree.

We cannot really know how a dragon would behave, so we anthromorphosize (a little pun) it. But I have a feeling that even if a dragon was intelligent that it would behave and fight in a totally alien manner, not in a way like a human would, but in a way that would be nothing like a human would, based on an extremely different physique, psychological outlook, and set of physical and mental capabilities. It is for instance really impossible to demonstrate flight by leathery bat wings for people, but it is easy to demonstrate negotiation by argument (in the case of the Duke).

I am for instance a big proponent of not turning monsters into just people with sharp teeth and claws, and who just have scales instead of scale armor. Monsters, or many of them, should be deeply alien in relation to people, not just masks put on human behavior. Even creatures that are a lot like humans would be very different to us if they could really communicate with us. Dogs, for instance. Very human like in many circumstances, very not like humans at all in others. (I also like Elves who are not humans in disguise.) But that's another story.

So whereas none of it is "really, real" some of it is more really real than other parts are.

So it's a matter of degree.

 

[LostSoul]

So whereas none of it is "really, real" some of it is more really real than other parts are.

So it's a matter of degree.

Yeah, I see. We differ in where we draw that line, but other than that I think we agree.

I am for instance a big proponent of not turning monsters into just people with sharp teeth and claws, and who just have scales instead of scale armor. Monsters, or many of them, should be deeply alien in relation to people, not just masks put on human behavior. Even creatures that are a lot like humans would be very different to us if they could really communicate with us. Dogs, for instance. Very human like in many circumstances, very not like humans at all in others. (I also like Elves who are not humans in disguise.) But that's another story.

A little out-of-sequence quoting.

I agree with you here. If monsters are going to act like people, might as well just use people. If you want a monster, there should be a reason why it's a monster.

 

[Nebulous]

But, as some have mentioned, it can depend upon your mood how flowery and descriptive you get.

--Breezly

I just want to point that out again, a fun skill challenge, like any fun combat encounter, really depends on the DM making it sound good, regardless of the die rolls. Flowery, verbose description spouting from on-the-fly decisions can be tricky to pull off, but i think that's a key component of a skill challenge.