Monster Lore Compendium (at WotC)

[Big Mac]

Crossposted from The Piazza.

I was searching for information on the ankheg and looked at the ankheg page on the d20pfsrd website and was suprised to see some content flagged as "Fan Content". They don't normally have fanon on the d20pfsrd website, so I did a bit of investigation and found that they were referring to a 3e project (at the WotC forums) called the Monster Lore Compendium. The aim of this project is to take the format of the lore information given in Monster Manual IV and provide similar information for monster books that lack that information. It sounds simple, but there are a ton of monsters to do and they are still working on them.

Here is the important text from the first post:

Perhaps the best thing about the MMIV is the new Lore section included with each entry. This thread is an attempt to create Lore sections for creatures already in print without this information. Posts in this index should be similar to the Lore sections in the MMIV, with the information gained presented in a descriptive (as well as mechanical) way. The main knowledge skill used should typically be based on creature type as follows:

• Arcana: constructs, dragons, magical beasts
• Dungeoneering: aberrations, oozes
• Local: humanoids
• Nature: animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin
• Psionics: astral constructs, psionic creatures
• Religion: undead
• The planes: elementals, outsiders

though feel free to use a different base skill if it is more appropriate - for example, Knowledge (dungeoneering) is only really suitable for those aberrations that live underground. All entries should include the monster's name, book and page number. They should have a basic knowledge check result, plus a number of higher results (typically at +5DC increments) depending on the complexity of the creature.

I think this thread is really useful, both for 3e gaming and Pathfinder gaming.

Does anyone think it would be worth adding Monster Lore to conversions, or would that be too much extra work?

 

[freyar]

I've done it with some of my own conversions, but I think we have enough going on here just converting critters! Besides, we tend to put in plenty of flavor text for DMs to mine for skill checks.

 

[Cleon]

I've done it with some of my own conversions, but I think we have enough going on here just converting critters! Besides, we tend to put in plenty of flavor text for DMs to mine for skill checks.

Ditto.

While I've been adding Monster Lore entries to some of my own 3.5 Homebrews, I don't think we need bother with the Creature Catalog conversions.

We've been following the SRD format for the monster stats, which doesn't include MMIV-style Lore. Also, the Creature Catalog monsters we've been doing tend to have plenty of flavour in the background text for the DM to dish out to players as they see fit.