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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pvt. Winslow" data-source="post: 6550218" data-attributes="member: 6779864">I need a little advice from you experienced gurus.Currently I'm DMing a level 10 party of four PC's in a custom campaign setting, and the combat is going great. The players are engaged, having a blast, and routinely tell me that each session after the last becomes their new favorite.The problem is, I'm having trouble making non-combat as interesting as combat. I tried porting over a version of the Skill Challenge system from 4E, inspired by a poster here (sorry I can't remember who originally posted it, I'd love to give them credit). It's worked out well enough, but seriously lacks in the interesting department.In a nutshell, I frame the objective (in one instance it was catching a group of rival adventurers as they chased a klutzy scholar through a city's alleyways), establish initiative order, then go player by player and ask how they want to work towards the goal (which in that case, was catch the scholar before the baddies did). Players tell me what their character does, we determine a skill together, then I go to the next player. Repeat until all four players have declared, then I get them to roll together. DC's are really simple. DC 15 for most standard tasks. DC 20 for risky tasks (but you get 2 successes if you beat the DC, and suffer -1 success if you fail), and some actions are automatic successes (one player flew his griffon up over the alleys to get ahead, and I decided that was worth an auto success).The system works with passes, with the number of passes determining the number of successes needed. I determine a few different results, based on failing by 2, tying, and succeeding by more than 2. Now you know where I'm coming from. The thing is, it still sometimes feels like a chore getting the players into the right mindset to do the challenges (which was a huge flaw of Skill Challenges in the first place, in how they can make the moment feel gamey). I'm just not sure what else I could do. In the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm not too worried about my ability to design fun combats, if my player's comments are any indication. Still, I feel like I'm letting them down when it comes to making interaction with the world interesting.I make up NPC's, random shops, items to buy, and minor events that can happen (like walking by as a team master's wagon axle breaks and his wagon crashes to the cobblestones, spilling cabbage in front of the PC's path, just to see how they react), but often they don't seem to pay much attention to such things. I guess I'm just hoping to hear some examples from posters on how they run the game outside of combats. How do you resolve scenes like chases, infiltrations, a political soiree where you're trying to coax out info, a trek in the wilderness trying to find an ancient ruin, etc. Do you use skill checks? How do you determine who gets to go, how many checks are involved? How do you determine DC's?Really, any suggestions will help.</blockquote>

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