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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5908997" data-attributes="member: 2067">Man, so many people Agreeing On The Internet. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />I think part of that will be determined by the target page count, but circa 5-10 pages for each "chapter" hits a sweet spot. Some critters might have slightly more, some might have slightly less, but that seems to give a good balance.I think the desire for minimal fluff is part of that desire for a traditionally formatted MM. Which, I guess, we avoid if we just call this third core book something different. <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=";)" /> And I think even in such a book, it's necessary to make it very clear that DMs can take anything in their own direction.This is presented as "one vision" of how goblins could be, presented so that DMs can tweak it if they want to. If you include goblins as wolf-riders allied with worgs in the book, but a DM decides he wants them on spider-back instead, it should be easy for him to either use the spider statblocks in the drow section, or just whip up their own spider statblocks from the DMG's monster-building directions. The kobolds might be dragon-worshipers, but it shouldn't take anything more than a change in how the DM describes them for them to be dog-rat-things. The tricks that DMs have been doing for 30 years with MM entries will still be valid tricks. What the MM says a dragon might be has never been the last word on what dragons are in D&D.I think part and parcel of that is to have a monster-building system that is seamless and easy. 4e got us most of the way there, so they can probably handle it. <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 think if I was to do this myself, I'd include "Goblinoids" as one entry, with goblins (minions), bugbears (brutes), and hobgoblins (soldiers) all there, working together. It's pretty normal in D&D to have these critters enslaved/conscripted/unified, anyway, and their differences will stand out more in contrast to the others if they're together. Orcs would probably be a separate entry -- they're pretty distinct.And swapping would just be a case of identifying equal-level monsters, much like it is in 3e or 4e (or even 1e and 2e, to a certain degree): any monster with a similar level would be a potential swap.Creatures without their own lairs might get bundled into other creatures who have their own lairs. You might have wolves in with the goblinoids entry, rather than in their own entry, for instance.Well, much like the MM, this book would be presumed to be full of DM information, not something the player needs to look at. Inevitably, that will happen to some degree, and for that, DMs can use the same tricks they've been using for years on players who read the MM -- refluffing, changing little bits, replacing, templating, etc. Just because the Kobold entry shows a trap in this room doesn't mean that there WILL be a trap in the room, especially if the players have already read the book. For those, you'll need to divide them up into smaller, more easy-to-manage groups. The Demons entry probably wouldn't include ALL the demons D&D has available, but a selection of them relevant to most DMs with especially iconic demons (Vrocks, Marliths, Succubi), along with things like Demon Thralls and the like. Elementals, I think, are prime candidates to appear in other creatures' entries -- the Fire Giants summon Fire Elementals, for instance.Sounds like a pretty good target to me. Usually the realities of budget and printing capability will dictate this for you, but if I could get "enough adventures to run characters from 1-10," that would hit the need of the 3rd core book pretty well. At 3 entries/level, that means 30 entries would be quite perfect. If it takes most D&D groups about a year to get to level 10 anyway, we'd be able to then either publish a sequel, or write it off as a failed experiment. <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=";)" /> That's certainly up to debate, though. The first Adventure Guide might want to hid a breadth of levels 1-20 so that multiple DMs at any given level can use it, and so 30 entries is just fine -- in fact, maybe a bit TOO many. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Let's see what I might do if I had one entry per level...hmm..LV 1: Kobolds (dire weasels, urds, wild boars)LV 2: Goblinoids (goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, wolves)LV 3: Feywood (elves, dryads, centaurs, giant eagles...)LV 4: Orcs (orcs, trolls, ogres)LV 5: Haunted Graveyard (skeletons, zombies, wraiths, ghouls...)LV 6: Hag Coven (annis, shambling mound, displacer beast)LV 7: Drow (spiders, driders, matriarchs)LV 8: Medusa's Isle (Medusa, Siren, earth elementals, Gorgon, Basilisk)LV 9: Glacier Peak (white dragon, frost giant, winter wolf)LV 10: Pirate Seas (kraken, merfolk, water elementals, sahagin, sharks)LV 11: Serpentine Swamp (black dragon, lizardfolk, crocodile, catoblepas)LV 12: Caverns of Madness (mind flayer, intellect devourer, mimic)LV 13: Living Jungle (treant, green dragon, yuan-ti, naga, hydra, snakes)LV 14: Vampire's Castle (vampire, ghost, banshee, werewolf)LV 15: Distant Sands (blue dragon, wind elemental, efreet, janni, mummy)LV 16: Primordial Depths (beholder, oozes, gibbering mouther, grell, aboleth)LV 17: Crimson Volcano (red dragon, salamander, fire elemental, azer)LV 18: Shrine to Graz'zt (balor, marilith, vrock, succubus)LV 19: Shrine to Asmodeus (Kyton, Gelugon, Pit Fiend, Erinyes)LV 20: Return of the Terrasque (terrasque, apocalypse cultists, golems)...which isn't a bad quick survey. There's a few left out, but that is the nature of the design, here. Not gonna be able to fit in every tabaxi and rakshasa. And there's still probably room for a few more, especially short entries like ooze hazards and the like. Rust Monsters and Black Puddings and Displacer Beasts are good candidates, I think for "support monsters." Maybe the gnolls use Displacer Beasts as guardians in their camps. Maybe Rust Monsters and Black Puddings live in the Abandoned Mines along with some undead and earth elementals. Mindflayers and Beholders probably are anchor-monsters, with the former having an assortment of psionic minions, and the latter being good candidates for other alien aberrations like gibbering mouthers.Again, this is subject to discussion.</blockquote>

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