Post originally by JRM at 2004-06-19 12:11:27
Converted from Phorums BB System

I have the same peeve against monster manuals that just include the stat block and a few bits of fluff. It's one of the things I dislike about 3rd edition D&D. The 2nd edition AD&D Monstrous Compendiums gave you some info on the creatures habits and ecology, but most monsters in the 3rd edition Monster Manual just have a paragraph or two of description. The 3.0 edition didn't even have the italicised descriptive text. The few "ecology of" articles in Dragon haven't been much better, since they’ve focused too much on how the creature can kill the PCs and visa versa.

Now 3rd edition D&D has many improvement over its predecessors, but this is not one of them. I think it hampers a games suspension of disbelief when most of the information it gives you about a monster revolves around how to kill it (and take its stuff). Some d20 products make an effort to correct this. The Wanderer's Guild stuff looks quite good (Into the Black, Into the Blue and so on, plus their website on http://www.wanderersguild.com). But it's quite frustrating when even a semi-spoof game like Hackmaster gives more monsters background in a Hacklopedia of Beasts than any of the Wizards of the Coast monster books I've seen.