What makes or breaks a good skill challenge?

[SlyFlourish]

I've tried piles of skill challenges in my regular Wednesday night game. I'm curious what other people have found that works and doesn't work in a good skill challenge. Here are my thoughts:

1. Skill challenges that end with combat can really throw off the plan for a game - it's like adding an extra hour and ends up rewarding them with experience.

2. The more specific the challenge, the better. General challenges leave things too vague - players don't know all the things they can do. If it's specific, they have more ideas of the options they can do. Too much specificity and it becomes railroading. For example, if you're doing a murder investigation, describe most of the things you can in the room - give clues and false clues to see where they go.

3. Make sure you have successes and failures that aren't required to progress and won't slow things down if they fail. A nice reward and a painful failure should be there but it shouldn't get in the way.

4. Most small challenges of 3 or fewer choices can be done without the players even knowing they're involved. In general don't tell players when they're in a challenge.

5. Separating the party is ok in larger skill challenges as long as there's a path to make it back together before combat.

So what other tips have you guys found? What were some of the more successful challenges you've faced and some that didn't work out?

What other tips have you guys found?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Negative binomial distribution.

 

[D'karr]

So what other tips have you guys found? What were some of the more successful challenges you've faced and some that didn't work out?

What other tips have you guys found?

Description, description, description. Don't ask for skill rolls, ask for descriptions of what they are doing, assign any modifiers, then roll.

The players don't necessarily need to know that they are in a skill challenge, but they need to know what is their specific goal. A vague goal makes for poor skill challenges.

I personally don't use skill challenges that need 8 or 12 successes unless they are extended skill challenges. In other words, break the skill challenge into significant smaller chunks. An investigation is a good example of an extended skill challenge. Instead of having a 12/3 challenge if you break it into 4 challenges each of 4/3 then the challenge becomes more interesting and not a protracted slog.

I hope that made sense.

 

[Kask]

Throwing out all the crappy rule advice on meta gaming and just presenting the situation to the PC and having him explain what he is doing about it.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I think the golden rule has to be: A significant result if you succeed, and a different significant result if you fail. The consequences need to be real, and the players need some insight into what they are. Otherwise it just seems like jumping through hoops until you get enough successes to get on with the game.

I also eschew the WotC system of defining which skills are required (though I might make notes on some of the mostly likely options). When the challenge hangs off specific rolls, it can seem to the players like they're fumbling around looking for the "right" answer.

I let the players suggest solutions or steps, then I assign the appropriate skills. Generally, this means the players are looking for ways to apply their best skills to the problem. Which is how it should be--we certainly do that in real life!

I absolutely agree with the advice of having the players describe what they are doing, rather than which skills they are using. While the two may often be the same in a practical sense, focusing on what the character does rather than what mechanic the player employs leads to more creative thinking, in my experience.

I disagree with the idea of not telling the players when they're in a skill challenge. I think knowing supports the players' focus on the objectives, and it also adds a bit of tension to the scene. Players know when they're in an encounter ("Everyone roll initiative!"); why shouldn't they know they're in a skill challenge?