Getting Monster Manual II added to the SRD

[RavinRay]

Oh, in case anyone's interested, here's a PDF of my Gem Dragon Psionics project.

Assuming that WotC will accept my article proposal for the gem dragons, I'll remove the link.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What would be great would be a product or site like d20srd where they combined the monsters from all of the OGC books, be they from Wizards or Necromancer or anywhere else. One massive monster site where you could choose from just hundreds upon hundreds of monsters at a time.

Would something like that be legal?

As we speak, I'm putting together an Excel file that lists all the monsters and a little basic information about them (CR, habitat, types, subtypes, size). I'm designing it to help me look up monsters for my game and for potential publishing projects, so it doesn't include ALL the detail, but I'll be sure to post to the boards when it's done.

It should have the SRD monsters, the Tome of Horrors (1, 2, and 3) monsters, and, if they come out with it, the monsters from the Complete Denizens of Avadnu. I may also add WotC monsters eventually, but the priority is on OGC beasties, since they're some of the easiest to use in almost any product.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Could someone say what the Open Gaming Lincese is? As far as I can tell, it means that content that is declared "open gaming" content by it's creator can be used by other people, even if they put that stuff in RPG products to sell?

 

[Thurbane]

Could someone say what the Open Gaming Lincese is? As far as I can tell, it means that content that is declared "open gaming" content by it's creator can be used by other people, even if they put that stuff in RPG products to sell?

Indeed - I would also like a simplification o what OGL really means...

 

[jmucchiello]

Could someone say what the Open Gaming Lincese is? As far as I can tell, it means that content that is declared "open gaming" content by it's creator can be used by other people, even if they put that stuff in RPG products to sell?

This may be an oversimplification: (And you can always wikipedia or google stuff when you need to know what something is)

OGL stands for Open Gaming License, a license written by WotC similar to the open source licenses found in computer programming. It grants 3rd party RPG writers license to use Open Game Content (OGC) without first getting permission from the original author. The catch is that when you use open content, you must propagate the license and leave that open content open.

The PHB, DMG and MM (as well as most WotC books) contain NO open content. But WotC released a document (really a zip of .RTF files) called the System Reference Document (SRD) which contains the nuts and bolts of D&D 3.0 (and later 3.5) as well select content from Deities&DG, EpicH, MotPlanes, and the Expanded PsiH.

With the SRD and the OGL one can write material compatible with the most popular fantasy role-playing game. WotC hoped 3rd party RPG publishers would use this to write adventures. To entice them to do this, WotC created another license: the D20 System License. It allowed 3rd party publishers to put a 1/2 inch logo on their books and by following the license place those immortal words "Requires the use of the Dungeons and Dragon Player's Handbook" on their works.

Pubs flocked to the d20 license but along with adventures came millions of splat books with names like Advanced Complete Fighter 6 and 50 More Feats No One Needs. These oversturated the market and eventually many of these 3rd party companies turned away or died. Still for WotC, it was a winning scenario. They had lots of potential competitors advertising WotC's brand and expanding the pool of D&D players among all RPG players.

Then came the OGL games. Mutants and Masterminds, Arcane Unearthed (later Evolved), etc. They abandoned the d20 license (for reasons someone else can go into). So now those books no longer beg you to buy a player's handbook.

Simultaneous with much of this were various personnel changes at WotC and so the SRD has not had an infusion of new material in several years.

That's the 10,000 foot view of what the OGL is. It is express a priori permission to create derivative IP.

A link: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome

 

[KingCrab]

There were monsters in MMIV? I just saw maps and leveled up existing creatures

 

[Mouseferatu]

I care because I don't want to make up a new name for something that is essentially the same monster. If I want to use an Ophidian (Yaun-ti like creature from Ari Marmell's bestiary), I want to use the name "Ophidian" to identify it. It's easy, its cool, and its instantly identifiable.

And indeed you can.

Almost everything Lion's Den does, including the Iconic Bestiary line, is 100% open.

(That was, in fact, the entire point behind the first entry in the line, Classics of Fantasy: To give publishers entirely open creatures to replace the ones left out of the SRD. Alas, as a mere PDF publisher, I lacked the level of exposure necessary to really make as wide an impact as I'd hoped.)

 

[Pants]

So, I really don't understand what the hate is about MM2. It has some great stuff compared to MM3 and MM4.

The potential is there, but, like I've said many, many times before, MMII is just a crapshoot. Sure it has a couple of good monsters, in fact, I'd say that MMIV and MMII have an equal amount of usably good critters, MMII just has more crap. People complain about MMIV's fixation with spiders, but MMII had oozes, lame oozes at that.

It also had a bunch of monsters that were horribly statted out. Most were just too damn weak for their CR's. The clockwork (platinum only actually) horrors were the epitome of bad design, too weak to stand up against a party of equal level, but with some at will SLA's that could utterly destroy that party over and over again.

I harp on this book a lot, but it's only because
1) the potential is there, a lot of the monsters are pretty cool, but I can't be bothered to go through fixing them to make the usable. I have a dozen other books I could reference.
2) It has a lot of converted creatures from 1e/2e. Whoopie. It doesn't help that most of the conversions suck
3) It has quite a few lame monsters, moreso than in successive MM's (though MMIV comes close)

I'll take the FF or MMIII any day over MMII, though if WotC were to update it, revise it, and fix most of the problems it might become one of the stronger entries, but right now... it pretty much sucks.

 

[MKMcArtor]

We don't really need WotC making a lot more OGC. We could use publishers using d20 OGC from other publishers instead of just the SRD, that would be cool. Though it's unlikely since most are moving on from d20 into their own systems at the moment.

We agree. We've already begun using monsters from other publishers in our products. Why reinvent the wheel, ya know?

 

[Jhaelen]

2) It has a lot of converted creatures from 1e/2e. Whoopie. It doesn't help that most of the conversions suck
3) It has quite a few lame monsters, moreso than in successive MM's (though MMIV comes close)

I'll take the FF or MMIII any day over MMII, though if WotC were to update it, revise it, and fix most of the problems it might become one of the stronger entries, but right now... it pretty much sucks.

Yup, I generally prefer all-new monsters that have been designed for D&D 3rd.ed. from the very beginning.

However, I would buy a 'best of' monster compendium including MM2 & FF monsters updated to the 3.5 rules with the new stat block format without thinking twice about it.