Ever wanted to run a montage sequence in your games? Need to make combat encounters, even space battles, that much more engaging? What about getting everyone involved at the table more than ever before? Then tune in, good listeners, as we get you to 'use dem skills' as we discuss the ins and outs of running the almighty Skill Challenge in your games. Join GMs Hooly and Huzz along with special guests GM Mick, and Order 66's GM Chris as we take a deep dive into the rules, the pitfalls, and methodology of the Skill Challenge and how you can harness its power to improve your games - plus we'll run a Skill Challenge on the show. We even get to answer some listener questions covering initiative, fear, and the Master talent, plus a whole heap more on this extra-large bumper episode of The Dice Pool Podcast.

Available on iTunes and your favourite Podcatcher.

DIRECT

Thanks for a good episode. Been using skill challenges since i heard them on your live play been working great. Was good to hear a more in depth discussion on it though. When i first introduced them my players was a bit confused especially with the montage concept. They tend to grasp the linear usage more but if you set the scene i found it to be a useful tool will use it more next time i play i think.

Also thanks for the answer to the master talent. Might be my bad English but i did not mean all my players have divine skill just one player. And as you said its a mature play group usually no problems with augmenting rules and talents for the sake of balance. Was interesting to hear your take on it kinda mirror our own discussion was curious though why it did not explicit state that on the talent that it did not work for combat and magic like knack for it. Was some good suggestions to augment the talent i think we will go with hard a fast rule that it does not work with combat and magic skills and them come up with some other talent for magic maybe grab a few of your suggestions from the magic discussion you had on earlier episode.

Again great episode thanks and keep up the good work.

Another great episode. The skill challenge is an interesting idea. In reality its really just an extended skill check, which you see in many systems. Its interesting it isn't in the narrative dice system, but I would do something like this:

Extended Checks

The Gm sets the total number of Successes required to complete a task (the Success Threshold), and the amount of time each action takes to help complete it. Depending on the situation, this may be measured in rounds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia or epochs. Then the Gm determines the difficulty of each check, based on the complexity of the task being performed. Add 1 to this number and multiply by 5 to determine the Success Threshold. The Gm can adjust this if necessary if they feel the task would take a longer or shorter period of time to complete (modify it by +/-5 increments as necessary - min 5).

Note: individual skill checks may be of a higher difficulty if the skill being used is less useful in the situation. A character attempting to repair a broken wagon with their Athletics, rather than Mechanics may have an extra Purple dice thrown in, for example. Trying to repair it by Charming the coachman to do the work may by +2 purple dice.

Advantages, Threats, Triumphs and Despairs can be used to modify further tests as the character's actions help or hinder other players actions.

For example, the players need to build a bridge across a river. The Gm rules this will be a series of Average checks, with a Success Threshold is 10, since it doesn't need to be pretty, just functional. Each check will take 1 hour.

Time Critical Checks

The Gm may decide that the players need to complete an extended check within a time period. This may represents the arrival of an enemy, or possibly an exploding bomb. The Gm sets events to occur after a certain number of rounds, minutes, hours, days or weeks, based on the action time. This may be smaller events, occurring more frequently, or a large event essentially ending the extended check.

For example, the party are trying to rescue 5 people from a burning building. Since its very dangerous, the gm sets the difficulty to Hard (and with an upgrade) with a Success Threshold of 20, and each check represents a minute of clambering through the wreckage. Breaking this down, the GM determine every 4 Successes will rescue one person. Owing to the inherent danger, the gm determines that the entire bullding will collapse after 5 minutes, killing all the people and causing serious damage to the player characters. Lets hope they succeed....