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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fruit" data-source="post: 3869606" data-attributes="member: 56898">As other people have said, I think it's dependent on the type of story in question. If the story is actually based on a game in which the characters had stats, and is more or less the tale of what those characters did in that game, I love to see stats. For the characters, for their adversaries, the whole deal. It adds to the experience in that you can see exactly how the game played out, how the PCs must have lucked out in this or that encounter, how the DM designs his challenges, and so on. It's a wonderful resource to tap into as research for your own games, and it's entertaining in itself.  If on the other hand the story is an original work, not based on roleplaying sessions, I see no need for stats. If Tolkien had happened to live to see DnD 3E in his later years and decided to go back and add an appendix to Lord of the Rings stating that Gandalf was a pimped DR 0 epic level Wizard/Fighter, I'd do nothing but laugh.  If you want to write fiction, great. If you want to play DnD, great. If you want to play DnD and then write about it, with a greater or lesser amount of artistic license, that's great too, and I'd love to see stats from the original game. If you want to write fiction and then write up DnD stat blocks after the fact... well, I don't really get that, personally.  I've never been one for lifting other people's ideas wholesale into my games... inspiration, sure, but on a fluffy rather than crunchy level, so no need for stat blocks. And I don't feel it adds to my enjoyment of a story to read some numbers that the author has chosen to allocate to his characters. So if it's happening that way round, I'll probably skip the stat blocks if they happen to be included.  Not that the presence of stat blocks actively offends me or anything, so option 3 isn't strictly accurate. But I figured it was the best fit, so that's what I plumped for.</blockquote>

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