Tag: Skill Challenge

Categories
Skill Challenges

Skill Challenges Without Skills

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 by how they react to the situation and what skills they use to overcome the obstacles presented. It’s a great collaborative system that ends up being a win-win.

Of course skill challenges have a drawback. Players often pigeonhole themselves into decisions based on what skills are presented on their character sheet. Worse, many players only fully consider those skills that they are trained in. All this leads to some very boring skill challenges where players decide what skill to use to complete the challenge, rather than deciding on an action that creates role playing opportunities.

Continue reading “Skill Challenges Without Skills”
Categories
Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Road Trip to GenCon

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 GenCon. The question isn’t if you’re going to get there but when you’re going to get there. The more successes you accumulate in the skill challenge will determine how quick and painless the journey is. No matter what obstacles you might endure along the way, it’s all worth it to get to GenCon.

Continue reading “Skill Challenge: Road Trip to GenCon”
Categories
Month in Review

Month in Review: July 2010

In July we learned about D&D Camp, covered our participation in D&D Encounters Dark Sun, looked at adventuring parties lacking a role player and wrote about GenCon. If you missed any of the great articles we ran in July this is your chance to get caught up. For all of our loyal readers who visited throughout July, we express out thanks. And to new readers just discovering us, we welcome you and hope you keep coming back every day.

Continue reading “Month in Review: July 2010”
Categories
Adventure Hooks DM Resources

Predators: The Movie That Begs to Be a D&D Adventure

Movies are always inspiring my D&D games. It was about this time last year when my inner DM was inspired by the movie The Hangover and then in January it was Daybreakers. This time it’s Predators that has me thinking D&D. I’ll admit that Predators is already more closely aligned with a combat-oriented RPG then The Hangover, but as a source of influence on this impressionable DM it was no less intriguing.

Before reading any further be forewarned that if you haven’t seen Predators yet, this article contains spoilers. I’ve broken down most of the film into a series of D&D encounters. But given the kind of action adventure movie it is I don’t think these spoilers will ruin the movie for you.

Predators is a really good movie. If you liked the original Predator from 1987 then you’ll really like this new sequel. And it is a sequel, not a reboot. They actually make reference to the Schwarzenegger movie in this new version.

Below is a 6-encounter D&D adventure that follows the plot of the new Predators film. I’ve intentionally left the level of the adventure ambiguous. This should make it easier for a DM to use this outline regardless of the PCs current level.

Continue reading “Predators: The Movie That Begs to Be a D&D Adventure”
Categories
DM Resources

The Problem With Assisting

Cruven – I use Arcana to investigate the origins of the portal in order to learn how we might vanquish the elder evil that has attacked the realm.

DM – Will anyone assist Cruven? The DC to assist is 17.

Dox – 29. I assist.

Jacinth – 25. I assist.

Luk – 17. I assist.

Josey – 18. I assist

Cruven – Ok, with four assists that’s +8 to my roll. My base is a 17, so I’m rolling on a 25. Here goes…

DM – Don’t bother. The DC is only 23 so with the assists you can’t fail this check.

How often has this happened at your gaming table? Assisting is a great way to help a PC out with a check that they might not make on their own. It’s a potentially game breaking mechanic if a PC is already highly proficient at a given skill. As the DM, how do you prevent reckless assist roles?

Continue reading “The Problem With Assisting”
Categories
DM Resources

The 5-Minute Rest as a Skill Challenge

Normally when combat is finished the PCs take a short, 5-minute rest. They get to rest up, heal, catch their breath, and regain the use of encounter powers. But what many players forget is that all of the benefits that come from taking a 5-minute rest come at then end of those five minutes. If the party is attacked or decides to venture onwards before the short rest is finished, they are still hurt and resource depleted.

In a recent game the PCs found themselves in a situation where they really needed a short rest, but couldn’t just drop their guard for five minutes. I decided to turn the 5-minute rest into a skill challenge. If they succeeded, then after five minutes they got all the benefits of taking the short rest (and some XP for completing the skill challenge). If they failed then at least some of the PCs would have to engage in combat to guard the others still resting. Here’s how it played out.

Continue reading “The 5-Minute Rest as a Skill Challenge”
Categories
D&D Encounters Dark Sun Player Resources

D&D Encounters Dark Sun Character Skill Cards

The six pre-generated characters provided for D&D Encounters Dark Sun are so condensed that they only list the three or four skills each PC is trained in. So for everyone playing D&D Encounters season two, I’ve created skill cards for each character.

I’ll admit that the character sheet cards Wizards provided look great, but other than the aesthetic quality, the cards are terrible. They provide the absolute bare minimum detail required to play the characters. Some might even argue that they don’t even contain that much.

Continue reading “D&D Encounters Dark Sun Character Skill Cards”
Categories
Dark Sun Skill Challenges

A Dark Sun Skill Challenge: Crossing The Chasm

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 Master if it the encounter was anything but a skill challenge. The following encounter is intended for use within Dark Sun, but can easily be adapted to fit any campaign world.

Continue reading “A Dark Sun Skill Challenge: Crossing The Chasm”
Categories
DM Resources Top 10

5 Ways To Include Rituals In Your Skill Challenge Design

Rituals are an underutilized aspect of 4e Dungeons & Dragons. One way to increase the way rituals are used in your campaign is to incorporate them into your skill challenge design. By providing opportunities for your PCs to use their abilities you increase their engagement in the campaign. They feel that they are more involved in what is occurring and are committed to seeing things through. Using rituals in your skill challenges does require a little bit of extra work, but is well worth the reward.

Continue reading “5 Ways To Include Rituals In Your Skill Challenge Design”
Categories
DM Resources Skill Challenges

Creating and Running Engaging Skill Challenges (Part 2)

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 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. Good skill challenges allow the party to overcome the problem presented to them in their own way while forcing them to interact with increasing complications. Picking up right where we left off yesterday, we follow the example begun in part 1 through to its natural conclusions with a heavy dose of Bauxtehude’s thoughts and insights added along the way.

I find it harmful to try to start setting DCs for various skill checks unless there are obvious hurdles that will need to be overcome. It’s better to not set any expectations for the party’s actions. The telling of the narration should reflect the choices the party is making rather than what the Dungeon Master thinks the party would do or what the Dungeon Master might figure the party ought to do. In this way time is better invested in thinking about what sort of place the PCs find themselves in.

Continue reading “Creating and Running Engaging Skill Challenges (Part 2)”