Stat block

When you're publishing a gaming supplement, you probably want to include statistics about the stuff you made, so that players can use it in their games.

Statistics are most readable when they're in tables, because you can look for the name of the item you want, then go across to the column of the statistic you want. But tables require a lot of space. That's a problem when you're publishing in a magazine and only have two pages.

So a lot of writers just put the stats in regular text. Usually this takes a format like "Statistic name: Value", repeated until all of the statistics have been described. Often there aren't any line breaks, and the stats will look like a wall of text - or a "block," if you will.

Stat blocks are also much less work to format properly than tables are, so they are the preferred stat-giving format of lazies and people who don't want to bother the editors.