True, but I don’t feel like examining multiple 4th Edition adventure, and, if I am going to offer some guidance about converting 4e to DCC, skill challenges have to be addressed. At their most basic, skill challenges are an attempt to codify complex skill uses with consequences for failure. To take it away from fantasy games for a moment, in The End of the World, the second episode of the Doctor Who revival, the Doctor attempts to open a door, and the computer controlling the door “fights back”.
This is a perfect example of how a skill challenge should be built: There is an advantage gained from the initial success, the initial success is not sufficient for clear reasons, and the challenge itself can be solved through bypassing the challenge and trying something else. If you know the episode, the method the Doctor uses to solve the problem could also be written as a skill challenge.
The point I am trying to make is that codifying a challenge is not in itself a bad thing. In a way, that is exactly what a monster statblock does. Nor is it entirely antithetical to the fictional narrative that is being woven, as one could easily argue that some of the events in various Sword & Sorcery stories could be modeled as skill challenges. In DCC, a similar structure is used in The Imperishable Sorceress (where three successes must be made on a Will save, with each failure reducing Personality, before Personality is reduced to 0 and disaster befalls the PC in question).
Okay, So How Does
This Skill Challenge Thing Work?
Remembering that our goal here is not to have to reference the actual book, we want to glean what we can from the skill challenge statblock itself. The most important thing is the flavor text, because that tells us what the skill challenge is trying to simulate and what we, in turn, must simulate in our conversion. The basic idea is that you must gain X successful skill checks before 3 failures. There are some skills that work better than others. Both success and failure result in their own consequences.
In some ways, a skill challenge is analogous to combat, but in combat each roll has the potential of changing the nature of the remaining challenge, and that is unfortunately not true with poorly written skill challenges. That it takes three missed checks to fail is also a problem with the system, although I suppose it makes things easier to systematize. Setting up more dynamic fail conditions is more interesting. For instance, in The Imperishable Sorceress, the first adventure I wrote for Goodman Games, there is a situation where a PC has to make three Will saves to succeed, and each failure temporarily reduces their Personality score, making future saves more likely to fail. The similarity to a skill challenge is obvious. Equally obvious is the difference: each roll has a potential consequence on the next, and the number of failures before all is lost remains unknown. There is, in my opinion, more meaning to the rolls, and more tension this way.
In our example from Doctor Who, the Doctor is trying to keep a sun shield from rising, which would result in his companion, Rose, being cooked to death. It is easy to see that, in the 4e model, three failures means the sun shield has risen, and Rose is cooked. How much more interesting, more tense, and more true to what is seen in the program if three successes lock the fully lowered sun shield in place while each success or failure moves the sun shield either down one step or up. One could then include potential consequence for each step the sun shield rises to ramp up tension.
The chase sequence in The Fence’s Fortuitous Folly is, again, resolved by a series of rolls, but each roll has potential consequences and the rolls are broken up by encounter points in which one or more players have the opportunity to make interesting choices. This is ultimately the key toward any successful mini-game within the game: Each roll should be potentially meaningful, and if the mini-game lasts more than a minute or two there has to be an opportunity for interesting choices with consequences that matter.
Choosing an Example for
Conversion
NEGOTIATING WITH THE REAPER SKILL CHALLENGE
You
sit in the stone chair and see a smoky form begin to coalesce before you. After
a few moments, the shape takes the guise of a spectral reaper clutching a
scythe. Its eyes burn with a red, unholy light, and its skeletal body is mostly
concealed by a tattered, hooded robe. In a dusty voice, the reaper whispers, “Show
your worth to death’s true master, and pass.”
Level: 23 (XP 5,100).
Complexity: 1 (requires 4 successes before 3 failures).
Primary Skills: Bluff. Diplomacy, Religion.
Bluff (DC 24, standard action): The character tells a tall tale of the adventurers’ exploits that is untrue but nonetheless impresses the reaper. This skill can be used to gain 1 successes in this challenge.
Diplomacy (DC 24, standard action): The character explains that, despite their many exploits, the adventurers are humbled to be in the presence of a servant of “death’s true master.” This skill can be used to gain 2 successes in this challenge.
Religion (DC 29, standard action): The character describes how the party's actions have been worthy of death’s true master by citing religious texts and obscure prophecies. This skill can be used to gain 1 success in this challenge.
Secondary Skill: Insight.
Insight (DC 29, minor action): The reference to “death’s true master” is a clue that the reaper serves Orcus. If the character realizes this connection, it is easier to prove the adventurers’ worthiness to the reaper. A success on this check provides a +2 bonus to all subsequent skill checks during this challenge.
Success: The reaper disables all four pillar traps and unlocks the curtains.
Failure: The reaper takes a toll in life force for the time it has spent in negotiation. All characters who have taken part in the skill challenge lose a healing surge. The reaper then unlocks the curtains but does not disable the pillar traps.
You can see, I hope, that this would lead to game play were the player says “I roll diplomacy!” and the DM then tells the player what their character does. In my opinion, humble or not, this is the opposite of how game play should proceed. Of course, the DM could have the players in question say what they wish to do, and then determine what skill this is closest to; there is nothing in the system preventing that. While 4e is far from my favorite edition, and the one I have the least play time with, it has been my experience that the skill challenge system encourages deciding what skill to use over deciding what your character actually does.
(Arguably, the same is true for combat, which is one of the reasons that the Mighty Deed system in DCC is so wonderful…it encourages you to think about what your PC is actually doing! DCC also encourages judges to include monsters which require engaging in the fiction to defeat, rather than simply relying on rolls, as in The Emerald Enchanter.)
On the other hand, earlier editions of D&D tend to focus on combat and traps, because that is where the quantifiable interesting choices lie in those systems. You wouldn’t tend to see something like Negotiating With the Reaper in earlier D&D, because those games weren’t built for that kind of challenge. It isn’t that people weren’t interested – see the interaction with the guards of at the gate of The Keep on the Borderlands – but that the game wasn’t designed to quantify those interactions.
A DCC Conversion
The goal of this conversion is to focus on player choices within the game milieu, rather than what skills might be most likely to succeed on a character sheet. DCC players don’t tend to roll for what their characters think; that is determined by the player. Because there is no Insight skill, the players need some way to reason out that “death’s true master” refers to Orcus, through a past encounter, inscription, legend, etc. The clue need not be found in the current adventure – one of the greatest rewards in old school play is that past adventures allow the players a better understanding of the world their characters inhabit. That Orcus is “death’s true master” could be a clue from a funnel adventure, with a payoff now which rewards players who paid attention to, and retained, that information.
My version would look like this:
Negotiating With the Reaper
As you sit in the stone chair, a smoky form coalesces before you. After a few moments, the shape becomes clear – it is a wraith-like reaper clutching a scythe. Its eyes burn with an unholy red light, and its skeletal body is mostly concealed by a tattered, hooded robe made of charnel ash and grey cobwebs. In a dusty voice, the reaper whispers, “Show your worth to death’s true master, and pass.”
Characters may attempt anything they wish, but the spectral reaper is immune to all mundane attacks and most magic. Effects that would charm or otherwise delude it into thinking the PCs are friendly to the worship of Ahriman may work, but the spell check for these magics must be made at a -1d shift and the reaper saves with a +8 bonus. Clerics or patrons of Ahriman who swear their devotion to the god of death and disease likewise sway the reaper. Otherwise, depending upon the PC’s tactics, a Personality check is in order.
Attempts to tell some tale of the adventurers’ exploits, whether true or otherwise, may impress the reaper, especially if they highlight the death and destruction the party has caused (DC 15). Citing religious texts and obscure prophecies to show that the party is chosen to walk this path may also work (DC 20). Characters with appropriate occupations or classes roll using 1d20; others must use 1d10. Two things may modify what die the PC rolls on: (1) demonstrating humility before a servant of “death’s true master” allows a +1d bonus on the roll, and (2) recognizing that Ahriman is “death’s true master” allows a +1d bonus on the roll.
Players may come up with other tactics, which the judge must set a DC for, but unless particularly brilliant, such tactics should have DCs of 30 or higher. Note that it is not necessary to impress the reaper for the PCs to move forward; doing so just makes moving forward easier.
PCs may attempt to diverse tactics so long as one remains seated on the stone chair. However, each failed roll (whether a spell check that fails to affect the reaper through failure or a successful save, or a failed Personality check) causes the PC 1d3 Stamina damage, with death resulting at 0 Stamina (recovering the body is still possible).
If the reaper is impressed, it magically disables all four pillar traps and unlocks the curtains. If the reaper remains unimpressed (including if the PC simply rises from the seat without engaging it), it unlocks the curtains but does not disable the pillar traps. In either case, as it fades away, it intones “Go forward then, to the doom which awaits you.”
That really is about all there is to it. If you want further examples, I converted both Dragora’s Dungeon and Curse of the Kingspire from 4e to DCC for Goodman Games. And note that, while I snipped the explanatory image of a skill challenge from an online 4e SRD, conversion didn’t require opening a single 4e rulebook. A simple, intuitive conversion is often the best conversion!
Next: D&D 4th Edition: Keep on the Shadowfell (4): The Keep Itself
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