Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4171943" data-attributes="member: 1054">"If the monster has Strength 18, ,20, 22, any answer would appease you? Seems you just want an answer for the heck of it."Yeah. I want statistics in my monster book. Silly me. I consider things like spawn creation for undead as important as their armor class. Then again, I see the game as more than a sequence of combat set pieces.Sure. And I can make ogres stronger, or orcs weaker, or say that all hobgoblins can cast Magic Missile once per day. It's my world. The point is, there needs to be a baseline to vary from, or what are we buying again, exactly? A book of pretty monster pictures?And the point is missed by a few light years...I want to build a world that makes sense. Knowing things like vampire spawn rates gives me a way of determining 'reasonable' vampire populations. Now, if I'm doing a vampire-centric world, then I'd just make up whatever I wanted to fit the overarching game theme. But if I'm doing a broader game, I just want to have a general idea of how common vampires are, and for that, I depend on the rules to give me useful crunch -- just like they tell me that orcs are more likely to be warriors than spellcasters (while giving me the freedom to add orc wizards if I so choose), or that dragons fly. I find one of the most enjoyable parts of worldbuilding is working from the dry facts of the MM to the cultural/social/historical implications. That's why I prefer good solid crunch to flavor text. I consider undead creation rates to be crunch, not fluff. The fluff is derived from that crunch.I also consider a 'shared consensus world' to be valuable, especially in a semi-open gaming environment. The more baseline material is left out in favor just presenting stripped down combat stats, the more different assumptions third party publishers will make, and the less useful any product will be without extensive work.A vampire-specific sourcebook might contain a whole bunch of rules, options, and guidelines for designing vampires in your game, with essays on the implications of each decision. I'd buy it. The core game, though, should contain a default. "Vampires make spawn" is not enough, any more than "Orcs fight a lot" -- without providing actual combat stats -- is.</blockquote>

Verification