Great (and funny) article on skill challenges by Austin local and Wizards writer Ari Marmell. He uses footnotes! My favorite one?
"If you’re anything like me, you get at least a faint twinge of dislike any time your DM brings in an NPC to save you from a bad situation.4"
"4 If you're a lot like me, you're sitting at home in your underwear right now, writing a column about player agency in RPGs. But please don't tell me if you are; that's just creepy."
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This sounds very close to my approach to Skill Challenges. I don't like the idea of Primary and Secondary Skills and immediately dropped those in favor of variable DCs based on the situation. It does require the DM to make some snap judgements as to whether a success counts toward the challege's overall successes or maybe gives a bonus to the next roll or simply provides some flavor for the scene...but that's the kind of stuff I like to do.
ReplyDeleteWhere I ran into problems with my big Skill Challenge (infiltration by a bunch of players with zero stealth skills into a giant Kenku warehouse of doom) was in conveying to them that we'd moved to a cinematic approach and there would be no map. It's very counter to 4E's tactical combat. It also dragged a bit - was a BIG Skill Challenge - leading me to realize I needed to keep the players better updated on how well they were progressing.