For the last several weeks we've been taking a look at many of the game mechanics that make the Menagerie a useful tool for game masters. This week we're going to examine one of the more meta ways in which the book strives to make itself as helpful as possible.
Much like the primary rulebook for Realm of Runes makes liberal use of hyperlinks to aid in navigation and understanding, so too does the Menagerie. The two use their hyperlinks in much the same way at a surface level, as well. The table of contents is itself a fast link to every chapter in the rest of the book, and the index at the end is similarly an alphabetically-ordered set of links to each and every important term used throughout.
Monsters also tend to have several hyperlinks sprinkled throughout their individual stat blocks as well. Sometimes these links are used for linking to other monsters that an individual is often found with, or has the capacity of summoning to its aid. More frequently, the hyperlinks in a monster's stat blocks are links to important terms in the book's glossary. Indeed, many of the important conditions and rules quirks that can be found in the core rules are reproduced in the Menagerie's glossary. This way a reader need not have to cross-reference with the core rules if some sort of confusion arises, the links will take one directly to the explanation.
Hyperlinks are also used to help organize the chapters of monsters, and in the creature biome lists to make navigating the book even faster, and to facilitate choosing on-the-fly monsters for unexpected game situations, or when planning an adventure from scratch. For ease of navigation purposes, not only is each chapter in the Menagerie linked to by the table of contents, but the beginning of each chapter is similarly studded with links to the individual monsters within. Since a link to the table of contents is present on every page of the book, getting from one monster to another never takes more than just three clicks: one to the contents, one to the chapter, and then one to the monster itself.
These links are themselves organized to provide some important information at a glance. Each monster entry's link is sorted by its rarity, common, uncommon, rare and boss. Because the stat blocks in the Menagerie are written in a level-agnostic format, the rarity of a monster is used as a sort of stand-in for difficulty. Generally speaking, the less common that a monster is the less carefully balanced its statistics tend to be. Boss monsters in particular are often intentionally unfair, though still not impossible to overcome. By organizing the monsters in a chapter this way, a user can quickly and easily determine which monsters from a creature type might be the most suitable to a current situation.
Where this organization really shines, however, is in the chapter that hosts the creature biome lists. This chapter contains 35 different types of places where the monsters in the book can be found, sorted by the type of terrain to which each one belongs. For example, Desert Terrain is broken down into Dunes, Hard Desert, Oasis Lagoon and Oasis Shore, while Underground Terrain is broken down into High Caves, Deep Caves and Nether Caves. These biomes are collectively a fairly comprehensive list of the types of places adventurers are likely to find themselves, and each one is itself a link to its full entry later in the chapter.
These biome lists are excellent tools for adventure planning, both well in advance and on the fly. Like the indices at the beginning of each creature type chapter, the biome lists contain each monster in the book that can be typically found in that biome, sorted by rarity. So if a group of players is camping out in the Tundra, choosing the sorts of encounters that might interrupt their rest is easy to narrow down, all while easily avoiding an encounter that might be too difficult for the current game situation.
Like its companion, the Realm of Runes primary rulebook, the Menagerie is carefully designed to be quick to navigate and presents its content in a way that assists its user in whatever its current needs might be. This concludes our overall exploration of the Menagerie itself. Next we'll start looking at the first party adventures that are also going through parallel development.
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