Rule of 3: 10/31/2011

[tomBitonti]

Negative reaction from me on this most recent rule of three. Anyone else having a similar reaction?

See:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Rule-of-Three: 10/31/2011)

The story element reason is that we wanted to be careful about burdening the game with "negative fluff" — story elements that tell the DM why he shouldn't use things in certain settings or combinations. (This is more relevant to the Monster Manual.)

The simplest way to open things up was to say less about the monster stories.

I'm just not buying it. I can see fluff being omitted as a way of throttling value (which is a copyright holder's right), but not because folks will feel constrained to only use the monsters in their usual locale.

Also, omitting descriptions in preference to pages of repetitive crunch seemed to be a way to emphasize the skirmish focus. As in, please don't get that role playing fluff in my skirmish/tabletop battle game.

Mind you, if the goal is to create "universal" creatures to fill specific roles, then why not go the whole way and strip off the descriptions altogether? Having lots of selectable options, with a primary role selection and a tunable setting for the target level, would seem to be a great way to setup a monster builder. I'm wholly behind this sort of idea. Then actual named monsters could be provided as "thematic archetypes" for the generic creatures. Getting stuck halfway seems to lose both the value of rich descriptions and the value of a generic, composition based monster builder toolkit. Of course, you might loose half the page count.

TomB

 

[Mark CMG]

Negative reaction from me on this most recent rule of three. Anyone else having a similar reaction?

See:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Rule-of-Three: 10/31/2011)


I'm just not buying it. I can see fluff being omitted as a way of throttling value (which is a copyright holder's right), but not because folks will feel constrained to only use the monsters in their usual locale.

Also, omitting descriptions in preference to pages of repetitive crunch seemed to be a way to emphasize the skirmish focus. As in, please don't get that role playing fluff in my skirmish/tabletop battle game.

Mind you, if the goal is to create "universal" creatures to fill specific roles, then why not go the whole way and strip off the descriptions altogether? Having lots of selectable options, with a primary role selection and a tunable setting for the target level, would seem to be a great way to setup a monster builder. I'm wholly behind this sort of idea. Then actual named monsters could be provided as "thematic archetypes" for the generic creatures. Getting stuck halfway seems to lose both the value of rich descriptions and the value of a generic, composition based monster builder toolkit. Of course, you might loose half the page count.

TomB

Yup, Tom, I see what you are saying. This passage seems particularly contradictory though -

In retrospect, I personally feel we were a little too aggressive in minimizing the story elements on monster usage. I think it teaches the new DM or player something about the D&D world when he learns that black dragons, lizardfolk, and shambling mounds all can be found in swamps. Next time we tackle a monster book, I think we're going to be a little more careful to present the essential truths of classic D&D monsters and accept the story burden that goes with them.

Personally, I like the idea of including certain creatures in a PH: horses, dogs, others that characters will relate to directly. Then including some iconic and typical creatures in the DMG: bears, (many types of animals), some dragons, and bits in between. Finally, other creatures should, IMO, be included in setting books, in context, with all the appropriate flavor text. Somehow the idea of an MM seems a geared toward the cook cutter design for skirmish-level minis games or flavorless campaigns where DMs are encouraged to simply stock empty dungeon rooms with certain levels of creatures in static environments that are not interrelated. We've often gotten something wavering in between my extreme and that which I describe but I think leaning toward what I suggest still allows for the other while leaning toward the cookie cutter extreme gives little support toward a more immersive approach.

 

[Henry]

I think you don't have to go any further than "New Game Bottleneck", as he describes, but to me the other reason is an oldie but a goodie: I personally don't need the flavor as much as the crunch when a new game is coming out of the gate. If I want to use the exemplary gnoll he mentions, and I'm using the Realms, or Eberron, or what have you, I can simply draw climate info, terrain, feeding habits, and a host of other info from the multitude of previous books that came before. If you accept their premise that the first few books are geared toward grabbing the existing D&D gamers, then it makes good sense.

Now, as time goes on, yes, it's inexcusable for intro products, etc. to eschew flavor for crunch (which they were guilty of in my opinion with the *SPLAT*Power books in 2008 and 2009), but for the first few months, They need as much through the gate as possible to give people enough feel for it to make their own.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'm just not buying it.

Are you saying you disagree with the early 4th Ed rationale of "less fluff", or are you saying you think they are being dishonest in their explanation? The first makes sense, of course, although they do state they have moved away from this philosophy. The second . . . eh, not so much.

Yup, Tom, I see what you are saying. This passage seems particularly contradictory though

It's not contradictory at all. They stated their philosophy for early 4th Ed design, the author still seems to feel it's justified, but grudgingly admits they took it too far, and are moving away from that approach.

Personally, I dislike the "less fluff, more crunch" approach they took, even in early products to "get stuff out there". But the perfect balance between fluff and crunch is an ongoing debate with no end in sight, for designers and for fans.

 

[Mort]

The 4e team made so many initial errors in layout, presentation, content, and especially marketing (among other things) that this seems nearly minor in comparison. Which is why I'm more than willing to take it at face value that they miscalculated.

The funny thing is, for me, I've been doing this long enough to know the default fluff they would be writing on just about all the monsters so it's great to save the space and just see a minimalist presentation.

To attract new players though, which was one of their biggest stated goals, it's almost a comical oversight/error (though again I can certainly see it in context of all the other things that were dropped).

 

[Mark CMG]

It's not contradictory at all.

Sure it is. On the one hand he is putting forth that by trimming the flavor/context of creatures they have made a mistake and on the other hand he is saying that there are "essential truths" that might be included. He saying that they minimalized and still wish to do so but just barely less so. That's not really an understanding of the point of context. In fact, with no real default setting presented in any monster tome (except those which are actually tied to settings), all of the creatures are out of context. The premise that he claims to understand, being that creatures presented out of context and with little flavor information is problematic, is contrary to his plan to add in just a little more flavor on the minimal amount he feels they already proffered.

 

[Rogue Agent]

I'm just not buying it. I can see fluff being omitted as a way of throttling value (which is a copyright holder's right), but not because folks will feel constrained to only use the monsters in their usual locale.

In specific, Climate/Terrain had become something of an appendix. I don't mean that bibliographically; I mean that anatomically: Like an appendix, the Climate/Terrain entry for a monster had become a vestigial anomaly.

See, that entry previously served the function of organizing creatures onto wilderness encounter tables. But 3E and 4E got rid of wilderness encounter tables... which means the entry was mechanically meaningless.

Also, omitting descriptions in preference to pages of repetitive crunch seemed to be a way to emphasize the skirmish focus. As in, please don't get that role playing fluff in my skirmish/tabletop battle game.

Well... yes. That was, after all, an explicit design goal of 4E.

The charitable interpretation is that they felt getting solid mechanics would allow people to provide their own fluff. But given some of the WotC's design team was writing in the 2007-2008 time period (making it clear that they thought of monsters as only being significant for their combat utility), I rarely feel that charitable.

 

[Dire Bare]

Edit: Nevermind.

Let's just say I think some folks are reading too much into a simple Q&A about our favorite game.

 

[Pentius]

Yup, Tom, I see what you are saying. This passage seems particularly contradictory though -

I don't see how it's so contradictory. Obviously they thought it was worth including some level of fluff, otherwise there would just be none. The choices, then, all came down to how much fluff and on which monsters. It's quite possible that though he is behind the ideas that led to the balance in the MM, he thinks the balance still wasn't quite right.

Personally, I don't mind the level of fluff in the MM. Usually, when I to go looking for a certain kind of monster in the book, I know already what environment I'm putting it into and why. Sometimes ecology is nice, but sometimes it's useless, too. What does a bulette eat? I don't need the book tell me. It's a huge, marauding creature with razor sharp teeth and claws. It eats whatever isn't slow enough to run away.
In cases where the information is somewhat novel, I'll take it, but that information, by large, made it into the MM.

 

[Niccodaemus]

What does a bulette eat? I don't need the book tell me. It's a huge, marauding creature with razor sharp teeth and claws. It eats whatever isn't slow enough to run away.

How would you possibly know that if you hadn't played earlier versions of D&D, or at least had some of the source books?

A bulette? WTF is that?

The fun of reading a monster manual is finding out about the monster. Stats about the monster are secondary information, imo. I can always make up stats, given a verbal description of what it actually is supposed to do.