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Message: <blockquote data-quote="C_M2008" data-source="post: 4774967" data-attributes="member: 65375">On skill challenges: I tried the mini game style challenge at first and neither me or my players were very enamored with it.  I didn't lay it out the Piratecat way though so I might consider that if I choose to try the style again.   The last one I ran was a murder mystery where the players had to try and find the identity of a murderer. I basically just gave them the murder scene and some basic clues (the body, a piece of cold iron, a journal and a broken window latch) and let them figure out the rest. One player examined the body and it's wounds (Insight made sense to me at the time) and figured that an axe or polearm had been used to make the fatal wound.Another climbed out the window(Athletics) discovering a bit of torn red silk, continuing this path he deduced a likely escape route for the killer to have followed(Streetwise) and leapt across rooftops looking for further clues(Acrobatics) eventually discovering a blood stained boot the killer ditched.One of the others took the iron to the smith demanding to know if he had worked anything of this particular type of iron lately (Intimidate & Diplomacy) and found he hadn't but that one of the merchant houses may have imported it for someone since it is rare and expensive.The fourth player used the journal to eliminate potential witnesses(Diplomacy mostly) and was aided when the jumper brought the boot to help and had the tailor make a list of who had ordered anything made of this particular type and color of silk recently. Eventually they narrowed down their list of suspects and were interrogating the Night Watch. One of the more suspicious players is investigating the barracks and spots (Perception) something unusual burning in the fire place. Pulling it out it appears to be a ball of cloth. A ritual to repair it is cast (the player drawing extra power to fix it from a daily power since this goes beyond the scope of the actual ritual a bit) revealing a red silk scarf with a hole that matches their scrap to a tee. Finally using the Command level 3 encounter power to Magically interrogate the Night watch lieutenant, a confession is reached when a cold steel axe appears in the lieutenants hands and slams into the cleric savagely (there hadn't been a fight for 3 sessions and this seemed a suitabley awesome time, otherwise he might have surrendered). That was a cool fight too, lots of impromptu manuvers.    But anyway I basically just let the players take the ball and run with it, they didn't even know it was a skill challenge, they got success doing things they thought made sense attempting and got further clues because of it eventually succeeding in finding the right culprit. I pretty much made the murderer fit with how they investigated, it was still the guy I thought it would be, but if they had gone wildly different it might have been someone else (and they would have got the wrong guy if they had failed the challenge). Best Skill challenge I've run for sure, those sessions were some of the best of the campaign. I'm not sure how well it ports to other scenarios though.</blockquote>

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