Rodney Thompson wrote a really good post on non-combat challenges in 4e on EN World today which has mostly been ignored by everyone else, so I wanted to point it to anyone who reads my blog. I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing! 🙂
Skill challenges are the big innovation of 4e, and I don’t think they work yet. Yeah, the idea is great, but the implementation isn’t quite honed enough. It’s too easy for a group to just have one character make all the checks. I’m leaning more and more towards capping the number of skill checks you can consecutively make in one skill before you have to try something else, if only to let the other PCs participate.
D&D on Friday was a low-combat, high-roleplaying session, though mostly roleplaying in the non-consequential frame. Nathaniel’s character, Will, has a host of connections to the old games I ran, which makes finding plot hooks and characters to entertain him really easy. A few “throw-away” characters I used also were seized upon by some of the PCs, so bringing them back would be really, really good. Like Bill, the gate guard. Assuming he knew the PCs, and then interaction ensued – I like that.
One thing I do need to keep track of is the main adventure, though. It got away from me mostly on Friday; I hadn’t done as much preparation as I needed to (although I got some aid from the D&D compendium… I printed out a couple of monsters which they then fought). I sometimes find it a useful trick to design 3 or 4 combats or otherwise set-piece encounters and then structure the session around them. If I can involve particular players with those encounters – one for Nate, one for Rich, etc – it works a lot better.
Adam’s old character, Archibald, who is now evil, escaped them again last session, so no surprises there! I need to make Archibald more interesting, though. Skulking around with cultists isn’t enough – more storyline needed!
The PCs have reached about 6th level now, so I need to really start kicking the campaign along…