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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4165853" data-attributes="member: 47190">This is actually a real issue in play (and no offense to anyone, but it's the only thing in this thread that is actually a real issue in play); when two challenges are very similar to each other, players tend to fall into repeating the last solution almost in a carbon copy of the earlier one. It's a very fast fun-breaker. Just like it would be boring to have the same fight with a gelatinous cube over and over, it's the same, only more so.The solution is of course to never repeat a challenge in a way that is similar, to always have something completely different lined up, and that sort of thing brings quick burnout.My solution so far has been simply to steal cool ideas from the very, very few posts on these boards that have any (though to be fair, I'm aware that content-creation is not the point around here at all) and from books. So far we have done stuff like:- The original "young dryad about to die from poison", which I wrote up above, which was actually my idea- A big "ship caught in a living elemental-lightning storm", inspired from these boards- A very cool "the party must lead an army into battle using their social and war-related skills" completely stolen from these boards- A "rescue the children from the fat druid's horrible Dance" sequence stolen from Robin Hobb's "Shaman's Crossing" trilogy- A "cross over into the spirit realm and reach the Tree-Lady" challenge inspired from the same trilogy- A fun "the floor turns into a big conveyor belt!" thing stolen from the WotC boards- A straight "The town is burning, what do you do!" scene stolen from these boards- A chase across the plains with a horde of mosquito-women close behind, courtsey of China Mieville's "The Scar"- A "dig for treasure and see what you find" sequence on a beach whose sand is made of tiny mechanical remnants from an ancient age, from the same bookAnd some others. It has all worked fine, sometimes spectacularly, sometimes just OK. I think the main thing to avoid burnout through improvisation is to just accept that you can't come up with everything yourself, and get help from where you find it.As to everything else in here, well, what can I say. It's one thing to sit and imagine how you would logically assume that something should turn out if you were to try it. It quite another to actually try it. Using just the bare-bones structure of the challenge system that we have right now on these boards, none of the other problems brought up in this thread have ever come up in-game for us... and none of them will.In some ways, because of things I've already explained at length; like, the thing where the stakes of that particular challenge was not in any way, shape or form whether the trap sprung or not (Yeah, I actually explained that, and then explained it again, in the old thread, and I won't do it again just to satisfy the chronic tail-chasing urge that comes from nebulous theorizing. This was a skill challenge that happened to have a 'trap' in it as one of its elements. End of story. Want more? <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=222372" target="_blank">Read the old thread</a> again).But really mostly because... they just aren't. I really don't know what to say... they aren't. Players trying to do nothing but knowledge checks to disable a trap? Doesn't happen. Players losing immersion because you ask them if they want to accept or pass on a skill challenge? Doesn't happen. Etc, etc, etc. Go ahead and try it all in your game. Yeah, you would logically assume that if you were to try it, those would be problems, and I would too. But they aren't. It's not a computer algorithm where you have to account for corner cases or the whole thing is going to crash. It's a guideline, and a coaching to help you as the DM keep up a pace that is fun and moves along and is interesting. And it works, if you let it work, and more importantly, if you ever even give it a chance to.Please note that I'm not saying the system is entirely without problems; we have run into several of them. There are problems that arise from play; they are just nowhere even close to anything being discussed here (aside from the burnout thing, for one). But I'm not going to enumerate them, at least until I see that there are people who have played and come across them too.Having said all that, I really look forward to the time when this stuff is all out and published, with whatever changes or corrections, and we can focus on giving each other cool ideas for interesting challenges that work and are awesome, which I believe was the initial point of this thread before it got the massive, shameless jacking that it did.</blockquote>

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