From the category archives:

Skill Challenges

The Challenge Of Writing Skill Challenges

September 3, 2010

While attending GenCon this year I had a eureka moment. Or to be more precise, the sky parted, a brilliant ray of light shone down, I turned to Ameron and said, “We’re already doing that!” This was in response to almost every hand in the room going up in the air when Bill Slavicsek asked [...]

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How Difficult Is It To Sneak Past A City Guard?

August 27, 2010

Assigning difficulty checks (DCs) for skill challenges can be a frustrating experience. Some checks have set DCs that are provided for the DM. Examples of this are traps and locks that have a predetermined level of difficulty. A skill check that doesn’t have such an obvious DC is Stealth for sneaking past a guard. Why is this check [...]

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Skill Checks vs. Skill Challenges

August 24, 2010

“I know you guys write a lot about skill challenges at Dungeon’s Master. What I’m wondering is, what is the difference between a series of skill checks and a skill challenge? If I fail a skill check I’ve failed, but the skill challenge allows the party to make multiple mistakes and still succeed. It seems [...]

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Skill Challenges Without Skills

August 18, 2010

Skill challenges carry the narrative of the story forward in a manner that includes the players in the telling. Through participation in skill challenges players can work with the DM to craft the story. While the DM holds the power of the overall direction of the story by creating the challenge, players control the tiny details [...]

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Skill Challenge: Road Trip to GenCon

August 3, 2010

Tomorrow Wimwick and I undertake the 9-hour drive from Toronto to Indianapolis for GenCon. Knowing that many of our readers will be in exactly the same predicament we decided to put together a GenCon Road Trip skill challenge to mark the occasion. Setup You pack up the car for the long, arduous road trip to [...]

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A Dark Sun Skill Challenge: Crossing The Chasm

June 9, 2010

D&D Encounter season two kicks off tonight. Unless you’ve been living under a rock then you know that season two is set in newest 4e campaign setting Dark Sun, scheduled for released later this summer. With this in mind we’re bringing you our very first encounter set in Dark Sun. And this wouldn’t be Dungeon’s [...]

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Creating and Running Engaging Skill Challenges (Part 2)

April 20, 2010

So you’ve chosen the premise of your skill challenge. Great, now for the second step. The second step is all about forecasting possible developments for the challenge. Bauxtehude, our newest contributor at Dungeon’s Master, continues his look at skill challenges. In yesterday’s article, Creating and Running Engaging Skill Challenges (Part 1) he stated that the [...]

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Creating and Running Engaging Skill Challenges (Part 1)

April 19, 2010

The best skill challenges pose a very open-ended problem to the party. Open-ended problems allow for a diversity of possible approaches as well as interpretations of the actual nature of the problem. The other great virtue of open-ended problems is that they have the unique ability to develop in any number of directions allowing for [...]

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Skill Challenge: Lie To Me

March 15, 2010

Training in Insight does not make you a human lie detector. Too often in D&D a PC rolls Insight and on a successful check knows immediately if a person is lying. This shouldn’t always be the case. Sometimes you need to work at it. If you’ve never met this person before how do you know [...]

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Skill Challenge: Olympic Games

February 18, 2010

The Dungeon’s Master team has used the basics of the skill challenge to create a unique form of athletic competition. Each skill check is scored as the PCs vie for top spot. PCs can compete against each other or against the world’s greatest NPC athletes. This is more than just opposing Athletics checks. Since this [...]

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