[Eden] Liber Bestarius off to the printer

[Eden Studios Inc]

June 4, 2002
Liber Bestarius off to the printer
After much delay, Eden's long awaited monster book, the Liber Bestarius (The Book of Beasts) for d20 has left for the printer and will be shipping early July.

Published under the The Open Gaming License and totally compatible with the d20 System, the Liber Bestarius provides a horde of new creatures. From the massive to the minute, intelligent to mindless, these beasts stalk your campaign with terrifying relentlessness!

Our printer has told us copies will be sent to us at the Origins Game Fair, where you can get your copies signed by writer Matt Colville and art director George Vasilakos, as well as many of the artists involved with the project will be at the art show.

This 160 page hardcover tome retails for $27.00. Make sure to preorder this new book with your local game store or place an order online from our website.

For more information, check out http://www.edenstudios.net/odyssey

 

[EricNoah]

any chance this will be out before the July 1 ENnies deadline?

 

[Eden Studios Inc]

Good question.

The printer said 3 weeks.

Does it have to be in stores before the 1st?

 

[EricNoah]

Our rules say "Published and made available to the public by July 1." So if you had, say, a limited run of them ready for a convention or supplied to an online dealer or something like that, then it would work. Kind of like when they release an Oscar-worthy movie in just a few theaters before the end of the calendar year. We'll try to be as flexible as we can be.

 

[Orcus]

George-

You might want to edit that post and any other advertising you have done.

If your book is d20, you are in violation of the license by claiming it is "compatible with D&D".

From the OGL:

"You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark"

From the d20 STL Guide:

"Except as described in the section titled "Optional Trademark Use", you may not use the Dungeons & Dragons or Wizards of the Coast trademarks in advertising or in any marketing in support of the Covered Product, or in any other use in conjunction with a Covered Product."

D&D has been claimed by WotC as a trademark.

Clark

 

[Eden Studios Inc]

License violation

Clark,

You are absolutely correct. We made the proper changes on the back cover blurb on the Liber Bestarius, but I failed to stay on top of the marketing materials. We will make those changes immediately.

Thanks for noticing our compliance boo-boo, and sending along the heads-up. Last thing we want to do to ourselves, or any d20 system publisher, is to piss off the company that has made all this possible.

Thanks again,
Alex Jurkat
Eden Studios
www.edenstudios.net

 

[Grazzt]

Shouldn't this part of the press release/initial post in this thread be changed?

"Published under the The Open Gaming License and totally compatible with 3rd Edition D&D..."


Shouldn't it be rewritten with the "compatible with 3rd edition D&D" part removed? This is a no-no according to the d20 and OGL is it not?

 

[JoeGKushner]

So what's considered a playabe race here? Do you provide game stats, height, weight, age tables, or just ECL and Favored Class?

 

[mattcolville]

So what's considered a playabe race here? Do you provide game stats, height, weight, age tables, or just ECL and Favored Class?

There are four or five (maybe more, I don't have a copy of the book handy) races that I identified during development as PC possabilities, as well as threat races, obviously, this being a monster book.

All the monsters in the Liber have height and weight. In fact, I think you'll find the Liber is somewhat different from typical monster books in that there are fewer monsters with a lot more data per monster. More like the 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium, where you got all sorts of ecological and biological data. Some people will love this, those that don't can skip it. There are plenty of monsters whose jobs are just to slaughter PCs and screw ecology.

Sorry, back on topic. . .The PC races have data on government, culture, gender roles in the society, religion, all sorts of stuff as well as ECL, favored races, etc... A lot more data than you get on Elves and Dwarves in the PHB. They don't have age tables because, until right this minute, I had no idea what an age table was. Still don't. Are there tables for stat mods as PC races age? That's what I'd guess you were talking about but I haven't seen those anywhere for the real actual races. None of the playtesters ever mentioned it either.

As we get closer to the release date, we'll put up either the Ruhk or the Nange I think, my two personal favorites for PC race as a PDF preview.

 

[SkeletonKey Ed]

The Player's Handbook page 93 has charts on the effects of aging for all of the PC races. This is something I have long wished WotC would expand on to cover all of the Monster Manual creatures.

Cheers - Ed