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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benimoto" data-source="post: 5042182" data-attributes="member: 40093">If you look back to what the developers at wizards were posting around the time, one of the columns dealt with the fact that "box text" tended to make players eyes glaze over.  IIRC, the column recounted how a developer had walked around the areas at GenCon where people were playing D&D and observed the players reaction to the DM.  The observation was that when the DM was reading off the page, the players were listless and inattentive.  When the DM was narrating on the fly, the players were much more attentive.The revelation there was that text meant to be read aloud is wasted on the majority of players.  A good DM is telling the story, not reading it aloud.  So essentially, I think that the 4e manuals intentionally stripped out things, like monster descriptions, that were meant to be read aloud as sort of a way of forcing the DM to improvise.It's a change in philosophy that may not suit everyone.  I suspect that while the old way of description-heavy modules may have bored everyone but the 1 in 5 players that enjoys being read to, the new way of sparse modules may provide a worse experience for players that don't have the sort of improvisational DM it takes to liven the the experience up.</blockquote>