I don’t hide the fact that I can’t wrap my head around skill challenges. I find it hard to conceptualize narrating them at the table without the exercise simply becoming a series of rolls. The irony though, is that I’d love to run them at the table to break up the monotony of combat/combat/combat.
This past sunday, I had planned to run a skill challenge where my players had to find their way up a mountain and locate a valley where a hidden city had been uncovered. I lifted the skill challenge straight from the pages of Dungeon Magazine, which included one exactly like the one I was looking for. (BTW, on the Dungeon Magazines forum there is a thread with every skill challenge published so far, a great resource.)
Now, it’s a perfectly well designed skill challenge, but unfortunatly, it suffers from the same thing as all other skill challenges in 4th Ed., a lack of explanation as to how to play it and narrate it.
It’s no surprise to me that in the DMG, the only actual example of an in play skill challenge is a social one that deals with interacting with an NPC. That’s a no brainer. But when you have a thing that says:
Endurance-DC15-The characters survive the effects of exposure to the harsh environment.
Well, that’s a bit different.
So I just decided to not complicate my life anymore in trying to wrap my head around these things.
My skill challenges now look like this instead:
Endurance-DC 15-You’ve been going up this mountain now for a few hours, and the weight of your equipment, along with the harsh sun, is taking its toll on you. I’m going to need a couple of Endurance checks here from two of you to simulate the rest of the party’s climb up the mountain pass.
I’m just going to write flavor text for every skill involved in the challenge and call for rolls. If they want to incorporate ideas for using other skills within that particular challenge then I’ll improvise them in if it makes sense.
Does it make me a DM that needs everything scripted? Maybe. A bad DM? Maybe. But the alternative for me is to ignore them, and I’d rather not do that.
The call is still out for an MP3 of these things in action. Preferably those that aren’t “social” interactions between the PC’s and an NPC.
edit: I added the link to the thread where you can find the skill challenges from dungeon magazine. It’s an index for Dungeon Magazine basically.
www. Newbie DM .com 
mike
April 28, 2009
good point, i totally agree with you that WotC doesn’t provide enough info on how to use the SC. when i run a home SC i just ask my self, what is a goal, and award success over time based on roles and rp.
Kameron
April 28, 2009
The guys at Points of Light had a great post on using a narrative approach to executing skill challenges. http://4theditiondnd.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-experiences-with-skill-challenges.html
I’ve done scripted flavor text and straight skill checks so far in 4E, and been unhappy with how stiff and disruptive to immersion they are. I always used a narrative style (players tell me what their characters are doing, I tell them what skill check to make) in previous editions. There’s no reason why the same approach can’t be taken in 4E. The players don’t have to know the series of skill checks their making is part of a challenge.
Dominic Ford
April 28, 2009
Can you leave an address to that list of Skill Challenges?
Brett
April 28, 2009
In the RPGA forum Calite gave an interesting example of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark as a skill challenge. It is an interesting take and show I think the direction that skill challenges need to head if they are going to be as much fun as combat is.
kaeosdad
April 29, 2009
I recommend checking this out
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/241440-stalker0s-obsidian-skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html
It is a reworked version of skill challenges turning it into something more of a role playing challenge. Very cool stuff.
Ameron
April 30, 2009
Over at Dungeon’s Master we offer numerous generic Skill Challenges that you can drop into your campaign. We also have a number of Skill Aides that may help too.
Another great resources is the Skill Challenge index put together by the the gang at Critical Hits. It compiles a list of skill challenges and skill aides from around the blogs.
mmaranda
April 30, 2009
My biggest discussion about the game and rules with my home-game players has been over skill challenges. The way we settled it was to present a situation. After describing what is going on I let them set what they want the goal to be. Examples might be, “hike through the storm”, “survive the storm by hunkering down”, “try and move around the approaching storm”. Once they know what they want to do we go around the table and each player declares how he intends to use a skill to deal with the problem, if I deem it appropriate they roll if it is a success I describe how that furthers their goal if it is a failure I explain how it makes the situation worse.
If there are special rules associated with the challenge I will present that to them after they have made their decision about what the goal is. At this time if they decide to change the goal the can.
B.S. is the name of the game. If they can make a convincing argument I usually let them have at least one try (although I will adjust DCs on the fly)
(RPGA play runs a little differently because you need to keep everything in a 4 hour time slot)