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Okay, my personal take on this whole deal.

I've liked the concept of skill challenges ever since they were hinted at. I'm one of the twelve people who bought Alternity and the Complex Skill Check was once of my favorite parts of the system. So favorite that it was months of playing 3e before I found out that complex skill checks weren't actually in the rule books for 3e even though I was using them. They stem, initially from skills that require "a new check every X days" and provide a great framework for skill that are, well, more complex/time consuming.

Second is a gripe about something pretty general: human interaction. When people sit down to role play interpersonal conflict the natural instinct is to make resolution as hard as possible. If you've ever worked a sales job where you had to practice concern resolution you know what I mean: the person sitting across from you, who you're normally buddy-buddy with the rest of the time, has some unresolvable concern that they bury so deep that Freud and a team of miners couldn't find it. They give wishy washy replies to every question and lie about everything. In short they become entirely uncooperative. This is why quality training programs either use trained people on the "concern" side, or script the conversation for workbook exercises.

This instinct bleeds over into D&D. Most of us have probably seen it: the NPC you're supposed to go to for help (were even told to go to for help) is the biggest prick in the world and seems hellbent on not helping the party for indiscernible reasons. Everything the Players say, offer, or ask for the DM (through the persona of the NPC) counters, shuts down, or in general withholds.

The problem in general is that the DM hasn't sat down and thought through the interaction as an encounter: they just maybe know who the NPC is, what they have that the PCs want, and whether or not they'll just offer it from the get-go. What they don't have is "what do the PCs need to do to convince the NPC to help them?" Because there's no planned trigger (script) the DM's brain never tells her to end the encounter as either a pass or fail.

The Skill Encounter system sketched out here leads a DM thorough the process of figuring out the needed aspects of the encounter: how hard should it be, what do the PCs (and thus players) need to do right, and what will anger/annoy/upset the NPC.

The main advantage of using such a system is that it provides a solid frame of pacing for the aspect of the game that is most likely to get bogged down in directionless rambling.

NebtheNever wrote:

LFK: You just put into words something I've had trouble articulating about social encounters in D&D for a very long time. I've stonewalled as a DM before, and I've had it happen to me as a player as well. The flowcharty process that is the Skill Challenge system is a great tool to help overcome this, and this excerpt is very encouraging in that regard.

Thanks, I'm glad I could help.

AriaSilverhands]Heyl, I bought Alternity too. I love the Star*Drive setting. ^_^

Dark● wrote: