Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5903335" data-attributes="member: 2067">I personally have rather controversial views on the subject. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I've got a PDF of a quick mock-up of what I might like an MM entry to look like attached to the post.I think it's time we get rid of the idea of "an alphabetical compendium of a random assortment of things to fight in combat," and focus on making a book that is about varied use at the table, rather than statblocks.To do this, I would first say that we need to get several antagonist groups to serve as the main entries for the MM. So we might have Kobolds, and Goblins, and Drow, and Orcs, and The Assassin's Guild and The Lich-King, and whatever else. You might have monster groups, antagonist groups, even environments: "The Spiderwood," "The Church of Asmodeus," or "The Volcanoes of the Red Dragon." The assumption must be, however, that these are creatures and organizations and villains and settings that can anchor an entire adventure, an entire night of gaming. Thus, we don't need an entry for "Bears" or "Rats" or "Fly, Giant" or "Mammal." These creatures (and their stats) can be part of the MM, still, they just should be in support of a creature that has more....adventure juice. Don't make an entry for "spiders," put spiders in with the Drow entry, or in with the Spiderwood entry (or subtly different spiders in both!). An Index would be useful in this format if you just wanted to quickly look something up at the table, but overall this makes the book much more useful: you don't have to flip between Spiders and Drow and Elf and Drider, and the Poison rules, and the Webbing rules...you have it all, right there, as part of the "Drow" entry. This MM basically says to you, "Hey. We see you like to use Monster X. Here's all the support you may ever need in one place for Monster X. Have fun."Each entry might, with some illustration, and a map, and several stat blocks for creatures and hazards and traps and environmental dangers, clock in at about 5-10 pages -- each "anchor" might be an entire chapter. But those 5-10 pages, I think, will be a lot more useful to a DM at the table than 5-10 pages of random mating information about a random alphabetical assortment of haphazardly arranged creatures. It is essential that this kind of MM include support for all three pillars for each "chapter." Kobolds should not just be a stat block, they should be a usable in combat, in exploration, and in interaction. The views are controversial because people are very wedded to the "Encyclopedia of Random Critters" format. It's just not a tremendously useful layout for the playing of the game, when linked creatures and threats that I need in running the adventure are stretched out over three books and twelve random pages.It is much better, IMO, to be able to say, "Tonight, the kobolds will steal some chickens!" and to turn to the Kobolds page, and have everything you need for dealing with kobolds and their chicken-stealing ways. Traps, creatures, allies, society, outlook, tactics, lair info, treasure, whatever. All in one place.If you need help writing it, WotC, I can offer my services. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification