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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6177581" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that "skill challenges" can refer to multiple things. You are talking here about an encouner write-up. But the first thing I think of when I think "skill challenge" is a resolution technique.Compare this to the idea of combat. We have the write up of a combat encounter in a GM's adventure notes - whether published module, or homebrew". But we also have the combat resolution rules. Using the resolution rules isn't dependant upon having an encounter write-up - all you need is mechanical information about the combatants, or rules (like MM3 on a business card) for quicky generating that information.I also see the write-up of a skill challenge as secondary. What is fundamental are the resolution rules: namely, that the scene is to be framed, and then resolved one way or another depending on whether X successes, or 3 failures, comes first. You can run a skill challenge without a write-up - all you need is narrative information about the situation and possible complications, and the DC table for setting difficulties for skill checks.I fluctuate on how bad I think the 4e DMG advice is for skill challenges. It has some good and important stuff in it, but there is a tendency to bury that in redundant or unhelpful text, and the examples aren't always that well thought out (and they definitely confuse the writing up of an encounter, with the existence of the tools and techniques necessary to actually resolve it).I didn't learn to run skill challenges from the 4e DMG. I learned from other, better GM advice for this sort of abstract scene resolution - Maelstrom Storytelling and HeroWars/Quest are the two best I know, and Burning Wheel gets an honourable mention - and adapted what I found in them to the different mechanical nuances of 4e.The biggest weakness in 4e's advice is that there is almost nothing said about how to narrate compiclations, although this is utterly crucial. If you don't narrate (generally positive) complications for successes, it becomes unclear at the table why, in the fiction, the challenge isn't resolved, and also unclear what, in the fiction, the PCs might do to push things towards succeess. And if you don't narrate (generally negative but not utterly hopeless) complications for failures, it becomes unclear what, in the fiction, has gone wrong and how the PCs might still have a hope of succeeding in their aims.The lack of advice is compounded by examples like the one in the Essentials books, which rely upon the GM introducing complications by reference to metagame considerations of pacing the challenge and keeping the fiction interesting and suitably open-ended, but which nowhere actually explain to the reader what the GM is doing. It contrasts very poorly with the discussions around combat encounter, which are full of frank discussions of the effect upon play of using different sorts of terrain, different sorts of monster roles, etc.</blockquote>

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