Your opinions on a monster book idea

[ColonelHardisson]

It sounds cool to me. You can never have too many monsters, especially if they're well-designed and original. Please, no more gibbering mouthers or amorphous blobs or clouds of mist...

 

[wocky]

My bubble jet's on a crisis

I'd say Aye, but just because I'm an Argentinian You see... since our economic crisis, the price of ink cartridges has gone up threefold... and they weren't so cheap to start with, so needless to say, we've become much more conservative in our printing habits. A B&W version would be very much appreciated by us poor people everywhere, specially if black is used sparingly.

 

[eris404]

I just want to add my vote to yes, please include a black-n-white version; I wish more publishers would. I love pretty art as much as the next person, but the reality is that I have to print these things out at work. We do have a color printer, but my bosses watch it like a hawk.

 

[Yuan-Ti]

I know Mr. Reynolds was waiting for me to chime in, so:

Yes, this makes perfect sense and any goofball who tells you later that you wasted their bandwidth by having two versions of the same book in one download can go to whatever hell is reserved for such people.

 

[Aaron L]

Sounds great to me. I like the coloring book part too, maybe as subtitle?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Don't we have enough Monster Books already?

Blasphemer!

Ehr... Sorry.

Seriously, though, I always love Monster Books. I don't even use very many monsters (low magic campaigns lends themselves to have most encounters being creatures with Class Levels), but sometimes a single monster can inspire a long-range quest, or even just a random icky thing dwelling in a sewer. I've so far got every monster book but 2 (on purpose, so my DM can surprise me once in a while); That I've used only 5% of the material doesn't phase me, since it's all just more options.

 

[Harlock]

It's a good idea. I even liked it when Ambient Inc. (now part of EN Publishing) did it with (some of?) their books. You got a print version and a screen version. Using line art is certainly preferable to grayscale. Only 30 pages of monsters? I hope this is pretty specific to a climate or terrain because only 30 pages of monsters that are random isn't terribly attractive unless the price were very low (as most .pdfs are, so probably not much to complain about). Good luck Mr. K. Reynolds!

 

[Voadam]

Printable counter depictions are a great idea for part of a pdf monster book.

How many counters will fit on one page? will horde creatures such as a kobold type have multiple counters so you don't have to print out the page 20 times for your ambush?

 

[JoeGKushner]

The book is too small. I had the same problem with Monsters of The Id. Great book, but too small. A lot of effort going into something like this. Make it 48 or 64 pages.

Page of monster counters is an excellent idea.

For the black & white portion, I'd say just go with stat blocks. Either standard Monster Manual or abbreviated.

Of course the real question I have is this coming out under the Malhavok Banner? Will it see print at a latter date?

Will the monsters have racial stats ala MM 3.5? Tactics? What levels are these aimed at?

Price range? I ask price range because while the b & w part is 'free', it's going to have some effect on the overall price of the material.

 

[tonym]

I like the B&W white option. It would allow a DM to print-out a bunch of B&W ethradiblexi (or whatever) and then quickly color each one a different color with watercolor markers--this for the purpose of keeping track of which ethradiblek is which.

DM: "Which ethradiblek did you swing at? The grey one that hit you twice last round? Or the blue one? It's slightly wounded..."

"No, the green one carrying a wand."



BTW: I made-up the word "ethradiblek" as an attempt to guess the name of one of the monsters in SKR's book. (The things we gamers do...)


TonyM