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<blockquote data-quote="dd.stevenson" data-source="post: 6261565" data-attributes="member: 6683099">Yeah, Mistwell is right: I thought (apparently wrongly) you were using a double entendre to be passive aggressively insulting. Also I still object to the grouping: pre-session prep is not where the 2E MM especially shines for me. (Pre-session I could make a lot of that stuff up on my own, if I needed to. At the table on the fly? Not so much.)It`s a couple of things. (1) I don`t know ahead of game which direction the players will go, and prepping ecological information of that breadth and depth for the entire set of D&amp;D monsters is not a realistic option. But give me the 2E MM and a 5 minute break, and I have everything I need to set up a simulacrum that will react plausibly to the PCs incursions. (2) Since the players will form plans based on monsters acting like they have in the past, it`s important for me to be consistent about this stuff. So even if I make it up myself on the fly, I`ll still need to compile a repository of established behavior, and refer to it a lot during play. And I`d much rather pay someone than do it myself, because it`s a pain in the tuckus. (3) Hopefully the pro writers are actually better at this craft than I am, but that`s just an added bonus.I don`t use the detail in the MM to plan long term stuff very often, although obviously that information does come into play sometimes. But that information is rarely causal. (i.e., I decide the ankhegs are going to go bother the borderland villages, and then I fish around in their MM entry to come up with a consistent in-world reason for this behavior.)(I`m happy to discuss this a lot more if it interests you, but manbearcat has a point: I don`t think the 2E MM is especially on topic for this thread.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="dd.stevenson, post: 6261565, member: 6683099"] Yeah, Mistwell is right: I thought (apparently wrongly) you were using a double entendre to be passive aggressively insulting. Also I still object to the grouping: pre-session prep is not where the 2E MM especially shines for me. (Pre-session I could make a lot of that stuff up on my own, if I needed to. At the table on the fly? Not so much.) It`s a couple of things. (1) I don`t know ahead of game which direction the players will go, and prepping ecological information of that breadth and depth for the entire set of D&D monsters is not a realistic option. But give me the 2E MM and a 5 minute break, and I have everything I need to set up a simulacrum that will react plausibly to the PCs incursions. (2) Since the players will form plans based on monsters acting like they have in the past, it`s important for me to be consistent about this stuff. So even if I make it up myself on the fly, I`ll still need to compile a repository of established behavior, and refer to it a lot during play. And I`d much rather pay someone than do it myself, because it`s a pain in the tuckus. (3) Hopefully the pro writers are actually better at this craft than I am, but that`s just an added bonus. I don`t use the detail in the MM to plan long term stuff very often, although obviously that information does come into play sometimes. But that information is rarely causal. (i.e., I decide the ankhegs are going to go bother the borderland villages, and then I fish around in their MM entry to come up with a consistent in-world reason for this behavior.) (I`m happy to discuss this a lot more if it interests you, but manbearcat has a point: I don`t think the 2E MM is especially on topic for this thread.) [/QUOTE]

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