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It’s been a while, eh? This SkillCast is made special not only for the delay, but also for the fact we have a new co-host! Our very own Ryven Cedrylle is the new co-host of the SkillCast and I think you’ll agree that it’s worth it. you’ll obviously know Ryven from our site, but you’ve probably also heard him on The Power Source, as both a guest and contributer of Aberrant Rules (more on that in a future post) As much as I llike to pontificate, I think the podcast and the listeners benefit by having another sharp point of view on skill challenges.
This episode is all about when to use skill challenges. Is the locked door a good skill challenge? Find out why or why not on the latest episode.
Enjoy!
The SkillCast
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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Love the podcasts, could you put a link to them on the “series” sidebar to make it easier to find them all?? Also RSS feeds for the podcasts and skill challenge series would be great
Hi, I’m about to listen to SkillCast #3, but I don’t see a #2. Did I miss it?
Afet
Here:
http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/2010/05/the-skillcast-2-the-kruthik-swarm/
Nice stuff….when to use a skill challenge is definitely as important as the set-up of the challenge itself. In my latest project, “City Slices I: Marketplace Fun” I present several skill challenges. Each challenge has the primary and secondary skills additionally defined with possible “quotes” from the pcs. An inexperienced DM can simply look for their players making similar statements and know which direction to take the skill challenge. The pdf is available at rpgnow.com for anyone interested in making a trip to the marketplace unforgettable with food vendors, stalls, encounters (hello runaway carriage!), and tons of npcs, adventure hooks, new magic items, new poisons, and….well just check it out for yourself! and Happy Gaming!
William C. Pfaff
President of Escape Velocity Gaming
That was an excellent podcast, and the portion about overland travel skill challenges really spoke to me. I’ve used overland skill challenges twice, and both times they were moderately successful as a narrative device. The idea of the environment functioning as an agent against the PCs is a notion that I hadn’t quite arrived to in my game.
The two most memorable instances of overland travel had encounters nested in them that would occur regardless of PC success or failure, and those encounters were designed to emphasize the bleak, weird, and terrible nature of the environments they were in.
The cost of failure for those overland skill challenges wasn’t transparent to the players. Failure would have amounted to being discovered by the foes they were seeking at their destination. Basically, if the succeeded, events conspired to them not being found…if they failed, then events conspired towards their discovery.