3 Tips for Running Skill Challenges
Posted on : 08-02-2011 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Advice, D&D, Skill Challenges
Tags: dnd, rpg
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Skill challenges are an oft-maligned aspect of D&D. In my experience, this is likely because they are often misused. D&D is a very mechanics-heavy game, and very focused on tactical combat. There are a lot of tactical combat options, meaning that combat is, by its nature, mechanically interesting from moment to moment. Skill challenges are a different beast. They’re mechanically much simpler and–lets be truthful here–less interesting mechanically, too. There’s not as much going on from a purely gamist standpoint, and that’s very likely intentional. In my experience, a lot of DMs have a misunderstanding of how skill challenges really should work at the table; this leads to bad experiences with them, which leads to not using them. There are a few relatively easy things you can do, though, to make them interesting again.
Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe
Skill challenges are at their best when they’re invisible. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been at a game and the DM has said, “Okay, this is a skill challenge. You can use Perception, Nature, and Insight here. What do you want to do?” That’s mistake number one, in my opinion.
See, the players don’t need to know that they’re in a skill challenge. In fact, it’s probably better if they don’t. When you couch it in mechanical terms, everybody looks at their list of skills and tries to find the ones they’re best at. If those skills aren’t relevant to the challenge at hand, those players are just going to sit there and do nothing, or try to aid someone else. That’s pretty boring, as is simply going around the table calling for check after check.
Instead, read the skill challenge beforehand (even if you wrote it), and imagine what it looks like in the world. Imagine how a group of adventurers might face it, and overcome it. Describe it in those terms, in terms of the world and the narrative. Give players some hints as to courses of action that might be useful, but don’t ever mention specific skills. Let them describe for you what they want to do, then tell them what to roll based on their description. If a player says, “I roll Insight”, ask that player what his character is doing. Try to coax the narrative out of your players, and get them thinking in terms of the story rather than the numbers on their sheets.
Go Off-Script
A lot of DMs look at the list of skills provided in a skill challenge, and they get tunnel vision. If a player tries to use a different skill, the DM tries to guide him back to using one of the ones listed in the skill challenge. What a wasted opportunity!
A skill challenge is a basic framework that allows you to adjudicate success or failure in a particular, non-combat encounter, and reward it appropriately. It is not a script that you must adhere to slavishly. Think of the skills on a skill challenge as suggestions more than anything else. If you’re using a pre-written skill challenge, some of the work has been done for you, but you may not need it. Your players are creative, and will likely think of things that the designer never did. That’s a good thing, and you should reward it.
Let me tell you a secret about how I write skill challenges: I don’t! At least, not in the traditional sense. If I’m writing one up for publication somewhere, yeah I’ll do the full writeup. But for my own games, a skill challenge is represented in my notes as a level, a complexity, and then a brief list of possible skills with DCs, sans any descriptive text. I don’t want to decide beforehand what success on a given skill means; I’d much rather let that evolve organically, in reaction to what the players are actually describing.
Make Failure Fun
Or at the very least, make it interesting. Your players are going to fail skill checks from time to time, and they might even fail the whole skill challenge. This is an opportunity for drama, and to throw additional challenges at your players. It’s very tempting, when a player blows a Perception check, to say, “Yeah, you don’t see anything.” Resist that temptation. Describe what the player does see, instead, but be deliberately misleading. Emphasize things that aren’t important, and downplay things that are. Describe things in ways that cause the player to draw the wrong conclusion. In the long run, this will be a lot more fun than a null result.
When considering these tips, consider this, as well: it’s a good idea to rehearse the skill challenge in your head beforehand, probably more than once. Look at it from your players’ perspectives, as well as from the perspectives of any opposition they may be facing. Think of possible outcomes, and come up with cool descriptive elements or awesome turns of phrase that you can pepper your narration with. It’ll pay off big time.