WotC Blogs II

[Glyfair]

James Wyatt has put up a couple of posts touching on dragons and, briefly, market research.

Anyway, dragons. Ready-to-play dragons, right in the Monster Manual! What a concept! I just pulled the 1977 Monster Manual and the 1993 Monstrous Manual off my shelf and realized that this is, in fact, the first Monster Manual in the history of the D&D game to give you complete, ready-to-play dragons right there in the book! (To be fair, you didn't have to do much for the dragons in the 1977 book, but you did have to contend with a range of possible Hit Dice, hit points per die that depended on the dragon's age, and a fair bit of text at the start of the dragon entry you had to refer back to in play. Plus, there was a random chance that a dragon might use magic, and its spells were determined randomly.

In the 1993 book, you had to consult two different tables, checking the dragon's age against the various columns, to determine its Hit Dice (let's see, page 79 tells me the silver dragon has 15 base Hit Dice, but it's adult, so page 64 tells me to add 2), AC, damage (1-8/1-8/5-30 on page 79, +6 from page 64), and so on. What fun!

And then, of course, there's 3e, with the whole stat block construction process. Choose skills and feats and spells for every dragon, and modify all the stats accordingly. Nuts!

So here we are, neck-deep in writing the 4e Monster Manual, and I have the happy task of filling in a 14-page dragon entry. (A waste of space? In a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual? I don't think so.) Each dragon has all the information you need to run it, self-contained in its stat block. Each spread gives you tactics, descriptions, encounters, and lore for the dragon at hand. The start of the section talks about the families of dragons, a legend of the birth of dragons, advice for building and running a dragon encounter—lots of great information, but nothing you're going to have to flip back to in the middle of any encounter.

Every attack, every statistic, every magic power each dragon has is contained right there in its stat block. Self-contained. As easy to run as you could ask a solo monster to be. Ready to go. Ready to kill your characters. Awesome.

Have I mentioned that I love my job?

Remember my very first post here, where I was talking about ethnographic research? Check it out: When I got back from GenCon I found this email from one of our market research managers—

I was reading your Gen Con blog last night -- we must've read your mind! ; ) Market Research has been conducting an ethnographic study of young gamers over the past couple of months, the results of which will be presented in September.

hat's cool. I always love to find out that the company is doing things right. I mean, R&D I can trust—I see what we're doing every day. Outside of R&D, it requires a lot more blind trust. The vast majority of the time, at least over the last several years, that trust turns out to be justified. Thanks, Market Research Folks!

 

[DaveMage]

Er, note to James: you can find a stat block for each dragon all set to go in the Draconomicon.

 

[Glyfair]

Er, note to James: you can find a stat block for each dragon all set to go in the Draconomicon.

His quote didn't say these were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in D&D. He said they were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in a Monster Manual.

 

[MerricB]

In the future, we'd rather *design* this stuff to do what it does, so that when you play a trog you have a fun, interesting, reasonably balanced character.

This sounds to me like a hint that monsters as characters might be included in the PH2 (or MM2 or DMG2).

It's been said that monsters-as-characters will be included in the MM, just not all of them.

Cheers!

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

Interesting news from James Wyatt. If the ten core dragons are dealt with in 14 pages (1.4 pages each), I would assume 1 page write up for each with maybe the other 4 pages used for the illustrations.

That suggests this must be one hell of a small stat block if each dragon is detailed individually!

I mean at the very least I would expect maybe 4-5 dragon ages (Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan?). The mind boggles at how all the information necessary will be squeezed in!?

 

[DaveMage]

His quote didn't say these were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in D&D. He said they were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in a Monster Manual.

There are several in the 3.5 MM:

Young Adult Black Dragon
Mature Adult Blue Dragon
Adult Green Dragon
Etc...

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

His quote didn't say these were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in D&D. He said they were the first "ready-to-play" dragons in a Monster Manual.

With only 14 pages, I wonder if we'll get the full range of power (read: age) levels for each dragon type. I also wonder if, to fit them all in, the dragons have been more or less standardized--e.g. every Great Wyrm is now Gargantuan, does XdY damage with each claw, does AdB damage with its breath weapon, etc. If it's red, it breathes fire, if blue, electricity.

I kind of like the different personalities that dragons have in combat, so I hope thay havent been too standardized.

 

[Aeolius]

James Wyatt has put up a couple of posts touching on dragons and, briefly, market research... Market Research has been conducting an ethnographic study of young gamers over the past couple of months, the results of which will be presented in September.

What about old gamers? :\

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What about old gamers? :\

They buy D&D and have been heard from more loudly than anyone else throughout the history of the game. Unless older gamers can stop dying and stop getting distracted by career/family, WotC needs to go after folks to replace them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh, I had to look it up, and someone else might have to:

per·i·stal·tic /ˌpɛrəˈstɔltɪk, -ˈstæl-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[per-uh-stawl-tik, -stal-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective Physiology.
of, pertaining to, or resembling peristalsis.
[Origin: 1645–55; < Gk peristaltikós compressing, equiv. to peri- peri- + stal- (see peristalsis) + -tikos -tic]

—Related forms
per·i·stal·ti·cal·ly, adverb
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source
per·i·stal·sis (pěr'ĭ-stôl'sĭs, -stāl'-) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. per·i·stal·ses (-sēz)
The wavelike muscular contractions of the alimentary canal or other tubular structures by which contents are forced onward toward the opening.

[New Latin, from Greek peristaltikos, peristaltic, from peristellein, to wrap around : peri-, peri- + stellein, to place; see stel- in Indo-European roots.]

per'i·stal'tic (-stôl'tĭk, -stāl'-) adj., per'i·stal'ti·cal·ly adv.
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source
peristaltic
1655, from Mod.L., from Gk. peristalikos (Galen), lit. "contracting around," from peri- (q.v.) + stalsis "checking, constriction," related to stellein "to put in order, draw together."

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

So, he's talking about living tunnels that force the characters toward an endpoint. Ew!