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I am just about to send my first query to dungeon for an adventure I wrote a while back. It uses an old monster that as far as I know hasn't been updated for 3.5 (I could be wrong).
Anyhoo I was wondering since the core monsters (MM1) have been used to death in adventures over the life of Dungeon, do the staff at Dungeon look more favourably to new monsters and those found in MM2, MM3 and the Fiend Folio?
Or are adventures with these monsters less likely to be accepted because less people would have all the books (save the core 3)?
I am considering picking up the other monster books to increase my pool of monsters to use in adventures. Would this be a wise investment for an aspiring Dungeon magazine writer?
Thanks
Reebo
Creative Director
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Dungeon assumes the reader has access to the three core books, including the Monster Manual. For monsters from this book, we print only a single line of stats, referring the reader to the page number. As a result, these monsters take up far less room in an adventure, allowing us to have more "meat" in the adventure. That's the primary reason we prefer using the core monsters.
That said, we do enjoy using monsters from other WotC books, including the other two Monster Manuals, the Fiend Folio, and pretty much any other monsters that get into the new harcovers. Since we reprint full stat blocks for these monsters, we can't use as many in an adventure, so we try to make sure that a monster used from a non-core book really serves a purpose.
If your adventure features a dungeon crawl in a tower buried in a glacier, and on the way to the glacier the PCs have an encounter with a wendigo gnoll sorcerer, we'd probably want you to change the encounter to something from the core books like a ghost or the like. If, on the other hand, that whole tower was infested with wendigos, then we're more likely to keep the initial wendigo gnoll in the game.
Are additional WotC books a wise investment for an aspiring Dungeon author? Absolutely. Not only do they widen the number of tools you can use for your adventure, but reading & studying the way they're put together is a good way to study the rules and become more familair with the game. That actually goes for all the WotC books.
Is purchasing additional WotC books beyond the core three a requirement to be published in Dungeion? Absolutely not.
Of course, all three of us on the Dungeon staff have our favorite monsters, and using one of our favorite monsters tends to trick us into more closely paying attention to a proposal, and probably helps get the adventure selected. I'm not going to list any favorite monsters here, but one could do worse than to look through recent issues for monster patterns, and then focus your adventures on similar monsters... wherever they may come from.
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Thanks James! It means a lot to me when the Managing Editor replies personally to a post.
I had a feeling you guys prefer the core MM1 monsters as I have seen certain monsters used quite a bit over the last couple of issues. Still if I were to use a 'new' monster, it would be the focus or BBEG of the adventure and not some random encounter. Still I'll take your suggestions and see what I can come up with.
Thanks again
Reebo
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Is there any chance you could start printing what book a non-core monster comes from? The stat blocks are great, but a lot of the time I want to read up the full description of a creature before running it.
For example, in the Styes (iss 121), I wasn't entirely clear what a corpse creature even was from the short description. I finally realized that it was basically a zombie (from the Book of Vile Darkness if I remember correctly), but wouldn't have been able to figure that out from just the stat block and description.
Sebastian
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Creative Director
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I try really hard to give sources for all the non-core monsters and classes we use in the magazine, and to give physical descriptions where appropriate. It's easy to forget to do this with a templated monster, since in a lot of ways the stat block for a templated monster IS self-contained. But still... can't hurt to be extra double careful about this stuff.
ANYway... yeah, a corpse creature is essentially a generic fleshy undead monster. It's pretty much a zombie template that allows the base creature to retain all or most of its class and race abilities.
What about variations of a known monster or additional material on something that isn't quite fleshed out in other books?
I'd give an example but then I'd be essentially giving away my neeto, cool, monster ideas for my submission.
I'm not going to list any favorite monsters here...
Aww, go on... give us a bone... does anyone like necrotic cysts like I do?
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I try really hard to give sources for all the non-core monsters and classes we use in the magazine, and to give physical descriptions where appropriate. It's easy to forget to do this with a templated monster, since in a lot of ways the stat block for a templated monster IS self-contained. But still... can't hurt to be extra double careful about this stuff.
Don't get me wrong. I think you do a fairly good job of giving stats and a working description of the monsters in the text. It's just that sometimes I want to find the monster entry and look at the art so that I am clear on what exactly the creature looks like. As for putting sources for non-core materials, I did notice that iss 122 did a good job in one section (the illithid grafts sidebar on pg 28 cites to the fiend folio) and a not so good job in another section (the needlefolk on pg 47 don't have their source listed, but do have the best description of non-core creatures that I've seen to date.)
On the whole, I think the magazine has improved in providing enough info to use non-core material, but adding the source would really be helpful (and not take up much room).
Sebastian