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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1463533" data-attributes="member: 812">Uh, yeah, that was kinda my point. Or at least, that's what I meant my point to be -- when I buy d20 materials I know that the game stats will be useful to me verbatim.Well, your definition of "easy" is different than mine. Creating a stat block is a lot of work that I'd rather not have to do. Knowing that there's a 60% increase from A to B doesn't appreciably reduce that amount of work -- it just means that my finished product will more accurately mimic the source material -- which I usually don't care about anyway.I don't. I need plot ideas, location ideas, monster ideas, trap ideas, world ideas, bad guy ideas -- I don't need precision unless I'm trying to use my campaign to mimic some existing setup. Which I'm not doing, so I don't much care.OTOH, the Citybooks are hands-down the best game supplements I've ever purchased. But not BECAUSE they're generic. Because they contain very high value in what they do provide -- and because they hit a critical need for me as a DM where stat blocks aren't all that important. When my players are buying a sword, they don't need to know what the smith's Armor Class is -- but I get huge value out of knowing that he's protective of his wanna-be-adventurer daughter, in debt to loan sharks and has a talking bastard sword in the back room. One of the great things about the Citybooks is that the "game content" in it is limited to two lines per NPC. See my previous point about not wanting to spend money on useless game stats -- Citybook maximises value by minimizing game stats. The ultimate example of that, of course, is non-RPG material like novels and comic books.If I have to write a stat block, it's significantly different. There's a world of difference in terms of value to me between having to write up a stat block and not having to write up a stat block. Maybe that's not the case for you, in which case great for you. But I assure you it is the case for me.Which I am. So there you go. I run four d20-based campaigns. When I look for where to spend my gaming dollar, the products that include stat blocks I can use as is in my game are providing significantly increased value -- products without that need to be seriously awesome in order to match that amount of value.Some are -- like the Citybook products. This doesn't say that there is inherently more value (even to me) in d20 products. It's just that usable stat blocks represent a certain value that lack of stat blocks (or stat blocks I need to rewrite) does not.It's nice that you think that. What I KNOW is the length of time it takes me to generate stat blocks. Products that reduce that time are providing value. Products that don't are at a disadvantage.</blockquote>

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