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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8729014" data-attributes="member: 6696971">One easy way to look at Skill Challenges in modern parlance is a combination of Blades in the Dark tech:1)  THE SCORE.  A score is a single operation of a particular archetype with a unique goal.  The 6 archetypes are Assault, Deception, Stealth, Occult, Social, Transport.  4e D&D parlance might be a bit extended.  Overwhelmingly, you're going to go to the Combat Encounter for "Assault", but I have handled plenty of quick combats via SC as a nested consequence in a greater SC.  But lets take Assault out of the equation, change some stuff and add a few more:Engage Calamity - This is a catch-all for something terrible (eg consuming famine, fire, pestilence, tornado) befalling a particular locale (steading, forest, etc).Perilous Journey - Navigate dangerous wilds either with cargo (people or things) or without.Pursue or Flee - Predator chases prey through a dynamic environment (of which the predator may not be sentient - "collapsing complex").Ritual - Engage the supernatural (open/seal the gate, banish/adjure the spirit, bind the demon, summon the entity, etc)Social - Bargain, convince, negotiate, persuade, trick an adversary who has something they don't want to give up.Stealth - Infiltrate and exfiltrate unseen.The goal and attendant stakes will be unique to the Skill Challenge and should be a conversation for the table to clarify prior to engaging.2)  RACING CLOCKS (4/6/8/10/12 ticks).  In Blades parlance, you create two opposed clocks to represent a race when a situation is complex or layered and you need to track something over time.  That basically describes 4e Skill Challenges to a T.  One Clock represents PC's proximity to achieved goal (Successes) and the other represents the antagonism (and its arc) to that goal (Failures).Deftly managing zoom here is key.  The zoom for a social scene where you're trying to befriend an angry and injured brown bear is going to be very different than engaging the resolution of a long-term calamity like famine or pestilence befalling a steading is going to be different than a multi-leg journey through a dangerous wilderness.  You're framing a dynamically changing situation that might be new obstacles or escalating situation on the order of moment to moment/blow-by-blow or days or seasons.  Telegraphing consequences and foregrounding the conflict inherent to each framed situation is essential.  For instance:For one leg of a journey, the players have chosen to chart a course through an expansive glacial crevasse and moraine field with cornices lurking above (vs navigating an increasingly escalating and steep ridgeline with volatile weather) would risk a failure causing the broad zoom (leg of a journey) to zoom in on a suddenly escalated situation that riffs off of their approach (Skill deployed) to the glacial crevasse and moraine field obstacle.  Depending on what move they have made and what consequences telegraphed, we'll be zooming in on thin ice cracking beneath their feet as they've navigated onto a false floor, or exposure, or the terrible truth of a monster in these parts, or the flagging spirits of our intrepid souls.After that is resolved with a success, we again zoom out to the next leg of the journey and a new obstacle.</blockquote>

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