I think you are assuming that I'm asking for hard , codified rules for the things mentioned. This is not the case, it's actually the opposite, the DMG has rules for stuff like foraging, how much food/water you need per day, getting lost, high altitude etc, and no one uses them because they are terribly boring and are just a waste of time because they don't impact the story or game in any meaningful way.
- This is our fault as DMs, not the fault of the writers of the system. If you personally find this item boring, you're likely to put it into your game as boring, useless and not fun. Also, there are plenty of people that don't like to play inventory management, and will handwave rations, rope.. all or some of it, because they've been made to believe that it's just too hard to do. I personally use them, and they do impact the story and the game. Not using something, doesn't mean that it's useless, it's unused or more accurately: under utilized.
What's missing are guidelines on how to make travel fun and interesting. They mention encounter tables but don't give examples. They give tables of settlements monuments, weird locals but nothing that happens if the players actually interact with them.
- Granted, random encounter tables are not published in the DMG, but included in XGtE. I'm not sure there is a one-size-fits-all table of locations and interactions that will fit in every game. Asking for there to be a hard, codified table will likely lead to people thinking that it *has* to be that way. 'Cause the rulez says so! I can see using the table as a basis for building your own, but that suggestion already exists... Creating Random Encounter Tables.... and isn't used. (And yes, there is a table to reference, as well as tables of creatures by environment, and CR.. mostly unused or at the very least not referenced.)
I might point out that a tool isn't useful just sitting on the bench. It has to be used to determine its usefulness. If a tool is used poorly, or not at all, it's not the fault of the tool. Overall, I think that we agree that some things need to be improved, I'm suggesting that our expectations of what the system is/not responsible for might need more improvement than the system itself.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I think you are assuming that I'm asking for hard , codified rules for the things mentioned. This is not the case, it's actually the opposite, the DMG has rules for stuff like foraging, how much food/water you need per day, getting lost, high altitude etc, and no one uses them because they are terribly boring and are just a waste of time because they don't impact the story or game in any meaningful way.
What's missing are guidelines on how to make travel fun and interesting. They mention encounter tables but don't give examples. They give tables of settlements monuments, weird locals but nothing that happens if the players actually interact with them.
Just giving examples of interesting fun encounters would do much more to help new DMs than 2 pages of random tables for randomly generating a settlement.
Things like: Ambushes, Traps, lost/fleeing/migrating travelers, merchants, thieves, con-men, attacks when camping, wandering monsters, abandoned wagons/homes, lost pets, etc.
Maybe categories of things like complications, combat encounter, social, skill challenge.
I think I misinterpreted your list since it sounded to me like those were things you wanted to see, not a list of things that already don't work all that well and which would be very difficult or impossible to make work well.
I also like your lists of things that could have greater coverage - not extra details but the broader aspects of how to run that sort of content.
If DMing wasn't such an individual activity (there are common elements but every DM I have met does things at least a bit differently and often radically differently) then it would be nice to have some DMing tutorials (there is some good content from individual contributors out there but it is a mixed bag in my opinion).
However, even without that, it might be worthwhile for WotC to provide specific tutorials to supplement the PHB and DMG. Since they are moving towards digital anyway, they might as well leverage it to have WotC produced digital content aimed at helping new DMs get off the ground (and not some sort of rambling chat with a game designer).
e.g.
"Running a combat encounter"
"Running a social encounter"
"Running exploration and travel sessions and making them fun" (e.g. don't actually say to the players "I'm rolling to see if there is a random encounter, hang on a sec" - Lol, talk about breaking any sort of immersion you might be setting up - Random Encounters should NOT exist from a player perspective - the players should ideally never know the difference between something that is pre-written, something that is random, or something the DM just made up 30 seconds ago)
"Let's create an encounter" - give a set of parameters to 5 different DMs and have them each walk through their process for creating the encounter.
"Casting Spells 101"
"The Monster and NPC stat blocks and what to watch for"
"So you want to DM. How do you prepare :)" - maybe have 5 different DMs walk through preparation for running an encounter - maybe the ones created above
Anyway, multi-media content could be used to supplement the published books and could be linked to directly from the D&D Beyond website.
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- This is our fault as DMs, not the fault of the writers of the system. If you personally find this item boring, you're likely to put it into your game as boring, useless and not fun. Also, there are plenty of people that don't like to play inventory management, and will handwave rations, rope.. all or some of it, because they've been made to believe that it's just too hard to do. I personally use them, and they do impact the story and the game. Not using something, doesn't mean that it's useless, it's unused or more accurately: under utilized.
- Granted, random encounter tables are not published in the DMG, but included in XGtE. I'm not sure there is a one-size-fits-all table of locations and interactions that will fit in every game. Asking for there to be a hard, codified table will likely lead to people thinking that it *has* to be that way. 'Cause the rulez says so! I can see using the table as a basis for building your own, but that suggestion already exists... Creating Random Encounter Tables.... and isn't used. (And yes, there is a table to reference, as well as tables of creatures by environment, and CR.. mostly unused or at the very least not referenced.)
I might point out that a tool isn't useful just sitting on the bench. It has to be used to determine its usefulness. If a tool is used poorly, or not at all, it's not the fault of the tool. Overall, I think that we agree that some things need to be improved, I'm suggesting that our expectations of what the system is/not responsible for might need more improvement than the system itself.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I think I misinterpreted your list since it sounded to me like those were things you wanted to see, not a list of things that already don't work all that well and which would be very difficult or impossible to make work well.
I also like your lists of things that could have greater coverage - not extra details but the broader aspects of how to run that sort of content.
If DMing wasn't such an individual activity (there are common elements but every DM I have met does things at least a bit differently and often radically differently) then it would be nice to have some DMing tutorials (there is some good content from individual contributors out there but it is a mixed bag in my opinion).
However, even without that, it might be worthwhile for WotC to provide specific tutorials to supplement the PHB and DMG. Since they are moving towards digital anyway, they might as well leverage it to have WotC produced digital content aimed at helping new DMs get off the ground (and not some sort of rambling chat with a game designer).
e.g.
"Running a combat encounter"
"Running a social encounter"
"Running exploration and travel sessions and making them fun" (e.g. don't actually say to the players "I'm rolling to see if there is a random encounter, hang on a sec" - Lol, talk about breaking any sort of immersion you might be setting up - Random Encounters should NOT exist from a player perspective - the players should ideally never know the difference between something that is pre-written, something that is random, or something the DM just made up 30 seconds ago)
"Let's create an encounter" - give a set of parameters to 5 different DMs and have them each walk through their process for creating the encounter.
"Casting Spells 101"
"The Monster and NPC stat blocks and what to watch for"
"So you want to DM. How do you prepare :)" - maybe have 5 different DMs walk through preparation for running an encounter - maybe the ones created above
Anyway, multi-media content could be used to supplement the published books and could be linked to directly from the D&D Beyond website.