a few requests – create a podcast of your audio posts.
create an audio post of your group playing out a skill challenge. i learn a lot by listening to podcasts of groups playing 4e.
i know you are working on it, but a pdf of your skill challenges would be amazing!

once again- thank you thank you thank you!

david

In your murder mystery example, the bulk of what makes the mystery move are clues. While you might have a few clues that you make the PCs work for, the bulk of your clues you need to give to your players as long as they are in the right place. Why? Because what’s interesting is what the PCs do with the clues and how they interpret them/connect them. The places for an SC in your case are set-pieces…the killer find the PCs are getting too close and burns down the inn they’re staying at, while they’re inside it; A desperate horse-chase of the villain when discovered; Finding a clue in a dungeon somewhere that triggers some deathtrap.

Because I enjoy summations so much, I’ll say this: Skill Challenges are an option anytime that failure is acceptable (i.e. it doesn’t stop the whole game), and more importantly, interesting.

I am basing a session around the investigation of a murder. The entire session could concievably be a complex skill challenge – and essentially it is. But the structure is so loose that it seems to defy structure in a skill challenge. Having a set number of successes or failures seems too arbitrary.

I think it could be done by assigning verying degrees of success (or # of successes) to different tasks – but there are still different kinds of successes that could lead to a variety of different outcomes.