So, Skill Challenges.
One of the things that I find damn interesting about D&D 4e's design is the concept of the skill challenge. For anyone out there who doesn't chuck around the twenty-siders, essentially these break down as moments where players go in turn to try different skills and accumulate successes in order to achieve a goal. It's sort of like an extended roll in the Storytelling system, save that everyone contributes and there's no one specific skill involved. You want to get X successes before 3 failures, and if you do, successful encounter. This tends to be more complicated than a simple single-check skill roll, but the payoff is immense: you have a skill-based encounter that plays out like a combat, in the sense that every PC is involved and taking turns. I can't stress how useful this is for encouraging player engagement. Now I'll admit that 4e borrows a lot from other games, and I'm not as deeply versed in the number of mechanics out there, so maybe some other game invented the idea. But it's one that deserves to be as widely publicized as D&D can make it.
The thing about skill challenges is that the rulebook recommends writing them out ahead of time: for an "interrogate the prisoner" scene, for instance, they may decree "he is a fanatic and cannot be Intimidated," or "a successful Religion check will grant a +2 to the next Bluff or Diplomacy check." I've found that it's actually more fun not to do that at all, though. Greywulf backs me up on this (relevant info in Part Five). Instead, I like skill challenges as something that either I can initiate or, with enough practice, the players can call for at any time. I've already tried standards like interrogation, chase scenes and "try to kite the troll to the guy with trollslaying experience." Last time, it was a very general "How are you going to get close enough to the villain and his hostage to pull off a rescue attempt?" Now, i could have said ahead of time which skills would work. But instead I had a vague idea that things like Stealth and Bluff could work, and left the rest to the players to brainstorm.
It worked great. The characters disguised the least stealthy of their trio to look like the person expected to report for a prisoner exchange, and while he advanced and tried the Bluff and Diplomacy route, the other two spied out a path among the rocks that would lead them around the back way to get into position (Perception and Stealth). The whole thing ended beautifully, with a Diplomacy check from the disguised priest allowing the other two to get into position for Bonus Surprise Rescue Round! And without planning ahead what they were going to do, it was all player innovation.
This is a really fun mechanic. It works great with the Storytelling system: what you'd do is set up extended rolls with open-ended skill use, and I think likely demand X successes within Y number of turns so as to make sure that failure is a possibility. It would be fantastic for Storytelling games with a strong team dynamic; consider a werewolf pack using a skill challenge to identify prey, isolate him from a crowd and chase him somewhere they can do their thing. It might be a little more easily finesseable by players, of course, because the decoupling of Attribute and Skill that Storytelling uses would allow players to really fudge the rolls they're good at as the ones they want to make - but I'm not sure it would be a bad thing. And after all, it would make things easier in some regards: maybe Dave can't roll on his maxed-out Weaponry for this challenge, but he can still involve Dexterity on something.
It's good stuff. Certainly going as free-form as I recommend would work only if you can trust the judgment of the Storyteller, and the players are going to be open-minded enough to try new things. But since I encourage everyone to play in groups like that anyway if at all possible, I don't feel so bad about saying they're worth a try.
The thing about skill challenges is that the rulebook recommends writing them out ahead of time: for an "interrogate the prisoner" scene, for instance, they may decree "he is a fanatic and cannot be Intimidated," or "a successful Religion check will grant a +2 to the next Bluff or Diplomacy check." I've found that it's actually more fun not to do that at all, though. Greywulf backs me up on this (relevant info in Part Five). Instead, I like skill challenges as something that either I can initiate or, with enough practice, the players can call for at any time. I've already tried standards like interrogation, chase scenes and "try to kite the troll to the guy with trollslaying experience." Last time, it was a very general "How are you going to get close enough to the villain and his hostage to pull off a rescue attempt?" Now, i could have said ahead of time which skills would work. But instead I had a vague idea that things like Stealth and Bluff could work, and left the rest to the players to brainstorm.
It worked great. The characters disguised the least stealthy of their trio to look like the person expected to report for a prisoner exchange, and while he advanced and tried the Bluff and Diplomacy route, the other two spied out a path among the rocks that would lead them around the back way to get into position (Perception and Stealth). The whole thing ended beautifully, with a Diplomacy check from the disguised priest allowing the other two to get into position for Bonus Surprise Rescue Round! And without planning ahead what they were going to do, it was all player innovation.
This is a really fun mechanic. It works great with the Storytelling system: what you'd do is set up extended rolls with open-ended skill use, and I think likely demand X successes within Y number of turns so as to make sure that failure is a possibility. It would be fantastic for Storytelling games with a strong team dynamic; consider a werewolf pack using a skill challenge to identify prey, isolate him from a crowd and chase him somewhere they can do their thing. It might be a little more easily finesseable by players, of course, because the decoupling of Attribute and Skill that Storytelling uses would allow players to really fudge the rolls they're good at as the ones they want to make - but I'm not sure it would be a bad thing. And after all, it would make things easier in some regards: maybe Dave can't roll on his maxed-out Weaponry for this challenge, but he can still involve Dexterity on something.
It's good stuff. Certainly going as free-form as I recommend would work only if you can trust the judgment of the Storyteller, and the players are going to be open-minded enough to try new things. But since I encourage everyone to play in groups like that anyway if at all possible, I don't feel so bad about saying they're worth a try.