Coming up with the consequences of failed conflicts is a big part of GMing Burning Wheel, the game I’ve been playing most in the past few years. So when I saw skill challenges, that part of it all kind of clicked.

But what scares me, the skill that I have never been particularly good at is coming up with challenging encounters. I am hoping the DMG combined with some published adventures will walk me through this process and I’ll have some system support.

If you use any of those suggestions, please let me know how they turn out.

Thanks for stopping by. I’ve found that coming up with failures for skill challenges is often the toughest part of creating them. You want the party to realize that they’ve failed, but you don’t want your campaign to come to a halt. Regardless of the failure the campaign should not be in jeopardy. I really like your suggestions and may just use one of them when I throw this skill challenge into my next campaign.

I’d want the players to come to the surface in the middle of an ambush or end up in a deep part of the underground where they just didn’t want to be, also in a brutal combat, most likely.

Ending up frustrated, where we started just feels too much like bad junior high play to me.