"Monster Manual® 3 introduces a new monster format that offers more background and story material to inspire Dungeon Masters."
Yay for more fluff!
All crunch belongs to Monster Builder, thanks for listening guys.
Every paragraph of fluff in a Monster Manual is wasted ink, as far as I'm concerned.
Every block of crunch outside Compendium and Monster Builder is wasted ink, as far as I'm concerned.
All crunch can go digital.
Every paragraph of fluff in a Monster Manual is wasted ink, as far as I'm concerned.
Every block of crunch outside Compendium and Monster Builder is wasted ink, as far as I'm concerned.
All crunch can go digital.
Umm... no? Some of us still use books. D&D is very much a book-centric game, not a digital one. I can't use the Character Builder or Monster Builder (and wouldn't want to anyways).
Well, I know im sure not buying MM3.
I understand some people don't use fluff at all for their games, some other use their own homebrew fluff for decades and still enjoy it... but the lack of long decent fluff on MMs of fourth edition has been a major letdown for me and other DMs to whom, it seems, Wotc finally listened.
Umm... no? Some of us still use books. D&D is very much a book-centric game, not a digital one. I can't use the Character Builder or Monster Builder (and wouldn't want to anyways).
That's your problem.
My problem was the lacking of fluff.
Reading *some* 4E books is like reading TV set manuals, which I don't enjoy. Dead trees for insipid crunch? Meh...
But, hey, each own has his opinion ;)
I don't run a Realms or an Eberron campagin and honestly I don't care how the newest spider loving drow assassin fits into those worlds. I do care about how the newest spider loving drow assassin interacts with the prior drow and it's place in drow soceity.
My other comment on the matter is simply that the fluff presented is always a good thing for New DMs or DMs that have problems coming up with ways to fit a Grey Render or X creature into their world. It gives a small glimpse into how the creature works and then the DM can decide from there on how it runs in their game.
As we speak I am compiling ALL the monsters in my current astash of books to tell me which ones are adequate "Forest' encounters and under what conditions. Next I will be doing a list of Dungeon monsters and then maybe Mountains.
Why? because when I am in a Forest location, it would be nice to have a table like in the good ole days that previous DMGs had that would allow me to roll a random monster encounter relevant to the terrain.
Today's monster books are really not much help in that regard. It tells you where some can likely be found, but not all, and it is not done in a clear simple fashion, it's always buried on the text.
I wouldn't mind just a biiiiiiit more fluff telling me about the monsters. Often we are lucky to get a mere minor paragraph.
So can we expect fewer monster stats but longer fluff paragraph?
Unfortunately, yes.
Yay for more fluff!
All crunch belongs to Monster Builder
Agreed. Good sign for the Dark Sun monster book.
If you (WOTC) are targeting (or looking to attract) a new audience, fluff is a good thing.
Though I wouldn't mind tables along the lines of what Tsukino is talking about.
If thats true, I won't be buying the MM3, since I won't be able to use the monsters in it without creating their stats myself. I won't be forced into subscribing.
Bad wotc! Bad!
If the OP is just bsing, and there will be LESS crunch, then thats fine. I can live with that and I'd be happy with more fluff, as long as I can still use the MM3 without some underhanded ploy to suck more money out of my wallet.
Fluff is subjective.
As we speak I am compiling ALL the monsters in my current astash of books to tell me which ones are adequate "Forest' encounters and under what conditions. Next I will be doing a list of Dungeon monsters and then maybe Mountains.
Why? because when I am in a Forest location, it would be nice to have a table like in the good ole days that previous DMGs had that would allow me to roll a random monster encounter relevant to the terrain.
Today's monster books are really not much help in that regard. It tells you where some can likely be found, but not all, and it is not done in a clear simple fashion, it's always buried on the text.
I wouldn't mind just a biiiiiiit more fluff telling me about the monsters. Often we are lucky to get a mere minor paragraph.
Whichever monster you decide to put in a forest is an appropriate forest encounter. Whichever monster you decide to put in the mountains is an appropriate mountain encounter.
I'm all for more fluff, but removing all the crunch makes the book useless. Those of us without DDI will have to houserule every monster. Is it honestly true that we won't have stat blocks in the MM3? If so, thats the most idiotic things wotc's ever done.
If thats true, I won't be buying the MM3, since I won't be able to use the monsters in it without creating their stats myself. I won't be forced into subscribing.
Bad wotc! Bad!
If the OP is just bsing, and there will be LESS crunch, then thats fine. I can live with that and I'd be happy with more fluff, as long as I can still use the MM3 without some underhanded ploy to suck more money out of my wallet.
It's BS. There's no reason why they'd take away the crunch altogether. The fluff will probably be just distributed a bit differently than as is in the previous volumes.
I'm all for more fluff, but removing all the crunch makes the book useless. Those of us without DDI will have to houserule every monster. Is it honestly true that we won't have stat blocks in the MM3? If so, thats the most idiotic things wotc's ever done.
If thats true, I won't be buying the MM3, since I won't be able to use the monsters in it without creating their stats myself. I won't be forced into subscribing.
Bad wotc! Bad!
If the OP is just bsing, and there will be LESS crunch, then thats fine. I can live with that and I'd be happy with more fluff, as long as I can still use the MM3 without some underhanded ploy to suck more money out of my wallet.
It's BS. There's no reason why they'd take away the crunch altogether. The fluff will probably be just distributed a bit differently than as is in the previous volumes.
Thats what I figured (and hope) but you never know with wotc. It made no sense considering how many 4e players don't subscribe to DDI. The MM3 would probably tank if they did that.
Umm... no? Some of us still use books. D&D is very much a book-centric game, not a digital one. I can't use the Character Builder or Monster Builder (and wouldn't want to anyways).
That's your problem.
Buletteschist.
The books are the core of the addition. The DDI is a resource.
EVERYTHING should be present in the books, and that means crunch. All of it, complete, total, and full. Because some of us don't game with a laptop at the table, don't spend a monthly fee to game, and don't access the DDI, but we're still DnD players.
Quite frankly, you are right, the lack of fluff is your problem. And it is a thousand times easier to solve than the crunch one, because you don't need to balance fluff, or worry about fluff being too boring, too overpowered, too foolish, or too ineffective. I can fluff a single monster twenty different ways in less minutes, but I pay the big bucks for WotC to brew up, playtest, and create interesting and dynamic monster mechanics.
Fluff is easy, crunch is hard. And I pay for something I can sink my teeth into.
What new monsters will MM3 possibly have? Will it mostly be more variations of the ones we've got from previous MMs?
Maybe for some, but there are a lot of monster that have yet to see the light of day (for this edition). Mimics, Dao, and Raggamuffins are three from the top of my head. Hopefully we WON'T be seeing that last one, but Mimics and Dao will be much appreciated. I'm going to assume that Dao will be in it, since they're talked about, but not statted, in The Plane Below. Mimics are confirmed to be in it.
Of course, we'll have our usual suspects of a Big Bad (this time, Lolth) and probably several more monsters that fit the them of that big bad (more Spider-based demons?)
We'll have Catastrophic Dragons, which I'm looking forward to immensely. Note that the stats for Volcanic Dragons in the Playtest nigh proves the idea that there won't be any crunch in the book a ridiculous notion.
We'll probably have more Demons and Devils, and hopefully a new type of Immortal. We'll probably see a clue on that in The Plane Above.
We'll see monster rules for Wilden and the undisclosed PH3 race, unless it's already appeared elsewhere. That said, we'll almost definitely get more Minotaurs and more Gith of both varieties to fit with the PH3 theme.
We'll probably get quite a few aberrant monsters, to fit with the Psionic theme. We might even get non-aberrant Psionic monsters.
It's very likely we'll see more Beasts, Behemoths, Lycanthropes (Werefolk, as much as I find the name etymologically incorrect), Vampires, Shadar-kai, and Drow. Because everybody loves Werewolves, Shadar-kai and Drow. And we want other Were-animals to supplement our awesome Werewolves.
We might see more Yugoloths translated into demons, but I wouldn't hope too much for that.
Either way a bit more fluff = "a good thing" in all of WOTC current products.
I'm sad to hear that the MM3, and likely other future releases, are probably going the same direction.
It's a return to long boring fluff written by hacks (and, you know, not professional fantasy authors or the like that would work at a place like Wizards). All that wasted paper and lost stat-block space for ideas for stuff I will never, ever use... or, uh, not.
Honestly, cutting a few pages of monsters from MM3 for some higher quality fluff wouldn't -bother- me that much. AV2 losing eight hundred items didn't phase me mostly because AV1 didn't -need- those eight hundred. Heck, it didn't even need an extra eight hundred on top of that. I dread higher level character making sessions mostly because the players have to spend several hours sifting through DDi or my books to find a -single- bloody item. Too much junk since, maybe, 40% gets used. Its also painful to look at sheets and sheets of yellow blocks looking for items which work for you. I have no real complaints as far as the Monster Manual goes, but I honestly as a DM would rather get more info on Far Realm baddies or Lolth than, say, Drakkoth stats.
Basically, what I'm saying after all of the hyperbole and such is: I would rather fewer high quality entries than more entries of lesser quality. There are certainly MM2 monsters I will never use, regardless of circumstance. Drakkoth for one. I also can't see myself using Fey Lingerers or Dimensional Marauders, but I won't necessarily rule it out. Direguard are conceptually extraneous. Why not just use Deathknights or any other undead? I don't see the need for a "Hawk" section, and I honestly think the more glutted sections such as Demons, Devils, and Humans, would not be RUINED FOREVER if they were tightened up a bit. I sure that are more than enough pages that can be cut without the product loosing any signifigant ammount of quality. There's also -alot- of white space in the Monster Manual books that could be used more effeciently.
All this means is that Wizards is moving to a "Quality over Quantity" approach, and, as long as they still deliver enough to make the purchase worthwhile and the extra fluff isn't useless, I say, "Good."
Honestly, its almost like the people on this forum are -looking- for an excuse to whine and complain that the game is being ruined.
I am for more fluff, as long as it doesn't cut on the crunch. If for space manageability they must cut somewhere, then i prefer they stick with crunch and keep the fluff at a minimum. But please WoTC, don't sacrifice monsters leaping into 4E at the expense of their fluff.
We have old editions references to make up the fluff if we ever want to. It's not if they were inventing tons of new monsters in every manuals.
Wanna know more of Beholders ? 1E, 2E, 3E and even Wiki can help you.
All this means is that Wizards is moving to a "Quality over Quantity" approach
The problem is that "more fluff" ≠ "quality".
"Competent mechanics design" = "quality".
The history and origin of a particular set of magic items does not interest me. When I want to include a special set of magic items with an involved history, I'm going to make it myself, and it's going to be specifically relevant to my campaign. Just now, I opened the AV2 to a random page, looking for an example, and I hit page 68, which is more than 3/4 sidebars, talking about the history of those items, none of which I care about in the slightest, and none of which make any sense (because the items are not unique, and can be conjured from so much residuum). If the MM3 is anything like that, I'll certainly be saving my money.
I'm not saying the books should be 100% fluffless. Crunch needs some degree of context in order to avoid being mindless numbers. I like the fluff:crunch ratio in MM1. However, I would appreciate if WotC were to keep the SIDCA relegated to Dragon or Dungeon articles, which are intended to provide ideas to DMs and player, as opposed to the books, which are meant to provide the meat and potatoes of rules and content.
I like fluff.
Fluff can inspire new takes or directions you may not have come up with on your own, and fluff can be viewed as a DMs first draft.
I often pull out a book to just read, and when I do it isn't because I enjoy reviewing the crunch. It's because the fluff can be an entertaining mini-narrative all on it's own.
And that's all well and good, but the rulebooks are not novels. They're not short-story compilations. They're rulebooks. They're supposed to tell you how the game is played.
When I want an entertaining story, I'll find an entertaining story to read. I don't need that in my rulebooks.
The books are the core of the addition. The DDI is a resource.
EVERYTHING should be present in the books, and that means crunch. All of it, complete, total, and full. Because some of us don't game with a laptop at the table, don't spend a monthly fee to game, and don't access the DDI, but we're still DnD players.
Quite frankly, you are right, the lack of fluff is your problem. And it is a thousand times easier to solve than the crunch one, because you don't need to balance fluff, or worry about fluff being too boring, too overpowered, too foolish, or too ineffective. I can fluff a single monster twenty different ways in less minutes, but I pay the big bucks for WotC to brew up, playtest, and create interesting and dynamic monster mechanics.
Fluff is easy, crunch is hard. And I pay for something I can sink my teeth into.
Now I'm on the opposite side. Getting the fluff just right to fit in with a given ecosystem, the basic cosmology, as well as the history, evolution and culture is the hard part. For me, it's a thousand times easier to balance the crunch by role and level.
Now I'm on the opposite side. Getting the fluff just right to fit in with a given ecosystem, the basic cosmology, as well as the history, evolution and culture is the hard part. For me, it's a thousand times easier to balance the crunch by role and level.
The inherent difficulty here is that the fluff for any given item, monster, class, race, etc. is different for each setting. If the fluff is FR-oriented, it's useless for Eberron. If it's Eberron-oriented, it's useless for Dark Sun. And no matter what fluff you use, it's useless for any DM that uses their own campaign setting (which, in my experience, tends to be the majority).
That's why the more generic a book's content is, the more valuable it is to the general public, and thus the greater quality product. Crunch is generic. Anyone can use the same crunch. Fluff is specific. Fluff must be written for a specific audience. Core books should be as generic as possible. Save the narrow-focused content for speciality books (Campaign Setting books) or for Dragon Articles.
I'm well aware the rulebooks are not novels or short-story compilations. However, the MM is not a rulebook. It's a sourcebook, and that may be splitting hairs but there's nothing really in the MM about the rules so they don't tell you how the game is played.
If you want an entertaining story, by all means find an entertaining story to read. I do the same. That doesn't mean my D&D material shouldn't be entertaining at every opportunity. D&D is a game of imagination, and that purpose is better served when it can capture the imagination whenever possible. And maybe gamers would be less prone to jumping on the boards to ask the most elementary questions if the books themselves were engaging enough to motivate people into giving them leisurely reads.
Fluff does not have to be realm or scenario specific, and I certainly don't recall entries from the 1st edition MM of FF being geared to one setting or another.
I don't think I'm explaining myself clearly. Let me give you an example of what I mean.
The entry for Orcs in the MM opens with three small paragraphs:
"Orcs worship Gruumsh, the one-eyed god of slaughter, and are savage, bloodthirsty marauders. They plague the civilized races of the world and also fight among themselves for scraps of food and treasure. They love close combat and plunge furiously into the think of battle, giving no thought to retreat or surrender.
Within what passes for orc society, there are orcs that fill special roles. Eyes of Gruumsh are orcs with a special connection to their fierce god. They offer sacrifices, read omens, and advise the tribe's chieftain of Gruumsh's will. Orc bloodragers are tribal champions feared for their strength and ferocity, and they also make excellent subchiefs or bodyguards.
Orcs often fight alongside ogres, and they can be coerced or bullied into serving any dark overlord or wicked monster powerful enough to command their obedience."
Not a single sentence of that applies to my campaign setting, where orcs are shamanistic country-folk. The same is true for Dark Sun, where the mortal races have no connection to the gods, so Gruumsh is a non-entity. I'm not terribly familiar with Eberron, but I'm led to understand that orcs aren't this way there either. That's pretty generic flavor text, and it's almost enough space to fit in another stat block, which would increase my resources for orc-based encounter building, rather than tell me how orcs work in Forgotten Realms.
Again, I wouldn't claim that a total lack of fluff would be good. Fluff provides context for the intent of the mechanics, and context is very important. It is for this reason that I consider the artwork of all the sourcebooks to be indispensable. A picture's worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to inspiration. However, it should remain the primary goal of a Monster Manual to provide us with monsters, not stories.
OH NOES!It's a return to long boring fluff written by hacks (and, you know, not professional fantasy authors or the like that would work at a place like Wizards). All that wasted paper and lost stat-block space for ideas for stuff I will never, ever use
My feelings exactly. ;)
Honestly, cutting a few pages of monsters from MM3 for some higher quality fluff wouldn't -bother- me that much. AV2 losing eight hundred items didn't phase me mostly because AV1 didn't -need- those eight hundred. Heck, it didn't even need an extra eight hundred on top of that. I dread higher level character making sessions mostly because the players have to spend several hours sifting through DDi or my books to find a -single- bloody item. Too much junk since, maybe, 40% gets used.
The thing is that 40% of 2800 (AV) is still alot more than 40% of 1900 (AV2) though. The more items/monsters/whatever they put in the book, the more likely there is going to be something useful, even if you don't use every single thing there. AV is far more useful to me simply because it has a much greater number of items that are actually good, while i can count on 1 hand the number of things i would want out of the AV2.
Basically, what I'm saying after all of the hyperbole and such is: I would rather fewer high quality entries than more entries of lesser quality.
If the AV2 has any bearing on the future, we have seen no evidence that giving us less options in books somehow improves the quality of those options.
OH NOES!It's a return to long boring fluff written by hacks (and, you know, not professional fantasy authors or the like that would work at a place like Wizards). All that wasted paper and lost stat-block space for ideas for stuff I will never, ever use
My feelings exactly. ;)Honestly, cutting a few pages of monsters from MM3 for some higher quality fluff wouldn't -bother- me that much. AV2 losing eight hundred items didn't phase me mostly because AV1 didn't -need- those eight hundred. Heck, it didn't even need an extra eight hundred on top of that. I dread higher level character making sessions mostly because the players have to spend several hours sifting through DDi or my books to find a -single- bloody item. Too much junk since, maybe, 40% gets used.
The thing is that 40% of 2800 (AV) is still alot more than 40% of 1900 (AV2) though. The more items/monsters/whatever they put in the book, the more likely there is going to be something useful, even if you don't use every single thing there. AV is far more useful to me simply because it has a much greater number of items that are actually good, while i can count on 1 hand the number of things i would want out of the AV2.Basically, what I'm saying after all of the hyperbole and such is: I would rather fewer high quality entries than more entries of lesser quality.
If the AV2 has any bearing on the future, we have seen no evidence that giving us less options in books somehow improves the quality of those options.
Speak for yourself. I liked the fluff in AV2.
Please don't take this as snarky.
I understand where you are coming from using your own setting and designing the world from the ground up, also using the Campaign Settings such as Dark Sun and Dragonlance. Those situations the fluff given by the books does not line up or in your case does not sync in the slightest. There are though, plenty of people that are running the Path of Light setting created by WotC which that fluff links up too.
While the fluff may not be useful to you it helps people out, particually newer DMs. Seriously, if you picked up the MM for the first time as a DM and opened up to the Gibbering Beasts would you have an idea of what these things are if there was no fluff? I know I'd be passing on them from the get go, because I could not logically justify their existence or even remotely understand how they interact, this is also an example of where the picture does not give me much inspiration other then a blob with mouths and eyes.
I'm just saying while fluff means very little to Homebrewed worlds, or more stricter settings (Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc.) there are many situations where it is actually useful.
The books are the core of the addition. The DDI is a resource.
EVERYTHING should be present in the books, and that means crunch. All of it, complete, total, and full. Because some of us don't game with a laptop at the table, don't spend a monthly fee to game, and don't access the DDI, but we're still DnD players.
Quite frankly, you are right, the lack of fluff is your problem. And it is a thousand times easier to solve than the crunch one, because you don't need to balance fluff, or worry about fluff being too boring, too overpowered, too foolish, or too ineffective. I can fluff a single monster twenty different ways in less minutes, but I pay the big bucks for WotC to brew up, playtest, and create interesting and dynamic monster mechanics.
Fluff is easy, crunch is hard. And I pay for something I can sink my teeth into.
Now I'm on the opposite side. Getting the fluff just right to fit in with a given ecosystem, the basic cosmology, as well as the history, evolution and culture is the hard part. For me, it's a thousand times easier to balance the crunch by role and level.
Clearly, the only solution is for the two of us to combine our powers in a Power Rangers montage!
According to Amazon's description:
"Monster Manual® 3 introduces a new monster format that offers more background and story material to inspire Dungeon Masters."
Yay for more fluff!
All crunch belongs to Monster Builder, thanks for listening guys.
Note that it does not say there will be less crunch. A new format could simply mean they've found a more efficient way of putting all the relevant information into the monster statboxes. More background could mean an extra paragraph.
Frankly, you could argue that all fluff belongs in "Ecology of ..." articles in Dragon Magazine and leave the rulebooks for the crunch. But arguing for one extreme over the other is silly. Better to have equal parts crunch and fluff in the "core supplements" and expand upon it with DDi. That way the core books will have something for both the "gimme the numbers" and "gimme the fluff" people.
To Novacat:
Please don't take this as snarky.
I understand where you are coming from using your own setting and designing the world from the ground up, also using the Campaign Settings such as Dark Sun and Dragonlance. Those situations the fluff given by the books does not line up or in your case does not sync in the slightest. There are though, plenty of people that are running the Path of Light setting created by WotC which that fluff links up too.
While the fluff may not be useful to you it helps people out, particually newer DMs. Seriously, if you picked up the MM for the first time as a DM and opened up to the Gibbering Beasts would you have an idea of what these things are if there was no fluff? I know I'd be passing on them from the get go, because I could not logically justify their existence or even remotely understand how they interact, this is also an example of where the picture does not give me much inspiration other then a blob with mouths and eyes.
I'm just saying while fluff means very little to Homebrewed worlds, or more stricter settings (Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc.) there are many situations where it is actually useful.
It's interesting in that way – "common" races actually are MORE LIKELY to have setting-specific fluff that you'll need to deal with if you're homebrewing or using a published setting. It's the stranger creatures that you're more likely to need an explanation of what the hell they are that are less likely to have material attached to them specific to the generic PoL setting or such.
The reason for this is mostly because of Our Monsters are Different.
Then of course there are limits to the hnumber of unique monsters that you can design without becoming completely ridiculous.
We are simply seeing these two forces converge with books that have set page limits to result in books with larger amounts of fluff to make up for the inability to produce the same number of monsters that were in the previous books.
Again, I wouldn't claim that a total lack of fluff would be good. Fluff provides context for the intent of the mechanics, and context is very important. It is for this reason that I consider the artwork of all the sourcebooks to be indispensable. A picture's worth a thousand words, especially when it comes to inspiration. However, it should remain the primary goal of a Monster Manual to provide us with monsters, not stories.
A picture can be worth a thousand words, but not always and sometime even the reveres is true. Pictures are great at presenting momentary snapshots, and are very useful when trying to convey what something looks like. A picture cannot as easily relates a sequence of event, even with a sequence of pictures the viewer must guess how A becomes B. This can become especialy problematic with longer periods of time. When one is attempting to convey a sense of history/legacy pictures tend to be inadequate.
I understand where you are coming from using your own setting and designing the world from the ground up, also using the Campaign Settings such as Dark Sun and Dragonlance. Those situations the fluff given by the books does not line up or in your case does not sync in the slightest. There are though, plenty of people that are running the Path of Light setting created by WotC which that fluff links up too.
This.
While most DMs might run homebrew campaigns (though I doubt anyone has hard evidence for that), I should imagine that a fair number of those homebrew settings are based at least in part on the default fluff as presented in the core books. Creating an entire world from scratch can be rewarding, but also difficult and time consuming. It's much easier to simply start from a default premise, such as what the core books present, and then make a list of the differences.
Even for the rare DM with a 100% original setting, default fluff can still be useful. No matter how thorough one is in there world design, one likely can't account for every new race or creature WotC will invent. The default fluff can if nothing else serve as inspiration when trying to find a place for new material.
Finally there's a mater of presentation. A giant book of stat blocks is simply boring to most eyes. Dictionaries make great reference books, but few people read them for pleasure. This is the problem with AV1, and to a lesser extend MM1, they read like dictionaries. Their dense crunch ratio might make them useful references, but there is little joy to be found reading them, and that can be very important. In previous editions, I've found that some of my best encounters involved creatures I stumbled across because I was reading for pleasure. These are creatures I would have never seen had they been buried in a monotonous list of stat-blocks. Both pictures and fluff are useful ways of breaking up that monotony and when well done can be very entertaining.
The current monster manuals are brilliant because they condense the fluff into brief hooks that make the monster interesting and can be used for adventures. Meanwhile, it doesn't drone on about things you don't need to know, taking up vital space.
Remember, more does not mean better, it just means more.
If they are adding more fluff, it had better be damn good, because the more fluff they add, the less crunch they provide. The danger lies in repetition, unneeded verbosity, or outright drawl. I don't need to know that owlbears prefer to hunt in the evening, or that rocs taste exactly like chicken, or anything about oozes besides the fact that they ooze around and engulf things. It's an ooze. That's what it is for. It Oozes.
I think people discredit the sheer amount of useful information in the current monster manual. It's short, but that is because it is condensed. In the orc entry, for example, I can tell you about thier government, their leadership skills, their economics (or lack thereof, how they prefer to rely on the industry of others), their level of technology, their general demeanor, the value of the clan within their society but NOT the value of species, their religion, a sample of their own rites, the most noteworthy racial relations, the use of self-destructive tendancies to show power and might, where they live, their architectural and settlement priorities, and their overall lifestyle as a whole.
Not bad for a quarter of a page.
The problem is that "more fluff" ≠ "quality".
"Competent mechanics design" = "quality".
"More mechanics" ≠ "quality".
The inherent difficulty here is that the fluff for any given item, monster, class, race, etc. is different for each setting.
I disagree. Thanks to the fluff provided in Primal Power, I have been able to take each of the classes and put a new twist on them. Without the fluff I'm left scratching my head. Opening up the Monster Builder Scathebeast Calf is meaningless to me without getting to read the fluff. If you provide me fluff I can adapt it to my setting. If you provide me with mechanics, I'm left floundering, wondering what the story is behind this increasing resistance.
That's a Forgotten Realms beast that can be easily adapted to any setting from Eberron to Dark Sun to an Aquatic setting.
Another example, I adapted Forgehome from the Underdark book for my Dark Sun campaign. I've switched out the dwarves who inhabit it with another race from the Underdark from MM1. I then read about something called a "quaggoth" I have no idea what that is, so I had to wait until the book came out before I could incorporate the city's enmity with that tribe into my Dark Sun setting. Its no longer a tribe but in fact a rival city-state. They have created their city-state around the only source of water that can feed themselves and Forgehome, so they're asking a rather steep price. So far the rulers of Forgehome have had to get their water from other sources, but those also incur high prices. As such they're eagerly looking for a way to wage war on the Quaggoths to gain control of their water-source.
All of that was inspired by the fluff for the default setting which is clearly not appropriate for Dark Sun. Without that fluff, I wouldn't have created either city-state.
IMO Fluff is much more important to a D&D game then mechanics, and fluff can provide quite a strong inspiration for DMs and players. Even you admit the books can't be completely fluff-less. But where you find the ratio to be good in MM1, I find it wanting. Instead I think the fluff ratio for Primal Power is extremely good for a Power source book compared with Martial Power which is almost completely lacking in fluff. Hopefully MM3 will have a similar increase in output.
Remember, more does not mean better, it just means more.
This is true, however, it works both ways, whether we're discussing fluff or crunch.
The problem is that "more fluff" ≠ "quality".
"Competent mechanics design" = "quality".
"More mechanics" ≠ "quality".
This.
I hope that at least some of the fluff is devoted to adapting the monsters to specific campaign settings (much like the later 3.5 monster manuals did) like Eberron and Dark Sun. It would make the fluff less jarring if it takes less work to jury rig into the setting.
IIRC, that ended up being a rather unpopular decision. People who didn't play the settings didn't have any use for it, and most people who played in the settings were under the impression that the adaptations were forced and showed a general lack of understanding of the intricacies and dynamics of any given setting.
Personally, I'm all for enough fluff in books to get a general feel for the creature. I think the ammount in the MM and MMII were more than enough and would very much not like to see a return to some of the 3rd edition or even worse, 2nd edition explenations which would seem as if they were copy and pasted from some encyclopedia- especially when the monsters in question were based off of real animals or mythological beasts.
Also, when I do get fluff, I always prefer things that are obviously plot hooks as opposed to an explenation of the creature's biology, histiory, and culture for the sake of it. Making Coatals gaurdians and pointing out how their eagerness to fight evil results in myopic plans with great consequences is useful. Their life cycle is not.
I hope that at least some of the fluff is devoted to adapting the monsters to specific campaign settings (much like the later 3.5 monster manuals did) like Eberron and Dark Sun. It would make the fluff less jarring if it takes less work to jury rig into the setting.
I also enjoyed that. I like suggestions on how to do things, even when I end up going my own way. Its nice to have the suggestions to use or avoid. I always enjoyed the 3.5 inserts on what creatures "could" be like in each setting. Although I often did my own thing in the end.
To Novacat:
Please don't take this as snarky.
I understand where you are coming from using your own setting and designing the world from the ground up, also using the Campaign Settings such as Dark Sun and Dragonlance. Those situations the fluff given by the books does not line up or in your case does not sync in the slightest. There are though, plenty of people that are running the Path of Light setting created by WotC which that fluff links up too.
While the fluff may not be useful to you it helps people out, particually newer DMs. Seriously, if you picked up the MM for the first time as a DM and opened up to the Gibbering Beasts would you have an idea of what these things are if there was no fluff? I know I'd be passing on them from the get go, because I could not logically justify their existence or even remotely understand how they interact, this is also an example of where the picture does not give me much inspiration other then a blob with mouths and eyes.
I'm just saying while fluff means very little to Homebrewed worlds, or more stricter settings (Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft etc.) there are many situations where it is actually useful.
This. If I wanted a book with nothing but stat-blocks, I'd just use the Compendium. Thankfully Wizards is listening to it's fans for a change.....
Unfortunately, the fluff takes up space. Space which could be used for more monsters.
Did it occur to you that perhaps they aren't able to produce the same number of monsters as they did with the first two for various reasons(time constraints, limited design space for non-ridiculous monsters, smaller number of cut monsters from previous MM, etc) and they are just filling in the left over space with fluff to keep the page count up? If they cut the fluff, we would not be getting more monsters(at least not significantly more), we would just be getting more pictures, more blank space, or less pages. None of those are good options, so they added fluff instead because it requires less design time, and can be used as a selling point to some customers.
Did it occur to you that perhaps they aren't able to produce the same number of monsters as they did with the first two for various reasons(time constraints, limited design space for non-ridiculous monsters, smaller number of cut monsters from previous MM, etc) and they are just filling in the left over space with fluff to keep the page count up?
The amount of monsters cranked out each month in the DDI makes this theory dubious, IMO. Not to mention the fact that there are a metric ton of legacy monsters from previous editions that haven't been touched yet. I think a look at AV2 and Primal Power shows us that "more fluff" seems to be the direction they are heading with future releases in general.
I don't get it.
Lack of fluff lack of fluff... I keep hearing it... I'm new to DnD and I don't have ANY problem with the level of fluff in the Monster Manual.
I don't get it.
People compared the new MM with the older version MM. Especially the 2nd ed MM.
Yup thats great when there's a picture. 1-3 sentences takes up less space, smart guy. But thanks for pointing out the pics what would I do without you.
I use those pictures for tokens in Maptool, so the picture is worth more than 1-3 sentances for me. Good art for monsters is sometimes hard to find, and the MM's have them for the majority of monsters.
Lack of fluff lack of fluff... I keep hearing it... I'm new to DnD and I don't have ANY problem with the level of fluff in the Monster Manual.
I don't get it.
At a minimum I expect this much fluff to be present in a roleplaying game. 4th ed falls far short of that expectation. Until now I've had one of two choices to bring D&D up to my level of expectations:
- Comb 3.5e and 2nd ed books for fluff.
- Make it up myself.
I'll be happy if MM3 offers more fluff as I'll have to comb the older editions less (and with no legal way to get PDFs I'm limited to second hand books. But given older edition books are filled with useless crunch, I only get fluff-heavy books as it is anyway) and I have more to base what I make up on.
But that's just my personal tastes. I was talking with a friend only yesterday who I play with. He was saying how he prefers 4th ed's lack of fluff. I said I'd like more fluff which is why I love books such as the Plane Below, Draconomicons and upcoming Underdark book. Despite us having completely contrary opinions on this matter, we enjoy playing with each other as either DM or player.
Lack of fluff lack of fluff... I keep hearing it... I'm new to DnD and I don't have ANY problem with the level of fluff in the Monster Manual.
I don't get it.
Same here. I'm just not seeing it. The MM has a paragraph or two telling you about the general type of monster, and then a few sentances about each individual type of monster. What more exactly should be said? Mating habits? They tell you what you need to know about a monster, and that's it. I appretiate that model.
The lack off fluff is what made the 1st MM the worst of the core books. With the only Fluff in the book being entries like "Cave Bears live in Caves". I'm glad that they've learned from their lessons.
Right there with ya. I kept a set of 3.5 monster manuals around just to do background research on creatures I was planning to use (where possible). It's the little details that help you set the stage for the storytelling. 4.0 MM vastly improved the readability for combat running, but it was rough having to craft all the descriptions from whole cloth, even for a delve.
I definitely get that tactics-oriented players would see the fluff as wasted space, but for story-oriented players, it really helps.
Lack of fluff lack of fluff... I keep hearing it... I'm new to DnD and I don't have ANY problem with the level of fluff in the Monster Manual.
I don't get it.
Same here. I'm just not seeing it. The MM has a paragraph or two telling you about the general type of monster, and then a few sentances about each individual type of monster. What more exactly should be said? Mating habits? They tell you what you need to know about a monster, and that's it. I appretiate that model.
Swing by a game story and grab a copy of, say, D&D 3.5 Monster Manual III - read the description of the Astral Stalker on p12, then read the description of the same creature in D&D 4.0 Monster Manual I, p10. That's what folks are talking about. The 4.0 book gives much better information about how to run the creature in combat, but gives almost nothing for the pre-combat roleplaying (and for making a story out of this creature, the hunt is everything).
Lack of fluff lack of fluff... I keep hearing it... I'm new to DnD and I don't have ANY problem with the level of fluff in the Monster Manual.
I don't get it.
Same here. I'm just not seeing it. The MM has a paragraph or two telling you about the general type of monster, and then a few sentances about each individual type of monster. What more exactly should be said? Mating habits? They tell you what you need to know about a monster, and that's it. I appretiate that model.
Swing by a game story and grab a copy of, say, D&D 3.5 Monster Manual III - read the description of the Astral Stalker on p12, then read the description of the same creature in D&D 4.0 Monster Manual I, p10. That's what folks are talking about. The 4.0 book gives much better information about how to run the creature in combat, but gives almost nothing for the pre-combat roleplaying (and for making a story out of this creature, the hunt is everything).
There have to be better examples. The only information the 4E Astral Stalker entry is missing are the three rules all Astral Stalkers abide by, but it compensates with actually explaining where Astral Stalkers come from and that they congregate in tribes- things which the 3.5 book leaves out.
Give me more monsters
Give me more items
Tell me how they work
Tell me how to use them
As for fluff, be nonspecific but give me some idea seeds. Tell me about an item set, or a legendary monster, give me a rough theme for some of the big monsters and let me go from there.
AV2s decision to use text blocks for fluff in the normal item section ate up space better used for new items. Half the time it feels like the fluff is there more as a filler than as something directly useful.
The podcast said that the new fluff is going to be like where you might encounter it, and with what. It might mention that it's a worshipper of Graz'zt and mention what else might be worshiping Graz'zt with it. It might say that these types of enemies are largely found with it. That sort of thing.
They pretty much already do to this...
For example, in addition to information on cults devoted to Orus, in the Encounter Groups section it mentions, "Orcus’s living worshipers often strike up alliances with demons and undead." It then proceeds to give 5 different encounters from level 9 to level 34 with all kinds of suitably creepy critters. All entires in the MM have a similar writeup.
Apparently, they're also going to tie in monsters with certain traps and hazards that might be effective combinations. That's something that hasn't been done yet.
Now THAT I can get behind :D
Encounter themes taken to a new level.