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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OnlineDM" data-source="post: 5396805" data-attributes="member: 90804">My experiences with the skill challenges in WotBS have been good, though I've run them pretty loosely.  I'm a member of the "Don't make a big deal of the fact that this is a skill challenge" camp, so I ran them as role-playing with occasional skill checks.My recollections of the skills challenges I've run in WotBS are as follows:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Finding the lost dire weasel: I'm glad I ran this.  We had a lot of fun tracking the weasel down a street, through a locked temple, into an alley and down a sewer.  One of the PCs really wanted to keep the weasel (I had the weasel be very scared but calmed with good Nature skill), but they returned it to its owner in the end.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Escaping the city.  I completely changed the middle section of the first adventure.  I had the party get the case of plans in the depository after defeating the fake Rivereye.  No eladrin ghetto, no wizard's school, no politics.  Instead, they escaped the city via the sewers, fighting through the dwarven crypt first.  The skill challenge that came next was for navigating the natural cave system that eventually led them out on the road near Marben's kingdom.  This was a very involved skill challenge with some battles along the way, using my PCs' back stories.  It was a ton of fun, I think for the party as well as for me.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Helping Marben.  I did run this as two simultaneous mini-challenges, one to fix the machinery and the other to investigate the theft of supplies.  The party succeeded on the repair and failed on the investigation.  We ran this one fairly quickly.  It was okay, but not amazing, and it could be cut.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Mushroom hunting.  I modified this one somewhat as well, having the party collect both mushrooms and flint (which required climbing up the cave walls).  Having some treasures buried in the mushrooms was kind of fun.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rescuing the dryad children.  This one required some hand-waving in the end and I was pretty liberal with the skills I allowed, but it worked out okay.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Investigating the bridge tower.  This isn't written as a skill challenge and I didn't explicitly run it as one, but there ended up being a lot of skill checks (thievery to disable traps, acrobatics to avoid falling damage when the stairs collapsed, athletics to climb up to the next floor, perception to search through the clutter, etc.).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Calming Tiljann.  This was a little awkward, but I allowed the party to do things like heal the unconscious seela to show Tiljann that they weren't bloodthirsty, that sort of thing.  It made sense for story purposes, so I was okay with it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gathering information at the seela village.  This was interesting in that I ran it as an optional challenge.  As the party started learning new information, they wanted to head off right away to start doing stuff (finding Gwenvere, finding Timbre, finding Indomitability).  I believe they racked up five successes and two failures and hit the road.  Shrug.  It worked out okay.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaining Timbre's trust.  My favorite part of this skill challenge was when one of my PCs wanted to use Endurance to show that he could relate to Timbre's pain, so he made a little speech and then stood in the flames.  That was pretty awesome.</li> </ul>I approach skill challenges as having suggestions rather than hard and fast rules.  Some plot things are going to happen, and how well or poorly they happen depends on how skilled and creative the party can be.  It's role playing, and it's fun if done well.  I think that the skill challenges in WotBS leave plenty of room for DMs to make them their own, which is fine by me.</blockquote>

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