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<blockquote data-quote="dmccoy1693" data-source="post: 6177724" data-attributes="member: 51747">At one level, I agree with you. At another level, I don't. I fully agree that non-combat encounters need to be really fleshed out in the DMG, and the intricacies should be kept hidden from the players, in much the same way players shouldn't be reading the MM, but the basic framework should be there for the players. Example: I published the Book of the River Nations.&nbsp; Its a book on how to build your own kingdom in Pathfinder. Some GMs kept it to themselves and let the players more or less guess at how to build a kingdom. Others told their players to buy the book and read it (as the publisher, I liked that second group, but we'll ignore that for the moment). The feedback we got was night and day. Almost universally, groups where the players had the rules were engaged and ready to build their kingdom and they did well with them. Again, almost universally, groups that did not have the rules felt frustrated and frequently asked to give up on the kingdom building aspect of the rules. Skill Challenges should be given as much space as a combat encounter of the same difficulty. More detail and options (like you said in the rest of your post) would make them much more interesting. The particulars of each encounter should be kept from the players, but I still think the players should have the basic rules to work from.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="dmccoy1693, post: 6177724, member: 51747"] At one level, I agree with you. At another level, I don't. I fully agree that non-combat encounters need to be really fleshed out in the DMG, and the intricacies should be kept hidden from the players, in much the same way players shouldn't be reading the MM, but the basic framework should be there for the players. Example: I published the [B]Book of the River Nations[/B]. Its a book on how to build your own kingdom in Pathfinder. Some GMs kept it to themselves and let the players more or less guess at how to build a kingdom. Others told their players to buy the book and read it (as the publisher, I liked that second group, but we'll ignore that for the moment). The feedback we got was night and day. Almost universally, groups where the players had the rules were engaged and ready to build their kingdom and they did well with them. Again, almost universally, groups that did not have the rules felt frustrated and frequently asked to give up on the kingdom building aspect of the rules. Skill Challenges should be given as much space as a combat encounter of the same difficulty. More detail and options (like you said in the rest of your post) would make them much more interesting. The particulars of each encounter should be kept from the players, but I still think the players should have the basic rules to work from. [/QUOTE]

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