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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 5041129" data-attributes="member: 11697">I think those are both seperate issues or different circumstances than the current complaints about the dearth of flavor text in the 4e MM.The first point you mention as I recall was mostly to do with the perception by many folks that WotC was intentionally leaving out classic monsters purely as a way to hold them back and thereaby force people to buy subsequent "core" monster manuals to get well known monsters that in prior editions would have been there up front and center. I was an objection to a perceived loss of value and money making tactic by WotC, not an objection to how many monsters in general would be in the book.The second point you raised, the so-called fluff in the 3.x MM4 that was again somewhat of a different issue. The MM4 fluff was often derided as being dull, generic, and written not to detail and explore new monsters, but filler for preexistant creatures with class levels tacked on which were being presented as new monsters. The so-called flavor text was also more an admixture of bare bones delve setup and dungeon encounter than it was Ecology and Society & Culture like we saw for instance in 2e monster books, or even now in the monster writeups in each Pathfinder AP.Personally I look at the progression from 2e to 3e to 4e and see a continual downhill trend in the amount of flavor text and the depth of the flavor text presented. Some late 3.x monster flavor text was often little more than bullet points with grossly general one sentence details keyed to various knowledge DCs. Color me unimpressed. 4e took that trend to an extreme and provided virtually nothing of substance in the MM, and what was there I found disturbingly brief and uninspiring. I literally read it, put it down, looked at one of my players and said, "What the hell? There's not even a description of what they look like. Nothing. Did they leave it out by accident?" (The disturbingly high amount of recycled artwork probably didn't help my impression either).Had the flavor text level of the 4e MM been what I was exposed to when starting gaming, I would not be writing stuff today. You can blame late 2e for inspiring me (and the less expansive 3e stuff for pointing me back to get those details). Even if you don't use flavor text as presented, it serves IMO an invaluable role in inspiring new players and new DMs - hooking them on the game and keeping them as players, versus dry and anemic listings of monsters that nobody is going to feel nostalgic for or talk about and create stuff based upon it a decade from now.</blockquote>

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