Monster Manual: I miss the fluff.

[phil500]

My first MM was the MM1 for ADnD, it had a giant fighting a ranger-looking dude on the cover.

I used to love browsing it and reading about the enemies. The current MM is an excellent tool for DMs, but not nearly as nice for just reading.

I remember I once totally ripped off their vampire section for a 7th grade english paper- I put almost all of the factoids in there: things like you to kill them with a stake, or in a day they would be back in the coffin etc. The teacher wondered how i "knew so much" about them.

These days, that paper would have things like "vampires can turn to a misty cloud that flies at 10 feet per second. They can then turn back to a vampire AND attack you in just 6 seconds."

 

[Scribble]

Maybe you picked a bad example... vampires have a bunch of stuff.

It has lore people might know about them (including the stuff about the stake and running water, and mirrors...) it has stuff about vampire coffins, and even stuff about the ritual vampires use to create other vampires.

Your paper would have a ot of stuff to plagerize!

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I don't miss it. Less fluff = easier to hammer into my game world.

 

[hong]

Also, vampires are mammals.

 

[pukunui]

The fluff's not completely gone. It's just been pared back. Most, if not all, monsters have a fluffy intro and a Lore section. What I miss is the evocative read-aloud descriptive text for each monster. Yes, I know that each monster has its own picture now, but it's not the same to just hold up the book and say, "This is what you see". Oh well, I'll just have to brush the dust off my creative writing skills ...

Also, as nightchilde pointed out, not having someone else's fluff makes it easier to make your own (just like it's easier to write your own songs when you haven't got other people's stuck in your head).

 

[Mort_Q]

I'm guessing that we'll see more fluff online, and more crunch in the books.

Works for me.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I like crunch. When I rifle through the monster manual I would love to see nothing but numbers and tactics. HOWEVER I do like the the Little (Knowledge check) boxes from the later 3.5 Monster manuals and I wish those were back.

Otherwise I like how the MM looks. All crunch and no fluff makes my monsters happy.

 

[pukunui]

HOWEVER I do like the the Little (Knowledge check) boxes from the later 3.5 Monster manuals and I wish those were back.

What about the Lore section included in most, if not all, the 4e MM monster writeups? They look a lot like the knowledge check sections from the later 3.5 MMs to me.

 

[Rechan]

I agree with the "lack of fluff=bad".

Especially with the tons of humanoids, fluff that helps you differentiate them is useful. Otherwise tehy all just run together.

Fluff especially makes some monsters. They make a boring monster have use in a story. Because some of these creatures I don't know what the hell to do with (Berbalang, Banshrae, I'm looking at you).

And for people new to D&D, this is absolutely useless to help new DMs make their games, well, interesting. Yeah, YOU may just need the stats, but some fledgling DM does need the story elements.

 

[Obryn]

I miss the fluff, too. I love 4e so far, but the monster manual has gone from the most interesting book to one of the less-interesting ones.

I think the MM is laid out way, way better than 3.x's was, but the high-point of monster manuals (in my mind) was the 2e Monstrous Manual.

1e's MM2 rocked, too.

-O