What supplement would you really like to see Wizards produce?

[Altalazar]

"Ecology" articles used to be written in what I called the "fiction and footnote" format -- a story about an encounter with the creature in question, with footnotes giving the game-related details. (To use two terms than seem to annoy a lot of people - and please forgive me in advance for using them - the story was the "fluff" and the footnotes were the "crunch.") When Dave Gross left Dragon and Jesse Decker took over as editor, the "Ecology" format was changed from "fiction and footnotes" to just the "footnotes," as it were. In other words, "Ecology" articles as they stand today are just a list of "game facts" about the givien creature, often including things like new feats the creature might use. In many ways, an "Ecology" article today is very much like an expanded "Vs." article that Dragon started putting out shortly after the change to 3E ("Vs. Zombies," "Vs. Vampires," etc).
Johnathan

I loved those old ecology articles. They gave such good flavor to the monsters. You could really picture them as living, breathing creatures part of the ecosystem. While stats are nice, after a while, my eyes glaze over from looking at endless blocks of stat text. I'd love it if they doubled or tripled or quadrupled the amount of flavor text with each monster entry in the monster books. And ten page articles on ecology in Dragon would be fun too.

 

[Frostmarrow]

You mean a redux of the idea behind the Basic/Expert/Companion/Master/Immortal sets?

Yes!

But back then the next box expanded the game in a linear fashion upwards. Characters getting to higher and higher levels and getting more and more powers. This time they should expand the game in such a way that you can stay in the levels you prefer.

The Basic set might be for a campaign about pickpockets and paupers in a thieves' guild or about nomads and hunters on a long journey.

The Master set might be about world-building, strongholds and titles.

-What do I know, I just enjoy the stuff? I don't write them.

 

[woodelf]

I'd like to see a big book of really out there ideas, written up in about 20-50 pages each. Think along the lines of some of the wierder Polyhedron minigames, all fleshed out, with new classes, rules etc. as needed. Would I use it all? Probably not, but I would have a great time reading it, and it would be great for oneshots. Think of it, maybe a dozen or more minigames, given a slightly/much longer then Poly rightup, with art and everything.

Have you seen the Horizon line from FFG? Redline (Mad Max), Grimm (kids in twisted fairy tales), Virtual (Tron meets Reboot), and a magic-n-sixguns Western (sorta like Deadlands, but without the horror slant). And probably more on the way. They're all really excellently done, and about as "out there" as D20 System games have gotten. I think each is around 60pp [my books are currently in disarray, and I'm not finding Grimm]. Did i mention that they rock?

 

[woodelf]

"Ecology" articles used to be written in what I called the "fiction and footnote" format -- a story about an encounter with the creature in question, with footnotes giving the game-related details. (To use two terms than seem to annoy a lot of people - and please forgive me in advance for using them - the story was the "fluff" and the footnotes were the "crunch.") When Dave Gross left Dragon and Jesse Decker took over as editor, the "Ecology" format was changed from "fiction and footnotes" to just the "footnotes," as it were. In other words, "Ecology" articles as they stand today are just a list of "game facts" about the givien creature, often including things like new feats the creature might use. In many ways, an "Ecology" article today is very much like an expanded "Vs." article that Dragon started putting out shortly after the change to 3E ("Vs. Zombies," "Vs. Vampires," etc).

Ah, i see--yep, that was after i stopped reading Dragon. And, based on the issues i've looked at since then, none too soon. Let's put it this way: if i were to describe the change in the Ecology articles, it'd be "they used to have tons of cool content, with a few crunchy bits in the footnotes; now they don't have any useful content, just the crunch". In a decade of running D&D, and well over 200 issues of Dragon, i think i used the crunchy bits from maybe half-a-dozen Ecology of... articles, but used the "real content" (the fluff) from dozens of them. Not that the crunch wasn't well-done, just that it isn't of much use to me. I already had tons of game stats, what was lacking was context and society and the like--especially before 2e.

Still, not surprising: it parallels the changes in the game itself: way too much crunch for my taste, way too little fluff (witness, frex, the lack of "how to RP" and "how to DM" books, as lamented in this thread). It sounds like the new Ecology articles would particularly frustrate me, since i've always relied on them to flesh out the narrative parts of monsters, and the format for monsters in the Monster Manual (3E) has less of that to start with [than the Monstrous Compendia did]. [I think eliminating the standard "Ecology" and "Habitat/Society" sections from the monster descriptions is the biggest backwards step of 3E.]