Skill Chellenges - unfun?

[Varis]

I can't really quantize it, it's an art. But let's try anyway.

1. How much awesome should you bring? As much as you can. You, as a player or DM, are entertaining the rest of the table with your contributions. Do it.

2. Where should you bring it? Everywhere.

3. How do I expect you to bring it? First, I expect you to know the tastes of your fellow players. I expect you to know what's cool, what's lame, and what crosses the line into bad taste.

So, keep in mind what you want to do and the tastes of the other players.

Then play your character agressively, driving towards his goals. This might create internal conflict, and if it does, show us. The same goes for the DM, playing his NPCs. These NPCs should be created with an eye towards challenging/opposing the PC's goals.

4. How do you make each die roll count? It's simple. It changes the situation. If it's a success, it changes things in favour of the PCs. If it's a failure, it makes things harder for them.

How's that?

There's some good advice here.

On Sunday I managed for the first time, to complete 2 seperate skill challenges AND make it fun.

In addition to Lost Soul's advice, I also conducted the skill challenge without announcing it.

The PC's simply thought they were role playing, and in the course of doing so, tried to influence a powerful NPC.
In the course of their efforts, I'd ask for a diplomacy or bluff check to 'influence' my reactions,...I set the DC in my mind and quietly counted the number of successes v's failures. When players wanted to 'assist' in a diplomacy check for example, I'd ask them to 'say' what their characters were saying (and apply negatives or bonuses as appropriate).
It was all done as a natural, organic evolvement of the roleplaying experience.

I was able to replicate this a bit later in a 'torture' scene (yes, alignment issues will be in my next post ). Again, we had a lot of fun.

So there you go,..I might be just a matter of not overthinking it, relaxing and allowing it to evolve through the course of roleplaying.

 

[Nebulous]

Count me in the group of "not digging skill challenges", although i think the idea is great and i can't shake the feeling that i'm just not good at them, hence the problem. I've run a few, some went well, some were dull, and there was a big one in H1 with Sir Keegan that i flat out skipped because i didn't want to bother.

I have read a few threads here where excellent examples are given of a SC, but the implementation seems like a huge amount of work. And like others have said, if your party is more prone to killing monsters and less on roleplaying, skill challenges might not be for them.

 

[jorrit]

Count me in the group of "not digging skill challenges", although i think the idea is great and i can't shake the feeling that i'm just not good at them, hence the problem. I've run a few, some went well, some were dull, and there was a big one in H1 with Sir Keegan that i flat out skipped because i didn't want to bother.

That one wasn't big at all. There just was a lot of descriptive text but the skill challenge itself wasn't that big. When I played this with my kids it was actually pretty fun to do. We *just* made it. In the end we had to do the final skill check with good use of 'aid another' and even then we just barely rolled high enough.

Greetings,

 

[Skywalker]

I have read a few threads here where excellent examples are given of a SC, but the implementation seems like a huge amount of work. And like others have said, if your party is more prone to killing monsters and less on roleplaying, skill challenges might not be for them.

No offence intended, but I don't understand how people find skill challenges as a lot of work. Mechanically they are very simple (choose complexity, level, success and failure). The difficulty is really in presentation which requires only a little more forethought than a pre-D&D4e skill intensive encounter.

In fact, I find them so simple to throw together, that I often negotiate them with the players on the fly. If I get a sense the players want to acheive X, then I suggest a skill challenge and state that if they fail it will result in Y. If they agree we choose 2 or 3 primary skills, I set the Complexity and Level and off we go. If they don't agree, we simply continue as normal.

Skill challenges don't circumvent the roleplaying but allow the group to focus in the camera on the action where the stakes are high. A well presented Skill Challenge will have both sides invested in the success and failure outcome, adding tension to the scene.