What monsters should be in a sequel to Tome of Horrors?

[Alzrius]

Here we go ... it was Alzirius.

Ah, Alzirius, he has no relation to me, Alzrius. I'm the nice one, really.

The Tabaxi and the Amphisbaena snake are in the Tome of Horrors.

I really should buy the original before throwing stones like that shouldn't I?

Of course, the real irony here is that I draw a strong dividing line between "canon" and "non-canon"...and then a non-canon product like Creature Catalogue gets officialized into the Tome of Horrors!

 

[DnDChick]

Of course, the real irony here is that I draw a strong dividing line between "canon" and "non-canon"...and then a non-canon product like Creature Catalogue gets officialized into the Tome of Horrors!

Well the conversions in the Tome are not neccessarily official -- they are just usable by 3rd party publishers. At the time of publication, WotC said they had no real plans to use many of the monsters we wanted to go in, which is part of why they gave us permission I suppose.

WotC gave us permission to publish those conversions and add *our version* of them into the OGL, but the IP is still theirs and they have every right to go on and release their own *truly* offcial conversions. Case in point, a few Demon Lords that recently showed up as web enhancements on the WotC site.

 

[DnDChick]

Ah, Alzirius, he has no relation to me, Alzrius. I'm the nice one, really.

D'OH! Sorry I was relying on my memory to spell your name. lol

 

[Gez]

Of course, the real irony here is that I draw a strong dividing line between "canon" and "non-canon"...

Me too: canon is everything I use and allow, non-canon is everything I reject.

For example, the MM2 Leviathan is non-canon, the Seas of Blood one is canon (much more inspired, more a magical force of nature than merely a big huge whale; only problem, the -8 Attack penalty from size has been forgotten).

Maybe 20-50% of my monster books are canon. Similar comments about prestige classes...

Orginally posted byDnDChick
lol. I had no idea that the Death Worm in the Tome was actually a beefed up version of my "Mongolian Death Worm" that I did for my Call of Cthulhu site.

Really ? That's a bit rude, then, given the "NONE of the creatures or NPCs on any of theses pages are released as Open Game Content" notice on that site.

 

[DnDChick]

Glad you liked the Leviathan in Seas of Blood. That one is one of mine.

And ... D'OH! on the missing attack penalty. I had no idea I had forgotten that. Ah well ... chalk it up to inexperience. That was a few years ago.

Really ? That's a bit rude, then, given the "NONE of the creatures or NPCs on any of theses pages are released as Open Game Content" notice on that site.

I added that notice only recently.

No harm, no foul. I work for NG, and (I can't remember but) I think I did send the Death Worm in when the call for monsters went out. It was perfectly acceptble for it to be beefed up and changed in editing. Acutally when I realized the Death Worm was mine I was quite pleased. It was a good thing.

 

[Alzrius]

Well the conversions in the Tome are not neccessarily official -- they are just usable by 3rd party publishers.

This is going to sound somewhat impertinent, but I disagree.

The advent of the d20 system has forced there to be levels of canonity. Whereas before it was everything WotC/TSR publishes is canon, and everything else isn't, the line has now been blurred somewhat. Now we have WotC products being the most canon (this includes official products from their designated fan-sites), other d20 publishers being canon, but less so (for the most part equally among them, by their very nature), and then just fan-produced materials. Where conflict occurs, the higher level of canonity trumps (if the conflict cannot be reconciled, that is).

All this, of course, is both a headache and a delightful challenge for people like me, who love to delve into the minute details and compare them. On the subject of the ToH though, it is most definately canon, the way I see it, since it was published by a d20 publisher (and one of the largest ones to boot), and especially because WotC looked the included monsters over somewhat, thereby implicitly adding a sort of approval stamp to them. Ergo, despite its origins as a fan-produced collective, it was designated canon by the powers that be.

...I am such a nerd aren't I?

At the time of publication, WotC said they had no real plans to use many of the monsters we wanted to go in, which is part of why they gave us permission I suppose.

(That's also why the conversions in the Tome are usually of the odd or bizaare monsters from the Fiend Folio and MM2. We had a bigger list of conversions, but WotC nixed a lot of them because some were going to be in the MM2.)

WotC gave us permission to publish those conversions and add *our version* of them into the OGL, but the IP is still theirs and they have every right to go on and release their own *truly* offcial conversions. Case in point, a few Demon Lords that recently showed up as web enhancements on the WotC site.

Too true, but that merely falls back onto the levels of canonity I mentioned before. The demon lords are an excellent example of this. WotC's Orcus from the BoVD is thusly more canonical than the Orcus in the ToH. However, that is only true if there can't be a workable explanation for why the two Orcuses differ (and I'm going to endeavor to find such an explanation in a few months when I update "A Brief History of Orcus" for the Necromancer Games site).

In essence, the materials in the ToH are canon until something more canon comes along.

Originally posted by Gez
For example, the MM2 Leviathan is non-canon, the Seas of Blood one is canon (much more inspired, more a magical force of nature than merely a big huge whale; only problem, the -8 Attack penalty from size has been forgotten).

Gez, that isn't how it works. Anything WotC does is canon, then d20 companies, then fan-stuff (which isn't canon at all). Ergo, the MM2 leviathan is the most canon, moreso than the Seas of Blood one. We have to take the bad with the good. It's part of having a standard of officialness that applies equally everywhere.

 

[DnDChick]

...I am such a nerd aren't I?

Aw heck, aren't we all? God bless us.

 

[Alzrius]

Aw heck, aren't we all? God bless us.

Hey now, some of us are Abyssal Lords thank you very much! Don't bring us to the attention of the Lords of Law and Good!

 

[Gez]

Gez, that isn't how it works. Anything WotC does is canon, then d20 companies, then fan-stuff

Not IMC. It's a house-rule I made

More seriously, I would tend to say monsters from the ToH are more canon than monsters from the MM2 or BoVD. Why ? Why such a heretic train of thought ? How could I conceive such a blasphemous idea ?

Well, it's quite simple, and it stems from the very nature of D&D, and the very nature of the d20 license.

D&D is a generic RPG. Less generic than, say, GURPS, who intend on being applyable to any genre, but much more so than, say, Exalted, that is tied to one setting.

D&D in itself is merely a toolkit -- a collection of component among which you pick and choose to build your setting (you can also take a premade setting, like the Realms, for which most of the pick-and-choosing has been already made by other persons). This means that just because WotC has released the Desmodus in 3 books already don't force you to use them in your own campaign. It's modular. I'm pretty sure Loxos are not canon in the Realms, for example -- and I hope they'll stay non-canon; there are some things that are only acceptable, and even then, barely, in multiworld settings like DragonStar, PlaneScape or SpellJammer.

Even the true core components -- the content of the PH -- is not necessarily canon everywhere. A dwarven paladin would not be canon in a d20 Rokugan campaign (the default setting of OA), for example, but is perfectly canon in Greyhawk or the Realms. And yet an old-school purist could exhibit 2e or older books and claim dwarven paladins are not canon.

Here's for universal canonity -- it can't exist in a multisetting game.

To use a lingo that is surprisingly popular, fluff is canon for the setting it relates to, crunch is never canon as it don't exist by itself.

Now, I have not really adressed why the ToH would be more canon than a WotC book. After all, it has its share of useless monsters like all monster books do (keeping in mind that one's favorite may be another's useless trash). This leads us to the other point: the OGL and d20 STL.

Let say I'm a d20 publisher, and as such, I want to publish a d20 something. Let say a scenario/module/adventure, call it whatever you want. This ready-to-play story is rooted in folklore and include the crazened ghost of a powerful elven witch: a banshee. I could either build my own monster, or avoid wasting time and using one already existing, but not the banshee from the MM2, not the keening spirit from the City of the Spider Queen. But there is the groaning spirit in the ToH that just scream, pun intended, to find a place in my latest masterpiece. Now, in the sequels of that adventure (because it's a full-blown campaign I publish), the adventurers will discover a corrupted city of dark creepers, whose dark stalker leaders have been replaced by shadow demons, and finally discover that Orcus was behind all that and have to fight him in to thwart his nefarious plans (no harm done, he's used to that).

Dark creepers ? They'll be, from what it seems, in the upcoming Fiend Folio 3e.
Shadow demons ? They are in the Book of Vile Darkness.
Orcus ? Ibid.

But I can't use them. However, I can use those from the ToH.

In this way, the ToH is more canon, as more people are able to use it in published material.

 

[Gez]

Variant Beholder ? Same comment as right above, although I would somewhat like to see the Tyrant put back into Eye Tyrant, and see a variant that would combine both the Eyes and the Flayers in one freaking monstruosity...

Just saw that

in the art gallery for Mindscape: Beasts of the Id*... I don't know exactly, but between the look, the name (soulshriver) and the origin (a sourcebook of psionic monsters), I think we may well have the two-in-one monster here... If that's the case, it would be a good idea to use OGC magic to reprint it in the ToH2.



(* What about getting the license to do Doomscape: Beasts of Id Software ? )