I have a 1st level adventure that sends a group of PCs across forested bogs in the wilderness. The object is to make it to a hidden locale within a day. Since they don't know where exactly to go I know they'll have to make a decent amount of Survival checks, but I'm wondering how exactly to run it.
Chase scene mechanics? 4e Skill Challenge style? 5 room dungeon? Please let me know your advice or what's worked for you in the past.
I think it sounds really boring to turn just finding the place at all into a challenge. Just rolling a handful of times waiting to be told you won is tedious. If I were you, I'd have them make only a check or two and then make the drama what happens when they get there.
This is why games don't have complicated multi-roll rules for say, lockpicking: it's not interesting to describe it (like combat is) and the consequences for failure aren't especially dire (again, like combat), so it just ends up tediously rolling several times until you win. Not fun.
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Create "rooms" in the wilderness; small, mapped out locales, and populate them with encounters. In each room put things to do: puzzles, monsters, and clues to the location of the hidden locale. Travel between rooms is facilitated by appropriate skill checks and/or finding and identifying the clues in each room.
To spice things up, instead of having just a linear sequence of "rooms" leading to the locale, have different clues or checks in each area lead to a different "room." Kind of like forks in a path.
@MPL's: I agree with the tenet that rolling to eventually win is boring; that's why I'm looking for a mechanic to spice it up. Basically I wanted to make getting there a test of skill with real consequences: people at the same level of skill (1st level) who wander these bogs get killed; if the party FAILS but still makes it out alive, they don't receive any help from the noble who set them on the test in the first place.
@Physics guy: that's one way to do it, kind of like the "5 room dungeon" idea. From scouring these boards and my own experiences it seems like the 4e skill challenge is kind of boring (more in line w/what MPL's was describing) so without any advice to the contrary I'd avoid that method.
Another idea I had was to run it like a chase scene. The thing chasing them would be time itself and the PCs would have a series of challenges and combats they'd have to overcome... but that would essentially just work out to Steve's idea.
Any other advice?
I disagree that a challenge to find a specific place will be boring. Anything, poorly done, can be boring.
Load your setting up with interesting details, embed a few potential plot threads in the area, and give the players meaningful choices to make.
Here's an example: while the PCs are searching for this place in the bog, unknown to the group, something hostile is searching for them!
The party meets the noble that gives them the initial test to find the hidden locale. After a dinner he proposes the test. If the party agrees, they have to leave from the hall immediately, cross the hinterlands and wilds, and make it to the Ghostwood Bogs before the dead of night so they can find a place to camp.
The first challenge is making it out into the bogs. PCs roll whatever skills they'd like; Survival, Perception, Knowledge: Local, Nature, Geography, etc. They need to make it down the right path in fading sunlight (Dim Light conditions unless fire/spells employed) to find a trail marker: an old overgrown runestone called Jevik's Fist.
Knowledge: Local (DC 10) tells us that Jevik's Fist is a divine item, often invoked by the faithful. Riddle Challenge: invoke the blessing of Jevik's Fist. If they don't want to they don't have to. If they do undertake it the riddle reveals the rite they have to perform (think: Hokey Pokey) - success = Bless effect for 1 hour; failure = Doom effect for 1 hour.
Also at the Fist the party realizes there are fresh tracks here (the guy that went ahead to the hidden locale to wait for them). If they want to follow them however they'll have a tough time (DC 20). Otherwise the tracks just seem to melt into the undergrowth.
Following the tracks will bring them to a challenge of crossing a bog; ignoring or losing the track will take them a different direction to a random encounter. The challenge continues along, every so often giving the party the chance to either find the track again or interact with a fey, a worg and an undead NPC to find their final destination.
The fey is easily explained in the wilds, as is the worg. If the party meets the skeletal champion however, it alludes to greater force and a patron directing them all (evil necromancer). The skeletal champion escaped control and fled into the bogs. Though evil he's honorable and will duel w/one of the PCs; if they succeed he'll spill more details while if he wins he simply leaves.
Anyway, when they finally get to the hidden locale they'll find signs of a struggle and several clues that suggest the guy waiting for them at the secret spot got ambushed. That will be the end of this first adventure; haven't decided if its the evil necromancer or something else in the wilds that has the NPC contact.