Bestiary of Cidri

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Skarg

"Illos" and cards may have merits, but I am more interested in counters with counter-style art (no background, shows the feet, big non-humanoid figures generally top-down so you can relate to which hexes which body parts probably are or are not), and the descriptions themselves.

If cards were an option, I might not opt to buy them.

Actually I think cards are one of the major innovations of the relaunched system. Although a book is great for reference purposes, it's clunky to use during play - so I'd need to take notes from it to use during a session. Cards solves this in an elegant fashion as I can choose a specific roster of creatures for a particular encounter or adventure and have them literally in my hand.

I can also see many other uses; like random monster generation, wandering monsters etc.

The more cards the better as far as I'm concerned.

[larsdangly]

Cards are an excellent idea that takes advantage of the fact that you can fully represent a fairly complex TFT character or creature on a ~3x5 note card format. I used to keep a big stack of such cards as my main archive of NPCs (including retired PC's) in my campaign. If they stick with this notion, people who are 'all in' with the game could accumulate tens to hundreds of these, at which point you have enough to very easily populate complex places like cities.

[ColBosch]

I agree on the utility of the cards. In fact, I'd like if the deck includes a "cover" card so I can use it like a video game monster rush.

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I can also see many other uses; like random monster generation, wandering monsters etc.

The more cards the better as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, cards would be great, but to Skarg's point maybe those should be included in an 'all in' pledge to give those that don't want them a less expensive pledge tier that won't include them.

All the other formatting proposals sound great to me, but I have to throw in one suggestion... let's have a stretch goal add-on to get a complete set of new Cardboard Heroes for each of the monsters covered in the book!

[Mallen the dark]

Love all of the above. When does the kickstarter start?

[JLV]

I totally agree with Skarg on this -- to me the counters would be higher priority than the cards are. Yes, I can see all the utility of the cards, but I like to PLAY the game, and the counters will get me there whereas the cards are more of a "nice-to-have." I'm not playing Magic: The Gathering here; but a counters-on-hex-map game. So I would much rather see the counters as a fundamental part of the Kickstarter with the CARDS as the PDF and later maybe fully printed as a stretch goal.

All the rest of Guy's post on style works very well for me, though.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by guymc

5. Cards would have text/stats on one side and JUST the illo on the other. (This is Greg’s idea, so a GM can show the party what they see in front of them without displaying stats, etc.)

Having the cards double sided is very useful. But if you want to use it as a "draw from" deck, then you see what card it is. Perhaps if you have a thick border around the illo, then deck can be held and fanned just a bit (but not revealing the illos) and the player can pick from the middle of the deck.

Or have a blank card available to cover the deck and when someone draws, the reach under the black and slide a card out.

[Skarg]

Apologies but I can't resist pointing out that using cards to determine what gets met works perfectly if and only if the deck of cards satisfactorily represents the population, and you're just choosing who gets met out of a group where everyone in that group has a card.

That doesn't describe a bestiary to me at all - very few species will have an equal chance of being met, etc.

Again, not to say they aren't an interesting idea and could be fun in some cases, but it's not something I'd be liable to use, and certainly isn't needed to play. Some sort of counter however is needed to use a creature in play. Counters seem like a much more fundamental need.

[schoon]

I'll place my vote for two books: Beasts & Folk.

...and cards for the beasts would be most welcome.

[gpoehlein]

I thought I might step in with a few clarifications of the design concept before we get too far afield here.

Organization - as with most actual bestiaries, the entries will be alphabetical. I looked at grouping creatures together, but a phone discussion with Steve about the conceptshowed that we both agreed on the alphabetical arrangement. Makes everything easier to find.

Cards - The cards are meant to be strictly a visual aid and GM’s aid. Summarize the combat stats on one side and show the players what they see on the other. Using them for random encounters is behond the scope here. And our proposal pitched the as one of several stretch goals - pretty sure counters came before the cards as stretch goals.

Sentient inclusion - Can’t just say nothing above IQ 6 for the book because that will preclude a lot of creatures. For example, the basilisk is an intelligent creature, and has been historically included in most bestiaries including the one written by daVinci. The proposal is for one book, not two. And including intelligent creatures and races does not preclude a “player characters of Cidri” book in the future. This is a bestiary that is intended to organize the creatue entries in ITL into a common format that is easy to use for both the player and GM. As such, I suggested the inclusion of PC races for a couple of reasons. The first is that just because they are PC races doesn’t mean the aren’t opponent NPCs as well. Generally, most RPG collections of monsters include orcs, goblins, giants, merfolk, and even what passes for lizard men in any given system. My thought was that including them as a simple besiary entry made sense fron a GM’s standpoint as they are common foes and opponents of the PC party. So where to draw the line? Why not elves, dwarves and humans as well? After all, the party could meet a gang of human thieves as easily as a tribe of orcs.

Greg Poehlein