Poll Results, Another Question, Progress Update, and Origins
Hey everyone!
I've got kind of a long update today, with results from the 2014 vs 2024 poll, writing and art progress updates, and another question for you at the end ...
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Lone Colossus Games
about 1 month ago
Surveys sent, PDFs for released books sent, and Important Poll!
Hey everyone!
It's a long weekend for a lot of us in the US, so I'm taking some extra time to work on stat blocks. More on that with the poll at the bottom of the update!
Su...
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Lone Colossus Games
about 1 month ago
Smoke Test Sent, Initial Progress Update
Hi everyone,
I've just sent out the smoke test for surveys! This means about 5% of backers in each tier will get their survey to fill out today.
Assuming that goes smoo...
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Lone Colossus Games
2 months ago
And that's a wrap!
The campaign is over and it somehow feels like it only launched a couple weeks ago. We didn't make it to the final stretch goal, but as I mentioned in the last update anno...
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Lone Colossus Games
2 months ago
60k Stretch Goal Unlocked, Final Stretch Goal Added!
We did it! We unlocked the Ritual Enhancement System, allowing players to enhance their boons and charms with additional power in exchange for added costs during the ritual a...
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Lone Colossus Games
2 months ago
26 hours left, new mini unlocked, and closing in on 60k stretch goal!
Hey everyone,
As we close in on the final 24 hours of the campaign, we're also quickly closing in on the milestone of 60k and the next funding stretch goal unlock! As a remi...
I've got kind of a long update today, with results from the 2014 vs 2024 poll, writing and art progress updates, and another question for you at the end of the update.
Origins Game Fair
I'll be at Origins Game Fair this week! If you're there, come visit me at Booth 104. I'll have copies of all my products, plus some free bookmarks with art from Tome of Intangible Treasures II!
2014 vs 2024 Poll Results
The vote was very close, but ended in favor of including 2014 stat blocks in the book. I think this will be the right decision to follow for a few reasons:
Many people running the 2024 rules likely already use 2014 content in their game due to the vast amount of existing 2014 content.
This is the edition I am most familiar with writing and balancing for.
This is the edition my balance editor will be most familiar with.
That said, it was a very close vote! While there's no way there's space in the book to include both stat blocks (I'm looking at a page count that might easily push past 320 pages with the 3 CR variants for each creature that we unlocked - more on that below), I will for sure be including some guidelines on converting the stat blocks to the 2024 design. If I have time, and the time cost for the conversion isn't too high, I will also look into providing a text-only conversion of all the stat blocks in the 2024 format. It won't look nearly as pretty, but it would be usable.
Tonguetacle, by Marco Morales (Based on lore by Spencer Hibnick)
Monster Writing Progress
I have some fun details to share about the direction I've been taking with the CR variant stat blocks, but before that: this wouldn't be much of a progress update if I didn't share what kind of progress I've been making! With the help of a team of about 10 freelance writers, almost every monster that will be in the book has been named, and more than 50% of them have lore written. At least 45% of monsters also have a stat block (though some have a stat block and no lore, and vice versa), and probably around 10% of monsters have more than one stat block drafted. In most cases, a monster that has at least one stat block it also has the associated boons and charms written as well, although it's not fully 1:1 at this stage.
Ok, progress update out of the way, let's talk about where these CR variant stat blocks are going. As I've been them, and as I've been getting writing commissions in for lore for new monsters, I've found that I've been tending to not just create CR variants of the monsters by simply changing numbers, but also by changing features or even turning them into an entire creature group.
A celestial ox (final name TBD), by Gibbs Santos
As one of the more extreme examples, Duriel's Divine Devices (lore written by Andie of MargoMods) ended up with each CR variant being an entirely different device. These devices are ancient constructs made long ago, and reclaimed by a somewhat lazy archangel. One device sifts souls and sorts them into their afterlife (or reincarnation) pathway, another strips souls of their impurities (and sometimes much more than that), and a third seeds these recovered souls back into new vessels.
Each variant, for the most part, should feel at least a bit like a new creature. So if you plan a longer adventure, or even a campaign, around some of these creatures, you should have good opportunities to introduce the party to their weaker versions as you build toward a higher level encounter with a stronger variant. This probably won't be the case for 100% of the creatures, but it's definitely a change that I think adds a lot of quality to the book's content (even if it's a bit more work).
Art Progress
Illustrations are well underway as well! Out of the 100 total monster illustrations that will be in the book, 33 have been commissioned, and more than 20 are complete.
A Memory Thief gloats over its prey, by Marco Morales
Monster Organization Question (Poll)
Finally, I wanted to ask you all about how you'd prefer monster groups to be organized as there are probably two or three ways that make sense given that each group will have at least 3 stat blocks.
The first option would be to present the "original" first, then its CR variants from low to high.
By "original" I mean the CR that the creature's stat block most closely matched to the lore is at. For example, if the lore presents a tier 3 creature description, but I've also made tier 2 and tier 4 variants of the creature, this organizational method would place the tiers in order of Tier 3, Tier 2, Tier 4.
This comes with the advantage of having the intended stat block presented first, but the disadvantage of the organization potentially making slightly less sense up front.
The other option that makes a lot of sense is to simply sort all groups by or CR lowest to highest.
The advantage of this is that the creatures are organized in a uniform way.
The disadvantage of this is that, especially for creatures whose "original" stat block was of a high CR, you might see related creatures rather than the creature the lore talks about first. For example, one of the powerful celestial creatures is the Origami Lord. This is a legendary, high CR creature. Its CR variants will be similar in theme, but won't necessarily be direct mechanical variants of the Origami Lord itself (for example, the low CR version will be a Paper Archon, as opposed to something like a "Lesser Origami Lord")
And of course we could also sort highest to lowest.
The advantages here are uniform organization, and creatures like the Origami Lord will show up first.
The disadvantage is that creatures that are originally low CR like the Cyclops Beetle Swarm will have their high CR variant (e.g., Apocalyptic Cyclops Beetle Swarm) show up first.
I'm leaning toward one of options 2 or 3, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on what would be most useful to you when pulling creatures from the book during your game or during session prep, so answer the poll below and let me know!
While skimming through the PDF for the first book, my distracted mind latched onto the analogy of boons as magic items that can't be transferred. Which made me wonder about while it's normally impossible, how would would you if you had to. This neatly leads to the second book and the concept of rituals.
Now as absurd as it was to consider it might be worth developing. A healthy example of this might be the rites of inheritance for a barbarian tribe where the last chief is laid to rest and their heir assumes their role by inheriting the tribes power. A more evil version would be villains (or villainous PCs) hunting people who have earned a boon and plundering it. It could even be the same ritual, just a twisted version of it.
Anyways not sure if the idea is worth developing but I thought I'd share it.
It's a long weekend for a lot of us in the US, so I'm taking some extra time to work on stat blocks. More on that with the poll at the bottom of the update!
Surveys Sent
The smoke test went pretty much without a hitch, so I sent out the rest of the surveys Friday morning. About 60% of you have responded already, which is great!
For anyone that missed the campaign, you can also place a late pledge via the pre-order store. Speaking of pre-orders, I mentioned during the campaign that I'd be continuing the stretch goal for environmental backgrounds for each monster illustration into pre-orders for a bit. We've currently reached around 66k total out of the 80k that we'd need to meet that stretch goal before layout begins.
Also, here's the finished "Inscrutible Sphinx" (working name), by Gibbs Santos
PDFs for Released Books
PDFs for Injuries and Vile Deeds and Tome of Intangible Treasures (Vol. 1) have been sent out via the pledge manger to all backers who pledged for a copy as an add-on during the campaign! If you're one of those backers, you should have gotten an email notifying you of your downloads. You may need to complete your survey first to be able to access the download.
Important Poll
With the release of SRD 5.2 for 5e 2024, I now officially have the option to natively support 2024 stat blocks in the book. The book will support both 5e 2014 and 5e 2024, but in order to best do that I need your feedback on which version you'd like to see actually present in the book!
Personally, I like the clarity of the new stat block formatting (the way abilities are written with targets and effects is often cleaner and more concise) but 2024 monsters also tend to be a bit stronger, with a "medium" difficulty encounter actually providing a moderate challenge to players rather than the cakewalk they tended to be in 2014, so there is a different balance to them. 2024 monsters often also have automatic on-hit effects rather than hit+save to avoid effects (when present).
Which 'edition' would you rather see the stat blocks balanced and formatted for? A section providing guidance on using 2014 stat blocks in 2024 or vice versa will be provided to support using stat blocks for the edition not chosen. My understanding from talking to people I know who've used stat blocks from one edition with the other is that it's not too hard to do, it just takes some minor adjustments with how you treat their CR (but definitely let me know if your experience is different!)
The poll will run for 2 weeks to make sure everyone gets a chance to vote, after which I'll use the results to make sure that all my stat block design effort is going toward the correct edition.
