D&D 5E New Organization of Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse- but not really

[Filthy Lucre]

Straight alphabetical is king.

 

[Jer]

Clearly the correct way to organize a Monster Manual is in a three ring binder format with one monster per page so that every DM can organize them however they want! /sarcasm

There are so many ways to organize a book like this. I just want decent indexes and then I don't have to care about organization. Give me an alphabetical index, an index by CR, and an index by creature type. A creature type -> CR -> alphabetical index would be quite nice, as would a CR -> creature type -> alphabetical. Creature type so that when I'm looking for inspiration for particular types for an adventure I can just look there, CR so that I have a rough idea of the basic range of difficulty I'm looking for.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Clearly the correct way to organize a Monster Manual is in a three ring binder format with one monster per page so that every DM can organize them however they want! /sarcasm

I always found that the one full front and back page was just enough space to give the designers the room they needed to truly define entries like 'Cat'.

 

[Jer]

I always found that the one full front and back page was just enough space to give the designers the room they needed to truly define entries like 'Cat'.

There were always two basic failures of the Monstrous Compendium 3-ring binder format for 2e. The first was that if you didn't reinforce the pages around the holes the binder pages had a tendency to tear. Reinforcements for binder holes aren't that expensive, but it was annoying.

The second was that they didn't actually use both sides for the same monster - nor should they have because it would have been a true waste of pages. But that meant that there was no way to actually use the binder format to organize monsters because as soon as you put hobgoblin and horse on the same page back to back you couldn't slide in the homunculus page when it came out in a later MC pack (examples pulled from the ether because I don't remember the actual problematic entries, but they definitely were there). So at least I ended up just storing them by pack and they might as well have been different books.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The first was that if you didn't reinforce the pages around the holes the binder pages had a tendency to tear.

Today's 'Understatement of the Day' award goes to...

 

[Weiley31]

tribal groups (Orcs,

WoTC: No, No, no, no we don't use those two words together.

 

[HammerMan]

WoTC: No, No, no, no we don't use those two words together.

wait what is the matter with tribal groups? I try to watch my words, but groups that have a tribal society seems to be okay... what's wrong with it?
If anything a chapter like this can explain that not all tribes members (and some hole tribes are not) evil...

 

[Weiley31]

wait what is the matter with tribal groups? I try to watch my words, but groups that have a tribal society seems to be okay... what's wrong with it?
If anything a chapter like this can explain that not all tribes members (and some hole tribes are not) evil...

See/Cue all the various Orcs and Drow are problematic and what not threads.

 

[the Jester]

I don't think tribal has been picked out as problematic; it's descriptive without casting judgment. Primitive, savage, etc. are a little different.

 

[Voadam]

I am a fan of a good cross-reference in the monster entries so you can know that something is in the same book but under a different name for their alphabetization scheme when you are flipping through to look something up.

Kudos to Octavirate Press for their 3.5 Lethal Lexicon which executed this well.

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