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I actually thought 4E monster manual was great. It was the only part of 4E I did like.
I like the idea that fluff is light for monster in the Monster Manual. To me that's how it should be. It gives me the freedom to make that monster fit my campaign world. It also leave it free for Paizo to put out books detailing their campaign world specifics for monster in the Adventure Paths and Chronicles.
exactly! having the freedom to say 'orcs are *this and this and this and do this*' without folks going 'nuh uh! monster book says they all are dumb and stupid and *blah blah*' is essential in a bestiary. having x pages detailing the denning habits of kobolds may interest some folks, but when i want them to be draconic equivalent of dwarves, i don't have to say 'no no, the CORE kobold isn't the kobold we're using.'
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I like ecology and flavor text, though only if it is written in a meaningful fashion. I see both sides of the coin in the posts above, but I also remember reading monster entries reading like "The XXX main diet is adventurers ..." and other nonsense like this. I prefer no ecology rather than bad goofy ecology.
Now, I just hope that my copy arrives at last, just so I can rant like the best of you :)
Alright...I'm sure this is gonna be a stupid question. Most of the games I played in were very low fantasy and involved more human opponents than monsters so I never found monster ecologies to be a great resource.
Onto my question.... why couldn't one read what most have mentioned to be the abundant fantastic fluff of the 2 days and just apply it to the pathfinder rule set for each monster presented in the Beastiary?
Old monster manuals go pretty cheaply on ebay as long as Planescape isn't in the title....
How much can the ecology change over editions? Does factors like whether or not Rust Monsters lay more eggs, or ovulate more frequently, or whatever the hell rust monsters do to breed change between editions?
The point of the Beastiary is to provide the rule sets for each monster.... fluff can be found in many other sources and should be more setting specific, no? I want my orcs to be forgotten realms orcs or Spelljammer scro....
Creative Director
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Alright...I'm sure this is gonna be a stupid question...
Not a stupid question at all. In fact... one of the reasons we aimed for edition compatibility was PRECISELY because of this concern. In particular, the flavor text for monsters from previous editions is still completely usable... and in most cases, since we grew up in love with that flavor text, it's more or less encoded in the monster in ways that we couldn't undo even if we wanted! :)
But yeah; there's nothing preventing the use of flavor text from previous editions (or even from different games).
There are lots of reasons why I think a core monster book shouldn't have much fluff, but they've all been covered.
My question is, what at this point is the jist of OP's criticism?
"I wanted the Beastiary to be a book of mostly-fluff. I know that Paizo already publishes a line of mostly-fluff books for monsters, but I do not like them because they are short softcovers, and I was hoping that the Beastiary would be that but rehashed as a hardcover."
Is that about it?
Would more fluff be great? Definitely!
But I accept the explanation that it cannot be done without screwing things up.
To get more fluff, you'd need to make the book bigger (and increase the price), cut out monsters (bad thing, the core rules need a good basis of critters to support as many stories as possible), or done something nasty with the layout (like getting rid of pictures or making them much smaller - and I love that art! - or turning the text into small print. I hate small print. Reminds me of lawyers, the most despicable of creatures).
The core bestiary needs to take the fall for everything else. Sad but true.
And the book still has more flavour than the other core monster books you compared it to!
Bestiary: Sure, some monsters only get 1/4 page or so, sometimes less (though in many of those cases, it's a member of a creature group that gets more shared fluff). On the other hand, some important critters get about a whole page fluff alone.
D&D 3.5e Monster Manual: While in some cases it has actually more fluff than the bestiary, in most cases it has less.
4e Monster Manual: Not much to speak of. A couple of lines, usually less than the D&D 3.5e Monster Manual. Hardly anything that makes the monster anything other than an enemy to kill.
The Pathfinder Bestiary is the King of the Hill. Champion of its league.
If you want to compare other books, compare other books. Not supplements with the core books, but supplements with supplements. Critters Revisited books give you several pages worth of fluff per creature, not just one or two.
And monster entries in other PF books usually have two pages for every single critter.
There are no supplementary PFRPG Bestiaries yet, but I bet they'll be like that, too. They have other design goals than the core bestiary, after all.
There are lots of reasons why I think a core monster book shouldn't have much fluff, but they've all been covered.
My question is, what at this point is the jist of OP's criticism?
"I wanted the Beastiary to be a book of mostly-fluff. I know that Paizo already publishes a line of mostly-fluff books for monsters, but I do not like them because they are short softcovers, and I was hoping that the Beastiary would be that but rehashed as a hardcover."
Is that about it?
Very nice summary.
The only thing that would have made it more accurate, would be if you could have had more misspellings. Or perhaps, have found some way to simulate slurred speech, implying the state of drunkeness I was probably in when making my point. Perhaps a few "ummms" or "duhs" inserted between certain words.
Then you would have very much captured the point I was trying to make.
I'm in the minority I guess, I want crunch in my Bestiary, and fluff should be just enough to convey the essence of the monster. That way I can make up whatever additional fluff I want without people getting up in arms about me 'changing stuff'.
I run in my own game worlds, not published stuff, so Golarian specific information would probably make me not buy the book, so I applaud that. I love the artwork in the Bestiary, and I love the layout (one monster per page) and the way everything is neat and tied together logically. All the common rules in the back instead of duplicated a dozen times. That used to irritate me in some of the previous monster books, you'd have 3 different descriptions of the same power, all with slightly different rules for them.
A+ on the Bestiary. I think it's the perfect size too, and I look forward to BII and hope it's the same size, just with more templates and lower level monsters and sentient types for non-monster encounters.
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If I want stat blocks I go to my "monster manual." If I want monster fluff I got to my "ecologies."
Hey look mom, Paizo has me covered..
Monster Manual.. Bestiary
Ecologies.. monster Revisited
Sweet!
Oh my and PDFs that I can print out and have only the monsters I need at the table... EVEN BETTER!
It's like AD&D all over again.. without the 300 page manuals. :)
Honestly, I think the criticism amounts to "I like more fluff".
I'd almost always like more fluff too but a monster per page with no flipping to use it - thats amazing for a monster guide.
You have to pick whats important to you.
I don't like all of the illustrations but they are very well done.
Some of the fluff is different from my imagining it but there's something to start from.
Lastly I have to say, $20 for all you need to play legit Pathfinder. (I prefer the PDFs) That's better than any deal I've ever seen from most publishers.
I've seen 5 page splat books going for $10 at RPGNow!
I think criticism, especially public criticism, should be considerate. The Bestiary was not a Patronage Project. It wasn't made for just me. As someone said there are other books with more in depth fluff out there.
This is a BIG book. I can cheerfully take my laptop and DM with just these two files. Of course I tweak everything (thats what DMs do) but I have to appreciate all the gaming goodness.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, I hope the next book pleases _everyone_ but it wont. Can't be done.
I am really surprised by jscott991's criticism. For me, I really don't think its valid.
Sorry jscott991 - I have no axe to grind. I have no association with Paizo. You are criticizing a point of material presentation that I think was an excellent choice. In most cases I'd rather have a second monster on a new page than more fluff which I might very well disregard. The hard work of game balance and stat creation is solidly in the initial monster statblock and description. I think that's the first demand for a DM. For me, this is an example of how to make a great monster manual.
Sigurd
Two quick points:
So utility was key with our monster selection, as was quality art, but as one of the authors I hope that there's still enough flavor there to hook you in. (And I can definitely say that, with many of the monsters I worked on, we certainly provided more flavor than the SRD/MM... I can't tell you how many hours I spent combing mythology articles on Wikipedia.)
Many of the monsters receive flavor text that consists of only a few sentences located in the bottom right hand corner of their one page writeup.
This screamed something unpleasant to me that I will refrain from saying here since I've been borderline too overt in my criticism so far.
The vacillation between saying that the book has little to no flavor text on purpose and that the book has more flavor text than we should have expected so be euphoric is somewhat strange to me.
The book has the least flavor text of any monster book I've purchased in years. Simply put, it's not what I expected of Paizo. Perhaps that speaks to the high standards I had for these products. Or perhaps I'm just a deranged idiot that wants something impossible (it's odd to become used to something impossible though, and I've become quite used to monster books being fairly interesting reads).
Very nice summary.
The only thing that would have made it more accurate, would be if you could have had more misspellings. Or perhaps, have found some way to simulate slurred speech, implying the state of drunkeness I was probably in when making my point. Perhaps a few "ummms" or "duhs" inserted between certain words.
Then you would have very much captured the point I was trying to make.
Well.. if you didn't want the Beastiary to be a rehash of Revisited fluff, then what DID You want it to be? Completely new fluff for every creature, which contradicted or was redundant with all the worldbuilding which Paizo has already done and which you have no interest in?
I'm not trying to make you sound stupid here, I'm reading your posts carefully, but I really don't know what to get out of them.
You don't need a single good reason to like or dislike something- what you personally prefer is your prerogative. But you keep phrasing your views as a complaint or criticism. If that's the case, what SHOULD the Beastiary have been?
The book has the least flavor text of any monster book I've purchased in years. Simply put, it's not what I expected of Paizo.
That's your fault for buying the wrong books. Paizo HAS released and continues to release the flavor-packed monster treatments that you're looking for (though, apparently, in the wrong format).
You keep saying "I guess I'll be more careful next time" as if that's some sort of tragedy. It really isn't. Next time do your homework.
Many of the monsters receive flavor text that consists of only a few sentences located in the bottom right hand corner of their one page writeup.Two quick points:
So utility was key with our monster selection, as was quality art, but as one of the authors I hope that there's still enough flavor there to hook you in. (And I can definitely say that, with many of the monsters I worked on, we certainly provided more flavor than the SRD/MM... I can't tell you how many hours I spent combing mythology articles on Wikipedia.)
Many? I have gone through the Bestiary, and I am starting to wonder if we're reading the same book? There is a lot of information packed into those paragraphs ... yes, some have very short information, because the creature is complex and needs more space for a stat block ... but I still get enough information to use the creature in my game. Maybe the problem is a matter of understanding what "fluff" is?
My definition of "fluff" is filler, nice to have, but not necessary to running a critter. So, yes, there is little fluff to be found. But all the information I need is there.
This screamed something unpleasant to me that I will refrain from saying here since I've been borderline too overt in my criticism so far.
The vacillation between saying that the book has little to no flavor text on purpose and that the book has more flavor text than we should have expected so be euphoric is somewhat strange to me.
The book has the least flavor text of any monster book I've purchased in years. Simply put, it's not what I expected of Paizo. Perhaps that speaks to the high standards I had for these products. Or perhaps I'm just a deranged idiot that wants something impossible (it's odd to become used to something impossible though, and I've become quite used to monster books being fairly interesting reads).
There is flavor on every single monster, a one or two line under their name before the stats start, that is very evocative of what the beastie is and what the players and GM needs to know. I don't want a story or novel in my rules, I like to be able to find what I need and play, not read and then have to dig for the actual information.
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Creative Director
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Indeed... had we done 2-page super-flavortext-filled monsters, we WOULD have had to cut about 150 or so monsters from the book. Printing a 600 some-page Bestiary at the time the Bestiary came out was a blatant impossibility; as it was, the book was late on its release anyway AND helped make our other product lines 2 months late on top of that. Adding 300 or so more pages in order to provide two pages of flavor for the monsters would have meant that the book wouldn't be out until next year sometime, and would have crippled our product line, and would very likely have put Paizo in a real danger of going out of business to boot as a result. It would have killed the company.
So the only option was to limit the book's size and scope to 328 pages. And since this is the ONLY monster book we can assume our customers have, we had to fit as many monsters as possible in there in order to avoid having to reprint full stat blocks for every monster that ever shows up in any adventure which would have limited the SIZE of adventures and so on and so on.
Furthermore, there are a large number of monsters that HAD to be in the book that aren't really "sexy" monsters. I'm talking about things like herd animals, bears, dogs, horses, familiars, and the like. We wouldn't have been able to cut them, or any of the monsters mentioned in the summon monster/summon nature's ally spells. The resulting book would have had some pretty blatant and inexcusable gaps in it. I'm talking very few monsters above CR 12. Probably only five dragons. We'd certainly lose out on a few of the templates.
That book, even if it did have 2 pages of text per monster, would not have been a book I would be proud of. It would have been a disaster.
Many? I have gone through the Bestiary, and I am starting to wonder if we're reading the same book?
We are reading the same book. The rest of your post confirms it.
You are with the vast majority of posters here and feel that the few paragraphs (sometimes measured as just several sentences) are more than enough flavor text.
I think presenting so little flavor information is a step back for monster books and is evocative of products I have a low opinion of.
But we are drawing inspiration for our viewpoints from the same material.
Everyone wants something different I suppose. It is fortunate that Paizo's intentions and the product they delivered appeal to so many here. A happy coincidence of interests that leaves me on the outside.
But, hey, in 5 or 10 years or so when the next fantasy system rolls out, we'll all be able to say, at least I have the greatest collection of stat blocks ever produced.
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One thing I do wish for, as someone picking up Pathfinder now instead of when the first AP came out, would be an easy way to get all of the old monsters published before. As it is I will slowly accumulate PDFs until I have what I want, which doesn't bother me, but a one and done would be nice.
I do have to add that separating fluff and crunch into a Bestiary and a Revisited book is brilliant. There are only a few monsters I use in the course of an adventure, and usually they are themed. This way I can have raw stats and light fluff for every monster, and if I want more fluff I can buy a book dealing specifically with that monster and it's related beasties.
Many? I have gone through the Bestiary, and I am starting to wonder if we're reading the same book?We are reading the same book. The rest of your post confirms it.
You are with the vast majority of posters here and feel that the few paragraphs (sometimes measured as just several sentences) are more than enough flavor text.
I think presenting so little flavor information is a step back for monster books and is evocative of products I have a low opinion of.
But we are drawing inspiration for our viewpoints from the same material.
Everyone wants something different I suppose. It is fortunate that Paizo's intentions and the product they delivered appeal to so many here. A happy coincidence of interests that leaves me on the outside.
I don't know if you missed it earlier, but I went to the one Monster book you like, the MC, and compared the first monster I found that was in both books ... and reading them side by side I find very little missing from the Bestiary.
As a final note, the fact that Pathfinder is fully compatible, with just minor tweakings on your part, with all the 3e MMs you like for their extensive fluff means you have the fluff you already need. The stats for the modules and APs that Paizo is going to publish will only presume ownership of the Bestiary, that you already have in hand. You need nothing else to play. That was a stated goal from quite some time back, and Paizo fulfilled that admirably.
I'm not going to convince you, you're not going to convince me, but as Sebastian mentioned earlier, using terms like "many" and "most" when referring to how something is viewed is going to bring out the defensive in folks that like what you don't ::shrug::
<snip>
But, hey, in 5 or 10 years or so when the next fantasy system rolls out, we'll all be able to say, at least I have the greatest collection of stat blocks ever produced.
Snarky comments like this do not help your position.
One thing I do wish for, as someone picking up Pathfinder now instead of when the first AP came out, would be an easy way to get all of the old monsters published before. As it is I will slowly accumulate PDFs until I have what I want, which doesn't bother me, but a one and done would be nice.
I do have to add that separating fluff and crunch into a Bestiary and a Revisited book is brilliant. There are only a few monsters I use in the course of an adventure, and usually they are themed. This way I can have raw stats and light fluff for every monster, and if I want more fluff I can buy a book dealing specifically with that monster and it's related beasties.
Agreed, I prefer the separate because I usually do my own fluff that just builds off the minimum. So this is great for me. I don't have to pay extra for stuff I don't need. I'd rather buy the bits and pieces I need rather than everything. And I know I'm in the minority on that, so the fact I get my happy ending is just a wonderful thing. :)
Snarky comments like this do not help your position.<snip>
But, hey, in 5 or 10 years or so when the next fantasy system rolls out, we'll all be able to say, at least I have the greatest collection of stat blocks ever produced.
Frankly, if you consider that snarky, you haven't read some of the posts on this thread responding to my position.
And as I responded to Sebastian, my "many" and "most" references and my great silent majority were about how people VIEWED monster books from the past. I stand by that interpretation of how the initial 3.0 books were received, but, and I said this several times too, it is based on anecdotal evidence and the subsequent direction of monster manuals; there is no hard data, like a vote count, to back it up.
Edit: In response to the post below, I have read the Bestiary and the few sentences on each monster do not make me resent the loss of detail from past monster books any less.
One thing I do wish for, as someone picking up Pathfinder now instead of when the first AP came out, would be an easy way to get all of the old monsters published before. As it is I will slowly accumulate PDFs until I have what I want, which doesn't bother me, but a one and done would be nice.
Well, again, there's the issue of redundant material.
I like to think that's not as big a deal for .pdfs, though. I wouldn't mind seeing (class/feat/monster/whatever) compilations, picked from among the older APs and possibly updated to the new ruleset. I'm sure there was some cool stuff in Rise of the Runelords, for instance, but I'm not going to buy all six books at 20 bucks a pop (when I'm never going to run those adventures) just to get it.
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I mean, giant hive-minded plague-ridden rats are pretty cool, but the multiple pages of material they give on those creatures in the MMV doesn't get my creative juices flowing like the three relatively concise paragraphs on girallons in the Bestiary. And really, isn't that what flavor text is supposed to do? Inspire good storytelling, not hand you a bunch of dry academic information that you're expected to cleave to?
+1
+1
I mean, giant hive-minded plague-ridden rats are pretty cool, but the multiple pages of material they give on those creatures in the MMV doesn't get my creative juices flowing like the three relatively concise paragraphs on girallons in the Bestiary. And really, isn't that what flavor text is supposed to do? Inspire good storytelling, not hand you a bunch of dry academic information that you're expected to cleave to?
Yes, but writing should be of the highest quality possible regardless of how much or little there is. That's immaterial to the discussion of fluffy-beastiary-verses-crunchy-beastiary.
jscott991: You're not alone. I actually think several posters agreed that they would 'like' to see more fluff, but understand that the utility for actual game products (for Paizo) and game play (for GMS) was a higher goal for this product.
As one who likes to play the game as well as create worlds or just enjoy reading flavor, my dream bestiary book would be an encyclopedic hardcover volume or volumes with cool art (multiple pics) and lots of flavor, ecology and maybe a couple different statblocks for game use ( a guy can dream, we play in a fantasy world right?)
That said, as a game resource/rulebook, the PF Bestiary is pretty awesome. An A for utility and ease of reference. The internet is full of cool art some of which I like the flavor much better than the bestiary. The great one page layout has made it easey for me to create mt own personal one page monster reference with my own custom pic on it to convey the flavor. Anyway I'm rambling now.
I don't think you're crazy jscott, I feel where you are coming from.
The Bestiary is also pretty great for it's intended purpose!
Maybe someone will be able to produce a dream product some day, I wouldn't be surprised if it cam from the folks at Paizo.
Game on.
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I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.
I'll just keep saying it, the Revisited books are where you should be going for monster manuals with fluff. I bet if Lisa, Eric, and everyone at Paizo thought they could release a 250 page Revisited hardcover every year and make money on it they would.
I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.
I'll just keep saying it, the Revisited books are where you should be going for monster manuals with fluff. I bet if Lisa, Eric, and everyone at Paizo thought they could release a 250 page Revisited hardcover every year and make money on it they would.
Yes, I come back to this forum every so often, usually after purchasing a new product, to troll in threads with carefully phrased titles so they don't seem critical to potential new customers casually browsing the forums.
The 3.0 Monster Manual is exactly the kind of monster book I'm criticizing. It CERTAINLY is comparable to the Bestiary. That's the whole point of my thread and title.
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One thing I do wish for, as someone picking up Pathfinder now instead of when the first AP came out, would be an easy way to get all of the old monsters published before. As it is I will slowly accumulate PDFs until I have what I want, which doesn't bother me, but a one and done would be nice.Well, again, there's the issue of redundant material.
I like to think that's not as big a deal for .pdfs, though. I wouldn't mind seeing (class/feat/monster/whatever) compilations, picked from among the older APs and possibly updated to the new ruleset. I'm sure there was some cool stuff in Rise of the Runelords, for instance, but I'm not going to buy all six books at 20 bucks a pop (when I'm never going to run those adventures) just to get it.
It's not something I would've wanted in the Bestiary, but some time down the road seeing a reprint of the earlier monsters with updated rules would be great.
I think what this boils down to is: we made what we thought was the best Bestiary possible. If you like it - great, and thank you! If you don't, we're very sorry, and we understand your concerns, but there's nothing else we could have done in good conscience... and there are several other products from us that you'll hopefully enjoy more.
Since this is all discussion of a decision that was made a year ago, and is completely over and done with, I don't think we need to make this into a potential flame war. The OP is entitled to his opinion (which, while aggressively stated, is perfectly valid), and a bunch of other folks have made it clear that they feel differently.
Rather than letting the discussion degrade, let's all go do something productive instead, like play a game (or edit a Pathfinder)...
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That's exactly what he's complaining about; he wants the Bestiary to be built off the chassis of books like the Monster Manual V, not the 3.0 MM.
Wait.. so you're saying he wants CORE monster manuals with only 100 monsters in it? Because that's how many MM5 had (not counting the playable Monsters in it.) I wouldn't have bought the Bestiary if it had only half.. or less then half of the 3.x Monsters. Pathfinder RPG is supposed to be cleaning up the 3.x ruleset, not making it a profit machine for Lisa's pockets, and that's what slimmer more frequently released.. oh high 4E.. core books are designed to do. Cost less, charge the same/more.
Besides which MM5 wasted space, yes wasted it, on telling me how to fit the monster in the Realms and Eberron. Some may like it, but others well let's look at the others. What about all those D&D players that HATE the Realms (from before 3e) and what about all those players that HATE Eberron (because it's Eberron.)
And I really hope he's not wanting a book like MM5, existing Monsters with player classes.. ugh. That was even more space wasted.
As one who likes to play the game as well as create worlds or just enjoy reading flavor, my dream bestiary book would be an encyclopedic hardcover volume or volumes with cool art (multiple pics) and lots of flavor, ecology and maybe a couple different statblocks for game use ( a guy can dream, we play in a fantasy world right?)
Personally, I wouldn't like that, even if it were feasible. The go-to monster book for a game, I think, needs to be a lean, mean, at-the-table resource. I need to know what the monster is, what it looks like, how it acts, and what its stats are, and I need to know NOW, without sifting through lengthy social, cultural, or ecological dissertations.
I want enough flavor that I can leaf through it casually and get plot or encounter ideas, sure, but no more than that.
Ecologies and extensive fluff are a completely different kind of info. They aren't something I'm going to look up in game, they're something I'm going to read once or twice, internalize, and then probably never look at again. I don't want that muddying up a core monster book.
As a bonus, dividing up the fluff makes it easier to pick and choose. Frankly, I don't NEED an extensive look at every monster in a game. Especially if there are times when I'm completely refluffing a monster myself (for instance, I hear that Dragons Revisited is a great book, but it doesn't interest me that much because I love coming up with my own takes on dragons).
Or it could be that, you know, I've been collecting Dungeon and Dragon magazine for the last decade and I have all the fluff I need. Personally, I actually think the Revisited books are fresh enough to be worth the look (and, personally, my Dragon collection isn't that impressive anyway), but there ARE Pathfinder players who would say that.
I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.
This accusation of trolling is completely despicable.
A Paizo customer posts, in a rather non-confrontational and polite way, his opinion on perceived deficiencies in a product (perhaps/likely in a hope that they'd be taken into consideration in a future product/release) and he's accused of trolling by you, or told "it's simple go play something else that suits your fancy instead of trying to convince us that we're all wrong and that Paizo is just trying to bleed our wallets." by another even more rude poster.
Unbelievable.
Smurf?
And I really hope he's not wanting a book like MM5, existing Monsters with player classes.. ugh. That was even more space wasted.
Ehh..
I see what you're saying, but I rather liked the later MMs as well, though for different reasons. I think it may just be that I'd reached the point where stats for different kinds of stock-NPC orcs were more useful to me than yet another evil hornet monster.
But, regardless, I agree that that format would be awful for a core monster book. Despite the name the MM's 2 through 5 were supplements.
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I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.This accusation of trolling is completely despicable.
He made his point didn't he? He keeps coming back for more.
He's been told he doesn't understand the product line in way more politer terms then I would have put it.
Chronicles = Campaign setting (where fluff is necessary.)
RPG = Core gaming mechanics (where fluff is unnecessary.)
The expectation for it to be the same was his first mistake. Ordering it not grasping the point of the product was his second mistake. Coming here and comparing it to chronicles fluff was his third mistake.
Chronicles is for Golarion.
The RPG is for anything.
For this "argument" I blame TSR and Paizo.
TSR is the one that brought campaign setting material into AD&D to try to give things like Clerics (Gods) and Monsters (mythology) example fluff that was taken as core.
I fault Paizo for continuing to use the word Pathfinder and not making a marketable separation between their Roleplaying game and their Campaign Setting.
Now yes Paizo did release the RPG to support their campaign setting because if they didn't eventually people wouldn't have "new" rule books to buy if they were new to "the world's most famous roleplaying game" Dungeons & Dragons and in turn new to the pathfinder campaign setting, but it should have been fairly OBVIOUS to anyone with some rpg pen & paper experience from the Core Rulebook that the roleplaying line was going to be setting neutral so that ANYONE could use it for ANY fantasy setting.
When you take all that in, that's how you get a "I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not." I didn't point and say look a troll, I said I can't tell if he is or isn't.
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Creative Director
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I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not. I'm comparing my 3.0 MM to the Bestiary and they're comparable.
I'll just keep saying it, the Revisited books are where you should be going for monster manuals with fluff. I bet if Lisa, Eric, and everyone at Paizo thought they could release a 250 page Revisited hardcover every year and make money on it they would.
Keep in mind "being able to make money on it" isn't the only factor. We're willing to take risks on products that might not make money. A much bigger factor is the fact that we simply CAN'T do everything. We don't have the manpower. A 250 page Revisited hardcover would be cool, and we might do something like that some day, but we've already got a pretty big schedule as it is.
I'd like to wait until we can get that schedule back ON schedule before adding even more products to the workload.
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Creative Director
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We're willing to take risks on products that might not make money. A much bigger factor is the fact that we simply CAN'T do everything. We don't have the manpower.I'd wager manpower wouldn't be an issue if money wasn't an issue. ;)
Also, money wouldn't be an issue if manpower wasn't an issue.
But no matter HOW many folks we have here, the laws of physics and reality will put a cap on how much product we can churn out. No amount of money can let us exceed our capacity at that moment.
When you way all that on, that's how you get a "I can't tell anymore if he's trolling or not." I point and say look a troll, I said I can't tell if he is or isn't.
I think basic decency demands that you presume other posters are not fabricating their opinions purely to spite you. Leaving it indeterminate isn't enough. You don't have to agree with the guy, but I think you still owe him the good-faith assumption that his opinions are sincere.
That said...
This accusation of trolling is completely despicable.
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I seriously hate the word "troll" as well, but please, try to take it easy on the fanboys here. These forums DO see a lot of bombastic grognardery. It's easy to get sick of the whole "I expected better from Paizo, I think I might take my toys and go home" line, especially when a particular criticism is so vehement yet ultimately so baseless. Again, it doesn't make it right, but more pointed outrage rarely helps either.
I didn't point and say look a troll, I said I can't tell if he is or isn't.
In fairness, this is what SirUrza originally said. While he admittedly mistook the OP's point of comparison, it seems a hair trigger to go from his "I can't tell someone is or is not trolling" to accusations of name-calling. I wish the temperature would come down in this thread.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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He shows up, and essentially says, "This book sucks because I have unrealistically high expectations and I'm leaving."
To be fair, I think the position was "This book sucks because everyone has unrealistically high expectations."
First person pronouns would've made the posts much more palatable. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone here participated in the debates cited as evidence for the fact that "everyone believes x" back when 3e was launched. I know I did, and I find the conclusions drawn from those debates to be questionable at best. As has been expressed many times in this thread, the first monster book needs to be a bunch of stat blocks to have a baseline of assumed monsters. I understand that, I think other people understand that, so assertions that "everyone wants more flavor text and fewer monsters" seems unnecessarily aggressive and leads to the flame-ish responses that have cropped up in this thread.
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Director of Games
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Hey there Everybody,
I think that all the points that need to be made about this particular topic have been made, many times. The tone here is not so civil, and the productivity has dropped through the floor. I am gonna go ahead and lock this one down.
Move along...
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
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I don't know if you missed it earlier, but I went to the one Monster book you like, the MC, and compared the first monster I found that was in both books ... and reading them side by side I find very little missing from the Bestiary.
I decided to follow-up on Gamer Girrl's little challenge and I pulled out my old Monstrous Compendium and picked a few random samplings. I'm looking at ONLY ecology and flabor text as it's what you're complaining about. As such, I'm ignoring anything combat and power oriented.
Rakshasa
The Rakshasa has a thirteen sentence habitat, society, and ecology description in the MC. The Bestiary contains eleven sentences and covers virtually identical information. In fact, if you consider that the two contain some fundamentally differences in ecology, the scope of the ecology is essentially the same. The variants aren't presented in the Bestiary, but that's not what the complaint was about.
Stone Golems
The MC has a small section again on habitat, society, and ecology. The Bestiary contains a much smaller section altogether. However, if you consider that there's a half-page write-up on golems in general that covers information like the fact they have no habitat (something it takes two lines to describe in the MC), again the information presented is of very similar scope.
Dragons (Pick any dragon)
Dragons each get a half-page write-up in MC (two columns at half the page since the stat block is pretty big) but more than half of that outlines combat capabilities and how the breath weapon works. Dragons get a much smaller section in the Bestiary, but again are given a small lead-in section and there's an entire separate book dedicated to dragons ALREADY PRODUCED by Paizo.
Lycanthrope, Werewolf
First off, it's only fair to mention that the original MC had several other were-variants not provided in the Bestiary. As a total, the habitat/ecology info covers about half the text provided for the creature. In comparison, Paizo packs only one column of info in the Bestiary that at casual glance seems less detailed than the original. This would seem to be an appropriate comparison of the differences noted. This one in fact this one could be argued as a loss of detail. I would argue though that if we examine where the loss of detail is (the fact that when pregnant Werewolves use a midwife, that they give birth to litters of 5-10 cubs that resemble fuzzy human babies, and the cubs grow 60% of their full growth by age six as examples) we're not exactly talking real game-breaking information. If I wanted to have my Lycanthropes live in a manor house surrounded by lycanthrope guards where they raise our children like royalty I can't under the original description of the creature. The old system's extra flavor text just locked me into something I'm not ready to have in my game.
So side-by-side I don't see much of a difference in the 10-12 creatures I looked at, and where I do, I'm actually glad to see some of the information go. What's provided in the Bestiary is good enough to run the game (a reasonable stat block APPROPRIATE for the system), and enough flavor text to have a reasonable understanding to what the basic look, ecology, and actions of that creature typically are.
I too am beginning to wonder if you're just trolling at this point.