A Community Monster Manual
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I’ve got this idea. All it is is an idea, but it seems like the kinda thing that could work…
Ok. A community monster manual project, where a bunch of people get together and make an entire monster manual for D&D 4th edition. For the moment, I’ll call this the CMM1 (Community Monster Manual 1), although if this did get off the ground I suspect the name would have to change (something like CMB1, the Community Monstrous Bestiary 1), but for the time being, CMM1 it is.
The 4e MM has 483 stat blocks in it, so let’s say that that the CMM1′s goal is 500 stat blocks. Of those 500 stat blocks, we’ll target 40% at heroic tier, 35% at paragon tier, and 25% at epic tier. Then we go in further and break them down by roles and level and such, trying to get a good assortment. Kind of a similar process to what was talked about in the WotC podcast. I don’t know how big this book would be, but the nice thing about electronic publishing is that page count doesn’t matter.
Also, what’s really nice, is that once we got this all done, it could be offered up to be printed on demand via Lulu.com or some other service. I just checked it out, and to print out a 8.25″x10.75″ 300-page hardcover book (black & white with color covers) is $23. Printing it softcover reduces that to $10! Very affordable, and completely optional since people could always just take the PDF and only print out what they need.
Ok, so we’ve got our goal. Now, how to do it. This depends a lot on how many contributors there were. If it’s only a handful, we could probably just all keep in communication and talk with each other. If there’s more than a handful, it would probably be helpful to have some “editors” whose responsibility it would be to sort out assignments (e.g. Bob, you need to make a level 12 artillery).
The way I see it, creating the monsters is easy. If I’ve already got inspiration, I can churn out a stat block in a couple minutes, and I can add some fluff without too much trouble. There are really two big issues here that I foresee, and I’m sure plenty that I don’t foresee (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it’s the unknown unknowns that have the real potential to bite us in the ass).
The first one is art. I strongly suspect there are more people willing to work on monsters pro bono than there are artists willing to make commissioned work pro bono. I feel very strongly that in a work like this, it’s important to have some kind of visual illustration for each kind of monster (not necessarily every stat block, though). I’m not terribly worried about this, though, as it doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be. I think judicious use of public domain and creative commons imagery will go a long way, with some photoshop magic to help.
The bigger issue is playtesting. I think at the very least every single stat block should be playtested against for potential issues, no matter how boring and vanilla the creature is. I don’t think extensive playtesting is necessary, but at least once or twice for every monster to identify potential pitfalls.
I think a good way to facilitate that would be to run the project using a wiki. Thus people could use the discussion page to talk about any playtesting they might have done and problems they might have found.
Well, that’s about everything that I’ve got on my mind right now, so the big question is whether there’s much interest in it. I’m gonna be completely honest and up front here: I can be very, very flaky. I try not to commit to long-term, large-scale projects in general because I don’t know that I’ll be able to follow through with them. That said, another nice thing about the nature of this beast is that even if it doesn’t reach the 500-stat block goal and doesn’t reach a publishable state, none of the work was wasted because all of the monsters are out there on a wiki or whatever, and anyone can use them.
Oh, one last thing: licensing and credit. I’m not a lawyer, nor am I lawyerly-minded person. Personally, I’ve got no problem giving away the stuff completely free, maybe with the loosest creative commons license possible. I don’t care if someone uses stuff I contribute without credit, or even in a commercial work. That said, I’m sure that would be a deal breaker to others. I do strongly feel that at the very least it should be open for use by others in non-commercial works. But that’s a detail that can be ironed out once (if) things start rolling.
Can we make it 3.5e? 4e is dead to me, largely because of the nasty direction WotC’s licensing has taken. To publish material, even (especially?) open source or cc material, I need flexible licensing! Well, either way the following offer stands:
I am compiling an index of images for the monsters in the 3.5 SRD. All of these images are pulled from commons.wikimedia.org, and I’ve already done the work of editing all of them to extract the monster from its background! Take a look at this post on my blog:
http://strongdynamic.blogspot.com/2008/06/goonmill-seeking-art.html
I am planning to release the entire collection just as soon as I track down attribution on all the images (I stupidly neglected to get it as I was downloading them originally – I used automated searches to find my monsters, and manual culling to get good ones). I would be thrilled to contribute what I have so far to a community project like this, it would even motivate me to finally get those attributions.
One last thing: I suggest the wiki should also have a section for magic items/equipment.
I think that we should keep it fourth, as there is only one MM for it. 3.5 already has 5? MMs and a ton of custom content already out there. I think if we did it for 3.5 there would be a lot of redoing old stuff.
I would be glad to contribute. I find 4e much more fun to play and create campaigns in. Drop me an email if you decide to move forward on this.
Hey I can’t create monsters as I am not very great at that but I can playtest them… and my vote is 4e. That is what my group is playing now, besides the encounters would be easier to calculate together. I always hated trying to make encounters in 3.5.
I would love to contribute!
The issues you will run into are no doubt going to be very similar to those I am facing with OPEN GAME TABLE. IP, GSL, artwork, content, editors, layout and design, formating, who gets paid? who doesn’t? etc etc. I have faith in the community however, that these issues can be worked out. Maybe the key to one of the problems above is use a Creative Commons license?
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I’m just throwing in my voice here and saying I would totally contribute to this project: both in terms of monsters and playtesting.
Concerning your self-described flakiness: the best way to solve that is to set things up so that your own participation is not necessarily central to the process. A wiki will go a long way towards decentralizing the project, so I think you’re set.
You’ve got me seriously excited here. I hope this comes to fruition.
I would be up for it, though I don’t tend to follow Wizard’s formulas precisely to the letter (because you end up with lots of samey numbers that way) in 4e. I don’t have as much time as I would like to get on gametable or something and run combats, but I could, and I can also help with the design of course. I like this idea, personally (and though I do care about a bit of credit, all I want is my pen name somewhere, and yes, anyone should be able to use the critters). I have some dedication to projects, and if anyone needs a wake-up tap, I can administer that
If you need credentials, I worked on some monsters here: http://wyattsalazar.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/monsters-of-eden-heroic-tier-part-1/
I’m also not very good with wikis, but I can learn easily enough I suppose.
Wyatt’s last blog post..Cuz This Is Thriller, Thriller Night (Dread Review)
Why not do both? If we’re really going for pure distribution of materials on this, I suggest several things:
1) 2nd edition was awesome for one reason alone (that I can think of at the moment): fluff. Monster statblocks were detailed with the numbers you would find, treasure types, locations, diet types, etc. If we do 4th or 3rd I suggest we go for a full fleshing out of the creatures, and none of this half assed stuff we’ve got now.
2) 3rd? 4th? Why not both. The WOTC statblocks for the 4th edition creatures make it easy to convert things up (like Return to White Plume Mountain for example). Each page can have a pair of statblocks: the 3rd and the 4th.
3) Playtesting is essential to ensure that these creatures are not broken. I’m a DM right now and my players want Dungeon Crawls (which is perfect for us), but one man alone will not solve these things, we need more groups, maybe a dozen or so (if we’re lucky) so that 2-3 can give us feedback on how tough the creatures are.
4) Start the wiki now! And I’m all for calling this the Soviet’s Bestiary: mostly because the People’s Bestiary sounds Chinese and Soviet is Russian for people. But that can come later… what we need now is to get this started while people are interested!
5) Unless we pony up the several hundred dollars for a license, we can’t legally sell this material.
I think that this is a very good idea and would at very least be willing to playtest some of the creatures with my gaming group.
Playtester – Yes
Monster Creator – Maybe
Art – No (but I will ask my artist gamer friends)
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Re: 3.5e vs. 4e: I’m a strong supporter of 4th edition; I have no interest whatsoever in 3rd edition. There are plenty of others who feel the opposite way.
This could actually be a boon. There aren’t very many people that seem to enjoy both systems equally well, meaning that if parallel projects were run, I don’t think it would cause significant splintering.
That said, I think it would be a good idea to run projects in parallel. I don’t, however, think that one should be the mirror of the other. Certainly, if there’s a good idea that someone sees on one version they should totally be able to convert it over to the other, but it should absolutely not be a goal to have every monster available as both a 4th edition and 3rd edition stat block.
@Cory: Wow, that sounds awesome! Talk about beating me to the punch! Thank you for your gracious offer, I’m sure it will come in very handy.
@Jonathan: The legal stuff will have to be worked out, of course. I’m hoping to head off any IP issues at the front by explicitly requiring licensing information for any artwork used, and manually vetting all the monsters to ensure they don’t infringe on WotC’s or anyone else’s IP (e.g. no beholders or mind flayers). As far as who gets paid, that’s easy. Nobody!
@Quaker: Decentralization is always a good idea. I’m going to set up a wiki on my server, but that shouldn’t be a problem even if I do flake out simply because I have no intention of turning my website off any time soon.
@Wyatt: You actually hit on something I wanted to mention… I feel pretty strongly that we should try to stick close to Wizards’ forumlae. Yes, the numbers do tend to be similar, but that’s a good sign that the monsters are (at least, numerically speaking) balanced. It’s really the powers which set monsters apart anyways, their defenses and HP don’t really matter much.
@Black Mage: I definitely think that extra fluff would be good here. Will start the wiki as soon as a name is decided upon. How the heck does “People’s” sound more Chinese than “Soviet” sounds Russian? lol And as far as selling it goes, I want to be perfectly clear when I say that this is a completely non-commercial endeavor. No advertising, no profit, no money at all. When I talked about printing them, they would be sold at cost, and the PDF would always be available for free.
@Everyone: Playtesters are as important as (heck, maybe more important than) people making the monsters, so that’s always going to be appreciated.
My numbers aren’t radically different from Wizard’s formulae. I just assign defenses a few points higher or lower depending on the few points higher or lower stats than the average ability score. I think that gives it some color while still producing monsters with exploitable weaknesses and that can be defeated. But I can do the samey-numbered ones easily as well. (In fact, more easily.)
Wyatt’s last blog post..Cuz This Is Thriller, Thriller Night (Dread Review)
Can we try to get the wiki up by the weekend? I really want to get started and comments are excuse for a forum. Something I am really am interested in is balancing the desire for creative mechanic creation against ease of use for DMs. I also think filling out level and role groups evenly is even more important than getting to any particular number of monsters.
I am in 100% percent! I love the new edition, especially the ease with which monsters are made. I would say 3/4ths of the monsters I run my group through are now tweaked or whole-made based on the formulae for monster construction.
I am willing to playtest and contribute.
Consider me interested. I’m no good at art, though.
I think that I can do stat blocks and play test. I would do art, but I could not draw to save my life. I would like to be credited with what I do, not specifically, but mentioned and a playtester and designer or what ever. We should get a wiki up soon.
@Wyatt: See step 6 on page 184 of the DMG. Adjusting defenses based on above- or below-average ability scores is already part of Wizards’ formulae.
@Skylar & Sebastian: My roadmap is as follows, regarding setting up the wiki:
I’ve got a post here where I’m seeking ideas for the names.
I plan on leaving that up for a day; but I don’t get home tomorrow until 9 PM EST, so I can’t put up a poll until then.
I’d like to leave the poll up for at least a day. Wednesday I’ve got to do my homework for Real Analysis, which will take anywhere from 3-6 hours, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get the wiki set up. At the very least, I’ll get some forums up Wednesday night for discussion. One way or the other, the wiki should be up by (late) Thursday night.
On the topic of art, I’m certain that you could find some web artists out there who are trying to get exposure. Tons of half-decent people on Deviant Art, etc, who are all too willing to submit.
@Rechan: point them my way!
Wow thats alot to read… never seen so many post here. Long story short tell me what you want me to do, I am in.
Black Mage- doesn’t the current incarnation of the ogl prohibit the mixing of 3.5 and 4e? I was pretty sure that if a company signed up for 4e they couldn’t do 3.5 stuff
As far as I know, yes; companies have to either decide to purchase one style of license over the other. To top it all off, there are multiple licenses that can be bought for 4th…
Holy crap this is a great idea! I’m in.
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