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Wandering Monsters 1/15/14: Reinventing the Great Wheel
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6248542" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>Sure, but that's more about how demons aren't useful to you specifically than a problem with the methodology</p><p></p><p>What kinds of things the designers want to spend a lot of pages on is kind of a question for a team with better market research data than I have to answer. I can't tell you what would be the best use of space in an MM -- if people want demons or humanoids or dragons or beholders or dinosaurs or familiars or elementals or whatever. I'd imagine for the first monster book you'd like a big diversity of things spanning 20 levels and hitting some of the most iconic creature types. I'd imagine that the more settings the thing appears in, the better chance it has of appearing. Which also means, the better chance it has of having a few variants in with it, to reflect how different settings use it.</p><p></p><p>This doesn't mean a hugely inflated page count either, though. 2e got away with a little a little <strong>variants</strong> paragraph in certain monster entries. It doesn't need to be much more than that, and that only needs to appear when there's some strong divergences -- because the monster entries are written to be specific to their setting regardless of the existence of variants, it is already implied that they might not be like this outside of that setting (or, heck, they might be!). Present a Vrock as a Demon from the Abyss who participates in the Blood War, and if that's all the extraplanar monsters your research suggests you need in a game, you're done!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This variety already exists, I just want a game that acknowledges it and treats it as a strength rather than a game that tries to unify everything under One True X. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's the "neutrality as avoiding the question" position I outlined. And it poses real problems when you're designing a game -- the first of which for monsters is that it doesn't give anyone any reason to actually <em>use</em> the critter. Okay, there's this thing called a demon and it's CE and there's no reason at all for any DM to give a crap about it. It's ythraks all over again: a lack of material means that there's nothing selling the creature to you. That's especially true in a D&D that takes one of the big improvements from 4e (easy peasy monster generation) and brings it forward: you now have the ability to whip up stats in a few minutes for ANY creature you want. Which means each critter in the MM needs to justify itself even harder as an interesting story, an interesting antagonist, an interesting world element to use. </p><p></p><p>I mean, it's a fair way to do things, but its weaknesses are pretty huge. If you hope to sell a monster book to people who don't really need monster mechanics (because the e makes it so easy to make those yourself), you're going to want to make sure you have some rich, evocative material in there that encourages DMs who read the book to want to use the creature THIS WEEK. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Nah, just Thor. Maybe the Thor description mentions other gods and places (he hates Loki, Odin his is dad, he hangs out in Valhalla) and leaves that open. Maybe a future <em>Deities and Demigods</em> book goes into detail about those elements, maybe its just up to a DM running a Nordic-themed game to do the legwork. </p><p></p><p>That's the thing about a building block approach: the block itself can be used alone, it can be combined with similar blocks, or it can be used with radically different blocks that nonetheless combine easily ("In this ancient Egytpian setting we're using the Norse gods, and they have animal heads, and also Waterdeep from FR, but with pyramids instead of castles. Also there are ninjas."). It doesn't depend on this complex web of supporting records to function, it just works by itself. </p><p></p><p>The big idea here is that the game makes no attempt to really reconcile these elements in any True Official Way. And a group that doesn't care about reconciling them doesn't even need to worry about it. And a group that does can pick the World Axis or the Great Ring or whatever and run with it without worrying if Pelor is a true Nordic god or not (he is if you say he is, guys), without worrying if Feywild and Arborea are the same or different (maybe they are, maybe they aren't, you tell me, DM), without having to muck about with choosing broad, flavorless defaults, without bothering themselves with excluding certain players or demoting them to "non-canon" status ("Okay, if you like eladrin in the feywild, that's how it is here"). </p><p></p><p>I think my favorite aspect of this is that it encourages exploration. It always suggests that there's more over the next ridge, just left off because of page count. There's Thor. Maybe there's a Valhalla. Maybe there's an Yggdrasil. Maybe Ymir. Maybe dwarves in the mountains worship him and his hammer. Maybe the plains people where the storms pick up vast speeds and the horse hooves sound like thunder give him homage. It's not defined, jut's just possible...just waiting for someone to explore. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The issue with this model is that playing D&D and DMing your own fun games isn't something that requires some sort of advanced degree. This is a game about make-believe: literally, 8 year olds should be able to do this. But no one's going to WANT to do it if the game is completely agnostic, refusing to take a side. Rather, I want my game to be <em>polytheistic</em>, to believe absolutely that there's Ra and there's Thor and there's The Silver Flame and there's no reason these can't all be alongside each other in the books, because they've all got awesome things to offer.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6248542, member: 2067"] Sure, but that's more about how demons aren't useful to you specifically than a problem with the methodology What kinds of things the designers want to spend a lot of pages on is kind of a question for a team with better market research data than I have to answer. I can't tell you what would be the best use of space in an MM -- if people want demons or humanoids or dragons or beholders or dinosaurs or familiars or elementals or whatever. I'd imagine for the first monster book you'd like a big diversity of things spanning 20 levels and hitting some of the most iconic creature types. I'd imagine that the more settings the thing appears in, the better chance it has of appearing. Which also means, the better chance it has of having a few variants in with it, to reflect how different settings use it. This doesn't mean a hugely inflated page count either, though. 2e got away with a little a little [B]variants[/B] paragraph in certain monster entries. It doesn't need to be much more than that, and that only needs to appear when there's some strong divergences -- because the monster entries are written to be specific to their setting regardless of the existence of variants, it is already implied that they might not be like this outside of that setting (or, heck, they might be!). Present a Vrock as a Demon from the Abyss who participates in the Blood War, and if that's all the extraplanar monsters your research suggests you need in a game, you're done! This variety already exists, I just want a game that acknowledges it and treats it as a strength rather than a game that tries to unify everything under One True X. That's the "neutrality as avoiding the question" position I outlined. And it poses real problems when you're designing a game -- the first of which for monsters is that it doesn't give anyone any reason to actually [I]use[/I] the critter. Okay, there's this thing called a demon and it's CE and there's no reason at all for any DM to give a crap about it. It's ythraks all over again: a lack of material means that there's nothing selling the creature to you. That's especially true in a D&D that takes one of the big improvements from 4e (easy peasy monster generation) and brings it forward: you now have the ability to whip up stats in a few minutes for ANY creature you want. Which means each critter in the MM needs to justify itself even harder as an interesting story, an interesting antagonist, an interesting world element to use. I mean, it's a fair way to do things, but its weaknesses are pretty huge. If you hope to sell a monster book to people who don't really need monster mechanics (because the e makes it so easy to make those yourself), you're going to want to make sure you have some rich, evocative material in there that encourages DMs who read the book to want to use the creature THIS WEEK. Nah, just Thor. Maybe the Thor description mentions other gods and places (he hates Loki, Odin his is dad, he hangs out in Valhalla) and leaves that open. Maybe a future [I]Deities and Demigods[/I] book goes into detail about those elements, maybe its just up to a DM running a Nordic-themed game to do the legwork. That's the thing about a building block approach: the block itself can be used alone, it can be combined with similar blocks, or it can be used with radically different blocks that nonetheless combine easily ("In this ancient Egytpian setting we're using the Norse gods, and they have animal heads, and also Waterdeep from FR, but with pyramids instead of castles. Also there are ninjas."). It doesn't depend on this complex web of supporting records to function, it just works by itself. The big idea here is that the game makes no attempt to really reconcile these elements in any True Official Way. And a group that doesn't care about reconciling them doesn't even need to worry about it. And a group that does can pick the World Axis or the Great Ring or whatever and run with it without worrying if Pelor is a true Nordic god or not (he is if you say he is, guys), without worrying if Feywild and Arborea are the same or different (maybe they are, maybe they aren't, you tell me, DM), without having to muck about with choosing broad, flavorless defaults, without bothering themselves with excluding certain players or demoting them to "non-canon" status ("Okay, if you like eladrin in the feywild, that's how it is here"). I think my favorite aspect of this is that it encourages exploration. It always suggests that there's more over the next ridge, just left off because of page count. There's Thor. Maybe there's a Valhalla. Maybe there's an Yggdrasil. Maybe Ymir. Maybe dwarves in the mountains worship him and his hammer. Maybe the plains people where the storms pick up vast speeds and the horse hooves sound like thunder give him homage. It's not defined, jut's just possible...just waiting for someone to explore. The issue with this model is that playing D&D and DMing your own fun games isn't something that requires some sort of advanced degree. This is a game about make-believe: literally, 8 year olds should be able to do this. But no one's going to WANT to do it if the game is completely agnostic, refusing to take a side. Rather, I want my game to be [I]polytheistic[/I], to believe absolutely that there's Ra and there's Thor and there's The Silver Flame and there's no reason these can't all be alongside each other in the books, because they've all got awesome things to offer. [/QUOTE]
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