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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 4906440" data-attributes="member: 2">Glad you found them, Phil! It's a big thread to sort through.I think this approach would be extremely successful for a con or one-shot; in fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that it would be more successful than an approach that was integrated seamlessly into the storyline with no hint to the players of behind-the-scenes game mechanics.I'm having a little trouble elucidating why that is, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's for the same reason that the player tracks their hit points instead of the DM.Imagine if your DM tracked your HP and didn't really give you much feedback on how close to life or death your character was. You'd have to make crucial combat decisions - do I charge in? do I withdraw and shoot missiles? do I flee? - with insufficient information to make an informed choice. More importantly, if you don't realize you're down to three hp as the monster is charging you, you lose all of the nervous anticipation and drama that you'd otherwise feel with your hero's life on the line.I submit that a skill challenge is the same way. If you aren't informed of the odds, your successes, and your failures, than there's absolutely no drama or excitement. You win or lose without ever being nervous or confident of your status, and that's simply less fun because you're not emotionally engaged. If you have the opportunity to strategically select your skills and actions, I'm finding these suckers to be as exciting and rewarding as a good combat. If you don't, I'm finding them to be frustrating black boxes I have to guess at, and that sucks.I throw the players into the action immediately, with no more time to plan that I would allow for combat. Less boring that way. You just need to make sure that every character has at least one decent choice, even if that's "aid another in some cinematic way." Physical tracking tokens are essential. I use small red glass beads (the kind used for M:tG hit points) for failures, and larger green glass beads (originally aquarium rocks from a pet store) for successes. The tangible symbols of success and failure help keep people focused, since they can just glance at the table to see how they're doing.</blockquote>

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