Our intrepid heroes needed to sneak through the ancient lava tube tunnels leading to the caldera lair of a red dragon. Rather than have them poke their heads into every last nook and cranny of the tubes trying to find the path (and getting bogged down in all the dungeoneering that goes along with it) I ran it as a Skill Challenge making liberal use of physical skills and dungeoneering skills, with the occasional knowledge check thrown in.

My goal, as the GM, was to move them through the ‘dungeon’ in about an hour, rather than taking a night or two, because this was our playtest campaign — we wanted to get to the big bad encounter as quickly as possible, but at the same time, the group and I didn’t want to simply wave our hands and say “you arrive”.

The Skill Challenge approach allowed for a sense of travel and adventure, without having to resort to mapping five foot squares.