Pathfinder 1E WotC desperately needs to learn from Paizo and Privateer Press

[AllisterH]

1. Were there any good noncampaign specific modules for 2e?

The only ones I know people recommend are Night Below and Gates of Firestorm Peak.

2. Fluff vs Crunch
I was honestly not trying to create an edition war. I was simply commenting on how it seems like "fluff is good" to me is more of a prevalent opinion whereas pre 3e (so it's not a WOTC versus Paizo comment) it seemed like this was seen as padding from what I remember of r.g.f.d

3. Fluff in the 4e Monster manuals
Actually, the 4e MM contains about the same amount of fluff as a non 2e source. It's simply split between the beginning entry and the lore section.

 

[GAAAHHH]

When I ran 2e, I usually used 1e adventures. Of course, I didn't run very often, and my DMs usually made up their own adventures. Now I'm currently running 4th edition (Keep on the Shadowfell, with some minor changes) and it's working out well so far.

 

[JeffB]

I understand your point and knew based on my own experiences that style often doesn't really translate into useful campaign stuff without some work on part of the referee.

Which is why I made sure I had 85 pages of rules that used that setting material in part. Plus within the setting stuff I have a lot on cultures and religion. These two areas I found are among the easiest of fluff to adapt to another campaign. The rest I hopes serves as an idea generator for similar situation in other campaign. Which is why I had a sentence or two of commentary on many of the entries on WHY I had this area in the Majestic Wilderlands.

No worries Rob- I think it's a great effort from you, and YES I found the actual "crunch" more inspirational than the setting material- especially as regards to the priesthood , crystals, etc. Totally swiping that stuff

The setting material, for my tastes focused entirely too much on what has happened in the past- as opposed to what is going on now or what COULD happen... if that makes sense. For a classic old school product I was suprised there was actually little mention of "adventure sites" or "mysteries" or "legends" or "things that need investigating". Those are the type of things that get my DM creativity flowing. It doesn't need to be 10 pages of details-often a sentence or three is more than enough.

Of course this is all just my opinion and I hope you take it as constructive criticism as opposed to "nerd rage" I think you made a fine product, and I am not unhappy with the purchase in the overall sense

 

[MichaelSomething]

Well for those who want lots of fluff, there are places to find it. Vote with your dollars folks.

 

[robconley]

The setting material, for my tastes focused entirely too much on what has happened in the past- as opposed to what is going on now or what COULD happen... if that makes sense. .... It doesn't need to be 10 pages of details-often a sentence or three is more than enough.

Sure, which is why when I do the dreaded info dump I am always going to make sure that the majority of the product is something that anybody can reasonably use. For example instead writing up the Duchy of Dearthmead and expecting people to buy it on that basis alone I would make sure there is an adventure or locale that of more general use.

Normally this would be tough as the setting stuff tends to be verbose. But given my experience at writing terse information filled explanation text for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, and both Points of Light I believe I can pull it off.

Also I am planning to have other products in the mix than just Majestic Wilderlands stuff. Expanding the 35 steps to making a sandbox fantasy campaign is one and doing some Mongoose Traveller stuff another.

Of course this is all just my opinion and I hope you take it as constructive criticism as opposed to "nerd rage" I think you made a fine product, and I am not unhappy with the purchase in the overall sense

Your feedback is great to have. While I may not always agree with every criticism it does get me to think about what I am going to be publishing and how to write it up.

I also appreciate the compliment and glad that you found a lot of useful stuff in it.

 

[Echohawk]

The Monster books are nothing more than boring lists of stats. There's no real flavor at all to inspire DMs and make monster encounters more memorable.

When I first looked at the 4e Monster Manual, I also thought that there was insufficient fluff compared to the crunch. But now that I am actually using the MM and MM2 to create adventures, I've found that the balance between the fluff and crunch is perfect. There is just enough background info to get my creative juices flowing when I page through looking for ideas, and the crunch is generally excellent at making monsters feel different in play.

And thinking about it, I'd much rather have a book that turns out to be more useful that I thought it would be than the other way around.

 

[Dannager]

Im not a fan of 4e, but I usually love reading monster books from and and all editions; as mentioned earlier, the 2e monster compendium/monstrous manual is right up my alley. Frankly, the 4e MM are just terrible imo; so dry and boring to read that honestly I dont know how you would do it. There are a lot of interesting looking monsters in the MM1&2, but the dearth of fluff just kills any excitement I might have had reading them.

I've personally never understood the "too much fluff" mentality in a MM. Pick and choose is the name of the game. If you like something, use it; if the way the MM describes the monster isnt to your liking or campaign style, cut it out. But if there is little to no fluff at all, then frankly all your left with is stats. zzzzz.....

I think the issue you're finding here is that products like the 4e Monster Manuals are designed to be used. They are put together with the expectation that they will serve as tools for the DM in designing and running adventures. They are not meant to be read like a novel. If you buy one with the intent of opening it up and reading through from the beginning to enjoy some nice story, you'll probably be disappointed. That's not what it's for. If you buy one with the intent of flipping through it for ideas on how to challenge your PCs with interesting opponents and create memorable combat encounters, you will get a lot of use out of it.

 

[Chrono22]

It's disingenuous to claim 4e adventures (or any content really) are made to be used and that other published adventures are not. Nothing about 4e combat mechanics necessitate creating largely bland combat-intensive adventures.
Memorable published adventures are memorable because of the content/style- the player interest- not because of what collections of encounters they contain.
WotC should take some notes from Paizo. WotC is the leader, but its adventures leave much to be desired.

 

[Failed Saving Throw]

Another bash-WOTC / praise-pathfinder thread.

yawn

That is not what my original post is about, nor is that what I intend this thread to be. Reread my post: I praise both WotC for the mechanical design of 4E and Paizo on several fronts. I don't mention Pathfinder at all. I'm not interested in an edition war thread - this is about sparking some conversation and debate on the future of WotC's various supplements.

 

[Failed Saving Throw]

One of the problems with the lack of fluff in 4e monster products is that, while it does render monsters very easy to re-skin and use as something else, the new monsters don't generate ideas. (I'm pretty sure the lack of fluff is real, not just imagined--back in 3.x, I would borrow monster manuals from time to time and read through them to see what new monsters were out there. Afterwards, I would often have a list of monsters that I wanted to use in an adventure or that had given me adventure ideas; reading through the 4th edition MM, none of the monsters do that).

But this is not just fluff. While one previous poster claimed that 4e monsters have good mechanical hooks for combat such that the unique abilities of orcs, goblins, and kobolds give them unique feels in combat, what this misses is that all of the non-combat abilities have been stripped out of monsters. For example, in 3rd edition, I noted that bone devils have animate dead as a spell-like ability and that gave me the idea to write an adventure that featured an evil cleric who summoned a bone devil in order to create undead more efficiently. 4th edition monsters, on the other hand, do not have non-combat functions. Their stats and abilities exist only to allow them to fight and be killed. Net result: if you are writing for 4e, you come up with an idea first and then comb through the monster manual for creatures to fit into your boxes. You don't look at a creature and see a story develop from its non-combat abilities.

This is a great post, and it gets to the heart of the point I'm trying to make. I've been designing my own adventures and worlds since the red box Basic D&D set. Once 2E rolled around, the way I would usually build adventures was to read through the Compendiums to get some ideas sparked. More often than not, the fluff contained in the Habitat/Society and Ecology sections contained some cool nugget that would serve as a jumping-off point. Examples abound. In particular, the Ravenloft and Dark Sun Compendiums were some of my favorites. I never felt like the monster concepts were being spoonfed to me; rather, I felt that each entry laid good foundations that I could then work off of to suit my own purposes.

These days, as I write and design 4E adventures, I find myself creating a lot of my own monsters and supplying the fluff myself. Which is fine. But I miss being able to flip through various entries and getting inspiration from sources I wouldn't think of myself, you know?

All that said, I'm not a big fan of navel-gazing, and I don't necessarily think that what WotC needs to do is have a big throwback party and start making Monster Manuals that retread Compendium stuff. That's why I use Privateer Press as my key example of how modern monster books can be done very well, with great writing, art, flavor and ideas. I defy you to flip through the Monsternomicons and not come away with entire campaign concepts.