On Skill Challenges that Suck

Sometimes, skill challenges suck. I'm not one of those people who thinks that they need to be stricken from the game forever, but I have certainly run skill challenges that were not at the top of their form. In fact, I ran one on Monday, and it was mostly terrible. The challenge was getting across the Tibean Wasteland. For the most part, the development of the challenge wasn't as important as the act itself, which should have been my first clue that the challenge wasn't even needed in this case, and I would have been better off making it a series of role-playing moments, a combat encounter, and some investigation. Honestly, I think an investigation skill challenge would have been more fun in its place, and now I'm a touch sad that I didn't run one. I'd offer to do one this coming Monday, but I have different plans for this upcoming session. Maybe when we reach the Spine of the World, or the city of Sternum...

I think that's probably the one thing that differentiates skill challenges that are awesome and skill challenges that suck: what they're for. I understand that some players hate them in general; the math is screwy, or they believe that the challenge would be better left to good role-playing. Personally, I disagree, but I'll admit that when a skill challenge isn't going to clearly effect things, it's pretty stupid to have a skill challenge at all. Whether they passed the skill challenge or not, my players would have crossed the Tibean Waste. Making it a skill challenge didn't add any tension or drama to the act, and if it had, I think I would have failed as a DM. That's not a thing that should invoke tension, it's a simple act and it should just get done. Travel, meet some people while you're travelling, fight some bitches what get up in your grill, then be done with it.

When you're crafting a skill challenge, it has to mean something. I think that's part of what made the Night at the Opera skill challenge such a success; the players knew that if they did not make their show a success, they would have to come up with a different (probably much more difficult) way to get into the Mayor's house and get the information they need to open the Dungeons & Dragons Inc. Lodge. That is a damned fine skill challenge. Development for that makes a big difference. If you succeed, you get to go to a fancy party, and when the guests are all unconscious or fucking, you can do what you need to do. If you fail, you have to bust in the door, deal with the guards, find a way to subdue the mayor and his guests, and get done what needs doing. The first way is much more fun, much less trouble, and is better for role-playing and story-telling purposes. The second way involves a lot of combat, a bunch of unwanted attention, some trouble-shooting and an uphill battle to get to your goals.

And I think that is what a skill challenge should really be about. When you're planning these things, keep your goal in mind. And your goal should be fun. What would be the fun way to get this goal accomplished? What would be the less-fun way to do the same thing? Now, make the fun thing the reward for accomplishing the skill challenge. Make the unfun thing the penalty for failure. Set this up from the beginning, let your players know what is at stake before they start trying to figure out how they're going to roll this, and make them think about the actions they'll be taking to use those skills effectively. That will add tension to the challenge, make it worth doing, and make the whole experience a lot more fun to play through.

The Most Metal Game Ever

So I've decided to put Undermountain to rest for a bit, and wait for Ian to come up with the next encounter for us. This is supposed to be a collaborative process, and while I'm totally down for taking his idea and running with it, I'd prefer to give the idea some time to breathe and let Ian get some input going. He's got a couple of weeks to make that happen before I jack the idea entirely. ^_^

Instead, I'm going to talk a bit about the first adventure I want to run for the Bones of a Dead God campaign. I suppose it's too much to ask for that potential players of mine avoid reading this blog, so I can't exactly get into too much detail about the first adventure or anything, but I'd like to talk a bit about the theme, the flavor and the set-dressing of the thing.

There are a few ways you can take a game setting like this one. The first thought through my head was "gothic Cthulhu horror" as we try to stop the evil cultists from waking up the dead god that makes up our whole plane of existence. Which was pretty dope. But then I got to thinking about crazy cultists, and how Rasputin (the guy that lives in my head next to the heading "cultist") wouldn't look out of place at all on a metal album cover. Tattered black robes, wispy black beard shot with streaks of gray, long black hair blowing in the wind as he holds out his hand toward you, the heart of a small child, still beating, gripped within. Yes. Rasputin-cultist is fucking metal.

Which forced the whole thing to shift in my head to become this huge, over-the-top heavy metal rock opera about stopping monsters and cultists from waking this dead god and bringing about the End of All Things. There's a very metal edge to that. Huge, macho barbarians oiled in the blood of their enemies, streetwise elven rangers dressed in spiked leather, sultry witches that look more like suicide girls than Elminster... Love it. Impossibly high castles looming over intricate cave networks of doom. Long-haired, wild-bearded cultists destroying the world. Lots of pentagrams, blood sacrifices, images of skeletons in dark robes, piles of skulls, tentacles and pig heads, anything Brom ever painted. Yeah. That's goooooood.

I'm thinking the first villain is going to be a fully-statted out cleric a few levels above the main crew. She'll be based on Baba Yaga, using a broom as her holy implement and flying about in a cauldron forged from the skulls of the children she's eaten. She'll be the leader of this death cult. The first adventure will have something to do with retrieving a very important book that has been stolen from the cobbler of the town of Capp. There will be many fights with Rasputin-cultists, a boss-fight with someone who isn't Baba Yaga, and the shocking discovery that the world is going to end in three months if y'all don't stop that bitch. ^_^

Also, I'm thinking each player should have their own WWF-style theme song. Oh fuck yes.