The Call of the World Builder

[Mallus]

snip: lots of good stuff...That should be enough for tonight's game.

You're good.

 

[Pssthpok]

And all of this also applies to how a succubus can seduce a king. IOW, there is a lot more to world building than just blind application of a rules framework, so the lack of that rules framework shouldn't hurt world building any.

QFT

 

[Lacyon]

The way I see it, it's fine if a monster entry says something like: "Shadow Barons create their Shadow Serfs through a ritual", and at least tells me the basics of the ritual - how long it takes and whether it requires rare components/blood sacrifice/etc.

It can create them fast enough and easily enough to create a level-appropriate encounter for the PCs.

But if the entry just says that a ritual is involved and I should make up what it is, that's not very helpful. Sure, it happens out of combat, but the effects are going to felt by the PCs. If Shadow Serfs are time-consuming/expensive to create, they'll be used sparingly. If the Shadow Baron can just pop one out every five minutes for free, they're going to be thrown at the PCs like popcorn, used to stand guard everywhere, sent to fetch drinks, and so forth.

If they are fast and easy to create, they are used in place of other minions and underlings to create a series of level-appropriate encounters. If they take a long time to create then you are going to use a lot of other creatures to create similar, but different level-appropriate encounters.

Either way, knowing the number of minutes/hours/days to create them and the cost of doing so isn't all that helpful.

Now I can already hear people getting ready to say "You're the DM, decide the ritual based off how many Shadow Serfs you want the PCs to fight." But that's the thing ... I don't need to decide how each monster ability works, I'm already deciding by the fact of picking a monster. Picking from all the different monsters available while also changing how those monsters work seems somewhat self-defeating.

You are correct that you don't need to decide how that monster ability works. Just design the encounters to be level-appropriate.

If I already have a plot in mind that requires the abilties to work a certain way, then they'll work that way. But if I'm digging through the MM for inspiration, I want the abilities to have defined properties so I can get some ideas from them. Otherwise I'm just getting ideas from myself, and I don't need a book for that.

You're getting plot ideas from yourself. Statblocks are handy enough to make a book out of in their own right.

 

[katahn]

I have to agree that the MM is something I don't want to see bogged down with plot ideas. Honestly it isn't the place for it for a variety of reasons.

1. Players have easy access to the MM, meaning I'd almost certainly have to retool the plot ideas anyway. Yes this can also be done with pre-published modules, but I don't use those either. Either way, I'd rather see more actual monsters in there with just enough fluff to inspire my own plot ideas at most.

2. Minimal fluff, the bare outlines of campaign-specific material, leaves it more easily plugged into a wide variety of campaign worlds. The world-specific implementations of everything from the bodak to the tarrasque to the succubus can be left in CS books where it belongs.

3. Some of the specifics asked for, such as "how long does it take for a creature to perform XYZ ritual" really is best answered by "well, how much of the result of that ritual do you want the players to deal with?" Like someone else said: if you want lots of shadow minions, make the ritual fast/easy for the shadow lord and if you don't... make it harder.

From what I understand the entire point of 4e is to make "on the fly" DMing just a little easier for those times when players don't follow the expected path or the DM just might not have the time to completely prepare a night's adventure. Not every question has to be answered in advance, nor every plot point scripted out. Sometimes the best thing to do is extensively plan, sometimes it is not.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Together, they fight crime!

LoL

 

[Professor Phobos]

From what I understand the entire point of 4e is to make "on the fly" DMing just a little easier for those times when players don't follow the expected path

Which is, in my experience, all the time, such that my "expected path" is "Surprise!"

This is why most of my scenario notes consist of abridged-just-what-I-need NPC stats, a hook, a basic summary of what's going on, and the phrase: "Hilarity ensues!"

 

[katahn]

Which is, in my experience, all the time, such that my "expected path" is "Surprise!"

This is why most of my scenario notes consist of abridged-just-what-I-need NPC stats, a hook, a basic summary of what's going on, and the phrase: "Hilarity ensues!"

Haha, yeah. My adventure creating is based on a high level idea of what the various factions or individuals involved want to do, how I'd expect them to react to the players' activities, and what will happen if the players do nothing. It's an approach I borrowed from an old college buddy of mine who was infamous for giving the players all the rope in the world with which to hang themselves if they weren't careful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Right. See, you've long since left the realm of monster manual entries. This is adventure module territory now.

I need at least a nod to adventure design so that I can get an idea of where to place the monsters. I don't need much, but something beyond a pat description that essentially repeats the obvious. I mean, for a successful example of what I need, check out the Mockery Bugs in the MMV, or, really, most of the entries from the MMV. Or the blurbs for the Archons and the Formorians. Or any monster manual with "adventure seeds" (Denizens of Avadnu, I'm looking at you!).

A succubus is a random high-Cha NPC. Except that, since she features in the game, she's not random, and she's an evil demon.

Right. What does that mean when I sit down and play the game? Why should I use a succubus?

But: "Phanes can manipulate time, which they use to sow chaos among mortals. Occasionally they form pacts with powerful beings that share their destructive propensities." That sounds good enough to me.

But their actual time manipulation powers don't so much sow chaos as kill people with AARP lazers. And of course things would ally with things that are similar -- that's self-evident.

Again, what does that mean when I sit down to play the game? What is the phane trying to do?

The backstory is that a phane has just showed up and wants to mess with the current political situation, so it goes back in time, gives its support to an ambitious dude (better if he's a relative of a PC), and manipulates the dynasty over the years to shape it into the tool he needs right now.

Throw in a bunch of skill challenges that hinge on finding this stuff out, then a ritual to go back into the past, and there you go. You've got all you need.

I didn't look at the statblock to come up with that; I don't think I would need to.

The thing is, nothing in the phane's entry tells me it can go back in time. Nothing in the phane's entry tells me that it cares about political dynasties. Nothing in the phane's entry tells me where to use skill challenges to uncover its plot.

That's all stuff I would have to create, doing the hard grunt work of it from scratch.

I'm going to need a book of challenges for my PC's to have more in it than the rolls they're forced to make.

Honestly, I prefer not to codify details like that until it comes up in play and a players asks. Schroedinger's DM'ing, as my friend shilsen puts it. This way, the game surprises me as much as the it does the players (+5 seconds).

I'd rather have a codified thing that I can use and worry about the world around it than worry aobut the thing itself.

One of those codified things I want to have are monsters.

I don't want to have to manufacture what my monster does whole cloth. I want the MM to tell me what the monster wants to do, and all I have to do is let it do that.

You could come up with all of that on the fly.

Right, but I shouldn't have to, and if I *do* have to, I won't be using much in the way of anything that isn't already anchored in some deep mythic tropes.

I know 4e is going to be partially supporting that (gnomes get lairs, right? and that Archon text and that Fomorian text is going to be in the game, right?), but where it doesn't, it's going to suck more.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have to agree that the MM is something I don't want to see bogged down with plot ideas. Honestly it isn't the place for it for a variety of reasons.

1. Players have easy access to the MM, meaning I'd almost certainly have to retool the plot ideas anyway. Yes this can also be done with pre-published modules, but I don't use those either. Either way, I'd rather see more actual monsters in there with just enough fluff to inspire my own plot ideas at most.

2. Minimal fluff, the bare outlines of campaign-specific material, leaves it more easily plugged into a wide variety of campaign worlds. The world-specific implementations of everything from the bodak to the tarrasque to the succubus can be left in CS books where it belongs.

3. Some of the specifics asked for, such as "how long does it take for a creature to perform XYZ ritual" really is best answered by "well, how much of the result of that ritual do you want the players to deal with?" Like someone else said: if you want lots of shadow minions, make the ritual fast/easy for the shadow lord and if you don't... make it harder.

From what I understand the entire point of 4e is to make "on the fly" DMing just a little easier for those times when players don't follow the expected path or the DM just might not have the time to completely prepare a night's adventure. Not every question has to be answered in advance, nor every plot point scripted out. Sometimes the best thing to do is extensively plan, sometimes it is not.

I think the Monster Manual should contain some fluff. Not to the amount of "Ecology of..." articles (I want a little more then 30 Monsters in a 200+ page book ), but they should contain fluff. What I don't like is if the fluff is deeply integrated into the mechanics. I am okay with mechanics getting "fluffy" names, but monster abilities requiring me to use the full implied setting or heavy house-ruling to remove it reduce their usefulness. There is a range where this acceptable - I like the idea of Hobgoblins as soldier monsters or Gnolls as pack monsters. This works fine. If I ever need a soldier monster, I can look to the Hobgoblin and use that one. But I don't like being required to use their cities and nations, or their gods.
Vampires (in 3E) for example seem overloaded with special rules, and still don't cover all the variants I'd like.
Dragons and their requisite spellcasting also seemed way to much.
The Shadows ability to spawn is a very awkward type of mechanics, since if taken at face value, Shadows would overrun the world. It you only put this ability in the fluff, you never run into that problem. Each DM can decide on its own, and until the PCs have researched the information for the campaign, shadows and shadow creation/spawning is a mystery and can create suspense...

So far I agree with KM that the monster fluff from the excerpt wasn't that great. I am not sure if we have seen the full monster fluff, but if that's it, there probably should be some more. On the other hand, if I really get a handful of monsters on every level of 4E, maybe the loss of fluff is worth it. Not having to create stat-blocks is a big seller to me, after having created countless of these in my 3E campaigns.

 

[JohnSnow]

So KM, if I understand you, your complaint isn't actually that there's no fluff attached to the monster entries. It's that, based on what we've seen to date, you don't see the monsters' stat blocks as supporting their fluffy descriptions.

So, for example, while the description claims that "Phanes manipulate time, which they use to sow chaos among mortals," there is no ability listed that would seem to imply that they have any real ability to manipulate time. All they seem to possess are their, as you put it, "AARP lasers," which by themselves are hardly enough to "sow chaos."

Do I have that about right?