An idea for DMG 3 (make it happen, WotC!)

[AbdulAlhazred]

I agree that a step-by-step guide to improvisation would have limited use, but I'd love to see more DM emphasis on mechanical design philosophy, conveying why templates, powers, skills, feats, items, monsters, encounters are built the way they are, and sharing the methods the design team uses to balance and create products. I realize this behind-the-scenes approach sometimes appears in articles and podcasts, but it should be a part of their core product line. Helping DMs understand WotC's design philosophy and application is not only useful in empowering homebrew or improvisation, but maximizing the use of prebuilt content, which almost never sticks to the script. (It may also improve the content of content submissions.) The rules exist to maximize quality of play, so it seems odd to say, "it's the DM's job to make it work," followed by, "good luck with that."

Yeah, I think a good discussion of the do's and don'ts of improvisational actions would be OK. Tell players what kinds of things to think about and why certain situations should be handled in certain ways (and maybe a bit of a list of different ways to handle it depending on the overall feel that the DM is trying to give to the situation). It seems to me there is a lot that sort of goes unsaid about what the role of rules really is in a game. A lot of theorizing and philosophizing has been done on the boards, but from what I've seen about the Essentials debates there really is not a lot of understanding of what the different aspects of the system are trying to achieve and how they fit together.

Of course I'm not sure the 4e devs are actually the best people to write that, they seem to have their own fairly siloed spin on things. Really it almost feels like it wants to be written from an outside perspective.

 

[Grabuto138]

I agree that a step-by-step guide to improvisation would have limited use, but I'd love to see more DM emphasis on mechanical design philosophy, conveying why templates, powers, skills, feats, items, monsters, encounters are built the way they are, and sharing the methods the design team uses to balance and create products. I realize this behind-the-scenes approach sometimes appears in articles and podcasts, but it should be a part of their core product line. Helping DMs understand WotC's design philosophy and application is not only useful in empowering homebrew or improvisation, but maximizing the use of prebuilt content, which almost never sticks to the script. (It may also improve the content of content submissions.) The rules exist to maximize quality of play, so it seems odd to say, "it's the DM's job to make it work," followed by, "good luck with that."

I would hate to see this in a source book but this is exactly the sort of thing that should be covered extensively in the Dragon and Dungeon online magazines. The current material is, I think, just a bit thin these days.