It’s time for the last segment on Skill Challenges, which is good because I’m getting kinda tired of this and ready to get on with something else .

When “Chatty DM” Phil Menard was on a few weeks back, he mentioned something he calls “Mouseguarding.” This is of course, a reference to the Mouseguard RPG; specifically page 91 of the core rulebook (which I own!). The text on the page reads as follows: “One of two things can happen and the GM gets to decide which one he wants. You can fail to overcome the obstacle and the GM can inject a twist into the game or you can succeed at your attempt with some cost. The GM can’t apply both options to one test.”

So what we’re actually saying here is that your PCs can fail a skill check and still succeed.. sort of. The concept needs to be translated slightly since Mouseguard has ongoing status conditions closer to Star Wars: Saga Edition’s condition track rather than 4E’s combat conditions and tends to use said conditions as the cost of success. If you’re in combat, you might be able to succeed on the check but are then Dazed until the end of your next turn, representing the extra focus required for the task that pulls you out of the fight momentarily. Outside of combat, though, we’re shooting for spirit rather than letter of the law.

I believe I may have used this example at the beginning of the series, but I’ll use it again because it’s good. You fail on an Athletics check to climb a cliff. The DM can simply say that you can’t find a good handhold and must locate a new way to your destination – the twist – or charge you some toll for the successful climb A healing surge or having to temporarily leave behind your armor immediately come to mind as costs. For a full skill challenge where the party is trying to locate the next major villain, the cost of failing the skill challenge could be an increase in the number of bad guys in the next combat or being stuck on the business end of a surprise round. Depending on the situation, these might be preferable to the pure fail, which is having to wait until the villain make his or her next move.

Most of the time, I recommend you go ahead and ask your players outright what they’re willing to sacrifice for the success. I am of the school of thought that meaningful choice, not just immersive narrative or setting, is the heart of the tabletop RPG and so I’m willing to step back into the metagame for a little bit to let the players mull it over. You can choose for them in secret occasionally, but I find it preferable more often that not to put that decision squarely in the players’ hands.

Why do this? Why add these complications or costs rather than simply failing? Several good reasons – first, it’s an extra layer of plot glue in case your PCs come up short on the rolls to move the story forward. If your skill challenge is built well based on the other criteria from the last few weeks, you shouldn’t need it, but better safe than sorry. Second, it helps the players feel engaged, even when they fail. There’s still a meaningful choice to be made. Grognards tend to be hard on “new school” gaming for being ‘soft’ when it comes to abject failure and character death. This is primarily a game genre issue and something I’ll revisit later, but remember that you as a DM want to encourage your players to keep playing. Besides, forcing characters to live with the ramifications of a bad decision is almost always worse than simply killing them or otherwise removing them from the game. Finally, imposing a toll can help expand the content and depth of what you already have written rather than being forced to improvise all the time.

I’m almost out of time and really, this isn’t something you write into a skill test or challenge inherently but a technique you use in play, so I won’t point out any DMG2 or RPGA module references. And with that (does it count if I say it?) we conclude the series on skill challenges. Next week – making magic items feel awesome and unique again without technically breaking the 4E magic item schema.