The Great Question of Morale

[Solomoriah]

One of the things we've been discussing lately is the standard abbreviation for Morale when listed in a monster stat line in a module. Here's an example of such a stat line:

Stirge: AC 13, HD 1, #At 1 bite, Dam 1d4 +1d4/round blood drain, Mv 10' Fly 60', Sv F1, Ml 9, XP 37

This is the old format, with upper-case M followed by lower-case L. As you may notice (depending on your screen font) it's a bit hard to decide if the second letter is lower-case L or upper-case I.

So we've discussed (and at present have in the style document) that the abbreviation should be all uppercase:

Stirge: AC 13, HD 1, #At 1 bite, Dam 1d4 +1d4/round blood drain, Mv 10' Fly 60', Sv F1, ML 9, XP 37

I was on board with this when our standard module font was still Century Gothic; however, now that we have Adventure BF I'm not sure I'm as clear on it. Here is an example, from a screenshot of LibreOffice showing the situation:

The Great Question of Morale.png (18.63 KiB) Viewed 1252 times

Top left is Century Gothic with the correct letters ML with the second letter lowercase, and upper right is the incorrect letters. It's pretty obvious what the problem is.

The lower left is Adventure BF. Lower right, for completeness, is Soutane BF, though we should almost never need a stat line in that font.

So given this change, what should we do? Go with the all-uppercase abbreviation, or return to upper and lower?

[Boggo]

not only is it clearer, it looks better

[coureur_d_bois]

I voted for ML for the sake of clarity. I do find it weird though that other abreviations keep the old format. I Would personally capitalize everything.

For example, Sv becomes SV and At becomes AT.

[Danny Powell]

The ML is not only clearer but also how it is in old modules that I'm used to so it is what I'm looking for when skimming.

[Solomoriah]

It's running tied... y'all are going to make me decide, aren't you?

[Vindeishi]

I voted for ML for the sake of clarity. I do find it weird though that other abreviations keep the old format. I Would personally capitalize everything.

For example, Sv becomes SV and At becomes AT.

I second this.

[Solomoriah]

I voted for ML for the sake of clarity. I do find it weird though that other abreviations keep the old format. I Would personally capitalize everything.

For example, Sv becomes SV and At becomes AT.

I second this.

Don't rush me here... this might be too much change for me.

[Danny Powell]

I also think 'Solomoriah' should be 'SOLOMORIAH' from now on.

[Boggo]

of course I've always written Morale myself, partly because it's less confusing and doesn't make me think people are suddenly talking Miles, but because the Moldvay Basic box used Morale (and that's the only version I ever played with a Morale stat for monsters, and I've only ever used 1e AD&D modules, and not many of those so it's never been a thing for me) and it wrote it out in full

[Mars]

I voted for ML for the sake of clarity. I do find it weird though that other abreviations keep the old format. I Would personally capitalize everything.

For example, Sv becomes SV and At becomes AT.

I second this.

I agree. From a copy-editor perspective, I like the consistency of having them all capitalized.

I also think 'Solomoriah' should be 'SOLOMORIAH' from now on.