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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5722302" data-attributes="member: 42582">I run a fairly loose game, but I find that robust mechanics - whether of the Rolemaster or the 4e variety - help me.I don't have any strong view on dryads as such - I think I've never actually used them in over 20 years of GMing, and the encounter that I wrote up nearly a year ago that uses them has still not come into play in my game.But I wouldn't have objected to some skill challenge ideas for negotiating with dryads, or other faerie creatures. Some other encounters I haven't run yet, but have been ready to run for a year or so, would involve this. (I have an adaptation of the HeroWars scenario Demon of the Red Grove ready to run as soon as my players take their PCs through a magical tower they have heard of into the Feywild, and in the lead up to that encounter envisage a social encounter or three with various fey beings.)But I have never got this vibe from the 4e MM. I have got the vibe that it's job is to provide thematically gripping antagonists for a game of high fantasy conflict, in which combat (resolved using minis or tokens on a map) is the premiere, although far from sole, form of conflict resolution.Now you might think that I've just used some fancy words to describe "stat blocks for minis combat", but I don't agree. The 4e MM is, for me, full of creatures that just leap of the page in terms of the story possibilities they present, and the way I might incorporate them into my game. I've probably used no more than half the monsters I would in principle have liked to include in my game.Even creatures that have been much-derided on mechanical grounds, like the wraiths and spectres with their action-denying auras, have produced gripping play at my table, with the PCs straining to decipher the incessant mutterings of a mad wraith . . .None of this can contradict your experience with, and impression of, the book. Those are what they are. But I do think it reinforces Kzach's point:I think this is right. You might say that WotC should have done better market research, to work out that there were more of you and fewer of me. But personally I'm glad they published what they did, because I got the best RPG books I've ever bought from TSR/WotC. (If only the DMG had been a bit better than it is. If it had better advice on how to use skill challenges - comparable to what is found in books like HeroWars, HeroQuest and Maelstrom Storytellilng - then you would be able to use skill challenges to run your succubus or dryad encounters, as I have used them to run comparable hag encounters.)</blockquote>

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