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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5662235" data-attributes="member: 54877">Skill challenges worked reasonably well for me right off the bat (on game launch, even with the busted DCs), but they didn't really sing until I realized that my style demands that I treat the information in a printed skill challenge as simply a (highly useful and compact) way for the writer to convey information to me. That is, if you've got an encounter with goblins in Room A, and another encounter in Room B, and you've run games for awhile, you don't need explicit text telling you under what circumstances fighting in A will attract B and vice versa. You use the information on the stat blocks and the map to run what happens in relation to what the players do. An adventure meant to be accessible to a new DM might include such advice for a few common situations, but it is not definitive. Because skill challenges are new--and because they do tend to come with extra "advice" to help people learn how to use them--it is natural to take the presentation as more definitive than the subject matter warrants. So as far as I'm concerned, when one runs a skill challenge "organically," one is simply adapting the information as a more experienced DM, and not deviating from the RAW at all. Where I do deviate from the RAW is that I treat the skill challenge framework as a way of telling when skill use has been sufficiently challenging to deserve XP. As far as the players are concerned, they are doing skill checks. (We have discussed some of this out of game. So they aren't completely unaware of when something is morphing into a challenge, the same way the know when I flip open the monster manual and run from it, they might be in a semi-random encounter.) If something with potential serious consequences is at risk, and they get engaged with it enough to do a full complement of checks--then it counts as a skill challenge. If they bypass it or avoid it entirely, then maybe not. This is again akin to a normal encounter, in my view. Fight the dragon in the cave and take his treasure, get XP. Sneak past the dragon and steal his treasure, get XP. Sneak around the dragon to the other thing you needed to complete your quest, get XP. Take another route through the cave system, never coming within sensing range of the dragon at all--no XP (at least not for the dragon or the things associated with him). With skill challenges, I see it the same. Make a single arcana or thievery check that lets you ignore the problem altogether--then it stands in the narrative, but wasn't worth XP. Engage in the situation at the risk of consequences over multiple checks--get XP. But the organic part is this is largely player choice based on the situation. A key requirement is that each check comes with narration and description, and can effect the situation going forward.</blockquote>

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