While reading through the excellent overview chapters of the aboleths, illithids, and so forth in Lords of Madness, it occured to me how great this format would work for Ecology articles in Dragon.
For those who haven't seen the book, each chapter is similar to the writeup for races, with language, relations with other races, and so forth. Additionally, many include variants, stats for young of the race, and special feats, items, and spells that the creatures might use. For example, the aboleth chapter includes information on giving aboleths a weak bite attack, then gives several feats for making the bite more versatile. It also includes amphibious, aerial, and Stygian variants.
I realize that the page restraints would prevent going into quite as much detail as an entire chapter in a book, but I know I'd find even parts of this format much more useful than the current format, with the heavy focus on players vs. said creature rather than details on playing the creature.
Since Dragon has adopted the new prestige class format from some of the recent books, I'm not without hope that this format could be used as well.
Anyone agree?
how interesting. :) i just came up with a similar idea...
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=135676
Agreed!
Lord of Madness is a fantastic setup, and was sufficiently good to start me at work at an entirely new campaign setting for my home game. I enjoye dits layout, but I am not sure how this would translate to magazine format.
