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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 6062291" data-attributes="member: 6669384">First, I'd like to apologize for my last post.  I was in a rush and it came across a lot harsher than I intended.While I'll admit to being a bit of a grognard when it comes to games, I'll also say that I approached the Skill Challenge mechanic in 4e without any preconceptions about what it was or should be, or how it should work.  It couldn't fail to live up to my expectations because I didn't have any.  It was the first time I'd really encountered a formal mechanism for creating and adjudicating that sort of non-combat situation.Okay, maybe that isn't 100% true.  I did expect better from the developers in general.D&D 3.* had become very comfortable for me, with the ability to more or less free form your character by mixing skills, feats, classes and prestige classes.D&D 4e felt more like standing in line at an amusement park.  Enjoyment is waiting, but once you pick a line you pretty much have to stay with it or you never get anywhere.  While I understand that the later books expanded the variety of options available, my initial experience seemed to indicate that the system was not about choices.  The Skill Challenge mechanic felt like that as well.  There were specific skills you had to employ successfully, as a group.  If your group didn't include some required skill on their trained list you were screwed, and if it did then you really weren't challenged.I'll explain that last part:  People in my group tended to train in skills that were backed by strong stats.  As a result, if you were trained in a given skill, you were a god with that skill.  If you weren't trained in that skill you were far better off never even considering such a thing.Your own views and experience may vary, but that's what I saw happening around my game table.Still, I loved the idea of a reasoned and planned game mechanic for quantifying success in areas that had always been pure role-play before.Now I love role-play.  It's one of the things I love most about these games.  But not all role-players are created equal.  If I hand out rewards for successful RPing, be it in Exp, loot or story awards, I end up rewarding the same players week after week, while others who were never Drama Majors sit in the corner, forgotten and ultimately left behind.A well planned Skill Challenge should be a method of inclusion.  Design it so that every PC has something to contribute, even if you have to go outside of "skills" and call for some class abilities to involve some of the characters.A well designed Skill Challenge system should encourage/require participation from all involved, and it should fit smoothly, not only into the game system it's used in, but also fit in with the way people play.Game designers can't force DMs to play or plan inclusive Skill Challenges, and they can't even write them into modules and settings.  They don't know what the party has in terms of skills and abilities, and so they can't plan for them.So the best we, or anyone else can do with this, is propose guidelines on how to draw everyone in, and suggest target DCs for the challenges appropriate to the group levels.</blockquote>

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