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Hands down my absolute favourite Pathfinder books were the "monsters revisited" books from first edition.
You'd get 10 articles about monsters (and one time treasures!) linked by a topic or idea. Some of them were creature types (special shout out to Fey Revisited) but my personal favourites were the ones more 'thematic'- such as Mystery Monsters or Classic Horrors.
You can see the spiritual fingerprints of these books on newer releases, but I miss them!
What topics would you want to be "revisited"? What monsters might be covered by then?
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I think there's room to expand on the Genies, especially with the way humans relate to them changing in 2e to deemphasise their enslavement to human masters. But also because real life Jinn is a lot more complex than the way it is represented in Pathfinder, and function a bit like Fey do in European folklore. There's also the fact that Rage of Elements is introducing two entire new planes, without any associated elementals or genies yet. Then again, that might be where Paizo would do it - the Revisited series were supplements to what was already established, whereas Paizo seem much more committed lately to getting it "right" the first time.
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Yep...I think I have practically all of these as pdfs if not hardcopies. They were my favorite series and sad to see it end, even if I do understand they covered a lot of low-hanging fruit as it were.
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Sea Monsters Revisited was the book I always wanted us to do but we never got around to it. These books were a lot of fun to write and create, but... the more we did, the less they tended to sell, alas, so we shifted away from doing them to do other stuff.
We did (and still do) continue to do articles like this for monsters relatively often in the Adventure Paths though!
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Sea Monsters Revisited was the book I always wanted us to do but we never got around to it. These books were a lot of fun to write and create, but... the more we did, the less they tended to sell, alas, so we shifted away from doing them to do other stuff.
We did (and still do) continue to do articles like this for monsters relatively often in the Adventure Paths though!
Sea Monsters would have been a fun addition to the line!
I understand why there was shift away from the line. At some point you are bound to run into a situation where you it's harder to find enticing themes anyway. Hopefully, besides APs, we can get more monster love in general in some of the future hardbacks, even if they are not dedicated entirely to monsters. I usually read the monster related stuff first in APs, but it's nice to have things concentrated rather than scattered through multiple random books.
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There's no denying we're spoiled for monsters- I'm just greedy and always wanting more!
Sea monsters have always appealed to me (the oceans of earth are filled with so much madness that Golarion barely needs to exaggerate!) Even assuming Krakens and Sea Serpents have already been revisited, we'd still have so many to be explored!
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Creative Director
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Sea Monsters Revisited was the book I always wanted us to do but we never got around to it. These books were a lot of fun to write and create, but... the more we did, the less they tended to sell, alas, so we shifted away from doing them to do other stuff.
We did (and still do) continue to do articles like this for monsters relatively often in the Adventure Paths though!
Sea Monsters would have been a fun addition to the line!
I understand why there was shift away from the line. At some point you are bound to run into a situation where you it's harder to find enticing themes anyway. Hopefully, besides APs, we can get more monster love in general in some of the future hardbacks, even if they are not dedicated entirely to monsters. I usually read the monster related stuff first in APs, but it's nice to have things concentrated rather than scattered through multiple random books.
Finding enticing themes was not an issue. I had several ideas for more volumes in the series. Sea Monsters Revisited was just my number one. But after doing Demons Revisited, that pretty much opened up the potential of doing a revisited book for all of the outsider types, just on its own. A few others I'd been hoping to do at some point include things like "Arctic Monsters Revisited" or "Mythos Monsters Revisited" or "Legendary Monsters Revisited." This one really did come down to the harsh reality of sales numbers, alas.
Here's hoping that our latest version of this book, "Monsters of Myth" does well enough to warrant more! (And if you like the old revisited books and haven't checked out "Monsters of Myth," you really should!)
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Creative Director
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There's no denying we're spoiled for monsters- I'm just greedy and always wanting more!
Sea monsters have always appealed to me (the oceans of earth are filled with so much madness that Golarion barely needs to exaggerate!) Even assuming Krakens and Sea Serpents have already been revisited, we'd still have so many to be explored!
If I remember correctly, my proto-list for this book was: Veiled Master/Alghollthu, Globster, Reefclaw, Scylla, Charybdis, Dragon Turtle, Lusca, Ningyo, Great White Whale, and Grindylow. I was holding back the Shoggoth for "Mythos Monsters Revisited." ;-)
Out of interest- what distinguishes a Legendary monster from a Mythical one?
If I remember correctly, my proto-list for this book was: Veiled Master/Alghollthu, Globster, Reefclaw, Scylla, Charybdis, Dragon Turtle, Lusca, Ningyo, Great White Whale, and Grindylow. I was holding back the Shoggoth for "Mythos Monsters Revisited." ;-)
Darn that sounds like the sort of thing I would have adored (although apparently just me if sales were so slow :P)
Were the Shoggoth going to double as the Elder Things entry? Deep Ones, Yithian, Zoog, Colours out of Space and the Leng Denizens (and spiders and ghouls). All worth candidates!
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Creative Director
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Out of interest- what distinguishes a Legendary monster from a Mythical one?
Mostly the idea that a legendary monster is unique but not mythic in power. A lot of the type of creatures that would have been in this one show up in Monsters of Myth, for example.
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If I remember correctly, my proto-list for this book was: Veiled Master/Alghollthu, Globster, Reefclaw, Scylla, Charybdis, Dragon Turtle, Lusca, Ningyo, Great White Whale, and Grindylow. I was holding back the Shoggoth for "Mythos Monsters Revisited." ;-)Darn that sounds like the sort of thing I would have adored (although apparently just me if sales were so slow :P)
Were the Shoggoth going to double as the Elder Things entry? Deep Ones, Yithian, Zoog, Colours out of Space and the Leng Denizens (and spiders and ghouls). All worth candidates!
I never quite got out to planning the Mythos Monsters Revisited book but it would have likely been:
Shoggoth
Deep One
Elder Thing
Yithian
Mi-Go
Gug
Leng Spider
Denizen of Leng
Nightgaunt
Spawn of Cthulhu
There's far more than 10 though, so part of me is thankful I don't also have to consider Zoogs or Moon Beasts or Ghasts or Leng Ghouls or Yaddithians or Shantaks or Colours Out of Space or Ratlings or...
"Mythos Monsters Revisited Revisited"... the only sensible option!
My bank account is going to take some hits with all these recommendations! :P
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I truly believe their are two types of Pathfinder: those who find flumphs and flail snails incredible, and those who are wrong.
Seriously though- Misfit Monsters took ten jokes and made them genuinely impressive and/or scary (I'm a big fan of their treatment of Adhearers and The Wolf in Sheeps Clothing!)
Sea Monsters Revisited was the book I always wanted us to do but we never got around to it. These books were a lot of fun to write and create, but... the more we did, the less they tended to sell, alas, so we shifted away from doing them to do other stuff.
We did (and still do) continue to do articles like this for monsters relatively often in the Adventure Paths though!
Sea Monsters would have been a fun addition to the line!
I understand why there was shift away from the line. At some point you are bound to run into a situation where you it's harder to find enticing themes anyway. Hopefully, besides APs, we can get more monster love in general in some of the future hardbacks, even if they are not dedicated entirely to monsters. I usually read the monster related stuff first in APs, but it's nice to have things concentrated rather than scattered through multiple random books.
Finding enticing themes was not an issue. I had several ideas for more volumes in the series. Sea Monsters Revisited was just my number one. But after doing Demons Revisited, that pretty much opened up the potential of doing a revisited book for all of the outsider types, just on its own. A few others I'd been hoping to do at some point include things like "Arctic Monsters Revisited" or "Mythos Monsters Revisited" or "Legendary Monsters Revisited." This one really did come down to the harsh reality of sales numbers, alas.
Here's hoping that our latest version of this book, "Monsters of Myth" does well enough to warrant more! (And if you like the old revisited books and haven't checked out "Monsters of Myth," you really should!)
I did actually...really enjoyed it! I would not be opposed to seeing some books similar to this dealing with other creatures cough mythos cough...
Flumph yes, the others I don't think so. Paizo is great at coming up with unique and original monsters, but my favourite is when they taken something preexisting and, as you say, put their spin on it. I especially like that they (by and large) keep the silly aspects of many folkloric monsters in tact, in one way or another.
Particularly liked Dungeon Denizens Revisited and Dragons Revisited- excellent for taking monsters that could be generic enemies and figuring out how to do something interesting with them!