Legacy of the Dragons is the product I'm working on now. Just finishing it up, actually. It's a bestiary to go along with Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. The monsters are designed to work well in the Diamond Throne setting, but work with any d20 game, as well. If you're wondering how that can be, there's really not that much difference between a monster that works for Arcana Unearthed and one that works for standard d20. The couple of conversion questions you might have -- a few spells for spell-like abilities, a few feats, and so on -- are all answered for you in an appendix at the back.

But anyway, Legacy of the Dragons. What does the title mean? Well, as I put in the introduction:

"As true as the sun rules the day, these beasts before us were wrought by the demon-seeded dramojh, themselves the scions of the dragons that once ruled these fair lands. As true as the moon rules the night, then, these creatures that walk the earth, take wing in the sky, or crawl the ground on snake-like bellies -- they are all the legacy of the dragons."

Day's Long Lament, Chapter XI, Colranith

So the dragons created the dramojh and the dramojh created most of the monsters in the book. Simple enough. But who is Colranith and what is Day's Long Lament? Well, he's a famous poet, and Day's Long Lament is a work of that describes everything there is to see in the world if you could travel across it in a day. Never heard of it? That's because I just made it up.

See, one of the things that we (my codesigner Mike Mearls and I) strove to do in the book is to give the monsters context, without having them depend on that context. In other words, most entries give you a feel for what the monster is like in the world in which it lives. For example, a description might include a short excerpt from the notes of a bestiologist (that's what I would call someone who studies monsters). Another might include a short example of an encounter a tribe of litorians had with the beast. Still another might provide a new alchemical substance that can be created using the creature's ichor. Or whatever. The point is all in the context.

From a design point of view, this is tricky. I went through a number of recent monster products and saw that some of them tried to do exactly what I'm talking about. Most, however, went too far. I found it difficult to wade through paragraph after paragraph of So-and-So made-up-guy's journal entry to even figure out what the monster does.

Personally, I fell into that trap myself when I wrote Planescape monsters. That was fun for me, and I took a lot of writing risks and did some experimentation with presentation. I don't think it was too grievous a sin, because a lot of that material was designed to be read as much as it was to be played. That is to say, the overall play experience was reinforced by continually immersing the DM in the flavor of the setting and in the storytelling, roleplaying-heavy style we were trying to encourage. (It makes me laugh out loud when people talk about Planescape as a "powergame setting." Talk about missing the boat.) So Planescape gave that flavor in huge, heaping shovelfuls, and we did it in a lot of different ways. Some good, some perhaps too much. But appropriate for our approach.

That's the wrong approach, I think, for a more straightforward d20 kind of product. Of course, Legacy of the Dragons isn't entirely a straightforward d20 product. Oh, it can be used that way, but it's also intended for Arcana Unearthed rules and the Diamond Throne setting, both slightly more heavy on flavor than the core rules. So a compromise had to be found.
I tried to learn from what I'd seen in other d20 monster books and avoid excess flavor baggage. Such stuff often doesn't help you understand the monster more. At best, it immerses you further into the setting and, at worst, it is just a writer who likes the sound of his keyboard clicking. But I still wanted to keep the valuable context.

To accomplish this goal, I kept two rules in mind: Keep it short (like the quote from our friend Colranith, above), and if you can't keep it short, make it useful. Useful, in this context, can mean two different things. The first is objective -- a new feat, a new spell, a new type of equipment, based around what the monster is, can do, or is made of. It's useful because it adds to the game. The second is a little more subjective -- it's a section of text that really makes it clear what an encounter with the creature is like, to help the DM use the monster correctly. For example, each and every monster in the book comes with a fully detailed encounter. And I don't mean "the monster is in a dungeon room and you have to fight it" kind of encounters, but real, meaty mini-scenarios with plots, settings, and motivations as well as hooks to get the PCs involved, and with choices for the PCs to make. A few even have maps to use with them.

Hopefully, this kind of material will help integrate the monsters into your campaign, no matter what kind of campaign it is.

 

DESIGN DIARY PAST ENTRIES

* Chaositech Playtesting -- December 11, 2003
"Chaositech is one of those products that came directly out of my campaign. The concept was not meant originally to have anything to do with a product...."

* Campaign Paradigms -- October 30, 2003
"An important thing for all DMs to keep in mind is that once a campaign is up and running, the basic flavor -- the underpinnings of the whole campaign structure -- usually should not change...."

* Developing a New Subsystem -- October 2, 2003
"Probably one of the biggest challenges that faces a designer when working on a book like Chaositech is the delicate way that you have to institute a whole new subsystem...."

* On the Horizon: Chaositech -- September 11, 2003
"If you'll indulge me, I'm going to divert the Design Diary's contents to what I'm working on now: a book called Chaositech...."

* Magic Items in The Diamond Throne -- August 28, 2003
"Magic items in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed and in The Diamond Throne sometimes require a little bit of thought on the DM's part. Using them isn't a problem..."

* A Look at the Land -- August 15, 2003
"This week I've prepared an excerpt from The Diamond Throne. As I've said previously, it was my design choice to spend most of the gazetteer portion of the book on the general aspects of the world..."

* Designing a World -- August 7, 2003
"I have mixed feelings about campaign settings. On one hand -- speaking as designer -- it's fun, challenging, and rewarding to create a whole world that's all your own...."

* Weapons and Armor -- July 17, 2003
"I absolutely love the introduction of exotic weapons into D&D. It's one of my favorite things about 3rd Edition. In Arcana Unearthed, I wanted to make sure that the exotic weapons were worth the feat required to use them...."

* Greenbond Notes -- June 26, 2003
"Last week's preview of the greenbond class gives a nice glimpse of a lot of Arcana Unearthed issues. First off, the greenbond is no druid...."

* Spell Templates -- June 12, 2003
"This week I thought I'd discuss an idea that I'm really very happy with. The idea is spell templates..."

* Playtesting -- June 5, 2003
"Playtesting is extremely important to me. When we developed 3rd Edition, we did more playtesting than perhaps any other RPG product, ever...."

* High Magic -- May 29, 2003
"I referred to the Diamond Throne as a high-magic setting. I should clarify..."

* The Diamond Throne -- May 23, 2003
"So it's about time I start talking about the Diamond Throne. The Diamond Throne is a campaign setting for Arcana Unearthed -- the default setting, like Greyhawk for D&D, I suppose...."

* Death's Door -- May 8 , 2003
" I like the D&D death's door rules. I like that at 0 hp, you're still up and can take a limited action, but then you exhaust yourself...."

* Hero Points -- May 1, 2003
"A roleplaying campaign can be like putting up wallpaper...."

* Truenames -- April 18, 2003
"Truenames are common in many fantasy settings. I think I first became aware of the concept in Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy..."

* Go, Go, Go! -- April 10, 2003
"Short entry this time. I hate spells with 1 minute/level durations...."

* Ceremony -- April 3, 2003
"I think I've already mentioned that one of the goals I set for myself with Arcana Unearthed was to make things a little less generic...."

* Things That Rules Take Away -- March 21, 2003
"There are aspects of fantasy roleplaying that rules, inadvertently, can actually take away...."

* Still Talking Classes -- March 13, 2003
"I've saved some of the best classes for last. Let's talk about the runethane, the mage blade, and the witch...."

* More Classes -- February 27, 2003
"This time, I want to tell you about some of the other classes: akashics, magisters, and greenbonds...."

* Build a Better Fighter -- February 23, 2003
"The title this week is facetious. It really should be 'build a different fighter'...."

* The Magic Balancing Act -- February 13, 2003
"In Arcana Unearthed I'm introducing a new method of magic item pricing. First, I streamlined the item creation feats..."

* More Magic -- January 23, 2003
"This week, I thought I'd talk more about the new magic system in Arcana Unearthed."

* Magic -- January 17, 2003
"As a designer, magic in Arcana Unearthed posed a huge challenge. I knew that I wanted to ditch the Vancian system...."

* Design Decisions, Part Two -- December 24, 2002
"Here's a bit more discussion of some of the general issues I faced as I began designing Arcana Unearthed...."

* Design Decisions, Part One -- December 19, 2002
"Before jumping into another big area of Arcana Unearthed's design, like classes or the magic system, I thought I'd discuss some of the general issues I faced as a designer starting the book...."

* Arcana Unearthed Races -- December 5, 2002
"I started with the races. While I knew that the game needed humans as a basis, I wanted all the other races to be new. I didn't want to just create dwarf and elf analogs with different names...."