Faolyn
(she/her)
For me, the primary problem with those abbreviated traits is that any special abilities or defenses have to get spelled out in the text, which can be hard to find if they're not neatly labeled. I love the AD&D 2e monsters--those MCs are still my favorite monster books--but it can be a real pain trying to figure out exactly what each creature's special qualities actually do. Often abilities were never fully explained for the sake of brevity (there's plenty of monsters that are given a ranged attack but no range was ever given, or given spells but no listing of how often they could cast them). Compare to the way 5e has resistances, immunities, traits, etc., each bolded and its own line, and spells were neatly divided into number of times per day they can be cast. It takes up a lot of space, but it's easy for me to find what I want to know.For me, old-school D&D and its clones have nailed the monster presentation format.
DCC RPG is my favorite in this regard.
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That's everything you need to run that ghoul. Except the paralysis save. All you need is "DC 14 Will save or be paralyzed, unable to move or take any physical action for 1d6 hours" from the description and you're set. The full description is one paragraph of stats (above) and four paragraphs of text.
Beyond that, though, I do agree that the half-page statblocks are often annoying. It's nice when a monster has a bunch of interesting abilities, but sometimes it's too much.
I'm sure there's some compromise. Bolded words in the four paragraphs of text, perhaps. Since I'm doing the "Vote Up a 5e-alike" threads, I'll think about how the monster stats could be shrunk.