Request to publishers

[Thomasson]

DUNGEON Magazine has always opted to print stat blocks of monsters and NPCs in the areas in which they're encountered. It's one of the only major ways we have deviated from the Wizards of the Coast adventure style. We decided early on that the appendix approach, while space saving, wasn't as convenient.

 

[EOL]

And then I just waited. The DM looked at the book, then flipped to the map, then back to the book, then back to the map. Then he got out his markers and (checking with the book again) drew the map very carefully, took out some gnoll minis. Once he'd spent about 5 minutes setting up the map board, he still kept checking back to the book during combat to make sure the stats were all totally accurate.

I had exactly the same experience when I was playing RttToEE the DM was constantly flipping back to the stat block section. I remember one combat in the moat house (when a bunch of the baddies ambushed us from below as we camped above) where it must have taken a half an hour to prep the combat, and though the DM could have spent more prep time he wasn't a wet behind the ears newbie, in fact the whole reason he was running RttToEE was because he didn't have a lot of spare time to prep or run a homebrew.

 

[J Lloyd]

PDF problem too?

I would like to hear what people think of PDF products that contain stats in an appendix.

I imagine there is less of a problem with flipping back and forth since the sheet you print the stats out on is loose, allowing you to place it anywhere for ease of reference.

 

[J Lloyd]

Bueller? Bueller?

So much for that!

Maybe PDFs have a slight advantage over published adventures in this regard.