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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5903663" data-attributes="member: 2067">That makes sense, though I prefer an introduction for two reasons. The first is <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dreye/20120314" target="_blank">engagement</a>, so that the book is a thing you can both read in preparation, and use at the table. The second is for education, so that a new DM with no preconceived notion of what the hell a "kobold" is knows in a few quick sentences the creature's main characteristics -- combat stats are not the main focus of an MM formatted like this, so while we want to make them stand out clearly, we don't need to put them out there like they are the only thing worth knowing.I didn't include any art there, but, yeah, I'm with you in that a picture right near the name is a good plan. Anything wrong with an index?This is designed for use at the table, too, but it acknowledges that kobolds are not just going to be used for their statblock (hence the bits about lairs and interactions). When I use kobolds in my game, combat stats are not the first or only important thing I need to know about kobolds. I need to know their personalities, their liars, their treasures, their allies, their traps, their schemes, their hooks -- this is all relevant information in actual play, not theoretical fluff (notice that there's nothing about kobold mating or kobold ecology or kobold religion or anything in there). When I've used MMs before, they tell me, "Kobolds use traps in their lair and ally with vermin" and then, to use traps and vermin along with my kobolds, I need to consult obscure DMG pages and tab different books and weigh how many of what kind and of what level -- I've got a lot of overhead to just using the kobolds here and now. This kind of format is principally designed for more efficient use in play, which is to say, more information that is relevant to using the monster with the monster, not buried in some appendix somewhere.Admittedly, this makes it a less than purely efficient "consume" product for those who only need combat stats but, IMO, if it is efficient enough for them (via an index), then an online resource like the Compendium is actually a better place to do a quick search-and-parse when you're prepping between sessions. Having something like the Compendium changes the calculus for an MM, in my mind, rather dramatically. Because if what you are looking for is a statblock and not much else, that delivers on the promise much more efficiently then any book could ever hope to. Meanwhile, an MM that is going to get used is an MM that includes information for all three pillars of play, and as much information in one location as possible. Part of the "controversy" of this idea is that I think there's a lot of people out there who still think that the best MM is a list of names and statblocks, and this can't make them happy. But the Compendium can probably make them more happy than ANY book can, while the MM has room to grow into something that is more broadly useful for more purposes than a list of numbers and dice associated with a creature. In other words, I don't think the ideal product for people who really want statblocks is the MM, anymore. But there's probably a lot of people who still believe that an MM is the best place for their list of stat blocks.</blockquote>

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