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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormonu" data-source="post: 5237398" data-attributes="member: 52734">I think the last couple of posts have hit on what is a problem for monster manuals - people expect them, well, to be full of monsters.  MM IV (from 3E) is probably a good indicator of what a lot people didn't want to see in their monster manual - pages devoted to encounter area maps and quarter-page sample encounters that are, at best one-shot uses. (Not to mention "leveled" versions of monsters we've already seen, but that's a separate issue).It would be risky to put non-monster "generic" encounters into an MM book, even though they might be brilliantly done.  Non-monster "generic" encounters would probably be better suited for books like "Beyond the Grave", "Book of Fiends" or even "Traps and Treachery" and the like where you delving into a broad but unified subject matter rather than the Monster Manuals "miscellaneous collections of foes".Would I like to see a book of epic (or slightly-more-than-mundane), interactive cut-scenes you can plop into an adventure?*  Sure.  Would I want it in a Monster Manual?  No, not in the slightest.* Examples:  A mine cart chase ala Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; battling elementals atop a primordial as it plods across the Elemental Chaos ala God of War 3; catching a plane-shifting horse and riding it as it pops through hostile planes in an attempt to shake you before you finally arrive at the plane of your choosing; evading a overpowering swarm of flesh-eating zombies to reach some safe point without losing your life in the process; luring the tarrasque into a killing zone without ending up pancaked on the bottom of its foot; escaping the gauntlet of a burning building filled with open crates of alchemical fireworks as they light and whiz past and around you lighting other crates and creating a shifting maze of flame to escape before being burnt to a crisp; etc.  Even something as "simple" as evading flash floods, forest fires, sinkholes, locust swarms/crop blight could be interesting encounters that could fill a book.  A few supernatural ones wouldn't hurt either - getting information from a slightly-more-intelligent-than-average magpie, surviving a flight of dragons (or wyverns) or stealing a valuable monster egg/young to sell back in town could be detailed.</blockquote>

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