Extended Challenge

These Extended Challenge cards are meant to visually represent the ladder of individual tests that characters may face in order to tackle some larger challenge. Many games make use of extended challenges (FATE, Spirit of the Century, D&D 4e). I won't go into how to run an Extended Challenge since those games cover it in detail, but what's missing is some sort of visual cue to the players to let them know how far along in the challenge they are and how far they have left to go...as well as the consequences of their failures. My goal with these cards was to provide that cue.

Due to the cards that describe the difficulty level for the tasks at each level of the ladder, this set of cards is mainly geared toward Spirit of the Century or FATE.

To layout an extended challenge using these cards, first determine the difficulty of the lowest level of success on the ladder. Place the appropriate descriptive 'Difficulty' card at that level (Average, Fair, Good, Great). Next determine the number of successes needed at that level. Place a number of 'Challenge' cards next to the Difficulty card equal to the number of successes needed. For the next highest difficulty you don't need to place a difficulty card (although you can of course) since that's implied. Just place the appropriate number of Challenge cards in a row for each level. At the top of the ladder the last Challenge card you place should actually be the 'Complete' card.

As an option, next to the ladder, you can place a number of 'Complication' cards equal to the number of complications that the characters could run into if they fail their individual tests.

It might look something like this:

[Complete]
[] (Great)
[] [] (Good)
[] [] (Fair)
[] [] [] [Average]

[] [] [] (Complications)

Each time the characters get a success or failure, flip the appropriate card over. Once the 'Complete' card gets flipped over, the challenge ends successfully. For each 'Complication' card that gets flipped over, a complication is encountered.

If you find these cards fun or useful please drop me a line.

The cards are copyright 2008 by me, Justin Evans through SinisterGame.com, but feel free to print them out and use them as much as you want for personal use. If anybody is interested in publishing them commercially please contact me.

Printing:

There are two PDF files available. Each is 4 pages long. One is designed to be printed on Avery 8871 double sided business cards. The other has crop marks included in case you want to print the cards on regular card stock and cut them yourself.

Print order:

• Page 2 is the back of Page 1.
• Page 4 is the back of Page 3.

Make sure 'Page Scaling' is set to 'None' in Adobe Reader otherwise your cards won't line up correctly with the pre-cut business cards.