Rule of 3: 10/31/2011

[Pentius]

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?

I have that information easily from the 4e MM1, which does not tell about the bulette's dietary habits. It has a bite attack, it burrows(most burrowing creatures use claws for this), it is Large, and there is a picture. What else would a creature with these features eat, if not anything it could catch? Plant matter might be an option, except herbivores rarely have razor sharp teeth and use their bites as a primary attack form.

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.

I could easily make stats, too, now that I've been playing 4e for a few years. But at release, with no prior knowledge of the system or what it can or should do? Please. At that point, the designer's stats are worth far more than the designer's fluff. I can infer and create fluff, easy, or borrow from another source, even easier. Stats are actually worth paying for, especially in a new game. Reading the monster manual to see what's in it can be fun, yeah, but that's an itch a lot books can scratch. At the release of 4e, however, only one source was available for scratching the itch of having usable 4e monster stats.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

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.

Yeah, I'm ~so~ certain that was their ~evil~ plan all along.

Note: ~ for sarcasm.

I like the minimalist approach and am not sure about the premise that MMs teach new DMs much of anything. Most new DMs cut their teeth on published adventures, which is a much better introduction for such fluff, or simply couldn't care less about monster fluff and just throw a bunch of cliched monsters together.

What is contradictory is people crying over the lack of monster fluff while claiming the PoL is too restrictive to worldbuilding.

 

[Imaro]

What is contradictory is people crying over the lack of monster fluff while claiming the PoL is too restrictive to worldbuilding.

Who complained about this?? If anything I saw people complain that the info on the PoL default setting is scattered over numerous books and Dragon magazine articles and thus it is hard to collect... I also saw complaints that the gazetteer was canceled... Finally I saw complaints about the shoehorning of PoL tropes into other settings... but I haven't seen complaints that the fluff is too restrictive for worldbuilding.

EDIT: As to the topic at hand I think that the fluff in 4e, IMO, especially the MM was uninspiring. I think that may be more important than less or more. When I read the description of a monster I want ideas to pop into my head about how and why I want to use this particular creature in a story/adventure sense... and for some reason 4e's MM 1 just didn't do it for me. However every previous edition I played did.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Who complained about this??...

Various forums, blogs and game related discussion areas. You know, the usual places. You could always google it if you are skeptical and find out for yourself and really the shoehorning argument is a component to PoL restricting worldbuilding argument.

 

[Imaro]

Various forums, blogs and game related discussion areas. You know, the usual places. You could always google it if you are skeptical and find out for yourself and really the shoehorning argument is a component to PoL restricting worldbuilding argument.

Or you could provide some kind of proof since you're the one claiming this took place... Unless of course there isnt any and you are just making baseless claims.

On the point of the PoL assumptions being shoe horned into published campaign settings ... that really has nothing whatsoever to do with worldbuilding... That's the choice of the company publishing it.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Or you could provide some kind of proof since you're the one claiming this took place... Unless of course there isnt any and you are just making baseless claims.

On the point of the PoL assumptions being shoe horned into published campaign settings ... that really has nothing whatsoever to do with worldbuilding... That's the choice of the company publishing it.

I could care less about burden of proof. I'm not going to trawl through forum archives and blogs because you think I'm lying.

It has nothing to do with worldbuilding? Well, if you say so.

 

[Imaro]

I could care less about burden of proof. I'm not going to trawl through forum archives and blogs because you think I'm lying.

Ha, but you expected me to google search for it... yeah, ok.

It has nothing to do with worldbuilding? Well, if you say so.

I know, because the choices WotC decided on as far as how the 4e FR would be structured... totally forced the shape and tropes in my 4e world... wait, no actually they have nothing to do with them at all.

Anyway this is really a tangent so I'll just assume that there's no evidence to support what you are saying and move back to the topic of conversation.

 

[Hungry Like The Wolf]

Ha, but you expected me to google search for it... yeah, ok.

I didn't expect you to do anything.

I know, because the choices WotC decided on as far as how the 4e FR would be structured... totally forced the shape and tropes in my 4e world... wait, no actually they have nothing to do with them at all.

Anyway this is really a tangent so I'll just assume that there's no evidence to support what you are saying and move back to the topic of conversation.

Ah huh. How a world was structured forced the shape and tropes of your world. Sure sounds like it is totally divorced from worldbuilding.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My inference from what was created and released at the start of 4E was entirely that it was new game crunch that was the driving factor in it's design and release. The fluff they already had on record was absolutely fine. Which explains why the first MMs were light on description, and the early campaign settings were 3 and out. Because the assumption was probably that most (not all obviously, but most) of the players who were going to pick up this game already owned or had access to most (if not all) of the books from their 3/3.5 range that already included the fluff... and thus repeating the fluff was seen as less important than coming up with the crunch needed to play the new game. And (in terms of the MMs) if the word-count issue came down to having a couple paragraphs of the ecology of the ogre versus a stat block for an ogre of a different level/role than the ones they already had included... they went with the extra stat block.

The problem we all face now is that we are looking back on the first MM from a much different perspective than we did in 2008. Right now, we have so many monster stat blocks for every monster available to us (especially those of us who are DDIers), that now the loss of fluff is more evident. But I know that for me at the time when I first bought the MM1 in 2008... the fact that it included stat blocks for like 5 different types of goblin at several different roles/levels rather than only a couple plus a rehash of the goblin fluff of 3.5 (which was only still about 5 years old at that point)... seemed much more useful at the time.

 

[OnlineDM]

Speaking as someone who came to 4e as a new DM, I agree with their assessment that they should have included more fluff in the Monster Manual if they wanted it to be useful for someone like me. I truly did read through the stat blocks and come away confused about what the monsters were really like, where the party might run into them, how they could be expected to behave in battle, etc. I didn't have the prior experience from earlier editions.

The Monster Vault, though... they knocked that one out of the park. It's a pleasure to read, and it really lets me understand how I might USE these monsters.

I'm in a good place now as a DM. I use published adventures, sure. I have things like the Monster Vault available for inspiration when I want to use a pre-existing monster. And when I want to create my own, I have the math laid out for me and Power2ool + MapTool to make it happen. I still like Power2ool better than the Monster Builder.