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<blockquote data-quote="wedgeski" data-source="post: 4653275" data-attributes="member: 16212">Having just sat down to design another SC for my group, I think I can put into words what mystifies me the most: pro-active vs. reactive challenges.In the classic Duke/diplomacy example, the Duke is a passive participant in the challenge, and the PC's are pro-active. He listens to what the PC's have to say, and responds appropriately. This, as far as I'm concerned, is a piece of cake to design. List your Primary skills, choose your complexity, think of some synnergies, and bam, off you go.But take the urban chase scenario, or the one I'm currently trying to write, the follow-someone-through-the-underdark scenario. In this challenge, your 'opponent' (the city/ underdark, the person you're following) is actively obstructing your progress through the challenge, via terrain, ambush, trap, or other nefarious means.Is it then up to the DM to come at the PC's with &quot;This happens, what do you do?&quot;... i.e. a somewhat scripted encounter?Or should the PC's be given leeway to contribute to the narrative, for example, &quot;Can I use Dungeoneering to predict the layout of these tunnels and find a shortcut?&quot;?It seems to me that in a reactive challenge like this, there's a danger that inexperienced players will kill the challenge stone dead, and a good DM will need to prepare, or come up with on the fly, a sequence of 'skill challenge attacks' against which they have to defend. In other words, does this type of Skill Challenge naturally tend towards a scripted encounter, which doesn't honestly seem to be the intent of the Skill Challenge system at all.Eh. Still unsure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="wedgeski, post: 4653275, member: 16212"] Having just sat down to design another SC for my group, I think I can put into words what mystifies me the most: pro-active vs. reactive challenges. In the classic Duke/diplomacy example, the Duke is a passive participant in the challenge, and the PC's are pro-active. He listens to what the PC's have to say, and responds appropriately. This, as far as I'm concerned, is a piece of cake to design. List your Primary skills, choose your complexity, think of some synnergies, and bam, off you go. But take the urban chase scenario, or the one I'm currently trying to write, the follow-someone-through-the-underdark scenario. In this challenge, your 'opponent' (the city/ underdark, the person you're following) is actively obstructing your progress through the challenge, via terrain, ambush, trap, or other nefarious means. Is it then up to the DM to come at the PC's with "This happens, what do you do?"... i.e. a somewhat scripted encounter? Or should the PC's be given leeway to contribute to the narrative, for example, "Can I use Dungeoneering to predict the layout of these tunnels and find a shortcut?"? It seems to me that in a reactive challenge like this, there's a danger that inexperienced players will kill the challenge stone dead, and a good DM will need to prepare, or come up with on the fly, a sequence of 'skill challenge attacks' against which they have to defend. In other words, does this type of Skill Challenge naturally tend towards a scripted encounter, which doesn't honestly seem to be the intent of the Skill Challenge system at all. Eh. Still unsure. [/QUOTE]

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