Mini-games within an existing system: Is it doable?
JSDiamond:
It's doable. A mini-game (IMO) should be short and fun and it doesn't need to use the system core. I put a mini-game into one of my sci-fi games; it was a "war" game about a bunch of backstabbing colonists farming space-turnips.
Anders Gabrielsson:
This was (kind of) my approach to making skill challenges in 4E interesting. I did still use skill checks, but the meaning of success and failure would be different than just counting them up.
The drawback was that it got to be too much work, so my current project is to make a general framework for game-mechanically interesting skill challenges instead.
Anyway, my main issue with using minigames that move outside the normal game mechanics is that they can a) break immersion, b) make character design choices irrelevant by relying more in player skill than character ability and c) leave the other players feeling left out if they can't contribute meaningfully. All of these can be prevented by careful design and managing of expectations, but that requires going way beyond the "oh, this is a neat idea!" level which is where, speaking from my own experience, one often ends up.
Taking the Mastermind example from above, it might or might not break immersion depending on the players. It still leaves character ability as a meaningful component, but player skill becomes much more important - if you want to play a good lockbreaker you'd better be good at Mastermind in addition to buying up the relevant skill. If it's used in situations where there is nothing else important to do - nothing to guard against etc - the other players will be left out.
I'd like to draw a parallell to rolling for social skills vs. acting out the scene, where the latter in this context can be viewed as somewhat similar to an improv theatre mini-game. Usually it doesn't break immersion (indeed, the argument for it is usually that it strengthens it), but it can leave players who are less talkative feeling left out and depending on how it's handled can definitely replace character ability with player skill.
(By the way, when I talk about players feeling left out I don't mean that they shouldn't take responsibility for their own experiences and whatnot, only that this may require the GM to focus more on other players which can create tension.)
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