Skill Challenge Help

[BlackLotus]

Firelance, I really like your ideas and I wish I had an opportunity to run them through my play test group that I just had tonight. But I'll have Alan look at your ideas and get his opinion before I make anymore changes with the module. Alan is a member of my play test group.

 

[BlackLotus]

Meet me at Origins on Saturday June 26, in Columbus Ohio. I'll be wearing a Doctor Who shirt and a black wizard cap, you can't miss me.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Mesh Hong, to tell you the truth, I really don't like skill check challenges. I find them too rigid and they take alot away from actually role-playing out of a situation.

I am with you there. As you could probably tell by my first post I share your experience that they can detract from the role-playing element of a situation and actually change a players behavior.

A PCs shouldn't be able to get themselves out of a situation just because they rolled a high number on a dice.

This is where we diverge a bit, of course its all very dependant on context but skill checks represent what a character is capable of, and also allow for the possiblity of unforseen failure.

I suppose it comes down to game style, but personally I believe that denying a player the right to a skill check over their real life ability is breaking a fundamental tenant of the game. Namely the point where the player stops and the character begins, to divorce the character from the player just seems like sanctioned metagaming (maybe not the right term?) on the part of the DM.

Anyhow, I'm still trying to write this section and I apologize for my arrogance. But I do want to instill the importance of role-playing above simple dice rolling in overcoming challenges in a social situation while in the game.

Well it did seem arrogant to me, but I am willing to accept that I was also guilty of a similar arrogance in my response.

I like the revised description of the challenge, it seems like a situation that anyone could use. It is short, clear and contains most of the information required to run it. I would like to see a brief idea for what could happen if the characters fail however just to round it all out.

 

[the Jester]

Another thing that I have found that helps avoid breaking the mood of the roleplaying when you run a skill challenge is simply not to tell the pcs that they're in one. Have them roleplay, ask for appropriate skill checks at the right moments, track successes and failures and consequences and award xp at the end. This technique has turned skill challenges from a corny gamist thing that interferes with the narrative of the game to a seemless insertion of mechanics into a flowing story and roleplaying moment, at least for my group. Also, my more observant players will eventually pick up on the fact that they're in a skill challenge, but now they look forward to them as opposed to deriding them as lame.