PDF products I'd like to see

[Nellisir]

I'd really like a Complete Book of Animals, collecting all the OGL Animal stats (dire ones too) and filling in the blanks. Including basic templates like celestial, fiendish, elemental, and dire.

A Big Book of Basic Templates. Like...OGL lawful and chaotic templates, elemental templates & energy templates (yes, I think a sonic displacer beast would be cool), all the basic undead templates...you get the idea.

And a Monster Under the Bed book of Vermin. All vermin, all sizes, including swarms.

Not very exciting, but I'm tired of looking through 8 different books to make a fey goat.

More edited, organized, and balanced feat and spell collections too, please.

 

[Vanuslux]

I thought about doing something like that as my entrance into pdf publishing, but then I went through a rather difficult move and abandoned the thought of publishing for the time being.

 

[Cergorach]

I've been thinkering with an online OGC database that would be able to output to user specified html, but also user specified pdf. I'll start with a spell database (soon), people will be able to create their own spellbooks from OGC stuff, might also create an option to enter private spells and spellbooks, i'm still working out the details...

Monsters would be the next logical step. If you made a specification (or someone already made it for you) for a celectial owl, the site would paste the celestial template over the owl.

Still al lot of work to do though... ;-)

 

[Jeff_DUG]

I'd really like a Complete Book of Animals, collecting all the OGL Animal stats (dire ones too) and filling in the blanks. Including basic templates like celestial, fiendish, elemental, and dire.

This EXACT product is in my pipeline, but I don't have a release date yet... maybe I should push it further up though if people are interested in this sort of thing...

 

[Nellisir]

This EXACT product is in my pipeline, but I don't have a release date yet... maybe I should push it further up though if people are interested in this sort of thing...

Let me know if you need a hand with any part of it. I never wanted to do the entire thing myself, but I'm not adverse to helping out.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[RCanning]

My wife, who loves D&D but is not a rules junkie, has recently started playing a Druid for the first time. So that she could work more easily, I did a Druid spellbook for her, with all of the druid spells organised by level. I have some experience in DTP, so I did this up nicely.

Then she wanted to have the information about animals she can summon all together, so I quickly put one of those togehter.

Then she wanted all of the forms she will be able to wild shape into, so I added that, though not with the same detail or DTP level.

However, this has got me thinking of putting together a "Druid's Handbook" together, with a lot of the SRD organised so that only what is needed is listed. Then adding details about progression and concepts, detailing what makes certain feats good and others not so good. What is broken, suggestions on how to fix broken things. Detailing why taking something at low levels is not as good as waiting until high, and visa versa.

I have no idea how much work this would be, but I have done a lot of the work already, so I might just give it a try. Pity I don't know as much about Druids as I should

Richard Canning

 

[Dimwhit]

This EXACT product is in my pipeline, but I don't have a release date yet... maybe I should push it further up though if people are interested in this sort of thing...

I don't know your work, but do a good job and I'll buy it!

 

[tensen]

This EXACT product is in my pipeline, but I don't have a release date yet... maybe I should push it further up though if people are interested in this sort of thing...

Will you be sure to have all the nice animals from:
Book of Familiars - Troll Lords
Dweomercraft: Familiars - Dark Quest Games

Both of which have a horde of animals for such a product.

 

[Jeff_DUG]

Thanks very much for the replies. Good to see that great minds think alike.

Nell: I may just take you up on that offer

RCanning: I encourage you to go for it! It sounds like a great idea for a book. If we can help let us know. Personally I really like Druids and have tried several times in D&D sessions to play them (had a fantastic Birthright campaign with a Druid ruler). I've not tried in 3e yet, but I can tell you Druids are woefully underpowered in all previous editions... I felt useless in most combat encounters as I couldn't adequately fight or heal. Druid's are a great concept, but they don't work well in the more dungeon/urban environments that campaigns tend to focus on.
Maybe your book could put a spin on that (hint hint)

Dimwhit: Cool, our first sucker! I mean customer!

Tensen: Have Dweomercraft. It's a good book. In fact it so good, it almost killed our first release... We decided to retool it and change the format. Instead of a book about familiars and spell casters it will be more of a Monstrous Manual of small and terrible little critters that can be used as familiars, pets, or just to harass low level PC's. Won't be many animals in it though.
Will have to track down a copy of The Book of Familiars. Seems like most of Troll Lords stuff is print only, but will give it a look see. From their website and blurbs about the book it looks to contain quite a few critters!

 

[Jeff_DUG]

Oh and a few quick thoughts:

The animal product we have planned would contain 100 or so animals, maybe more (o.k. probably more because there's a hella lot of critters out there)

It's working title is 101+ Companimals. I know kind of dumb. We're still debating the whole naming schema of our product lines. We have a lot of play on words type titles and Companimals smirks of companion animals. The 101+ thing is also tentative. Seems like there's a current slew of 101 type products and DM's/Players gravitate towards those because over a hundred triggers the thought process "wow that's a lot!". People like lots of stuff when they are making a purchase (well we do any ways!)

Despite it's title the product focus is making sure that the "standard" animals are covered that DM's will populate their adventures with - i.e. cows, chickens, dogs, cats, horses, squirrels, foxes, etc. Of course we'll have alligators, elephants and sure even stats for whales, but to be honest those are really filler. We think gamers need small, farm and riding animal stats more than anything else.

We also wanted to include a section on poisonous insects & reptiles. Not made up stuff like giant centipedes or dire lizards, but actual game info on the bite effects of black widows, tarantulas, rattlesnakes and the like.

This is the kind of stuff WE feel is missing from D&D, but I dunno what do you guys think???