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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5492609" data-attributes="member: 42582">LostSoul, that's a good question.The two things that come to mind straight away are: (i) guidelines on adventure preparation; and (ii) skill challenge guidelines.(1) The DMG and DMG2 talk a lot about encounter design, but when it comes to adventures don't have much to say about how to handle dynamic scenarios, coming up with and resolving encounters on the fly.(2) The skill challenge guidelines in both the PHB and the DMG are fairly sound, with discussions of the players needing to explain how their PCs engage the situation, and the GM having the responsibility of resolving that engagement. But the way the examples are written up give the impression of a very formal and rigid structure. This contrasts with (for example) the scenarios in the original HeroWars Narrator's Book, which make it clear that the contests outlined, and the options mentioned as part of them, are just guidelines to the GM for how to handle some of the likely ways the players will tackle the situation.A good part of the DMG is its discussion of player-initiated quests and player item wishlists. But there is not much discussion of how to link these into adventure and skill challenge design. Which compounds (1) and (2) above, and highlights the inadequacy of the rulebooks in these respects.Besides these particular points, there is the broader failure of the rulebooks to give guidance to the GM about how to prepare encounters and adventures the perspective of a GM - how different elements can be combined to establish a certain sort of situation for example, or how various approaches to resolution will shape the unfolding campaign story. (This is a fairly stark contrast with the advice on tactical encounter design, which does deal with this sort of stuff.)The two exceptions I can think of to this, which talk about the gameworld from the point of view of the game rather than from the ingame perspective, are (i) the discussion of languages in the DMG, which does tackle languages in this sort of way, and (ii) Worlds and Monsters, which talks about monsters and the planes, and how they can be used as game elements.</blockquote>

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