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!
