Organizing bestiaries...what sort order?

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you're writing a bestiary...what order do you sort the monsters?

1. Alphabetically, grouping "template types" (ie put Dragon, Young White with the other Dragon, <age> Whites) -- note: this is how D&D does it, mostly.
2. By difficulty rating (if such a thing exists) and alpha within that
3. By type (all beasts together, all fiends together) and then alpha within that
4. By environment, then sub-listing...

I'm conflicted. I often look up monsters by type and/or difficulty. Alpha is nicer if you're looking for a specific monster. Or are just reading through the bestiary for ideas.

Maybe Alpha and then have a selection of good indexes for the others?

[Quertus]

Maybe Alpha and then have a selection of good indexes for the others?

This. It’s nice if you have a bestiary expansive enough that you actually need such auxiliary tables, but by all means make the entries in alphabetical order, so that someone who knows what they’re looking for can actually find it, and isn’t digging through some labyrinthine “arctic.Serpent.Simple? No, Arctic.Spirit.Serpent.Simple” chain to find the entry.

[Pauly]

I think it depends a lot on how the GM looks for content.

If they prefer to look for content by the region(s) a critter is found in then organizing the bestiary by region is most useful.
If they prefer to look for content by critter type then organizing by type is most useful.

When I”m building a campaign and wanting to populate what bad guys the PCs are going to encounter I prefer to have one of these 2 options.
In game play I find these really useful as most of the critters are usually grouped in a few pages of each other. This usefulness is predicated on playing with a physical book, as a marked/linked pdf can be searched just as effectively even if the critters are scattered over a wide range of pages.

If you already know what critter you want to use then a pure alphabetical listing is most useful. I don’t like this approach very much because most of the time I’m using a critter compendium is when I’m building the campaign and I’m exploring what options are available to put i to the encounters. If I want to reference a critter during play I usually have the relevant pages marked with a post-it note so I’m not relying on the index to find critters.

[Brookshw]

I'd love to see different indexes by type and by environment with the creatures ordered by CR and with the CR listed

[stoutstien]

Personally it comes down to the overall design goal of the book.

If it's just a general monster book that has just a hodgepodge of different suggestions and options I would say alphabetically with an index for cross reference with habits, difficulty/strength (if needed), and type.

If the book is designed to be for a specific setting I much rather than be organized by how they would occur in that world/setting itself and give me suggestions on how to implement it.

*I'm also a fan of an index for certain powers or abilities. So if I am looking for some sort of npc that can teleport it would be nice to have a tag that allow me to find them all*

**Side side note: give me a solid method of building NPCs over NPC tome of X any day. At least make sure to avoid the "standard" approach.**

[King of Nowhere]

why not all of the above?
it's the digital age. just put on some good search system that will let you sort on any of those criteria, and put the whole thing as an ebook.

[Jay R]

why not all of the above?
it's the digital age. just put on some good search system that will let you sort on any of those criteria, and put the whole thing as an ebook.

Absolutely. If I'm going to write it myself, then I'm not going to flip through pages; I'm going to search the document for "young white dragon".

The important decision isn't what order to list them in.

It's whether to list it as "young white dragon", or "dragon, white, young".

[stoutstien]

why not all of the above?
it's the digital age. just put on some good search system that will let you sort on any of those criteria, and put the whole thing as an ebook.


Absolutely. If I'm going to write it myself, then I'm not going to flip through pages; I'm going to search the document for "young white dragon".

The important decision isn't what order to list them in.

It's whether to list it as "young white dragon", or "dragon, white, young".

I'm the opposite and rarely if ever use digital reference materials. I like books not only as artists expression of the genre but as enjoying beyond the math. I still thumb through my back catalogs looking for nothing particular.

[PhoenixPhyre]

why not all of the above?
it's the digital age. just put on some good search system that will let you sort on any of those criteria, and put the whole thing as an ebook.

Considering right now I'm at the "pile of markdown files in github" stage and editors react...ungracefully[1]... to extremely long markdown files...

I'm trying to figure out how to split these things between files. Alpha makes it easy, as does by type. But searching between files is less of an easy thing at this stage.

When (more like If) I ever publish this as anything other than a repo, it'll be a pdf. So full text search natively.

[1] plus my programmer's need to split things up to avoid merge conflicts, even though that's unlikely. Call it an...obsession.

[False God]

By whatever orginization method you want your protential readers to think of them in.

Yes I know that sounds silly but IMO, this is a game design question.

A highly "dungeon crawler" book would do well to organize them by challenge rating, because the game is less concerned with what you're fighting and more that the fight provides the appropriate challenge. A game that is more focused on "open world" is probably going to want to sort them by type or by biome, so that whatever you're running into feels appropriate to the area. If all you're making is a big index of monsters, then just A-Z.

So, sort it by what matters most for the system in question.

[KorvinStarmast]

I tend to sort them alphabetically by height. :smallsmile:

[Buufreak]

Maybe Alpha and then have a selection of good indexes for the others?

This. Full agreement with Quertus, not only do I find it the simplest to sort through, be it during writing/editing or actually reading, but it also feels like the general format many books have defaulted to, so it is what people are used to.

The indexes in the back are definitely gravy. Also, don't forget table of contents in the front.

[noob]

I tend to sort them alphabetically by height. :smallsmile:

What about flying creatures? Do they move in the classification as they go up and down?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ok, what about "grouped" creatures?

For example, the 5e D&D MM has "Angels" grouped as a subcategory, so the entries for Deva and Planetar are both sorted directly after "Aboleth" because it's Aboleth, Angels (Deva, Planetar, Solar), ...

How do people feel about that? Or should it go Aboleth, <whatever next>, ..., Deva, ..., Planetar?

[stoutstien]

Ok, what about "grouped" creatures?

For example, the 5e D&D MM has "Angels" grouped as a subcategory, so the entries for Deva and Planetar are both sorted directly after "Aboleth" because it's Aboleth, Angels (Deva, Planetar, Solar), ...

How do people feel about that? Or should it go Aboleth, <whatever next>, ..., Deva, ..., Planetar?

Personally I prefer the later unless (angel) is included in the description of everything in that category. Group by celestial sure but angel is such a weird decision.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally I prefer the later unless (angel) is included in the description of everything in that category. Group by celestial sure but angel is such a weird decision.

Yeah. Devils and Demons are in the same boat as a subcategory of Fiend, but combined. So Fiends aren't together, but Devils are and Demons are.

For this particular project I think I'm just going to go straight alpha. The world this is mostly for has a non-standard take on the outsiders anyway (devils and angels are the same species and as far as anyone is concerned stat-block wise those are skins, not reflections of some underlying thing, while demons are all former mortals that have been abyssified, often while still alive), so just being straightforward makes the most sense.

I'm likely going to rename and redo many of them anyway.

[False God]

Ok, what about "grouped" creatures?

For example, the 5e D&D MM has "Angels" grouped as a subcategory, so the entries for Deva and Planetar are both sorted directly after "Aboleth" because it's Aboleth, Angels (Deva, Planetar, Solar), ...

How do people feel about that? Or should it go Aboleth, <whatever next>, ..., Deva, ..., Planetar?

I actually really wish Aboleth was sorted with other eldritch horrors. But yes, "classifications" absolutely.

[LibraryOgre]

1. Alphabetically, grouping "template types" (ie put Dragon, Young White with the other Dragon, <age> Whites) -- note: this is how D&D does it, mostly.
2. By difficulty rating (if such a thing exists) and alpha within that
3. By type (all beasts together, all fiends together) and then alpha within that
4. By environment, then sub-listing...


Entries in alphabetical order, tables for the rest.

Entries by alpha makes them more convenient to reference at a drop of a hat, but being able to look them up by environment or difficulty makes them easier to place during planning.

If I need to quickly look up something about Gnolls, it should be near the Gnomes. But if I'm wondering what kind of creatures to put on my Savannah encounters table, being able to look up the savannah biome, then decide from there, is useful.

[Duff]

Depends a bit on the game



1. Alphabetically, grouping "template types" (ie put Dragon, Young White with the other Dragon, <age> Whites) -- note: this is how D&D does it, mostly.

Nice solid default. You know the monster you want, you go and find that monster.
D&D has a lot of lists of "Monsters in [x]" where x is some other factor such as level, environment or wandering. Which does show the limitation of this style



2. By difficulty rating (if such a thing exists) and alpha within that

More useful for "I need a level X, but don't know what I want" I'd suggest this is better as a sub-index for one of the 2 below




3. By type (all beasts together, all fiends together) and then alpha within that

If the type of monster is fundamental to the encounter, this is the one. For example, if having a fiend as your BBEG for the adventure means the party needs to be on their holeyest behavior for the whole adventure, and encounters will be mostly either; other demons, possessed people or opportunities to do good works, while having a dragon as the BBEG means an adventure of tough overland trekking across a despoiled wasteland, and werewolves means a murder-mystery, then choosing the type of monster is the first thing you do to design an adventure.
Sublist by danger rank to have your minor encounters lead up to the BBEG of the right level or by environment. Then Alpha



4. By environment, then sub-listing...

"You're in a jungle and you find a" [flick, flick] "Village of snake people"
Great if you're aiming for a low prep game where what you're listing is not just monsters but pre-prepared encounters. Probably best in games where the party's power doesn't change too much across the game, or where the style is less about matching up power levels for a fight, and more about dealing with a range of interesting opportunities

[Quertus]

Ok, what about "grouped" creatures?

For example, the 5e D&D MM has "Angels" grouped as a subcategory, so the entries for Deva and Planetar are both sorted directly after "Aboleth" because it's Aboleth, Angels (Deva, Planetar, Solar), ...

How do people feel about that? Or should it go Aboleth, <whatever next>, ..., Deva, ..., Planetar?

D&D 2e (and earlier?) grouped spells by Class, then by level, then alphabetically. Then offered indexes to sort them by (Class, then by) School / Sphere (then by level, then alphabetically).

D&D 3e (and later?) groups spells alphabetically, with some index help dividing things level and then school. And groups related spells together naturally through the naming convention "Nerf Vehemence, Lesser" and "Nerf Vehemence, Greater".

D&D 2e was great. If your Cleric leveled to obtain 3rd level spells, you could just crack open the book to "3rd level Cleric Spells", and read through what you could now do. On the down side, if Wizards and Clerics both had "Dispel Magic", then the spell had a full entry for each class. Which mattered, as sometimes the classes implemented the spell differently.

Then 3e came along, and shoveled everything together, listed alphabetically. Any differences in the ways the classes handled the spells had to be spelled (heh) out in the spell description. You could no longer just read through <class>'s Xth level spells, to easily gain that Player SKill of familiarity with your new abilities (and Wizards (and the new discount-Wizards, and discount-discount-Wizards) now had automatic spell acquisition, making this a double-whammy of raising the bar to entry.

On the flip side, they lowered the bar to entry by removing the need to know the spell's level in order to look it up. Which led to an uptick in GMs having NPC casters cast spells beyond their spell level (not that Ed Greenwood wasn't already writing modules with that kind of error, but now with this change other GMs caught the stupid, too).

While I believe that, ultimately, Alphabetical was the correct answer, there were some costs involved, and some adjustments GMs needed to make to their skill sets in order to make that work.

As far as grouping monsters... if you wanted to be noob friendly, if you grouped the monsters, in addition to having the Barbezu entry in the index point the reader to the correct page, and the category indexes list it as "Devil, Barbezu" for training purposes, you could have alphabetical monster entries like, under "B" Barbezu - see Devil, Barbezu, p.xxx". Or, if this is simply a Module concern, either have the module reprint the Barbezu, or have the module reference the "Devil, Barbezu, p.xxx" line.



plus my programmer's need to split things up to avoid merge conflicts, even though that's unlikely. Call it an...obsession.

If you've got the programmer's need for DRY inheritance, please do a better job with it than WotC did (especially with Polymorph effects).

[Wintermoot]

Speaking for myself, with my DM hat on, I would love to see them grouped by type rather than alphabetical.

When I'm freeform designing encounters/games, I know the terrain and location already. So if I know "okay, this is an encounter in a secret underground lair, that used to be a temple devoted to earth elementals, with an open portal to the abyss" or something I know "Okay I want to see some demons" and I want to be able to look at all the demons and earth-types without having to figure out what they are named.

So, for me, alphabetical is the least useful sort method.

Terrain
Type
SubType
CR/ECL/HD/Whatever "what level should you fight these at" metric you want to use.

That's the four sort criteria that would matter the most to me. That will maximize my possibility of finding a new monster I'm not already familiar with or to spark a new idea for a drab encounter.

[KorvinStarmast]

If I need to quickly look up something about Gnolls, it should be near the Gnomes. But if I'm wondering what kind of creatures to put on my Savannah encounters table, being able to look up the savannah biome, then decide from there, is useful.
Reminds me of the AD&D 1e DMG tables ... :smallsmile:

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Alphabetical - I am going to read through the book once and then every time I use it I will more likely than not know what monster I am looking for and want to find it quickly without using an index.

Give us indexes for everything else; environment, type, alignment/faction, etc.

[Easy e]

Whatever the writer's preference is fine as long as you consistently use it.

[KillianHawkeye]

Take the Pokemon route and assign each monster an arbitrary number. :smallamused:

[Hytheter]

Take the Pokemon route and assign each monster an arbitrary number. :smallamused:

Of course, the first one must be some kind of Plant monster.

[LibraryOgre]

Reminds me of the AD&D 1e DMG tables ... :smallsmile:

I'm old. Get off my lawn. :smallbiggrin:

[KillianHawkeye]

Of course, the first one must be some kind of Plant monster.

#001 Assassin Vine

[Duff]

Quertus's reply has led me to a better way to express my answer:

What do you most expect the GM to know before they start looking?
Do they know the name, the type, the environment or the level?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Quertus's reply has led me to a better way to express my answer:

What do you most expect the GM to know before they start looking?
Do they know the name, the type, the environment or the level?

And that's a good question. And the answer is "I'm not sure". Because I've certainly looked based on all those things. As well as just browsed looking for interesting things.

One advantage of "grouping" them is that you can put common info together (such as stuff about how all dragons are, before you reach the exhaustive lists of individual dragon stat blocks[1]). One disadvantage is that it's sub-types, not full types.

But yeah.

[1] although I'm certainly planning on doing a "dragons as a template" model where you pick your age category, then pick your element and then scale up/down based on rules rather than having individual, nearly-but-not-quite identical stat blocks for Dragon, wyrmling <color>. You'd just have one Dragon, Wyrmling entry with the relevant parameters/color mappings in the stat block.

And I'm not going to separate devils and demons because that notion makes little sense in my altered system. I use demon stat blocks for notional "devils" and vice versa fairly freely. And the metaphysics is that a given entity could be a devil or an angel and you'd not know by looking at them--what body they're wearing depends on what role they're filling at that instant. Because the bodies they show are just shells created to interact with "mortal" matter.

[Maat Mons]

Phylogenetically.


Animals


Bilaterally Symmetric Animals

Dire Frog
Elf
Fidler Crab
Flounder


Nonsymmetric Animals

Sponge Bob


Radially Symmetric Animals

Grick
Hydra
Xorn



Plants


Ferns
Mosses
Seaweed

Murder-Kelp
Spiny Strangle Weed


Seed Plants

Assassin Vine
Shambling Mound
Treant



Fungi


Lichen

Werewolf
Wifewolf


Molds

Brown Mold


Mushrooms

Myconid
Shrieker
Violet Fungus


Sac Fungi

Orc Wort
Wartling



Slime Molds


Jellies

Flesh Jelly
Ochre Jelly


Platonic Solids

Gelatinous Cube
Gelatinous Icosahedron
Gelatinous Octahedron


Puddings

Black Pudding
Red Pudding
Tapioca


Slimes

[LibraryOgre]

Grouping can be useful... but only to a degree.

Take, for example, the 2e Monster Manual. Some grouping was useful; dragons were all together, giants were all together. Others was less so, with massive entries for "Mammal" and "Bird", which often gave way too little information, and mixed the fantastical in with the mundane.

So, I still lean towards "alphabetical", with various groupings in the back.

[MoiMagnus]

Alphabetical used to be great when you knew what you were searching.

But in this modern time, when I know what I'm searching, I use online references, or the search function of a pdf.

And if I really know what I'm searching, I already wrote down the page number or put a paper in the book at the right position.

So for my personal use, alphabetical order can discarded as useless (though an alphabetical index is always welcome for the rare cases where I need it).

I'd rather have the bestiary be indicative of how the game is played.

If the game is stratified in tiers of play, with PCs rarely encountering enemies of higher/lower level, the manual should be split by tier of play.

If the game expect you to adventure through well-crafted ecosystems of monsters, them have one section of the bestiary for each of thoe major ecosystems.

If the game is expected to have some thematic like "undeads" or "dragons", then classify monster by those types.

If has a complex worldbuilding, then teach me the worldbuilding through how the monsters are grouped.

If the game is supposed to have well structured combat encounters with some elite monster commanding minions, then monsters that are designed to work with one another should be in the same double-page.

[Pauly]

One advantage of listing by type or by biome is that it gives the author a chance to fo some world building.

Let’s say you group all the orcs and goblins together, you can then give a 1 page or 1/2 page header explaining about the culture, lifestyle and expected places to find them. If you group by biome you can give descriptions of where such biomes exist in your world any important cultural or historical exposition that may help.

The other thing about grouping is that each group should be roughly similar in page length. A couple of short entries for rarely encountered groups is OK, but very long groupings defeats the purpose of putting things in handy easy to reference groups.

Plus this x 1,000


.

I'd rather have the bestiary be indicative of how the game is played.

.

[Duff]

I'd rather have the bestiary be indicative of how the game is played.

If the game is stratified in tiers of play, with PCs rarely encountering enemies of higher/lower level, the manual should be split by tier of play.

If the game expect you to adventure through well-crafted ecosystems of monsters, them have one section of the bestiary for each of thoe major ecosystems.

If the game is expected to have some thematic like "undeads" or "dragons", then classify monster by those types.

If has a complex worldbuilding, then teach me the worldbuilding through how the monsters are grouped.

If the game is supposed to have well structured combat encounters with some elite monster commanding minions, then monsters that are designed to work with one another should be in the same double-page.

Really good point.
Connecting to Phoenix's response on my suggestion
Don't ask what the GM knows, tell them what order to make the decisions in.
We all know this will vary, but this is a chance to lay out some hints and some expectations

[lightningcat]

As I am currently working on a Bestiary, this thread was both more and less helpful than I would have hoped for.
Of course mine is going to be entirely within one of those Categories, as it will be an entire book of demons.
Even now I have not yet figured out if I go alphabetical or by CR. I default towards alphabetical, which I think is most useful in a general bestiary. But for one with a specific theme, CR might be the better choice.

[MoiMagnus]

As I am currently working on a Bestiary, this thread was both more and less helpful than I would have hoped for.
Of course mine is going to be entirely within one of those Categories, as it will be an entire book of demons.
Even now I have not yet figured out if I go alphabetical or by CR. I default towards alphabetical, which I think is most useful in a general bestiary. But for one with a specific theme, CR might be the better choice.

How bizarre are your demons? Do you expect users to already know most of the names in the book? Are the name generally easy to remember?

Because if your average user will be "there was this big ice demon which was quite strong against LV4 heroes but I'm not sure how it is named", a CR based sorting will be much easier.

On the other hand, alphabetical is quite practical if your average user is "there is this kind of demon that I know exists in fiction (or in the lore of the universe) and I just need to find its stat block in this book (if it has one)".