Upper_Krust said:
Hey all!
Sorry for the slow response boards still seem a bit sluggish for me.
Anyway, I have been pondering on releasing the first half of the Bestiary (80 pages, 36 monsters for $5) next week.
Naturally anyone who then bought the full Bestiary would get that for half the $10 price.
Any thoughts on the idea? I know it isn't ideal but I'd like to release something as soon as possible, I feel terrible keeping you all waiting.
I'll probably get lynched for saying this, but I think it's a bad idea. Rushed releases never, in my experience, have favorable results. There's always something that you'd have done differently, or included, etc. While I feel the waiting as much as anyone here, I'd rather have a truly great product later than one that's just good now.
Well firstly I don't know if those Green Ronin names are themselves OGL?
Secondly, I no longer have Armies of the Abyss (I gave it to S'mon) - I was planning on buying the Book of Fiends but haven't got round to that yet. So I can't recall the names offhand.
I don't own
The Book of Fiends, but I do have my copy of
Armies of the Abyss handy. According to the designation of OGC on page 1, the "name, statistics, and obedience of each demon prince in Chapter Three" are OGC. Note that the listed names there are Abaddon, Abraxus, Anarazel, Astaroth, Azazel, Azidahaka, Behemoth, Decarabia, Eligor, Flauros, Gamigin, Haagenti, Ipos, Marbas, Nocticula, Raum, Sabnach, Seere, Shax, Socothbenoth, and Vepar. I don't know if more were added or not in
The Book of Fiends.
One other point of OGL I'm worried about is that I want the first monster in the book - the Amilictli (Abomination) to be able to summon Thunder Worms (from the Fiend Folio - offhand I can't recall if its the Fiend Folio or the Monster Manual 2. Can I even mention that as a summons or will I have to change that to Air Elemental I wonder?
To be succinct, you can't mention Thunder Worms. None of the content in the MMII or FF is OGC. WotC is supposed to be relatively nice about giving permission, but that must be specially sought and obtained. Your one point of "wiggle room" might be if you could make a case that your Thunder Worms aren't those from the
Fiend Folio (where their stats are), but that would be cutting it rather close, and you'd then have to have some other source with monsters named that.