Would you spend $100 for a monster book?

[JoeGKushner]

Lot of it will depend on the art and the execution. If both are up to standards, then I have no problem with it.

 

[Vanuslux]

Not a chance. I have a hard enough time justifying buying print books at all.

 

[Soel]

For me to spend $100 the book would have to:

1. Be produced by a company I trust to give me a high-quality product. Companies like Privateer or Green Ronin are examples of people I would trust to do a good job on something like this.

2. Beautiful.

3. Packed with unique, interesting monsters. A 50-page section of variant goblins is NOT what I'm looking for.*

4. Well designed. Such as every monsters fits exactly on a page and/or spread.

5. Heavily indexed, cross-linked, and usable.

My sentiments exactly. I will add that the art should be great, and in full color.

I do believe this was mentioned on another thread about Mongoose's new monster books, and that many of the creatures are culled from ogl sources...

 

[jrients]

I won't buy a monster book for a $100. I still haven't purchased Penumbra's Fantasy Bestiary, which looks awesome but is a tad bit pricey for me for a monster book. And that product is under fifty bucks, IIRC.

I've got all the monsters I need in the Monster Manual 3.0. The stats cover a wide variety of CRs, and I can always simply change the description of the monster to make new ones. Heck, I don't think the players realized they were fighting Warhorses the whole time last session...

Hah! You rock!

 

[Tetsubo]

I'm a big fan of B&W art. But it has to be good B&W art. Something along the lines of Monsternomicon or Dawnforge. It would also have to have a very solid index. Encounter tables with terrian types would be a bonus. The monsters would have to be interesting, well thought out, balanced for their CR, have decent background stories and should have plot ideas. Any PC or NPC creatures should be fully stat'd out. I'd also want each monster to have a full page or two page write-up. So that would be 500 - 750 monsters.

If the book met all of these criteria. I might, MIGHT pick it up.

I'd be more likely to buy it at a lower price on-line.

A monster book is most likely the only RPG book I would pay $100 to purchase.

If they could make a 1000 page version of the Monsternomicon, I'd buy it in a second.

 

[Driddle]

Does it play DVDs, too?

Gawd, no. The last time I agreed to buy a $100 book was DC's hardbound "Crisis on Infinite Earths" collection. A nice enough product, but I still regret spending that much money.

 

[diaglo]

i would pay $100 for a first printing of the 1edADnD Monster Manual (1977)

but not for any other monster book.

 

[Garnfellow]

No way. I've probably got three too many monster books as it is.

Right now, even Tome of Horrors III by the masterful Necromancer team is in my "doubtful" category simply due to total monster saturation.

 

[Cergorach]

I would pay $100 for a good 1000 page monster book, the problem is that i won't buy it sight unseen, especially not from Mongoose. I paid $35 for Necromancers Tome of Horrors II (256 pages), and if Necro would make TOH3 a 1000 pages and would ask $100 for it, i would gladly pay that for it. It all depends on the quality, i'll wait for the reviews on the Mongoose monster book before i'll consider buying it.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'll take a look at it. I'm a bit of a monster nut anyway, so if it's more than just rehashes of SRD/OGL monsters with good execution I could see myself buying it. It will not be a sight unseen purchase, however. (Very, very few purchases really are anyway.)

Kane