Volo’s Guide will have a narrator - two actually. So the idea was, the kind of genesis of it, was that want to do something that's more story oriented.' But I just think that if that’s all the Monster Manual is, then we're selling ourselves short. 'In the end, it's still a giant book full of monsters. Their next take on the Monster Manual will be called Volo’s Guide to Monsters and, for the first time, it will have a lot more character to it. This time around, he and his team have decided to do something a little bit different. I think that if people have seen it, then it's not really new and it's not really exciting.' 'I don't want to duplicate any product that's come before. 'I have this kind of personal philosophy for managing the product line,' Mearls said last month in Renton, Washington. But, through the decades, it’s always been roughly the same thing: An alphabetical list of monsters. Since then there have been 18 iterations, some for different editions of the game with different rulesets, others with slightly different snippets of lore. The first, titled simply Monster Manual, was published in 1977. How do you keep the source material fresh for a 42-year old franchise? And, when you’re in the business of selling books, how do you make the next one more interesting than the last?Ĭonsider a pillar of the franchise, the sourcebook known as the Monster Manual. More people than ever before are discovering the magic of rolling dice and telling stories with their friends, and lapsed fans are returning in droves.įor lead designer Mike Mearls, that’s created a bit of a problem.

And, to hear publisher Wizards of the Coast tell it, the sourcebooks are selling like hot cakes. The venerable Dungeons & Dragons franchise, the granddaddy of the modern role-playing game, is now in its 5th edition.

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