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I'm sure all my readers know this already, but just in case I have voyeurs I'm not personally involved with (hands out of my pockets, Nick, I'm typing), I'm working on two published D&D products. Due to NDA's, all I can say is one is a monster manual and the other is an extraplanar campaign setting/enhancement. Why is this important?

Once you start to "meet" (because it's all done online now) other writers and publishers, you start to get free shit. Whoot. And that's what this post is about.

I was just gifted with a copy of Expeditious Retreat's monster building guide A Magical Society: Beast Builder. I totally recommend it. In fact, I've got the free samples for A Magical Society: Western Europee and A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture. These links are to the hard copy books, but you can purchase/download the pdfs (and free samples) at RPGnow.com or DriveThruRPG.com.

Now, if you're like me, you probably think you know a fair amount about culture, ecology, world building, and possibly balanced monster design. You're probably right. I was. I was actually surprised at how much of what I thought was right, was correct in these books. Years of gaming pay off.

However, that doesn't mean the books aren't handy. I LOVE them. First of all, each one is over 200 pages, and I guarantee there will be shit in there you didn't think about. On top of that, even if you did think about it, sometimes reading about it sparks an idea about a way to twist something that you might not have thought of on your own. So, besides being good solid resources for free-forming your own campaign, world, etc, the books are great as a means of inspiration.

So go ahead and check them out. I recommend hitting the online links, downloading the free samples and seeing if you like them first. You will. If you're cheap like me and don't mind hours in front of a computer screen, the pdfs are fine, but I think I might add these links to my Christmas list. Hard copy is good.