I hew as close as I can to the 4th Edition rules, but I have a few preferred ways of doing things.

I make a lot of information available to players that is normally hidden.

In the status information appended to combat description, and to certain other posts, there will be information that is commonly hidden, such as: hit point values, defenses, resistances, vulnerabilities, etc. Players are expected to be aware of these things. If they choose to have their character not be aware, that is fine, but I feel that there are generally ways for the characters to be aware of these things, without knowledge checks, and the knowledge allows combat to run more smoothly.

I will post a thread that contain the details of monsters, traps and skill challenges. Players who don't want to see "spoilers" can simply avoid this thread, but in deference to those who may want to know some things yet not everything, I will enclose the information in spoiler tags.

I generally disclose at least the existence of traps. I tend not to use "gotcha" traps. This is for several reasons, the most important of which is that it disrupts the flow of the action if I have to say, after a turn is posted, "You moved over a trap trigger therefore your turn can't proceed as you described."

I disclose most readied actions and their triggers to players, and ask that players do the same and that everyone be accepting of anyone acting strategically on the information.

If you're wondering what the use of Insight, Perception and knowledge skills is, I try to cover that elsewhere in this thread.

Please don't roll a skill check unless I call for one. This is the one situation in which I am willing to suffer additional slowness for the sake of clarity and overall fun. If we're at this for a while, we might get to where players can call their own skill checks, but for now, please let me do it.

If you're interested in my reasoning for this, please hover over the spoiler text.

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Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
I will generally call for skill checks when an action has been committed to that has the potential to change the scene directly, or has a chance of failing in an interesting way. When I say "action" I'm talking about some real, overt change: moving into a new location, activating something, spending significant amounts of time, saying words that can't be taken back. What I'm not talking about are things like thinking, looking at something, or trying to recall information.

So, I won't call for a Perception check if a character is looking to see if there's an ambush laid ahead. I won't call for an Arcana check if someone is trying to figure out what lever to pull. I would instead call for a Perception check when the party has decided to move forward and an ambush is present; success would mean that the PC was not surprised by the ambush, failure would mean they were, but either way the ambush is happening. I would call for the Arcana check when they pull one of the levers; success would mean they pulled the correct one, failure would mean they did not.

The point of this is to bias the game for action, not avoidance. I very much do not like rolls intended to gather a lot of information before moving forward, because this delays any action and often leads to protracted discussion, and more questions and more rolls.

I will tell you information that I have, if you want to know it. I will happily share whether or not there's an ambush. If you want to avoid it, I can create a skill challenge to enable that possibility. I can't tell you which lever is the right one, but I can tell you what will happen if your Arcana roll results in you pulling the wrong one. I'm not trying to entrap you, and if you don't want to proceed given the information I provide, you don't have to. There should be other options. But I may post a question to understand better what challenges you'd be more willing to face.

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If you're eager to use one of your skills, please let me know that, along with what your intended goal for the skill use is, and I'll let you know the kind of action I'd be looking for to trigger such a roll.

The following is not a rule variant, but clarification. Many people believe the game works otherwise:
When rolled for a skill check, natural 1s do not result in an automatic failure, or incur any harsher penalties. If someone's skill modifier is high enough for them to succeed on a 1, then they succeed.

When rolled for a skill check, natural 20s do not result in an automatic success, or garner any additional benefits. If someone's skill modifier is low enough for them to fail on a 20, then they fail.

If an effect gets better or worse with a high or low roll, a 20 or a 1 has its normal effect according to the effect. For instance, it is possible that a very low result on a Thievery check can have consequences other than lack of success. With one's skill modifier, a 1 might still be enough to avoid those circumstances.

At the start of combat, or as soon as possible after the start, I'll post the "status block." This will give the participants of the encounter, in initiative order, along with their HP, defenses and, in the case of monsters, their melee basic attack. Following this will be a summary of their position and state.

Location won't be absolute. It will usually be in reference to something else in the situation. "Adjacent to the pillar," "engaged with the cleric," "several moves away from the party," etc. Use your best judgment in determining the information you need to take your turn. If you don't think something is the case, then it probably isn't. If you do think it's the case, then it probably is. If you're not sure, err on the side of doing something fun.

If something can't be done, I'll try to make that clear. For example I might say "the raiders are spaced far enough apart that only a really big burst could hit more than 2," or "The ranger can't move without provoking an opportunity attack." If I don't say something like that, then it's not necessarily true, and you can decide the truth for yourself.

So, on your turn, post a description of your actions, followed by the mechanics for it in a clearly separate block of information, either with a line between them and the prose, or in a different color or both. At the end of the post, include the status block, updated to reflect any changes due to your actions. Always work from the most recent status block.

You can also update to fix errors from previous turns. I prefer this to halting progress and redoing things, as this is likely to lead to confusion.

If you are relying on some aspect of positioning or conditions to allow or disallow something in combat, it behooves you to state it as specifically as possible.

Ultimately, what allows this to work is trust. As this is also important to most other aspects of this imagination-based hobby, I do my best to build it and not squander it, but it can take time and a little risk. I try not to start out with particularly high stakes, and part of the point of goal-based encounters is so that losing doesn't rip one's character from them.

Outside of combat, or when not involved in combat (i.e. they haven't been attacking or getting attacked) an invisible creature can potentially be totally unseen and unnoticed.

In combat, or while involved in combat (i.e. they have been attacking or are getting attacked) an invisible creature is invisible per the rules, with one exception: their location is known..

This has the following effects:
✦ An invisible creature can’t be seen by normal forms of vision. While the creature's location is known, they cannot be seen for the purposes of powers and abilities that require being able to "see" their target. For example, even though a warlord knows that there is an invisible enemy within 10 of him, he cannot target that creature with own the battlefield, as that power targets only enemies the warlord can see.
✦ It has total concealment against any enemy that can’t see it (as normal).
✦ It has combat advantage against any enemy that can’t see it (but it still has to be able to see the enemy) (as normal).
✦ It doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks from enemies that can’t see it (as normal - in fact this is redundant, as an opportunity attack requires being able to see the target).
✦ It is not necessary to guess where a target is in order to move toward them, aim an attack at them (as long as the attack doesn't refer to seeing the target).

Total concealment means that melee and ranged attacks against the invisible creature still take a -5 penalty. That and their ability to move with relative impunity I think still makes invisibility powerful, while allowing us to use it without a map. I frankly have never liked the "guess a square" approach to attacking invisible targets.

In short, don't take "invisible" and "see" too literally. In combat, they're more like keywords than what they literally mean.

Skill DCs for Level 2:
Easy: 9
Moderate: 13
Hard: 20

As alluded to above, I prefer to reserve skill rolling for when it really "matters," when there's something significant to be gained from success and something significant to be lost by failure. "Looking around" doesn't, to me, require a check, but "looking around while running through room as you're chased by guards" would.

But, I realize that there's more to skills than that. People like to roll them to see what their character is "like," to inject a little randomness into the game, and for other reasons. But it's tricky for me to adjudicate all of that, to convey that I've seen your roll, and that it made some kind of a difference.

So, here's what I propose:

Outside of combat or any kind of risk-based situation, feel free to roll skills when you take actions, if that makes sense to you. Reference the DCs at the top of this thread, to determine the quality of the roll. You get to decide whether its Easy, Moderate or Hard. Generally it's going to be Easy.

Basically, assume you succeed at whatever you're doing, but if you roll below the DC, it didn't go as smoothly as you hoped. A stutter, a stumble, a faux pas. You describe that as works for you. I'm sure we'd all be happy to chip in, if needed.

I'll handle the reaction or response from NPCs or the environment, if any and I'll base that on the description of your roll. So, if you choose to roll Diplomacy when talking to an NPC and you fail and describe your failure as getting tongue-tied, I might have the NPC respond more patronizingly than normal.

If you're trying to gain information, you can probably get it in these kinds of low-stakes situations, it helps me to know why you want it, what you're planning to accomplish by knowing it. Raw info dumps rarely sink into long-term memory.

The key caveat is that with nothing at stake there's nothing to be gained. There's not meant to be XP or treasure benefit from these kinds of rolls. Those kinds of rewards are meant to come from risk. What I'm talking about here is getting to use your skills to help you decide how to roleplay the actions you're taking.

This is a draft concept, so I'm open to thoughts privately or in the out-of-character thread.

PCs can use a limited number of daily item powers, depending on their tier and number of milestones achieved. Heroic characters can use one daily item power per day, and they gain another use at every milestone.

Skill challenges operate on the updated DMG rules and Rules Compendium DC numbers.