And I’m back.
The holidays are always a busy time for me, with two little kids, family, friends, the house full of people, my anniversary and my wife’s birthday all bunched up at the same time. But I survived, so it’s time to start blogging again.
This Saturday we are playing again, and I’m having my PC’s navigate a swamp as they look for a Halfling outpost tucked away on a little island. I decided to design a skill challenge for this, rather than stealing finding one on the internet. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m still hoping to find an MP3 of a group actually running one, to see how others are doing it.
Anyway, I’m going to post it here for opinions. Or, if you’re in need of a skill challenge, feel free to use it.
I found this thread over at ENWorld, by AFCErik, and I liked how he did his skill challenges on paper. So I took his basic idea and modified it to my liking. I have the basic template as a word file, if anyone cares for it.
So, here is my skill challenge: Navigating the Eckleborough Swamp.
(The circles inside the columns on the right are meant to be checked off as successes/failures are accumulated.)
Let me know your thoughts… I’m reaaaally a Newbie DM with skill challenges….
Finally, I received some really humbling and exciting news for my little blog, of which I’m going to write about this week, and I’m also going to blog about a community project I am proposing for all of the RPG Bloggers Network members. Every single one of you. Those of you on the Google Group already know what it is, I think it’s good stuff, so stay tuned…
www. Newbie DM .com 
Swordgleam
January 5, 2009
It looks good. I’m not sure about the ‘everyone loses a healing surge for someone else’s failure,’ though. A couple of reasons why – one, it sucks to get hurt because someone else failed a check. Indirectly (they missed a trap, or triggered an encounter) is to be expected, but directly feels a little cheap. The second is that, in the statistically unlikely but gamer-luck-wise highly likely probability that every check is failed, the whole party loses 4 healing surges apiece, not counting the encounter. Depending on your group (and their luck) neither of these might be a real problem.
One way to compensate for it might be to make the DC of those checks a little higher, but allow party members to aid in them somehow. That way, everyone is at least a little involved in the check. Perhaps an acrobatics check to jump over some logs, and save the athletics guys the heavy lifting, or an insight check to notice that someone is tiring, and help out with the endurance check by taking some of their load. The checks to aid wouldn’t count as successes or failures, but would help with the main checks.
Tommi
January 5, 2009
What kind of swamp is it? If there are trees or high rocks or similar, I’d try climbing one to see what lies around.
Is there any way to investigate the situation before diving in? Listening to rumours or hiring a native guide, for example.
jonathan
January 5, 2009
thanks for the link to the ENWorld post. I agree it does present some interesting ideas – even only if its the format in which the SC is presented. I’m looking forward to hearing your “news” too Newbie! (/wink)
newbiedm
January 5, 2009
This is why I need the feedback.
These are great ideas.
Thanks.
Donny_the_DM
January 6, 2009
A good start.
A couple of pointers;
– Try and find a use for every single skill. You don’t HAVE to use them all, but if you can, do it.
– Be careful when penalizing more than just the character failing the check. Players hates that kinda thing.
– Repeatable skills start low and get higher for plain old successes. Single shot skills have higher DC but give a bonus as well as a success.
These have served me well. Keep up the good work!