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The SkillCast
Exploring the ruins of templegrounds long destroyed, the players are attacked by a swarm of reanimated, skeletal kruthik. The chittering swarm appears from all over, throwing themselves at the players then receding. How do the players deal with the assaulting and unrelenting waves of attackers? Listen to this episode of the Skillcast and find out.
Our players for this episode:
Ryven Cedrylle & Milambus, At-Will contributors.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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Great! I was waintig for the 2nd episode! Thanks, Quinn!
I don’t listened yet, but show the SC’s settings should be great.
Hi.
Thanks for the new episode. I’ve been looking forward to it. Unfortunately, however, the sound quality is quite bad. The voices are distorted and fuzzy.
I’ll have to look into that. I appreciate your patience –I’m pretty much a newb at the podcasting thing but am getting better!
I could barely hear the narration at all, especially at the end, but the Actual Play was pretty audible.
This was a very creative use of the SC mechanic overall and I liked it.
I note that with this skill challenge and with other ‘actual play’ examples I’ve seen (and run) it tends to seem as though the challenge is too easy for the group. I find that it is difficult for me to gauge how difficult or easy a challenge will be, and usually err on the side of too easy. Perhaps this is a failing of the system or perhaps I am too concerned that my players will fail the challenge.
I would like to suggest that a future skillcast feature an skill challenge that the players are likely to fail, or at least struggle greatly with, and demonstrate some of the consequences of failure and how a DM can deal with that.
As I said, I haven’t been able to listen to the episode, but I think this question of making “failure” as fruitful as success, in terms of moving the story forward is fundamental. Conflict or opposition are fundamental to making narrative interesting, and skill challenges provide a structured way of engaging than success. To make that happen, though, we need to plan skill challenges to both fail and succeed in interesting and engaging ways.
Hey, listened to the cast and overall I liked it. I know you are working on the sound quality, so I won’t dwell on that.
Here are some things that you might consider to make such sessions more useful to the listener.
1. Use character names rather than player names. Introduce each character with a reasonably short name. Give each PC a name that starts with different letter and doesn’t sound too much like the other names. As you introduce the PC’s, you can say who played them and you can thank them again by name at the end of the show.
2. Post character sheets in your show notes. These can and should be abbreviated sheets, but it will give the listeners who want more information a place to look at the characters, see what their numbers are, and follow along with the characters as they choose.
3. Break the 4th wall. I think it would be extremely useful if you explained the mechanics of the skill challenge as you go along. Either you can make an aside to the listeners while you are playing or, perhaps a better method, is add the information in while editing. Such a format might have you explaining the basics of the challenge up front, including what level it is set for, how may successes they need, and how many XP’s it is worth. Then get into the play. Once a player has done an action that is part of the challenge, explain to the listeners what skill was used, what DC you set for it and why, and what any consequences there might be for success or failure. Then go back and forth until the end. If you think this would be too disruptive during the play, then you could add it in in post or add a post play segment where you explain all of this.
I appreciate what you are doing and hope you find something useful in these suggestions.
Elderac
I very much like Alderac’s idea of added mechanical commentary. That way as listeners we can sort of see behind the screen of actual play. Perhaps the DM commentary could be introduced by a sound or have some light background music to differentiate it easily for the listener.
Cheers,
Afet
Hello, Gamefiend.
When can we expect to see/hear your next Skill Challenge podcast? I’m looking forward to it.
Cheers,
Afet
Can you update the Similar Post entries so that it links to the 1st and 3rd skillcasts? Thanks, B. Lynn.