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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 1670132" data-attributes="member: 697">Monster books are an interesting nut to crack. Of all the d20 product types out there, they're the only one to follow a clear development path. All of those d20 companies saw Privateer getting award after award for the Monsternomicon, and many of them have chosen a similar design approach. There's an increasing tendency to make detailed, long entries that give a lot of information about a few monsters.I think that leads to the sort of book that is fun to read, but not necessarily easy to use. The more monsters a book offers, the greater its inherent utility. A book with 5 creatures of CRs 1/4 to 20 has a much greater chance of purchase/use than one that has 12 creatures of different CRs. If your game is at level 3, or level 8, or whatever, the book with more creatures has a greater chance of having something you need. You may have had more fun reading the book with a lot fewer monsters, but it's less likely to have a creature that you can use, and a lot of the details may never work their way into the game.So that's the first problem - you can't really judge a monster book until it's been on your shelf for a year, unless you buy RPG books as literature to read. That's why I don't trust monster book reviews. There's a big gap between the monster collection that's fun to read and the one that's easy to use.But here's the second, and more difficult to overcome problem: familiarity.Most veteran gamers, the type that are going to go out and buy a new monster book, have a good grip on the monsters in the Monster Manual. They know them from second edition, they've used them before in 3e. When a DM sits down to create an adventure, he might think "I need a CR 12 or so creature with a lot of magical abilities." If he thinks about it for a minute or two, he can come up with a bunch of classic D&D monsters from the MM - mind flayer, beholder, lich, and so on. If he wants to use a non-standard monster book, he has to make the effort to pull the book off his shelf and flip through it.That's more work. Work is bad. So in goes the familiar monster.So, you might now see the fundamental dilemma - companies are trying to break that familiarity barrier (wittingly or not) by sticking in lots and lots of detail. But that in turn cuts down the basic utility the book offers. In essence, the designer robs Peter to pay Paul.I think that monster books are an excellent example of the d20 market's inability to really look at the problem of design in a new and interesting way. d20 companies generally just try to do what WotC does, but they lack the budget to do it better, especially since monster books are so art driven.You'll notice that most, if not all, of the new monster books that have been released are tied to a setting. In Malhavoc's case, Legacy of the Dragons sells great because we have lots of AU fans who need monsters for their games. The book pushes aside the MM in terms of that game. I think it woud be really interesting, though, to peer into some alternate universe where Legacy of the Dragons wasn't an AU product and look at the sales numbers.</blockquote>

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