4e a bite at a time - The MM

My general impressions of 4e after having close to a week with the core books is that it lacks depth and is missing a lot that a builder DM, like me, craves in a game system. The temptation to write a full-blown review of the system is strong, crouching in the back of my skull and feeding, but there's so much to say. Every time I sit down to start I am crushed by my own emotional knee-jerk reactions. How dare you make everyone's attack bonuses the same by level? Everyone has roughly the same number of powers and feats by level? Are you crazy? How could you ever get rid of druids and monks?

Do you see? I want to be objectional. I really do.

For now, a full review is off the table, and probably premature; I've spent so much energy on 3e+ that I will be comparing something I'm fond of, and intimately familiar with, to some unnecessary and still-unwanted interloper. I'd hardly give a balanced review of the whole package. So, let's take it a bite at a time, but only after I put the following thought to you: 4e is a lot of fun under the right circumstances, but I think 3.5e offers a better experience.

Let's talk about the 4e Monster Manual.

When I first roleplayed a decade past I borrowed the then-current MM from a buddy. I read it for days afterwards, poring over the ecologies and detailed statistics of imaginary creatures and imagining some of my own. Since, I've read through a dozen complete monstrous compendiums (not only the critter collection of the same title, but all the crunchy critter tomes I could lay hands on) simply because it was fun to learn about the monsters therein.

I've had the 4e MM for a week, and I've skimmed through it a few times and opened it a few more to revisit some of my favourites. I'm sad to report that It doesn't hold my attention; the book is missing a lot of depth of previous editions. Instead of a page or more per monster, we have a page or two for every monster grouping. You get the creature's name and a brief description of it written from writer to reader, not for the DM to read to his players. You get a statistics block, then another brief sentence or paragraph describing general tactics, and finally a lore section for knowledge checks. It's all great, and once you're familiar with the new MO the designers used to run the critters, it's useful, even.

But. (You knew one was coming.) There's so much detail missing, as if the designers decided that the monsters are useful only in combat, appearing Final Fantasy style in a swirling design of colours, and then fading away once they die. Can you hear the victory music?

There are 500 critters crammed into it, which is great, but the number of monsters has come at the expense of the outside of combat detail, as if the critters don't exist in any sense unless they're facing the PCs. I want my D&D world to breathe, dammit! I need that information to help me achieve.

The average entry looks to be less than a page long, often less than a single column in the two-column spread. Without those paragraphs of information, the ecology, and the creature description--stuff you may never even use--the monster becomes flat. Each becomes a grouping of numbers and statistics rather than the living, breathing core of an adventure. 4e has taken away the personality and flavour of the monsters for me, and I'm disappointed that this feeling is creeping into other parts of the game that I enjoyed immensely in previous editions.

But that's another post, and tastes change. For now one of my normal gaming groups has decided to make 4e a fall-back plan for when we want a change of pace, or much more telling, when our standard 3.5e game dissolves thanks to RL appointments.