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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5183796" data-attributes="member: 55271">You laugh in Noonan's misguided face. That's pretty much all you can do.Here's a quote from <a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2007-08.html#20070820" target="_blank">The Alexandrian</a>:There are two problems with Noonan's attitude:(1) He is, in fact, dismissive of the non-combat qualities of a monster. When that's your design ethos as a company, it's unsurprising that the non-combat qualities of a monster are being shirked in the modules.If you say that PCs only interact with their opponents during combat, it's probably unsurprising that your modules are seen as grind-happy combat fests. (They are.)(2) Yes, actually, I would say that. And if I want the BBEG to be able to communicate with the otherworldly creature, then I would give the BBEG a way to do that: A magic circle derived from Atlantean arts. A crystal ball infused with infernal energy. A sacrificial ritual.And this is precisely the kind of contextualizing detail that make the BBEG come alive: When you discover the journal detailing his journey to one of the lost outposts of Atlantis and use that knowledge to identify the unique geo-sympathetic locations where his magic circle could be scribed... When you go to the ruined remnants of his former master's wizard tower and find the remnant of the ritual he used to infuse the crystal ball... When you track him from one gruesome sacrificial victim to the next...All of these tell you something about the BBEG. They create a relationship between the PCs and the BBEG.When you gloss over the detail work like this, the details don't exist (QED). And if they don't exist, the PCs can't learn about them or interact with them. And if the PCs can't learn about any details outside of combat...Well, that's when you're back to the grind-happy combat fest modules again.</blockquote>

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