Redisigning the 4E MM for the digital age

[tomBitonti]

Forked from: Did You Buy the First Three 4e Core Books?

I do wish they had repackaged the 4E MM into a PDF generator that spits out cards for each of the monsters, and a separate PDF with all of the fluff. Lots of dead trees in that there 4E MM.

Hi!

Has anyone out there had similar ideas? So much of the space in the 4E MM seems to be printouts of monster stats, with a hidden core model with templates and abilities applied to create the listed monsters.

That seems to be an outmoded way of creating a monster book. What seems to be a better approach is to have an actual digital product that generates specific monsters as needed, with a number of preset monsters built into the product.

That is, the product would have:

*) A listing of core monsters, with fluff, core abilities, and upgrade mechanics for each;
*) A listing of optional abilities, maybe as individual powers, or as combinations;
*) Some generic rules for upgrading the monsters.

Then:

*) An engine for selecting a core monster and adding abilities to that monster, or to upgrade the monster.
*) A database for recording monster combinations, and generating the data set for a particular combination;
*) A print engine for formating data sets for individual monsters and generating PDF or other formatted, printable documents, with the monster data.

I really don't understand, anymore, why we need to actually list out the monster instances in a book. If I had a printed book, I would want that to concentrate on the fluff and core definitions, and leave the creation of concrete monsters to some software.

 

[malraux]

Forked from: Did You Buy the First Three 4e Core Books?



Hi!

Has anyone out there had similar ideas? So much of the space in the 4E MM seems to be printouts of monster stats, with a hidden core model with templates and abilities applied to create the listed monsters.

That seems to be an outmoded way of creating a monster book. What seems to be a better approach is to have an actual digital product that generates specific monsters as needed, with a number of preset monsters built into the product.

That is, the product would have:

*) A listing of core monsters, with fluff, core abilities, and upgrade mechanics for each;
*) A listing of optional abilities, maybe as individual powers, or as combinations;
*) Some generic rules for upgrading the monsters.

Then:

*) An engine for selecting a core monster and adding abilities to that monster, or to upgrade the monster.
*) A database for recording monster combinations, and generating the data set for a particular combination;
*) A print engine for formating data sets for individual monsters and generating PDF or other formatted, printable documents, with the monster data.

I really don't understand, anymore, why we need to actually list out the monster instances in a book. If I had a printed book, I would want that to concentrate on the fluff and core definitions, and leave the creation of concrete monsters to some software.

The downside of that is you need to be sure the model is always generating proper output rather than checking each pre-generated instance. That is, with the core monster kobold you'd have to check every possible combination of kobolds and abilities in the database to be sure that the level and role end up correct in play rather than just the ones in the MM. And so on for every race and special ability/template. So that's a lot more work.

You also lose some branding with that. Does it make sense to allow mind flayer brutes? If the monster manual doesn't have thematically linked monster builds, you run into the problem of monsters not feeling like anything.

Lastly, the disadvantage of the build it all approach is that then you have to build it all. Its nice to be able to make up monsters from time to time, but I'd hate to have to do it for every single monster I want. 3e had this problem to some extent. The monsters as just specialized classes approach did make everything into a bit of core races + abilities to add onto them. It made 3e (for a lot of people) way too much work.

 

[tomBitonti]

The downside of that is you need to be sure the model is always generating proper output rather than checking each pre-generated instance. That is, with the core monster kobold you'd have to check every possible combination of kobolds and abilities in the database to be sure that the level and role end up correct in play rather than just the ones in the MM. And so on for every race and special ability/template. So that's a lot more work.

You also lose some branding with that. Does it make sense to allow mind flayer brutes? If the monster manual doesn't have thematically linked monster builds, you run into the problem of monsters not feeling like anything.

Lastly, the disadvantage of the build it all approach is that then you have to build it all. Its nice to be able to make up monsters from time to time, but I'd hate to have to do it for every single monster I want. 3e had this problem to some extent. The monsters as just specialized classes approach did make everything into a bit of core races + abilities to add onto them. It made 3e (for a lot of people) way too much work.

Well, the actual rules subsystem seems to be the easier part of it, and you should only need to make particular fixes once. Product integration and the management of product and content updates would seem to be the harder part.

You could build product branding into the fluff and predefined combinations. There is no reason to ship such a product with no predefined monsters with enough to create branding.

That handles the last issue: You should not have to build all the combinations yourself. There should be a features database and and combinations database, with a substantially set of predefined monsters / combinations in the shipped product.

Btw, isn't a Thoon Hulk a mind flayer hulk?