On the occasion of E3, we were all “video-gamey” and asked who won the battle for the public’s digital hearts by wielding the most dreaded weapon of all: the multimedia presentation. The Xbox 360 successfully won among you, the readers, by capturing 38% of the vote by announcing the magical technology of Project Natal, the zombirific southern sequel Left 4 Dead 2, the stabbing Assasin’s Creed the 2nd, and others. Second place with 29% was those of you who don’t give a crap, and third place went to Nintendo’s M-heavy lineup.
Last weekend, as I’m oft to do every two weeks or so, I ran the next adventure of my campaign. Within it, they once again faced down a great wyrm black dragon that blames them for the death of her black dragon son (whom they did kill, but he was kind of a jerk in the first place). Earlier on, when they were but in the Heroic Tier, they fled from the menace by ducking through forests, and fleeing on horses to a safe area. Then in this last installment, the dragon found them flying through the skies aboard a flying Dwarven pirate airship (what else?) and threatened to destroy the ship if they didn’t toss the heroes overboard. Despite now being Paragons, they still found their powers mostly useless against the creature, and scrambled to improvise other alternatives aboard a flying pirate ship. Firing at the creature’s wings, slowing it for a round, ordering the pirates into a better sense of organization, searching the hold for something useful, and finally, firing a Deva riding a barrel of rum attached with a chain to an anchor at the dragon using twin ballistas.
What do both of those encounters have in common, other than the same foe? They were both done as skill challenges. (In similar fashion to Mr. Mearls’s method of throwing a famous demon lord at your players at level 1).
As I’ve remarked before, skill challenges have been something of, umm, a challenge for many DMs and groups. It doesn’t help that it had to be heavily errated for the numbers to work the way they were intended, and everyone seems to have an opinion on them.
Thus, I’d like to find out that opinion, especially towards our skewing heavily towards liking 4e audience:
[poll id=”128″]
My sense overall is that either they fall flat and it’s just kind of boring, or they’re pretty awesome without a whole lot of room in between. But if you have stories of either, feel free to share them!
I’m hopeful about the idea behind skill challenges, but I’m not happy with how I’ve experienced them so far, as both player and DM. I used to play a lot of (old) WOD and CP:2020, so I’m used to and comfortable with a lot roleplaying. I don’t like it when players try to substitute rollplaying for roleplaying, and in every instance where I’ve been a player, that’s what’s happened with SKs. Players seem to think that since there is a formal system of dice rolling, they don’t need to play their roles at all, and so SK encounters have turned out to be a process of going round & round the table, having people roll dice, seeking a number of total successes. It completely guts what ought to be opportunities for creative roleplay.
I’ve run a few, and the best one was when the party had to, as part of their attempt to win over a crowd, show & tell just how badass a group of adventurers they were (this was at the kick-off celebration before a formalized, annual goblin hunt sponsored by a town, and the party was jockeying against other groups for their departure order the next morning). They, as a party, had to make their case — so they planned a bit in character, then two of them started off on a line about how great they all were (diplomacy & bluff) while the others showcased some of their powers — the warlock blew up something; the Eladrin rogue did some acrobatics and teleported…stuff like that. It all came together nicely. It did, however, take a good deal of prodding and leading on my part to get the players to jump on board, and not just try to get out of it by rolling dice.
I’m putting one together for a game this week, wherein the party will be investigating a chamber that seems to be the cause of an undead infestation in the area. I’m hoping I can get at least the same level of roleplay in it — I’ll lead off with that, and plug the dice-rolling in on the back end, instead of presenting what skills they can use first, which is just an invitation to roll, roll, roll, snooze.
I feel that I need to elaborate on my vote :p Long story ahead…
My first skill challenge was in my last 3.5 game. The DM decided to try out mechanic, and we had a fun little thing where 3 of the PCs were trying to help an alchemist get his orders filled or something. It only lasted about 10 minutes, but brought a bit of excitement to a string of roleplaying encounters as we tried to come up with fun excuses to used our trained skills (since at high levels in 3.5, the only skills you’d have a chance with are though you’ve trained). It was enjoyable (even though we lost the challenge, not realizing that “aid another” would let us actually maybe make the checks in skills no one was trained in), enough so that we said “sure, we could keep doing those.” Of course it was then immediately overshadowed by the hour-long skill-based encounter (run in the traditional 3.5 style, without the challenge/failure tracking) that the other 3 players got to do. Basically they could come up with a lot more interesting activities because they weren’t looking for specific skills to use and didn’t feel the pressure as failures racked up.
The DM in that game ran a few more skill challenges before the game collapsed. These got more and more boring–soon it was everyone just trying to roll their biggest skill that was applicable, without it meaning anything. Furthermore (and this might be a 3.5 artifact), the fighter was basically not allowed to play because her 2 trained skills (Ride and Handle Animal) never came up, despite a number of potentially creative uses [“they’re rat people! Can I use Handle Animal?”]. Other more social based challenges eventually fell back into pure role-playing, without checks really needing to be made at all. The Skill Challenge bit either seemed to block potential actions (as that DM was not very flexible), drag-out (or gloss over) interesting scenes, and were basically boring to play. They didn’t feel like they added anything.
I ran one or two in a short 4e game I ran–a big one involving a set piece chasing some gnomes through a city (that might have worked better if I used a series of little challenges rather than a complexity 12, as is now the current advice), and a couple smaller impromptu ones as the PCs decided to negotiate rather than fight with some monsters. Neither was so awesome that I felt the need to use them in later games I’ve run.
I think Skill Challenges are an awesome mechanic idea in search of an application. I’ve seen examples of interesting skill challenges–but I tend to be left wondering “why use the skill challenge at all? Why not just make skill checks as we’ve been doing forever” I also think that, as presented in the book, Skill Challenges are terrible. They’re a boring series of rolls that don’t include any drama. Basically they don’t seem to include the entire party. They are also difficult to use because the price of failure is weird to address. PCs are expected to win battles, which is okay because it’s the ebb and flow of the battle that is fun. PCs can be expected to win skill challenges, but the process of that challenge isn’t interesting in and of itself.
This idea (the lack of drama) has been addressed somewhat (or at least acknowledged) in the D&DI articles I’ve read, so I’m eagerly looking forward to what DMG2 will have to say. But at the moment, things are pretty vague. As it is, skill challenges feel like a tacked-on mechanic (if a fairly elegant one) that doesn’t fit with the rest of the game. Good advice is to make every success or failure an event, but then when do you count a success or failure? IMO, the mechanic needs to be updated to deal with a series of party checks, rather than individual actions. I’m hoping DMG2 will address this, rather than requiring me to ad-hoc them myself (in which case, I’ll simply not use them). I want to like skill challenges, but at the moment they don’t improve what they’re trying to replace. I think that they could, but they’re not there yet. Hopefully the designers will actually redesign them, instead of just trying to patch what, in my opinion, does not really work.
whew :p
I have been game master in similarly structured extended challenge mechanics in various rpgs. Skill challenges look very clumsy, but I reserve further judgment until getting to actually play 4e. It is quite rare hereabouts; I’ve got no problem playing various indie games, but D&D is hard to find.
When the skill challenge works with the story they are great. I’ve found that when they seem forced or tacked on to the adventure they flop. One LFR game we played had the final encounter set as either combat or skill challenge. Because the skill challenge needed to give as much xp as the combat it was a 12 before 3 challenge which did not fit with the adventure.
.-= Wimwick´s last blog ..Skill Challenge: Fixing The Lightning Rail =-.
As the “Deva riding a barrel” I think that the use of creative skills makes a lot of sense, and the idea of skill challenges create really cool moments, but that 4E’s implementation of skill challenges is a big waste of printed paper.
I don’t use any of their suggestions. I looked at the success:fail ratio, but ultimately decided that any given situation PCs can try skills. I ‘eyeball’ a DC and that’s that. If its a complicated task then many skills tend to be used and more than one success is necessary before too many failures make the task undoable.
Its hardly a quantifiable system, but the RAW just seem overly complex and not all that rewarding, as skill challenges I’ve planned (and seen planned) don’t survive first contact with a gaming situation anyway.
I’ve used them extensively in my adventures mostly with great success. It really is all about getting the feel for them in spite of the god awful way they were explained in the DMG and getting them to do whatever you feel like.
It’s nothing more than a scafold on which you can run extended skill checks. With the added bonus of becoming a lot cooler when players start experimenting with creative uses of skills and getting a taste of narrative improv.
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..Primal/Within Chronicles: A Master’s Wrath, Part 1 =-.
Let me start by saying “Dogs in the Vineyard.” This type of mechanic is THE mechanic of the game, and it works for it. The idea there (and my memory is a little sketchy) is that the player and DM each decide which skills are applicable, and roll a bunch of dice ahead of time. You take turns using those dice as if playing a set of cards and whoever wins each round of that dictates the story. There are more mechanics around it, but it works really well.
I think the problem with the SC (why SK?) mechanic is that D&D is closer to a table-top or miniature game than it is a pure RPG. The original game, Chainmail, is a war/battle simulation, and all editions have followed suit. 4E is now basically a version of Descent: move your characters around, meta-gaming is on some levels encouraged, role playing takes a back seat – and all of that is okay, right?
SCs (I still can’t figure out SK) might be better if you got to roll for “damage” against something. I have intention of creating a mechanic for a long-term quest for my PCs in an upcoming campaign where bunches of SCs (nope, still don’t get SK) will add up to a bunch of die rolls like Dogs. It won’t be for quite some time, but I’ll let you know how it goes if we all remember.
Back to the “damage” thing, if each class had some sort of damage roll for SKs (okay, I give up), then maybe it would add the needed tension. Maybe the DM gets to decide on the damage die based on how good the skill use is. If you say, “Let’s try Diplomacy” you get a d4. If you say, “Illustrious Duke, do you recall the Battle of Thorus, where Count Alex’s troops were decimated? Had the Count used the foresight and wisdom you possess, he may have helped the adventurers who came to call, rather than alienate them. I roll History,” maybe you get a d10 or d12. Anyway, I think you get the idea. The encounter has a set of hit points, and you have a number of rounds to beat it.
I think that the options presented are hopelessly simplified and there is no answer that remotely expresses what I see as one of the most common opinions (and naturally which represents my own opinion)
+ I have run/played in them and have had highly variable experiences, liking some and disliking others.
They are simultaneously one of the best ideas and worst implementation in 4E, imho. I remain hopeful, and yet I have nearly abandoned using them as written.
Although I wouldn’t say so simplistically, as MMearls did in the linked post+comments “A skill challenge is only as good as the DM running it.” it is certainly true that I have played in some excellent skill challenges and also played in some really crappy ones and the DM skill is a huge component.
But how the challenge is set up is at least as important. Although in theory a good (OK, great) DM can rescue a crappy skill challenge (probably by reworking it) and a bad DM can ruin a good skill challenge – most DMs are average and are thus at the mercy of the skill challenge designer.
Speaking for myself, I have nearly abandoned the formal skill challenge – saving it for a very few special cases.
Two of the greatest problems I have with the formal skill challenge are:
Disassociation of success and players actions: Success or failure at the challenge is dependant upon an arbitrary number of success or failures rather than upon the brilliance of the players ideas, the logical consequences of their attempted actions or any other in-game consequence. Sure, a DM can metagame this problem by not allowing them to attempt anything that might lead to a ‘win’ until they have nearly enough successes or failures – but that is often clearly arbitrary.
The skill challenges, as typically written and run, too often move from skill to action, rather than from action to skill. And yes, I am aware of the excellent advice “skill challenges are about actions not skills” – but the reality is that most skill challenges are both written and played from the mindset of “I want to use [this] skill, what action can I take that makes this skill logical? (an entirely metagame mindset), rather than “I want to do [this action]” (and do I succeed at the attempt?) – which is much closer to an in-character perspective.
For these two reasons, I tend not to use skill challenges as written anymore.
Instead, I have inverted the mechanic.
First – the players are encouraged to use skills/inventiveness wherever they might lead to a solution to their problems (either immediate or long-term).
Second – the choice of what they attempt is entirely in-character. They choose the actions and/or skill checks that they expect will lead to solutions to their problem.
Third – success or failure in whatever they attempt is determined soley by what they have attempted to do, and how successful they were in their attempts.
Fourth – the skill challenge experience formula is inverted: Rather than using the table/ formula to determine how many successes and failures it takes to accomplish their goal (and then awarding experience for this arbitrary accomplishment), I record how many successes and failures they accumulate during the adventure/ while overcoming their obstacles – and reverse engineer that back into the skill challenge formula to determine the amount of experience earned.
For example, in the case of having to face down an angry Black Dragon, rather than assigning a level and a complexity, determing from that that they need X successes and Y failures, and then having their overall success or failure depend upon reaching X successes before Y failures, their fate would be determined by how they used their skills, their diplomacy, etc – ingame consequence to ingame decisions. And rather than having their experience be determined based on that arbitrary level and complexity choice, the experience value is determined by looking at (as an example) how many successes the party accumulated before reaching three failures (or before succeeding, assuming that they never reached three failures) – and then using that formula to determine the appropriate experience.
And another benefit is: I often do not need to declare formal skill challenges. I can treat the various non-combat challenges of every adventure as skill challenges, keep track of the parties relevant use of skills (those actions they took which served to advance the story and/or adventure), and from that calcualte an ‘informal adventure skill challenge’ experience award which takes into account how the party used skills to overcome their problems – without my ever having to place a metagamey skill challenge in front of them.
Carl
I think they can be made to work, but as written they don’t work very well. It just feels really wooden – like instead of having a conversation with an NPC and the DM telling you “okay, you just lied, roll bluff”, you’re having a conversation and it’s “what roll are you going to use?” instead of “what are you going to say”.
If you make it a little less rigid, though, they can work, but not better than individual skill checks, so I still don’t really see the point.