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Nuadha wrote:

I know how Elves fit in to MY world. As a world-builder, I don't need anything but the rules defined.

QFT

The problem I have with the original argument, at least in the way it's often used as a stick to beat 4th edition with, is that it assumes there's one right way to play D&D. Elves are the way the books describe them and that's how they're supposed to be, and if the world you're using makes them different there's something deviant about it. Which of course leads to statements such as "Dark Sun is not D&D" or "Spelljammer is not D&D". And I'll note that Pax Veritas when challenged on this isn't actually willing to declare it outright.

The other argument often used, that proper D&D uses Gygaxian Naturalism to simulate a real world, also falls down. There is no fundamental reason why the same techniques that people used to make the world more "realistic" in earlier editions can't be used now. If you want rules for things which aren't (yet) covered, and without them can't play an RPG, then I suggest looking at the 1st edition AD&D PHB and working out how we managed to back in the day. Not that D&D is a system that people serious about simulationist play are likely to use.

thecasualoblivion wrote:

"Official" fluff is a crutch for the uncreative.

Patently offensive. Sure, some folks aren't as creative as others, but are otherwise good DMs. As welll, some people don't have the time to develop that sort of stuff.

It's not a crutch - for some it's a very necessary tool. For others, it's completely unnecessary. To paint everyone who uses it as uncreative is an insult.

That's one reason why AD&D has stats for so many kinds of "ordinary" animals: you can't build a "real" world without stats for sheep and cows and horses and such, because you never know when the PCs might need to kill one.

Is the sheep or cow or chicken going to actually pose any sort of threat to a guy in platemail with a greatsword and a longbow? or to a wizard that can skewer it with mind-bolts from a hundred paces? If not... then it doesn't need stats because the creature's role in the story is fluff.

Now your mount on the other hand? THAT needs stats because there will be instances where it is involved in a fight with you and whether or not your mount lives or dies could have a significant impact on a story. Low and behold they have rules for horses. They likewise have stats for predators like wolves who might attack your camp and scavengers like rat swarms you might find in a dungeon. In other words, creatures that may actually pose a challenge to the PC's in some fashion.

How would you know how to use elves in your game without any background info at all except for a stat block?

Well, if all the MM provided for elves was a statblock you might have a point. Instead the 4E MM says the following; "Slender and agile, elves revere nature and roam the wilderness, hunting creatures that threaten their lands. Although they trace their origins to the Feywild, most elves consider the natural world their home."

You can also go look up the entry on them in the PHB to get a better picture of where they fit into the world.

Or, you and/or the other players and/or the DM could come up with a unique concept for them (in one of the more interesting campaigns I played in the Lizardmen (this was 2E so they were still 'men' not 'folk') were natives of the desert regions that lay to the east of main human lands of the campaign. They had brownish-tan scales and were built more like velociraptors than lizards. Likewise, instead of losing AC when they dried out, they lost AC if they got wet (their armored scales softened when they got moist) and they couldn't swim to save their lives.

That idea started just because a player wanted a lizardman PC who wasn't from a swamp and it quickly expanded via the DM into an entire culture of semi-Arabic nomadic merchants known for both their fierceness and honor (scimitars became the weapon of choice and they favored flowing robes for clothing and camels and horses were replaced with a species of giant riding lizards) that the party had to deal with a number of times over the course of the campaign.

...or we could have said, "No, the MM says that lizardmen come from swamps and are basically barbarians. Sorry."

On the other hand, the "4e has no fluff" argument is dumb, since there is an official world, and there are descriptions in the monster blocks. They are much, much shorter than the AD&D ones, but I don't really think they're that much shorter than 3e or 3.5... Actually, as 3rd edition progressed, monster descriptions started to get "thinner".

In point of fact the 3.X era MM really doesn't say that much more at all. Most entries have 1-3 paragraphs of actual fluff. The first is the basic 1-2 sentence summary and another will invariably be the physical description, a third, if any, will into detail about where they make their lair.

Everything else in the MM entry is stats and descriptions of their abilities. The biggest difference between 3E and 4E seems to be that 4E incorporates any special attacks/abilities directly into the stat block rather than simply listing them in the block and then explaining how it actually works in the body of the monster description.

The other major difference is that instead of simply spelling the information out like an encyclopedia entry, the 4E MM broke the knowledge up into a series of knowledge checks where higher DC's grant additional relevant knowledge about the monster. When you actually compare the amount of fluff in the 4E MM it's actually fairly comparable to that of 3E.

Dungeons, regions, whole campaigns were populated without thinking about how the players/PCs can do anything there. PCs were "intruders" in a world not meant for them, and they had to find a way to survive.

My biggest pet peeve of previous editions in this regard were the elemental planes. By the time you have sufficient magic to be able to survive a trip there (3d10 fire damage or a negative level per round?) the natives of that plane weren't even strong enough to pose a challenge to you (Efreet were CR 8 for example).

Frankly, the revamped cosmology is one of the best decisions they could have possibly made. Even low-level PC's can survive journeys into the Feywild or Shadowfell, possibly even a sojourn into the elemental chaos or astral sea. All the cosmology and monsters are only useful if the PC's can actually encounter it and that's one of the things that 4E has definitely made an effort to improve upon... making the environment an easier place to tell stories.

Building the story around the PCs does not mean the actual dungeoncrawl. Kaliban7 was refering to the fact that with every NPC being created by the same rules as the PCs, thus usually being a heroic character of some repute, it made little sense for the PCs to actually exist because there was already someone better equipped and, thus, predisposed to handle the problem - meaning the adventure/dungeoncrawl/conflict.

Raise your hands if you've ever had a DM's who used an "NPC" (I put this in quotes because 9 times out of 10 it's actually one of the DM's old PC's) who basic Gary Stu's his way through an "adventure" while your PC's sit around picking their noses because they can't do anything as well as the Gary Stu.

In a campaign setting sense I give you... Elminster, the Simbul, Blackstaff, the Seven Sisters, et cetera. World-shakers who could (and SHOULD) handle any major world-shaking event to hit your FR campaign.

And look at who is all gone or their powers destroyed or what-have-you in the 4E setting. Who can stand against the forces of darkness when even Elminster has been broken? Why, the PC's of course... which is as it SHOULD be.