Would you spend $100 for a monster book?

[Driddle]

I might buy the product if it provided uber-rare M:TG playable card interpretations of the monsters. And some clickable miniatures. And a mood music CD. ... Then, yeah, I'd consider the purchase.

 

[devilbat]

It would have to be something extra special for me to spend my hard earned money on it. At least 35% color, Combat tactic table, quick treasure tables, great art, original creatures that span the EL's fairly evenly, terrain/lair descriptions, etc....

The price tag doesn't scare me, but it has to be a book I will use over and over again, for years to come.

 

[Pramas]

ditto.

i paid $500 for an orange cover B3 Palace of the Silver Princess.

Now here's a guy I could sell my copy of the Jade Hare to.

 

[Tolen Mar]

Hehehehe
HAHAHAHAHA
OHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO
!!Guffaw!!

What?

Oh. You're serious aren't you?

*I'll just be over there...*

 

[diaglo]

Now here's a guy I could sell my copy of the Jade Hare to.

never hurts to have extras.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

If, (all the factors Wulf laid out above), plus it was more than a massive tome. That is, every monster also came with a small index card of its vital stats that I could use to reference, instead of flipping back and forth between a half dozen creatures all over the same book. Plus, it came with art of the creature also on a hand out that I could show to PCs, instead of trying to hold up a 1,000 page book covering all the text and tables at the same time just to show the PCs "you see this!"

If it had all that... I might give it a really good look...

 

[coyote6]

What Wulf said, plus throw in a free (barebones, even) PDF version of the book -- then I'd be intrigued.

Otherwise, most likely not.

 

[Henry]

For $100, Dr. Bottleberger himself would have to come to my home and give the lecture.

I couldn't see buying this - $100, MAYBE for a really good Dwarven Forge set or something - but I don't even buy those.

 

[Nareau]

I wouldn't. The only way I'd even consider it would be if it were:

1) a very well designed database
2) searchable by many criteria
3) packed with the contents of many, many OGL sources
4) full of with color print-resolution images
5) continuously updated (say, monthly) with new data for at least a year.

I'm constantly thinking things like, "OK, so the Ice Vampire has created a bunch of flying-monkies. I wish I had a cold-based undead creature that can fly. It should be small or medium-size, humanoid, and about CR 7 or 8." I've seen some online databases like this, but they're rarely updated, usually core-only, not fully-functional searches, etc.

Spider

 

[Glyfair]

To wrap this all up into 1000 pages, you could not help but think that the chance of significant errors would be enormous. We will wait and see.

My impression from the article is that it might not be a huge number of monsters. However, it seems there will be extensive detail (anatomy pictures, monsters in habitat, etc).