Challenge Discussion Thread

[Haschel Cedricson]

Woo, more opportunities for me to wax on about design philosophy.

First of all, I like to follow a general rule when designing a game. One-third of the challenges in your game should be 100% brand-new. One-third should be old challenges but with some sort of twist or change. The remaining third can be classic challenges that are basically unchanged. The ratios don't have to be perfect but they should be your starting point. In addition, once you've modded games you may start to develop "signature challenges". It wouldn't be a CC game without a Jigsong; if I'm the mod in charge of design you will probably see Codenames or the Endurance Essay at some point; Broseidon has that ball-balancing thing he made in Unity four years ago. Those don't count towards the ratio; they are freebies.

There's another useful trio of categories when it comes to designing challenges for the pre-merge.
1) Tribe vs Tribe. In this type of challenge, the tribes will directly face off somehow. The actions one tribe takes will directly affect the actions taken by the other tribe. Examples: Building A Case from PD, Buckball Brawl from Equestria, the spam challenge from KSS/BS
2) Tribe vs Challenge: In this type of challenge, everybody on the tribe will work together in order to accomplish some sort of task. Examples: Fingerprints and Ransom Note from PD, Cooking With Link from PvCvW, Grand Galloping Gala from Equestria
3) Player vs Challenge: This is a glorified Individual Immunity challenge, except the scores are somehow collated and used to assign tribal immunity instead. Examples: Every challenge in Flash Mob, Sudoku Roulette in BS, Interpol Tax in PD

Again, numbers don't have to be perfect but you should strive for an equal amount of these categories pre-merge. In addition, I personally like to make the first challenge Tribe vs Challenge as a way to promote bonding.

The last thing to consider when designing challenges is looking to see what skill sets are being tested. Puzzles are great, but if EVERY challenge is a puzzle then things start to feel stagnant (looking at you, TRTWIUAA). You can double up sometimes, but if you do then try to have one challenge be pre-merge and the other be post-merge. For example, you should not have two memory challenges post-merge. It doesn't matter what they are trying to memorize in each one; they will still feel like the same challenge. Same applies to every skill set, be it trivia, endurance, hand-eye coordination, etc.

I have a lot more thoughts but these are the basics. Not every moderator is going to approach challenge design this way and that's fine. If it's your first (few) games, though, I highly recommend using these as a guide.

[Haschel Cedricson]

Can we get rid of the challenge where you have to pick numbers on a pyramid and every time someone always says they'll do 1 for every level?

I don’t know about scrapping it entirely but it definitely needs a new twist. Hogwarts tried something where players could also booby-trap a space. That’s still a lot of RNG though.

[Haschel Cedricson]

Re: Jigsaws

I'm a big fan of the "do a task that determines how big your jigsaw puzzle is, THEN do the jigsaw."