I'm not a fan of tags in general.

Tagging? What?

Oh, so that's what they used all those extra pages for.

My problem with the tagging systems is they're pretend taxonomies, and try to systematize the world. Which is another way of saying they're trying to limit the world.

If you go back to the older editions, monsters were mostly behavior, physical descriptions, and game stats. DMs need that -- if you want to run a game, it really helps to know what monsters look like, how they react, and the numbers that serve as an interface with the rules. But the nature of demons, or which monsters are related to other monsters? That kind of information is irrelevant. You don't need any of that to fight a type IV demon, but you do need to know it has telekinesis and how that works.

Where that kind of detail is useful is at the setting level. And that's the problem. Because by tagging all these monsters, the designers are limiting the type of worlds that a DM can create. More importantly, they're robbing games of the opportunity to explore those details. Because if what faeries really are is baked into the game stats, the players will know what they're facing. That means individual games lose one important avenue for creating that sense of mystery that makes exploring an unknown world so wondrous, because they won't have the opportunity to discover on their own what makes the monsters of a new campaign tick.

Quote from: Pat;1056472My problem with the tagging systems is they're pretend taxonomies, and try to systematize the world. Which is another way of saying they're trying to limit the world.

If you go back to the older editions, monsters were mostly behavior, physical descriptions, and game stats. DMs need that -- if you want to run a game, it really helps to know what monsters look like, how they react, and the numbers that serve as an interface with the rules. But the nature of demons, or which monsters are related to other monsters? That kind of information is irrelevant. You don't need any of that to fight a type IV demon, but you do need to know it has telekinesis and how that works.

Where that kind of detail is useful is at the setting level. And that's the problem. Because by tagging all these monsters, the designers are limiting the type of worlds that a DM can create. More importantly, they're robbing games of the opportunity to explore those details. Because if what faeries really are is baked into the game stats, the players will know what they're facing. That means individual games lose one important avenue for creating that sense of mystery that makes exploring an unknown world so wondrous, because they won't have the opportunity to discover on their own what makes the monsters of a new campaign tick.

I agree with this. Beyond things that are generally self-explanatory like beasts, humanoids, giants, plants, oozes, undead, etc, the spiritual/natural/whatever stuff should be decided by each setting. The aberration/celestial/elemental/fey/fiend/undead division (the types mentioned in the 5e spell detect good and evil) does not make sense for a setting like Moorcock's multiverse since good/evil are not alignments therein. Fairies are only ever mentioned by Poul Anderson's work as aligned to Chaos and never feature in Moorcock's multiverse either.

What I liked about 13th Age was that it only added as many types as were absolutely necessary (since the type system barely figures into any other mechanics) and the monster books sometimes provide guidelines for changing the type of a given monster to indication something about its background or a transition or so forth. As far as I know there is only one monster with two types and it is a rider and its steed, but the types are so minimal that I do not predict many monsters would need more than one type. Only two more types (elemental and spirit) were introduced in later books. The article on fey stated that the author did not feel they needed their own type but that GM's were free to make one up (although I think the existing spirit type more than covers fey).

In 13th Age the write-ups for demons, devils, fey and so forth provide multiple sample explanations for their origin and place in the cosmology that the GM could choose if they didn't make one up. That's the sort of thing I think D&D should have done. Their current setup only pays lip service to the idea of alternate cosmologies since the rules do not change if you rearrange the planes.

Quote from: Pat;1056472My problem with the tagging systems is they're pretend taxonomies, and try to systematize the world. Which is another way of saying they're trying to limit the world.

If you go back to the older editions, monsters were mostly behavior, physical descriptions, and game stats. DMs need that -- if you want to run a game, it really helps to know what monsters look like, how they react, and the numbers that serve as an interface with the rules. But the nature of demons, or which monsters are related to other monsters? That kind of information is irrelevant. You don't need any of that to fight a type IV demon, but you do need to know it has telekinesis and how that works.

Where that kind of detail is useful is at the setting level. And that's the problem. Because by tagging all these monsters, the designers are limiting the type of worlds that a DM can create. More importantly, they're robbing games of the opportunity to explore those details. Because if what faeries really are is baked into the game stats, the players will know what they're facing. That means individual games lose one important avenue for creating that sense of mystery that makes exploring an unknown world so wondrous, because they won't have the opportunity to discover on their own what makes the monsters of a new campaign tick.

Then the Ranger came along, with it's 'Favoured Foe' mechanic.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1056517Then the Ranger came along, with it's 'Favoured Foe' mechanic.

You mean giant class opponents. Which is, in a backdoor way, very setting dependent, because they're quite clearly inspired by the forces of Sauron.