Travelling Athas Skill Challenges - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Travelling Athas Skill Challenges

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
Pord
Apr 22, 2011 6:10:29 I was just wondering how people like to roleplay the travelling of the athas world?
Do you like to use the skill challenges provided with lots of dice rolls or go for this is where you are going how do you do it?

I sometimes find the skill challenges in 4e hard to bring into the game without asking for lots of dice rolls and would like to see how some other people tackle this.

#2
Phobos
Apr 22, 2011 10:39:15 I hate skill challenges as a DM, for the same idea it is a lot of dice rolling that is very artificial.

We try a lot of roleplay on the heat of the sun, the lack of food/water, things that might eat you and the shifting sand. Yes, this does lead to dice rolls, to escape, to protect, to etc..but it never ends up with 12 successes before 3 failures. I basically weave a 5 minute story.

Over all, as we roleplay I make 1 or 2 group checks on one aspect or another, the sun, the sand, the supplies or the dangers and we move on.
#3
tentagil
Apr 22, 2011 20:47:50 I don't bother with skill checks. Generally if they are traveling on foot I have them roll an endurance check each day, failure costs a surge. If in wagons or mounted I don't bother.

I also roll a dice behind the screen to add a random terrain problem or encounter on occasion and then see how my party deals with it.
#4
pelagorn
Apr 22, 2011 20:52:35
Do you like to use the skill challenges provided with lots of dice rolls or go for this is where you are going how do you do it?

I usually break up the journey into 1-3 legs, depending on how far the destination is. Each leg is a 1-2 (sometimes 3) complexity skill challenge.

The success for each leg usually has some benefit (e.g., they stumble upon a tiny oasis or are able to surprise a monster encounter at the "end" of that leg). I also like to spell out the consequences of failure, or partial failures, when I prepare the SC. For example, complete failure on the first leg of a trip may penalize them during the second leg (e.g., they're lost so the time travelled is increased one day -- which means an extra survival day is used up).

I've played in sessions where travel was done as a single 4-5 complexity SCs, and found them to be a roll-fest, so I've avoided that so far in my Dark Sun campaign.
#5
Alphastream
Apr 25, 2011 16:42:18 Greg Bilsland, a producer for WotC, posted some cool ideas on his random wilderness encounters on Athas. He has a pretty sweet spreadsheet where he shows example encounters.

His method is similar to something I have played with. At a high level, you provide 'travel scenes' as they progress through their wastes. These might have a random feel, but are something you cook up ahead of time and adjust based on what the party does.

You can combine this with a skill challenge. Here is a quick shell:

- Set a daily Endurance check
- Allow for each day to gain an assist to one or more of the Endurance checks (or even affect the overall DC) based on the local environment and what PCs do. For example, Nature to orient, History to recall details from merchants, Perception to spot features.
- Allow for some days to have a travel scene. This may be a semi-random encounter, a sub-skill-challenge, an RP moment, etc. The scene can impact the skill challenge.

An example: Heading to Draj from Raam, the first day is on the road. They pass a Raamite merchant for an RP opportunity, using Diplomacy to gain some travel tips (as well as info pertinent to the overall plot). They make a group endurance check. On the second day they use perception and spot a group of Draji military. The party decides to head off the road and avoid them, making stealth checks and endurance/athletics/acrob checks to quickly but quietly get off the road. This might be its own mini-skill challenge. Perhaps the PCs now travel off the road. The next day Endurance is higher and there is a wilderness encounter.

This kind of approach has produced good results for me. The mix of framework that the PCs can grasp and encounters to spice it up keep it interesting and dynamic.
#6
Centauri
Apr 25, 2011 17:07:02
His method is similar to something I have played with. At a high level, you provide 'travel scenes' as they progress through their wastes. These might have a random feel, but are something you cook up ahead of time and adjust based on what the party does.

You can combine this with a skill challenge.

That's basically what I do with skill challenges in general, be it a travel scene or what have you.

I then weave a five- to ten-minute story, based on how well they are progressing in terms of their skills, and on the "beats" I come up with earlier or improvise on the spot. Especially in travel scenarios, it's convenient for me to have some kind of a track that allows me to tell them about how close they (think they) are to their destination.

I highly recommend that you avoid running anything as just a single skill challenge. Always try to run at least two at once, or combine it with combat.

What I have considered doing is focusing more on the in-city preparations for travel rather than the travel itself, which, lets face it is either going to be incredibly boring (if they prepared right) or incredibly deadly (if they didn't).
#7
Raddu76
May 02, 2011 20:28:16 Here's a skill challenge I used in on the journey from south of Fort Kalvis (on the Peoples ROad) to Altaruk. As you can see, not a standard skill challenge, but it worked well:

Day 1) Traveling the People's Road is easy, the paved stones make for fast walking and you are accompanied by the clicks of the kank claws on the cobblestones. You pass through a ruined villaged. The smell of charred bodies nauseates some of you and makes other's hungry. You come upon a large pyre. The ragtag group of villages look at you with interest. They have have various farm implements and approach you with menace.

One man steps forward, fresh wounds are apparent and dirt covers his face. "There's a toll for passing through this village" he says, grinning.

Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff checks

Day 2) You leave the comfort of the Verdant Belt to enter a thin strip of sandy wastes. As you break for lunch one of the kanks wanders off.

Kank Lion eats Kank: Round by round, just goin in INit bonus order.
Each round each character must make an Acrobatics Check (DC 16) or fall prone, if prone, the next round fails, slide in the funnel toward the ANt Lion. Athlectics (DC 23) to climb up, 2 checks to get out.

Acrobatics can be used to lasso the Kank (DC 23), Subsequent Athletics (DC 23) to pull it out, 4 success needed. (Each 30 points of damage done to the Kank Lion reduced the successes needed by 1)

Giant Ant Lion Level 8 Lurker
Large natural beast XP 1750
Initiative +11 Senses Perception +11; darkvision; tremmorsense
HP 184 Bloodied 92
AC 24; Fortitude 23, Reflex 22, Will 20
Immune poison; Resist 10 fire; Vulnerable 5 cold
Saving Throws +5
Speed 2, burow 6

The character's have 5 rounds before the Kank Lion pulls the Kank down.

Success; Keep the Kank
Failure: Lose the kank to the Kank Lion

Day 3) Traveling through the day, you begin your journey through the rock badlands. As you take a ridge, amazingly, you can see for miles around, to the south the Estuary of the Forked Tongue stretches before you. The wind is calm and little silt clogs the air. Far to the west you see a group of what looks like some type of humanoids standing atop a small craft with a sail, they float above the silt as if they had wings. ( Raiders of Chanth on the horizon (Raiders of Chanth Dungeon #44))

Day 4) The previous day's calm is shattered by howling winds and silt scouring your skin. It getis in your mouth hair, your eyes, your ears. It blocks the sun from the sky.

Perception (23), Nature (23), Heal (16 for +2 to next Per/Nat check), Group Endurance CHeck (11). For Every Per/Nat check the group must make a group Endurance CHeck. Needs 6 successes, for every 2 failures they lose a day returning to the road. After 2 failed checks, Diplomacy can be used to calm arguing parties.

Day ?) You leave the rocky badlands and are grateful for the protection of the Altaruk Range peaks. The silt storm was large and even in the protected walls of the mountains large drifts of silt have piled along the trial, footing is precarious and care must be taken to maneuver the kanks and yourselves.

Acrobatics, Althetics, Endurance (16), 6 successes needed, every 3 failures, a kank tumbles down a slope to it's death.

#8
Raddu76
May 02, 2011 20:36:41 Here's another skill challenge I did, sort of a reverse skill challenge if you will.

"The road to Tyr was long and fraught with danger, but you made it relatively unscathed. Between Altaruk and Tyr you traveled though the foothills of the Altaruk Range, trudged through the Great Alluvial Sand Wastes where you came upon a cross-roads that led to the ruins of the city-state of Kaldinay and the fort of Fort Adros and Fort Melidor, a House Shom encampment. Who knows what dangers you faced in the sandy wastes. At the edge of the sandy wastes you ran into Fort Amber, a House Vordon holding and then Fort Skonz at the intersection of the road to Silver Spring.

Finally the last stretch of wilderness was a trudge toward the Ringing Mountains and Tyr brought you through deep rutted rocky badlands that hold untold dangers from halfling raiding tribes, human slave tribes, or any number of unintelligent beasts.

Once past the rocky badlands with the Golden Tower and the impressive Ziggurat of Kalak towering over the city walls you traveled along the roads of Tyrs verdant belt, through client villages where Tyrian Tempars, savage raiders, or perhaps some trading Nikaal were encountered.

What's important is that you've made it to Tyr alive and you tell your tales over a mug of Tyrian Ale or perhaps fine Asticles wine. You find yourself in a tavern called the Scorched Tongue, a place of moderate repute that lives up to its reputation.

A few Tyrian locals who have never seen beyond the verdant belt inquire to your stories and offer you drink to encourage. What is your tale, who did you meet upon the open road? What dangers did you overcome?"

Skill Challenge: All skills are appropriate if the characters can think of a reason they would use it in a situation along the road. The trip to Tyr from Altaruk should take about 7 days.

Each day have the players make a group endurance check, using the two highest scores to determine if they succeed for fail. Failure adds another day to the trip.

Every other day have one party member recount an encounter they had long the way in story form, first they must roll 3 skill checks of their choice to tell the tale of the encounter. Each success is an exploit form the party member, each failure is a setback. Ask for the checks during the story to guide it.

If the characters fail too many Endurance checks they may be subject to Sun Sickness.

After action report::::
Additionaly, failed checks were initially supposed to impede the characters in Tyr, but I never implemented it, IE, the characters were chased out of Fort Skonz (I could have given them trouble from their pursuers in Tyr)

Players said their characters talked their way out of raiders, or escaped the guard of a fort or found their way through the desert.

It was sort of a flashback vignette where the players told what happened to the characters on the trip.

It worked out ok...one player had nothing to contribute unfortunately, but the rest did well.

I really liked using it as it gave the players a lot more narrative control than is usually in a D&D game, at least in my experience.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Pord Apr 22, 2011 6:10:29	I was just wondering how people like to roleplay the travelling of the athas world? Do you like to use the skill challenges provided with lots of dice rolls or go for this is where you are going how do you do it? I sometimes find the skill challenges in 4e hard to bring into the game without asking for lots of dice rolls and would like to see how some other people tackle this.
#2 Phobos Apr 22, 2011 10:39:15	I hate skill challenges as a DM, for the same idea it is a lot of dice rolling that is very artificial. We try a lot of roleplay on the heat of the sun, the lack of food/water, things that might eat you and the shifting sand. Yes, this does lead to dice rolls, to escape, to protect, to etc..but it never ends up with 12 successes before 3 failures. I basically weave a 5 minute story. Over all, as we roleplay I make 1 or 2 group checks on one aspect or another, the sun, the sand, the supplies or the dangers and we move on.
#3 tentagil Apr 22, 2011 20:47:50	I don't bother with skill checks. Generally if they are traveling on foot I have them roll an endurance check each day, failure costs a surge. If in wagons or mounted I don't bother. I also roll a dice behind the screen to add a random terrain problem or encounter on occasion and then see how my party deals with it.
#4 pelagorn Apr 22, 2011 20:52:35	Do you like to use the skill challenges provided with lots of dice rolls or go for this is where you are going how do you do it? I usually break up the journey into 1-3 legs, depending on how far the destination is. Each leg is a 1-2 (sometimes 3) complexity skill challenge. The success for each leg usually has some benefit (e.g., they stumble upon a tiny oasis or are able to surprise a monster encounter at the "end" of that leg). I also like to spell out the consequences of failure, or partial failures, when I prepare the SC. For example, complete failure on the first leg of a trip may penalize them during the second leg (e.g., they're lost so the time travelled is increased one day -- which means an extra survival day is used up). I've played in sessions where travel was done as a single 4-5 complexity SCs, and found them to be a roll-fest, so I've avoided that so far in my Dark Sun campaign.
#5 Alphastream Apr 25, 2011 16:42:18	Greg Bilsland, a producer for WotC, posted some cool ideas on his random wilderness encounters on Athas. He has a pretty sweet spreadsheet where he shows example encounters. His method is similar to something I have played with. At a high level, you provide 'travel scenes' as they progress through their wastes. These might have a random feel, but are something you cook up ahead of time and adjust based on what the party does. You can combine this with a skill challenge. Here is a quick shell: - Set a daily Endurance check - Allow for each day to gain an assist to one or more of the Endurance checks (or even affect the overall DC) based on the local environment and what PCs do. For example, Nature to orient, History to recall details from merchants, Perception to spot features. - Allow for some days to have a travel scene. This may be a semi-random encounter, a sub-skill-challenge, an RP moment, etc. The scene can impact the skill challenge. An example: Heading to Draj from Raam, the first day is on the road. They pass a Raamite merchant for an RP opportunity, using Diplomacy to gain some travel tips (as well as info pertinent to the overall plot). They make a group endurance check. On the second day they use perception and spot a group of Draji military. The party decides to head off the road and avoid them, making stealth checks and endurance/athletics/acrob checks to quickly but quietly get off the road. This might be its own mini-skill challenge. Perhaps the PCs now travel off the road. The next day Endurance is higher and there is a wilderness encounter. This kind of approach has produced good results for me. The mix of framework that the PCs can grasp and encounters to spice it up keep it interesting and dynamic.
#6 Centauri Apr 25, 2011 17:07:02	His method is similar to something I have played with. At a high level, you provide 'travel scenes' as they progress through their wastes. These might have a random feel, but are something you cook up ahead of time and adjust based on what the party does. You can combine this with a skill challenge. That's basically what I do with skill challenges in general, be it a travel scene or what have you. I then weave a five- to ten-minute story, based on how well they are progressing in terms of their skills, and on the "beats" I come up with earlier or improvise on the spot. Especially in travel scenarios, it's convenient for me to have some kind of a track that allows me to tell them about how close they (think they) are to their destination. I highly recommend that you avoid running anything as just a single skill challenge. Always try to run at least two at once, or combine it with combat. What I have considered doing is focusing more on the in-city preparations for travel rather than the travel itself, which, lets face it is either going to be incredibly boring (if they prepared right) or incredibly deadly (if they didn't).
#7 Raddu76 May 02, 2011 20:28:16	Here's a skill challenge I used in on the journey from south of Fort Kalvis (on the Peoples ROad) to Altaruk. As you can see, not a standard skill challenge, but it worked well: Day 1) Traveling the People's Road is easy, the paved stones make for fast walking and you are accompanied by the clicks of the kank claws on the cobblestones. You pass through a ruined villaged. The smell of charred bodies nauseates some of you and makes other's hungry. You come upon a large pyre. The ragtag group of villages look at you with interest. They have have various farm implements and approach you with menace. One man steps forward, fresh wounds are apparent and dirt covers his face. "There's a toll for passing through this village" he says, grinning. Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff checks Day 2) You leave the comfort of the Verdant Belt to enter a thin strip of sandy wastes. As you break for lunch one of the kanks wanders off. Kank Lion eats Kank: Round by round, just goin in INit bonus order. Each round each character must make an Acrobatics Check (DC 16) or fall prone, if prone, the next round fails, slide in the funnel toward the ANt Lion. Athlectics (DC 23) to climb up, 2 checks to get out. Acrobatics can be used to lasso the Kank (DC 23), Subsequent Athletics (DC 23) to pull it out, 4 success needed. (Each 30 points of damage done to the Kank Lion reduced the successes needed by 1) Giant Ant Lion Level 8 Lurker Large natural beast XP 1750 Initiative +11 Senses Perception +11; darkvision; tremmorsense HP 184 Bloodied 92 AC 24; Fortitude 23, Reflex 22, Will 20 Immune poison; Resist 10 fire; Vulnerable 5 cold Saving Throws +5 Speed 2, burow 6 The character's have 5 rounds before the Kank Lion pulls the Kank down. Success; Keep the Kank Failure: Lose the kank to the Kank Lion Day 3) Traveling through the day, you begin your journey through the rock badlands. As you take a ridge, amazingly, you can see for miles around, to the south the Estuary of the Forked Tongue stretches before you. The wind is calm and little silt clogs the air. Far to the west you see a group of what looks like some type of humanoids standing atop a small craft with a sail, they float above the silt as if they had wings. ( Raiders of Chanth on the horizon (Raiders of Chanth Dungeon #44)) Day 4) The previous day's calm is shattered by howling winds and silt scouring your skin. It getis in your mouth hair, your eyes, your ears. It blocks the sun from the sky. Perception (23), Nature (23), Heal (16 for +2 to next Per/Nat check), Group Endurance CHeck (11). For Every Per/Nat check the group must make a group Endurance CHeck. Needs 6 successes, for every 2 failures they lose a day returning to the road. After 2 failed checks, Diplomacy can be used to calm arguing parties. Day ?) You leave the rocky badlands and are grateful for the protection of the Altaruk Range peaks. The silt storm was large and even in the protected walls of the mountains large drifts of silt have piled along the trial, footing is precarious and care must be taken to maneuver the kanks and yourselves. Acrobatics, Althetics, Endurance (16), 6 successes needed, every 3 failures, a kank tumbles down a slope to it's death.
#8 Raddu76 May 02, 2011 20:36:41	Here's another skill challenge I did, sort of a reverse skill challenge if you will. "The road to Tyr was long and fraught with danger, but you made it relatively unscathed. Between Altaruk and Tyr you traveled though the foothills of the Altaruk Range, trudged through the Great Alluvial Sand Wastes where you came upon a cross-roads that led to the ruins of the city-state of Kaldinay and the fort of Fort Adros and Fort Melidor, a House Shom encampment. Who knows what dangers you faced in the sandy wastes. At the edge of the sandy wastes you ran into Fort Amber, a House Vordon holding and then Fort Skonz at the intersection of the road to Silver Spring. Finally the last stretch of wilderness was a trudge toward the Ringing Mountains and Tyr brought you through deep rutted rocky badlands that hold untold dangers from halfling raiding tribes, human slave tribes, or any number of unintelligent beasts. Once past the rocky badlands with the Golden Tower and the impressive Ziggurat of Kalak towering over the city walls you traveled along the roads of Tyrs verdant belt, through client villages where Tyrian Tempars, savage raiders, or perhaps some trading Nikaal were encountered. What's important is that you've made it to Tyr alive and you tell your tales over a mug of Tyrian Ale or perhaps fine Asticles wine. You find yourself in a tavern called the Scorched Tongue, a place of moderate repute that lives up to its reputation. A few Tyrian locals who have never seen beyond the verdant belt inquire to your stories and offer you drink to encourage. What is your tale, who did you meet upon the open road? What dangers did you overcome?" Skill Challenge: All skills are appropriate if the characters can think of a reason they would use it in a situation along the road. The trip to Tyr from Altaruk should take about 7 days. Each day have the players make a group endurance check, using the two highest scores to determine if they succeed for fail. Failure adds another day to the trip. Every other day have one party member recount an encounter they had long the way in story form, first they must roll 3 skill checks of their choice to tell the tale of the encounter. Each success is an exploit form the party member, each failure is a setback. Ask for the checks during the story to guide it. If the characters fail too many Endurance checks they may be subject to Sun Sickness. After action report:::: Additionaly, failed checks were initially supposed to impede the characters in Tyr, but I never implemented it, IE, the characters were chased out of Fort Skonz (I could have given them trouble from their pursuers in Tyr) Players said their characters talked their way out of raiders, or escaped the guard of a fort or found their way through the desert. It was sort of a flashback vignette where the players told what happened to the characters on the trip. It worked out ok...one player had nothing to contribute unfortunately, but the rest did well. I really liked using it as it gave the players a lot more narrative control than is usually in a D&D game, at least in my experience.