Skill Chellenges - unfun?

[legiondevil]

I ran the final skill challenge from Thunderspire Labrynth last night, and my players all had a ball with it. I think what helped out a lot was that I clearly defined the challenge (Vecna wants secrets), and then listed the primary skills related to the challenge. They found out the secondary supplimental skills on their own. I did toss them a bone by stating they were facing a God, and that considering their minute status (low level) that any Intimidate challenges they tried would auto-fail.

The most fun came from the rogue, bragging about stopping a minion of Orcus (whom Vecna made an off-hand comment of being a silly pretender godling), and the bickering and one-upsmanship between the Drow Dark Pact Warlock and the Eladrin Wizard and their differing ideas on "the origin of the Drow race" (history checks, each one succesivly scoring a higher result than the previous, finished with a hellacious bluff check from the drow commenting on "bad PR against the drow by the surface elves).

I find that laying out all the guidelines early, and offering benefits from creative skill uses, helps out quite a bit. The Eladrin made a sweeping comment about a fallen vampire warrior who was known to have betrayed his former master...and I lowered the DC for the skill to result in a success, but also gave them an automatic failure because of the topic. I even let the minotaur battlerager just score a success by expending a healing surge, and thus "gifting Vecna with a portion of his prowess." Which is, well, certain to come back to haunt him in the future.

 

[kutulu]

Being forced to screw up the success because you 'must' participate is irratating.

No longer true. The errata for the DMG deleted whole chunks of the skill challenge rules. In particular, there's no initiative rolling, and there's no requirement that everyone participate.

I just ran three of them today for a group new to 4e. For reference: the three-in-a-row skill challenges from the beginning of Rescue at Rivenroar. The two social ones actually turned out pretty good, though I admit our cleric, the diplomacy guy, did most of the talking. The third one, walking through the woods, seemed as bad as everyone claims: mechanical, forced, etc. But oddly enough, it was the only one the players "got", that had a definitive goal of "find the castle before you run into bears or collapse in exhaustion", and overall the players never seemed too bored with them.

The new rules also make the challenges "fail fast" -- every complexity challenge fails on 3 failed checks. I was hesitant at first but seeing this in action it makes a lot of sense. When my players were talking to a nobleman to try and get a job, they made two failed bluff checks. At that point, in my own mind, it was obvious that the guy wasn't gonna put up with much more crap from them.

The hardest part of the whole encounter, to me, is figuring out what kind of incremental progress to give the players. I'm getting better at it, but knowing where the players "want to go" I sometimes give away too much too early, which makes continuing the challenge silly.

I would really like to hear a skill challenge or three in the PA/PvP podcasts, and see how a WotC employee thinks they should be run.

--K

 

[Aenghus]

The most important issue in skill challenges is that the players must want the result. Random or abitrary skill challenges are just looking for apathy.

Secondly, they take work. All but the simplest challenges probably need some customisation to suit a particular party and campaign. And it takes work to make them seamless rather than awkward.

Thirdly, they take time. There has been a distinct move in WotC conception from what I can see from immediate skill challenges to longer-term ones. I think short-term skill challenges are more likely to feel clumsy than longer term ones.

Lastly, they must be fun, win or lose. Winning shouldn't be boring, losing shouldn't be a roadblock. Complex challenges may have multiple possible outcomes, all of which should be interesting. (again this is work).

I think the idea of skill challenges raised hopes of making non-combat challenges easy and painless to prepare and run, and well, non-trivial ones aren't. The idea itself is excellent, but there's a varing amount of work in making them entertaining and useful.

 

[DanmarLOK]

A big thing that seems to make things more 'palatable' for my players was that skill challenges aren't a pass/fail. The last one I did of my own was an "Organzie the Defenses" as a three bands of orcs formed up out of bowshot range. The players had a lot of options from using diplomacy/bluff/intimidate to get the farmers to fight better to thievery to set some traps, history to know how typical orc battle tactics, nature to see the natural channeling of the terrain etc. The number of success/failures they got altered the size of the orcs they faced and how often they had to face reinforcements by hand waving the results "Two successes at thievery removes two standard mobs worth of XP from the intitial wave", "Success at firing up the farmers removed forces from the ones the farmers had to face." That kind of thing.

Simple pass fail from a skill challenge is very much blah. at that point you might as well just 'do the math' and have one player roll d% to determine if they win or fail.

 

[LostSoul]

I have lots of experience running extended conflict-resolution in other systems, so skill challenges were pretty easy for me.


1. Conflict resolution. If there is no conflict in the game world, don't use it. That means that you need two sides, the PCs and some kind of antagonistic force. Both sides must want something, and I think that both sides should oppose each other.

2. Make each die roll count. This means that you want the game world situation to change after the die is cast. Static situations are boring. Change it up. Each side responds to the success or failure of the other side. Be creative, and bring the awesome.

3. The antagonist must be proactive. Resolution comes down to a roll a player makes, but that doesn't mean your NPC/force of nature/act of God has to sit on the sidelines waiting for something to happen. Have the bad guys do something, something the PCs must respond to. That's why it's a conflict, after all.

4. Don't pre-plan the outcome. Leave it up to what happens in play. The actions of the PCs (and thus the descriptions and choices of the players) have to matter. The outcome can be anything and you don't know what's going to happen when you begin. This is where the awesome you brought to the table pays off.


Do all that and you will enjoy your skill challenge.

 

[Tuft]

bring the awesome.

I'm starting to really hate that word. It's turning into the trite and meaningless buzzworld of the hour, like "proactive", or "expedite"...

 

[HeinorNY]

? Isn't repetition boring? Isn't repetition boring? Isn't repetition boring?

Hell is repetition.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

The biggest disconnect for the groups I've played in is the lack of back-and-forth in a skill challenge. In combat, the bad guys hit back. In a skill challenge, we either make progress or.. damage ourselves? That doesn't always make a lot sense. Sure, you can botch something and make it harder on yourself, but the antagonistic forces are just so static that the suspension of disbelief breaks. When DMing, I had moved to a system where PCs could only inflict failures on themselves by rolling 1s, but the antagonists got to make rolls as well for counterarguments and complications (usually against 10+ a character's skill mod - like a Passive Diplomacy, if you will) and THOSE counted as failures. It felt more like a challenge then 'roll high a bunch of times' which is really what combat is as well.

And for heaven's sake, don't tell them how many successes they need.

 

[LostSoul]

I'm starting to really hate that word. It's turning into the trite and meaningless buzzworld of the hour, like "proactive", or "expedite"...

Okay. Well, I could have said, "This is where you contribute to the group, engaging with everything you have, making sure that everyone at the table loves your contribution."

That would be awesome, right?

Thus, "bring the awesome".

 

[Mr. Wilson]

I've personally only ran one and half sessions of 4E (which is weird, since prior to this year I've been primary DM for our group for 3 years).

That said, during that one true session I ran two skill challenges on the fly and really like how they worked, despite the party failing both of them.

I also told them up front what the primary skills where, how many success before failures they needed, and told them they could use any skill as long they could justify it. At one point, I had a warlock throwing his voice to distract guards with a bluff check (it failed because he botched, but it was a brilliant idea).

I'll check with the players monday to see how they felt about the skill challenges.