Needing help with skill creativity.

[Bigkrieg]

Hello all,
I am running an adventure tomorrow night with a dungeon map created from the website: http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

I am having some difficulty coming up with ideas for obstacles and ideas for ways the PCs can use a variety of skills.

The dungeon represents and Imperial base located in some ruins of an ancient civilization. The base serves a research facility for the ruins and a torture/interrogation facility for an Imperial Inquisitor. 2 players are prisoners in the base while the other 2 will be attempting to rescue them.

Again, any ideas for creative ways to make the players use a variety of skills would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[Bigkrieg]

I forgot to mention that the planet they are on is "heavy gravity." If players wander off the safe zones, the gravity will crush and begin to suffocate them.

[vanir]

It's more in how the GM bases his point of view than forcing the players to make skill rolls.

What you want to do is create a point of view about how to GM, don't tell a story, let the dice tell the story you just create the opportunities to roll dice and narrate the story they tell.

You mentioned a heavy gravity world. "If players wander off the safe zones, the gravity will crush and begin to suffocate them."

Well you don't go ahead and say that to them unless you're speaking through a rather excitable and overly imaginative teenager NPC.
You might have a sign near any entry point to the heavy-grav zones from the PC area, which says something like "Warning, you are entering a heavy gravity zone, pressure suits advised."

Point one: any problem you place before the PCs is one to solve, which they do using skills. You don't have an insta-death environment, you have one which causes the players to make dice rolls. That solves your dilemma about making players roll skills. It's the things you do as a GM which forces them to make skill rolls, if you tell the story then make planned dice roll events, then continue telling a story you create a schizm of PC roles, one to roll dice when the GM instructs, second to sit around listening to the GM tell a story you have no real interaction with and never really influence.

The GM is really more a coach than a ruler. The players create the story, the GM coordinates it with each other and within the SWU gaming environment.

The adventure plot is really just a foundation the dice can completely alter. The GM needs dice to be rolled to tell the story of the dice as it influences events which happen. If the PCs step into a heavy gravity environment, they roll skills and attributes and then the GM knows what happened, you don't really know before then.

So everything the players do involves a skill roll, everything. Most are simply so superfluous it's actually disruptive to the gameplay to make PCs roll them all.

I want to open a door? This is SWU RPG. I walk over to the door. There is no knob, what do I do? I check my technical, door locks, skill = security, how is this door secured? To the side is an electronic panel, is that the house alarm? I roll easy on my security and grew up in Mos Eisly so I should realize the panel is the door control and it's use is fairly intuitive: green for open, red for closed, code in for lock and keycard to enter.

So opening the damn door is by default a skill roll. Just too superfluous to make PCs do it every time.

You want the PCs to roll more skills, get more creative with skills, find more need for broad skills, redraw the line as a GM on which point you start making PCs roll dice when they say "I do this..."
All the time.

[vanir]

Here's a couple of techniques we use in our group.
For Jedi, a prerequisite of Scholar: Jedi Lore 5D or more in order to use Lightsabre Repair to construct a lightsabre from parts.
In unit combat, initiative is resolved using the appropriate Tactics specialization (Squads for squad level action, capital ships for cruiser battles, etc.).
Blasters and other carried equipment do break down. Repair skills, tools and parts are often required to repair them in the field, otherwise retail skills are used to replace it, eg. planetary systems for planet/city information about stores and markets, or streetwise or both, tech/repair skills related to various items does improve changes of picking up good quality items or those with good specs, value to know the value of the item in a given market, and bargain to haggle a good local price.
Also as you will find using alien environments, they are best played out as causing skill rolls rather than PC limitations. A player inadvertantly stepping into a deadly alien environment should get a survival skill roll to reverse the decision before fully committed to the point beyond no return (eg. "...it hits him as he begins to step through, roll a survival check to leap back and avoid a terrible fate"). If he found himself irrevocably exposed then stamina, survival and first aid seem naturally relevent skills to determine any biohazardous damage and rates of damage. People with high STR attribute and skills tend to handle heavy grav worlds just fine, essentially it imposes a penalty on physical attributes like STR and DEX and high attribute dice naturally offset this. Alternatively an easy survival roll would tell you an exoskeleton type of pressure suit would be just perfect to negate the penalties, you might rule ad hoc that essentially any powersuit with a +1D bonus to STR attribute or skills negates the regular habitable heavy gravity worlds. The trick about very heavy gravity worlds is pressure density if they have an atmosphere, so the issue isn't the gravity, it's the pressure and a lot like walking the surface of Venus (crushed, melted, boiled away and compressed into a very small space all at the same time). A tough SWU pressure suit could handle it for a limited time but you wouldn't want to go building a city there.

These circumstantial skill rolls will by default get players putting CP into relevent skills because they affect PC performance that players want to control themselves, high skill rolls is the only way to do that reliably. Now, once Players start putting CP into a non-combat skill they want as many ways of gaining as much benefit from taking that skill as possible, they only need a little encouragement to start getting creative about using these skills to affect gameplay.

eg. Tactics also gives dice benefits to troops under command, such as a cover bonus for the next combat scene environment such as crossing open ground under fire, enough debris that a moderate tactics for coordinated movement through cover gives a 1/4 cover bonus for that scene. Tactics skills can elevate circumstantial PC roles such as when part of a Rebel strike team or similar military or paramilitary campaign, a good tactics roll can represent a terrific battleplan the PC soldier just thought of that the unit commander would definitely want to hear. So it has combat benefits, and roleplay benefits for the Player to take this skill.

Aside from circumstantial skill rolls you have elective skill rolls. These are rolls the PC himself is obliged to perform in order to guage the success of his declared actions during all gameplay. Starting up a freighter is an easy space transports repair but involves a 10min checklist and safety routine, doing it in 1min takes a moderate repair and in one combat round a heroic. The PC wants to fire up his freighter you say, okay you pull out the 10min checklist and safety routine and start crossing off the list as you run through the system. It'll take about ten minutes. But if the PC wants to try firing her up in 1 minute no fuss then make a moderate space transports repair roll to use your own initiative to start up central systems and get the ship off the ground.
This sort of method: improving PC performance by introduction of skill rolls for mundane actions gets the Players used to the idea of thinking in skills terms whenever declaring actions of any kind. Stepping from here to there isn't an unconscious action as we normally assume, it's a dexterity based skill and if you've got enough dice to do it easily then it just seems like an unconscious action, and generally you don't have to roll.

So the way you think about it is the PCs are using skills constantly, but you're just not forcing them to roll for anything that would normally be too easy to bother with.
Opening a regular door doesn't normally involve a security roll (very easy), but as soon as someone locks it the door now requires a security roll (modified by tools available, type of lock, lockbreaking method, etc.). The PC was already using that skill to go through a door, he just didn't have to bother rolling until someone locked it.
What I do is continually relate every PC statement or declaration with skills to roll to decide whether or not the PC gets his way, you have to multitask your concentration as Players talk and make declarations, because when one says "Okay I'm going back to the ship," the GM suddenly has to get individual Perception, streetwise, survival or any number of other circumstantial skill rolls, modified as necessary to get a quick mental image of how that walk back to the ship works out for him on that particular time/place.

Where you can run into problems is when Players assume PC knowledge like say operating blasters, that is, readying a typical blaster for firing, something PCs normally don't have to roll for so something they might assume PC knowledge or inherent understanding of. Doesn't really work that way. It is a blaster repair roll to understand how to ready a blaster for firing, reload one or use any other features, but these are such common knowledge in much of the galaxy and the difficulties so minor they don't have to roll every time they pull a blaster. But if one walks up to an E-Web for the first time, who knows how the power conduits are connected, how to operate the power generator at the correct settings, how the gun is safely readied? These might require a moderate blaster repair the first time someone does it, lowered in difficulty as they become more familiar with the specific weapon.

So that's why the theme is that everything is a skill roll, everything the PC wants to do. It's just that most mundane things are too easy to bother rolling. Get players used to that and they'll start getting creative with influencing gameplay using CP skills expenditure themselves.
Once they see that dice influence the game, and they can build dice in skills at their discretion, you'll find them taking to it like a duck to water. The object for PCs is to run their own game the GM narrates, they do this with skill rolls and will enjoy doing it because it means with enough dice they control every aspect of the game. Let them.

A good way to exercise your GM style in getting players to rely heavily on skills uses, is by simple starting with babysteps and making them roll for every mundane skill use. As the Players to bear with you while you try out a GM technique, and every time one PC wants to do something, like open a door, ask him to roll a security roll (very easy). Walk down the street, running skill check (very easy). Tedious at first but if you just get players to roll for every action the first time they do it, then whenever the difficulty modifier changes, eg. just as it starts getting tedious making PCs roll running skill to walk down the street, a sudden gale blows into the street from some sort of weather phenomenon and tears a nearby piece of roofing. People start panicking in the street and other pieces of debris are blown around, some injuring pedestrians. The street is slightly more difficult to negotiate due to panicking traffic (up from v.easy to easy), whilst now the PC must elect a move rate and MAP a dodge to avoid getting hit by debris. He might not have enough dice in running skill to make the ~7 minimum terrain difficulty, despite having plenty of dice in dodge to avoid debris, he might trip over and just as a large piece of debris is about to fall on him he rolls out of the way and scampers to his feet but stumbles, etc.

It's really when the GM gets skills heavy that the game gets skills heavy. It can be tedious at first but the Players will thank you in the long run when they can play so much of a role both during scenes and in combat using a wide variety of skills at their discretion, heavily influencing gameplay in a tremendous amount of ways. That's when it gets interesting and most fun.

My Coynite rolled so low on a bureacracy once he farted at a monarch when he was supposed to bow, and here's me as the Player looking at the woeful dice result and the GMs description of what just happened to me, trying hard to explain in RP to armed guards the uncouth behaviour but just farting more so it was a good move to just step back and be quiet. That's what the dice do. A 3 metre smelly coynite with battlearmour and a 1D in bureacracy probably isn't the bureacrat you want greeting a local monarch, you want him in the background keeping quiet.
But Players often depart what their PC sheet can do using their own Player knowledge rather than PC knowledge, so you have to make them do everything, even sometimes their own roleplay freedom, come down to making skill rolls to guage its success or failure.
Next time my coynite wanted to greet a monarch, he had to put a stack of skill dice in bureacracy, cultures, languages, things that help the PC perform that kind of task with ease and thus with some personality, otherwise the dice kind of decide how a PC personality is perceived by the gaming world NPCs. This in particular really needs to be GM enforced to help instruct Players how to get the most out of their template development selections, and gives more involving roles for PCs with different skills specializing in different Party tasks.

[schnarre]

...With this being a heavy-gravity world, the Survival skill seems an obvious one. Another would likely be Stamina (for getting around this world--especially if they don't have any gear to handle such an environment).
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The man who thinks he knows everything is most annoying for those of us that do.

[garhkal]

Stamina might help, but so too will base str, to see how badly you get "Pulled down". So too will lifting.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[vanir]

Heavy gravity worlds escalate penalties quickly because of pressure-density. You'd probably place an escalation house rule for something simple like every bar of pressure-density incurs 1D attribute penalty which goes first STR, then DEX, then back to STR and you just keep going until the PC runs out of attribute dice and needs a pressure suit with an exoskeleton (an envirosealed powersuit like a modified Krail would do, but something like a Telgorn pod is designed better for it).

Most regular heavy gravity worlds that still have a livable atmosphere and otherwise earth-like conditions would run to 1.5-2.0 bar, or -1D STR and raise stamina check difficulties, or -1D STR and -1D DEX for the extreme ones. But once you get very heavy gravity, significantly heavier than earth's, it causes a different atmospheric composition due to raised escape velocity for one, and raises the pressure-density in general of an area so it's like being inside a combustion engine on the compression stroke and at the very least is going to give you a big headache, ie. it's not really a livable environment for a great number of reasons...meaning there's a point where an exoskeleton and a pressure suit with artificial environment are just required and it comes along pretty quickly when you start making significant gravity increase.

Worlds that are "heavy gravity" and incur attribute penalty, these mean only marginally heavier than 1 bar, 1.5 bar is more than enough to feel and have serious impact. The conditions for livable worlds are actually extremely narrow in scope.