At Will

A very good question that gets asked of me:

When do you use a skill challenge?

My answer:

You use skill challenges when it isn’t necessary for the players to succeed for the story to continue, and where the process of failing of succeeding is interesting.

Article done, right? Notsomuch.  Elaboration follows.

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In Part 1 of this series, we discussed axioms of skill challenges.  In Part 2 we discussed the need for improvisation and the importance of pink and purple dice.

What I’d like to address in this article is time.

Time is on your side (Yes it is)

Pace is an important storytelling tool in every medium.  When you GM a game, pacing and control of time is one of your main duties.  You want to keep a game moving at just the right speed.  Sometimes you gloss over a week.  Other times you drill right down into a conversation, playing everything out in real-time.   Time is fluid in RPGs, and mastery of where to put the players is, again, a prime skill for a GM to have.

The use of time in skill challenges is a microcosm of what you do in the rest of the game, and the decisions of how to move time forward can change the feel of a skill challenge dramatically.

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In Part 1 we discussed two fundamental axioms of running skill challenges.  When running skill challenges, one needs to understand that ’skill challenge’ is another term for ’structured roleplay’.  It is also vital to understand that the fundamental unit of skill challenges are actually actions and not skills.

With that being understood, there are few more thoughts I’d like to offer regarding improvisation and scene setting.  But first I need to share a little tip I’ve learned with you:

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A lot of people have enjoyed my skill challenges that I’ve posted.  The response has been really great, but always the follow-up question is:

How do I run one of these things?

Which is, you know, a pretty darn good question to ask.  The way skill challenges are presented, it seems just another method for rolling dice.  Dragon is chipping away with some articles on skill challenges on how to design challenges, and I almost did a design post myself, but…no one has problems with design.

How do I run one of these things?

Geez, you’re sort of persistent.  OK, let’s start with fundamentals.

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