Skill Challenges - Again!

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure the best way to do the skill challenges. I thought they went better, but the "negotiation" with the dwarf ghost didn't go off very well. What needs to happen differently is that you all need to (and I need to encourage) roleplay in these encounters and then shoot the dice.

Think of a skill challenge as a combat where you use your skills instead of your powers. How's that work? You roleplay. You describe your actions and/or what you're saying (or just say what your character says) and then we throw some dice. A good roll gets you a success. A bad roll gets a failure. The theory behind skill challenges is to offer a framework for the roleplay encounters that involve skill use and involve everyone. What we don't want to see is the options that usually came up in 3.x D&D: 1) the bard (or other high diplomacy skill guy) is the only one that does any talking with major NPCs. 2) one skill roll determines success or failure.

So, it's a team effort. Everyone should participate and everyone should try to offer something to what's going on. I'll do my best to better roleplay the NPCs; you all work on doing a bit of RP yourselves. I know you don't know all there is about the game world and such, but as I'm sure you can tell from what I've been doing, I'm ad libbing a great deal in the skill challenges anyway. So, if you make a history check and decide to describe that as reminding the ghost of the time the eladrin heroes saved some dwarves from an attack by giants . . . cool! Let's go with that!

So, I'll keep working on making the RP skill challenges better. Everyone needs to get involved. I think the non-RP ones went off very well.