So, here's the plan as it exists at this point.

I will not abandon the site, but I will expand the focus to cover other roleplaying games. I'm a bit busy getting ready for Christmas, but I hope to do a bit of planning and design work for a relaunch shortly after the first of the year. I will be seeking co-contributors when I do; when I'm ready, I'll have a few guidelines about what I'm looking for in volunteers. In particular, I'd like to hear from people who want to cover specific game systems. Everybody will be welcome to chime in on any game system they want, but I'm looking for folks who will be seeking out material for the particular games they're into. As I'm being roped into attempting to run a Shadowrun campaign, I'll probably be focusing on Shadowrun links that I find useful, although I will still follow D&D news to some degree. More information later.

One last note: I'm keeping the name.

Yes, it has been far too long since my last entry. I've kind of drifted away from this website, and I've come to realize that I'm not that interested in keeping it going the way it was. I originally wanted the Blog of Holding to be a much more frequently updated guide to links on Dungeons & Dragons (especially the third edition) along with some commentary on the game, and possibly some original game materials. In that, I feel that I've failed. However, I think I do want to keep some sort of role-playing game weblog going.

I'd like to change the focus of this site, but I haven't decided exactly what I want to do with it. Should I expand the focus from D&D only to all roleplaying games? Gaming in general? The reviews I've written (of the Creature Collection and Monster Manual) are the most fun I've had writing for this site; shoud I write more reviews? Only reviews? Should I keep a diary of my own game sessions? Should I make more of an effort to write orignal game material? Or should I just throw in the towel completely? I'd really appreciate any feedback readers would care to contribute on what direction they'd like to see this site take.

I'd also like to hear from anyone who would like to write from this site; I think a group of writers could do a lot better job of keeping this site active than I (and one occasional contributor) could manage. I'd particularly like to hear from volunteers who are webloggers and/or Blogger users, but I'll consider anybody who expresses an interest. If you're not familiar with Blogger, the web serive I use to maintain this site, it makes updating a site like this from a browser window quite easy, and requires only a minimal understanding of HTML.

Whatever I do with this site, I'd like to make some major changes in time for the beginning of the new year. In the meantime, I plan to at least write and post a couple of new reviews: the Hero Builder's Guidebook and the Star Wars RPG, especially now that I've had a chance to play the latter. I hope to hear from anyone who's still interested in this site.

As I'm a thousand miles away from my usual setup, and have been working on this review during class breaks, I reserve the right to revise and extend my comments. Still, here's a rough version of the review I've been promising:

Although the third-party Creature Collection beat it to release by a few days, the Monster Manual remains the definitive monster reference for D&D. The new edition is the last of the three core rulebooks to be released by WotC. Like the other core rulebooks, WotC is selling it at an introductory price of $19.95 to promote initial interest in the new edition; expect the price to rise to the $30 neighborhood with future printings. Within the "dragon skin" cover (the gaudiest D&D hardcover yet, to my eye) are 224 color pages packed with nearly all the beasts, spirits, humanoids, and animals that D&D fans have come to expect. However, the quantity of information seems to have come at the expense of the quality of presentation; the organization and layout of this vital reference leave a bit to be desired.

The selection of monsters is all a DM could hope for. While the cover claims over 500 creatures, I'm not entirely convinced that this is an accurate count; the index lists about 400, but the variants listed under some entries (six different sizes of each elemental, for example, as well as all the various dragon age classes) might bring the total over the 500 mark. Still, the book appears to contain just about every traditional D&D critter: a wide variety of real-world animals, most major beasts of traditional mythology (griffins, harpies, dryads), and the invented creatures of long standing in D&D games (mind flayers, displacer beasts, beholders). I'm sure a few old favorites didn't make the cut (I've read a couple of laments from fans of the missing Phoenix), but this looks like a reasonably comprehensive compendium of common D&D monsters. On the other hand, there's little innovation in the monsters themselves. Although I've never committed the monsters of older editions to memory, I recognized nearly all of the creatures in the new Manual, and suspect that the few I didn't recognize are well known to many players. I don't consider this a weakness of the book, mind you; this book was meant primarily to update the old standards to the new rules.

The overall organization of the book has some quirks, but it may (like the spell lists in the PHB) make more sense with familiarity. The bulk of the book is its encyclopedic listing of monsters (in alphabetical order of course, but with grouped creatures listed under the heading of the group). Exceptions are an introduction (which explains the stats, lists common special abilities, and describes how to "advance" a monster), separate appendices after the main alphabetical listing for both vermin and mundane animals, and another appendix of templates. The book doesn't have a table of contents so much as a front index, listing all the monsters in alphabetical order (making it much easier to find monsters lumped under groups), but which doesn't simply tell the page numbers for appendices, etc. Another listing at the end of the book lists creatures by their Challenge Ratings, for DM's looking for an appropriate level of opposition for their players; it's a good cross-reference (which would have been that much better with page numbers).

The individual entries are fantastic. I like the new format for statistics blocks: AC is broken down by elements (so you can subtract Dex modifiers for a flat-footed creature, etc.), every monster's size, face, and reach are given, all monsters have standard D&D attributes (with a few well-reasoned exceptions)... If you need to know something under the new rules, it's in there. Lots of traditional monster abilities are described in terms of the 3rd edition's skills and feats, to be resolved using standard game mechanics rather than one-off special rules. Many creatures can be scaled up, either by simply making them larger and tougher (with full rules for improving skills, feats, size, etc.) or by advancing intelligent creatures in a class. The descriptions of most creatures not only explain their special abilities, but also describe their behavior in combat. For social creatures, the description often describes their social structure, at least well enough to understand the makeup of a typical settlement, and creatures suitable as character races explain the roles of common classes (the DMG has details on converting creatures to characters). The one feature of the creature listings that I generally find lacking is the flavor text; I would have enjoyed more information on the ecology or origins of some of these creatures.

Nearly every fictional creature has its own full-color illustration, aside from grouped creatures (which often show representatives of only a few subtypes), and one or two odd exceptions (like the pseudodragon) that seem almost like accidental omissions. If you need to know what a wolf looks like, go to the library and get a picture book. (Or better yet, get out of your parents' basement and go to a zoo.) The style of the art varies, just like that in the PHB and DMG, but overall, the art gives this book a more fantastic, otherworldly feel than older editions had. The quality varies as well, and I'm not thrilled with every drawing, but I think that most of the pictures do their subjects justice.

One major innovation in the new edition is the idea of a template: a set of modifiers and qualities that can be applied to a variety of creatures to create a consistent type of variant. For example, the celestial template may be applied to a non-evil creature to make it a magical, good creature, adding some magical resistances, the ability to smite evil, etc. One significance of this can be found in the player's handbook: The "Summon Monster" series of spells lists a number of celestial variants of mundane animals (such as a Celestial Badger as a possibilty for Summon Monster I). Another template is the vampire; instead of assuming that all vampires are the same, this template adds a collection of special abilities on top of those the undead had in life. Thus, a vampire "embraced" as a fifth-level human fighter will be distinctly different from a dwarf who became a ninth-level rogue during life. The template concept builds on the general 3rd edition principles of giving players and DM's greater flexibility, and tailoring the game to their style of play.

The main problem that I have with this volume is that it seems to squeeze too many creatures too tightly into its pages, making in-game reference unnecessarily difficult. I won't deny that it's a great-looking book (possibly the most attractive of the three core rulebooks), but I think that the designers chose the wrong balance between usability and aesthetics. They used a lot of the same layout tricks from the PHB and DMG to fit a lot of information into a limited space, but I wonder if that really works for a book that's more of a reference than the other two. I noticed all too soon that it can be difficult to quickly determine where one creature starts and another begins. Stat blocks too often wrap around artwork, or break across pages, or are squeezed together into too solid a block of tabular text. (See the Devil stat tables on pp. 48-49, in which it's easier to see the separation between sections of the stats for one creature than to see the separation between different creatures.) I have to admit that I'm no expert on graphic design, but I do see some things that make me cringe. I do know that whitespace has its uses in breaking up vast expanses of text, but there's precious little to be found in this book. While I don't entirely agree with calls for the one-creature-per-page format of the Creature Collection (and some older incarnations of the Manual), I would have liked a more clear and consistent break between one creature and the next. I would have also preferred more of an effort to set stats blocks off from the rest of the text and artwork, and to prevent page breaks within those blocks. WotC's goal seems to have been to limit the size of this book (in order to keep their costs and fans' prices down) while including all of the creatures players would expect. However, as this is the shortest of the three core books, I think they could have managed a slightly larger page budget. I can see why the designers may have made the choices they did, but I think a lot of DM's are going to pay a price for those trade-offs.

I may have harped on a few organizational weaknesses of the new Monster Manual, but I'm still quite impressed with this release. The monsters, and the rules for running them, certainly live up to the high standards of the third edition ruleset. This is a must-have volume for all 3rd Edition DM's.