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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5187833" data-attributes="member: 2067">I think this is a false dichotomy.If you take Noonan's quote to the critique of WotC adventures, you get that context is part of how the monster is used at the table. That, functionally, during game play, it is more satisfying to have a villain built up, to have a world breathe, and to have moments of "down time" to explore the environment.Think of it like a rest in a song or simple colorspace in a painting or paragraphs of description in a fantasy novel. They increase tension. They set the stage. They provide contrast. They provoke anticipation. By projecting high-octane thrilling encounters against a background like this, the encounters have the effect you want to achieve at the table (that is, the players are into them, and not bored by them). They shouldn't be hard to build into the writing for an adventure: rooms without monsters, forex. The idea that fluff is only for the DM and worldbuilding is a naive idea. There is certainly such a thing as useless and overabundant and unnecessarily limiting fluff, but that is not all fluff. That is just the badly designed fluff. Well-designed fluff has an impact, even if that impact is "catch your breath as I describe this harmless room with the grand waterfall and the fish and the quiet, because in the next three rooms, you are going to be hit in the face several times." Games, like many creative works, are about maintaining and resolving tension. A game that is all smash all the time is like a horror movie that becomes numbing with all the startles and BOO-scares. Good horror movies -- and good creative works in general, including D&D adventures -- master pacing to deliver time to breathe, time for thought, time to speculate on the broader significance of what's going on. In a horror movie, this eventually builds a sense of dread. In a D&D game, this should build a sense of heroism and adventure. And you don't achieve that simply by rolling dice over and over again. You achieve that with context.That's important. At the table.</blockquote>

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