Organizing bestiaries...what sort order?

[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)".