Preview VOLO'S GUIDE TO MONSTERS

Polygon has scored a look at the upcoming Volo's Guide to Monsters from WotC - six full pages, in fact, which give a very clear idea of what we can expect from the book when it arrived next month! From the looks of their article, it seems that WotC is using this as a testbed for the way they handle future sourcebooks. Polygon confirms the overall product description - 96 new (to 5E) monsters, tons of rules for monster PCs (goblins, orcs, firbolgs), and a buch of deep dives into some iconic monsters. The beholder section is nearly 14 pages on its own. Check out the article at Polygon for more!

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[Dire Bare]

The wonderful "Tome of Horrors" published by Necromancer Games updated many classic D&D monsters for 3rd Edition and then again for Pathfinder. There is no 5th Edition version per se, but "Fifth Edition Foes" from Frog God Games is essentially the 5E update of the "Tome of Horrors". Since Frog God and Necromancer work closely together, I don't know why the name change, but there it is.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/195015/Fifth-Edition-Foes

There are also a lot of good monster updates from the growing number of "pro-am" designers on the DM's Guild website. Here's a few that are getting good reviews and selling well:

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/173428/Bestiary-of-Faern--Monsters-of-the-Forgotten-Realms

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/193100/Planar-Bestiary?hot60=0&src=hnum&filters=45469

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/175212/Realmspace-Bestiary

And, of course, there's a lot more available where those are found!

Simply updating classic monsters is a job easily handled by the community, allowing WotC to focus on providing us with newer content and deeper stories. I would have purchased a standard Monster Manual 2 had they released it, but I'm much more excited for this newer format.

 

[Prakriti]

Simply updating classic monsters is a job easily handled by the community, allowing WotC to focus on providing us with newer content and deeper stories.

I feel like this statement can easily be turned on its head: "Simply creating stories is a job easily handled by the community, allowing WotC to focus on updating classic monsters."

Whether you agree with the original statement or the revision probably depends on your strengths as a DM. If you're the creative type who can easily come up with stories and plot-hooks, then you probably want WotC to focus on the things you struggle with, like balancing mechanics and monsters. If you're the analytical type who can easily churn out new mechanics and stat blocks, then you probably want Wizards to focus on the things you struggle with, like creating lore and adventures.

When someone says how easy it is to do X, what they're really saying is that it's easy for them. That doesn't mean that it's easy for other people. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I feel like this statement can easily be turned on its head: "Simply creating stories is a job easily handled by the community, allowing WotC to focus on updating classic monsters."

Whether you agree with the original statement or the revision probably depends on your strengths as a DM. If you're the creative type who can easily come up with stories and plot-hooks, then you probably want WotC to focus on the things you struggle with, like balancing mechanics and monsters. If you're the analytical type who can easily churn out new mechanics and stat blocks, then you probably want Wizards to focus on the things you struggle with, like creating lore and adventures.

When someone says how easy it is to do X, what they're really saying is that it's easy for them. That doesn't mean that it's easy for other people. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

So much this. While I love the lore and fluff of things like the Volo's Guide (I buy 2e books entirely for the fluff, even though I get no use out of the mechanics, because I still hold 2e as the gold standard for lore), I don't really struggle making up my own stories. I want it because I like it, and I can use it.

On the other hand, I don't want to try to mess around with updating monsters. To do it right, I'd have to set up a comprehensive comparison of the monsters in the 5e MM to their previous edition versions, then look at non-updated monsters and extract a mechanical update that follows similar principles and looks like it's what WotC would have done if they had done it officially. I'm not going to be satisfied just refluffing something in the 5e MM, or taking old stats and doing quick translations to 5e numbers. That won't produce the results I'm going for. The 5e Foes book has some monsters that are coming out in Volo's. It will be interesting to compare them and see how well or poorly Necromancer Games did at converting them in the manner I'm talking about. I think the differences we see are going to be instructive.

So while I want the lore, I need the updated stats for my ongoing settings.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Can't we have both. You know like this book is giving us. Lore and Monsters.

 

[Prakriti]

Can't we have both. You know like this book is giving us. Lore and Monsters.

I think it's an experiment worth having. I was skeptical at first, but I'm on board now. The only reason it's an issue (presumably) is because of the slow release schedule. If this were 3E, we wouldn't need to argue about whether Volo's Guide would be better off as a MM2, because we would be getting both. That's the downside to a slow release schedule. People are much more invested in each new release, because they only get 1 per year. Naturally they want each release to address their specific needs. Volo's seems like an attempt to please as many camps as possible.

 

[Henry]

The wonderful "Tome of Horrors" published by Necromancer Games updated many classic D&D monsters for 3rd Edition and then again for Pathfinder. There is no 5th Edition version per se, but "Fifth Edition Foes" from Frog God Games is essentially the 5E update of the "Tome of Horrors". Since Frog God and Necromancer work closely together, I don't know why the name change, but there it is.

Necromancer was Clark Peterson's and Bill Webb's company, and Frog God is Bill Webb's company, if I understood correctly. i think Tome of Horrors may have some legal issues why there can't be a 5e version, because Clark got some kind of special permission from WotC back in 2000 to use some WotC monsters that aren't strictly released as OGL, so they have to take care in how Tome of Horrors is handled for further expansion projects, but I could be wrong. I've never looked at the legalese in the OGL for the original release of ToH so I could misunderstand that. I do know that Tome of Horrors is a seminal work for expanding the available base of monsters where the OGL was concerned.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Can't we have both. You know like this book is giving us. Lore and Monsters.

Absolutely, which is why I like the looks of this book. I was just agreeing with the sentiment that purchasing preferences are affected by what we are or aren't good at or comfortable with home-brewing.

 

[SirGrotius]

Another example of WoTC and the DD5 team somehow getting it. This feels right and the evisceration illustration alone would sell me on the book.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...evisceration...

Technically it's not evisceration until you take the goodies out of the bag... isn't that strange? There is a fancy word for cutting something open to study it, a fancy word for if you start that process with the something alive, and another fancy word for when you cut something open and take out the insides that fits whether you mean to study them or not.

Not that the word didn't serve its purpose how you used it, since I knew what you meant, I just find language interesting when it has weird little foibles like this.

 

[Grazzt]

Necromancer was Clark Peterson's and Bill Webb's company, and Frog God is Bill Webb's company, if I understood correctly. i think Tome of Horrors may have some legal issues why there can't be a 5e version, because Clark got some kind of special permission from WotC back in 2000 to use some WotC monsters that aren't strictly released as OGL, so they have to take care in how Tome of Horrors is handled for further expansion projects, but I could be wrong. I've never looked at the legalese in the OGL for the original release of ToH so I could misunderstand that. I do know that Tome of Horrors is a seminal work for expanding the available base of monsters where the OGL was concerned.

Shouldn't be any issue with reusing the monsters from Tome (any of them). We "open sourced" all of them, including the ones we got permission from WotC to use. It's all in each of the Open Content declarations in each of them. About the only thing we didn't open source was the artwork and title of the book.