The Crunch-Fluff Debate

This is one of several thoughts/suggestions regarding the upcoming fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons (5e). Relevant news items: nytimes and wizards.

You’ve been screwing this up since (at least) 2e. Stat blocks are a waste of space, and they create the need to put updated stat blocks in future products. This increases the amount of wasted space… or, rather, it decreases the amount of creative output you have to pay the author for, which gets the conspiracy theorists among us thinking that you’re doing it on purpose. Things which make us suspicious of you are obviously bad policy. Here’s how you solve it.

Stop putting ruleset-specific stuff in the setting material.

No more stat blocks in campaign setting books or regional sourcebooks. Yes, they can be in adventures, but only when they’re not simply reprints of stuff that’s in other sources.

NPC stat blocks should go in pdf documents which are setting-specific and ruleset-specific and available to everyone from the wizards website. So the “5e FR NPCs” document will have 5e stat blocks for notable Realms NPCs, while the “2e FR NPCs” document will have all the same people with 2e stat blocks.

Why pdf documents online? Because they can be updated there without the expense (your production and our purchase) of new books. Furthermore, if they’re alphabetized, DMs can print out the ones they need instead of having to carry yet another book to their gaming table.

Why go to all the trouble of making separate documents for NPCs? Well, there is a precedent; you’ve already done it: the Hall of Heroes. This would be more concise than that book, though, because I’m talking about nothing but stat blocks. And if you do it right, you should be able to generate these stat blocks with a computer both quickly and neatly. So don’t bother whining about the expense… I will not believe you.

Furthermore, an NPC document gathers all the stat blocks in one place. No more having to look each person up in the indices of multiple books —and then cursing you (WotC) for your inability to produce indices— and having to pause the game while we flip through books looking for stat blocks. Just open up the pdf and there they are in alphabetical order.

Realmslore goes in the FR books, Eberron-lore or whatever you want to call it goes in Eberron books. Stat blocks, however, have nothing to do with lore, and add nothing to the setting. They’re just crunch, and they should go in a different place… the alternative is 5-6 versions of each stat block in each book, and I don’t think any DM or player wants that.

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