If you want to rush up the rankings in MTG Arena, you need a deck that can win quickly and reliably in Standard format. The current meta has a red and white mice and monks Boros aggro deck going big for an impressive win rate.
Winning games of Magic: the Gathering in a few rounds is the best way to play more games. And playing more games is the best way to rank up. End of story. But okay, Magic is a game, and it’s supposed to be fun. So what could be more fun than rushing at your opponent with a huge mouse and his buff monk buddy to deliver 11 damage to the face?
Copyright and TM, Wizards of the Coast 2024
Boros Aggro Mice & Monks Deck List
Cards are listed with the number of copies first, then the name, the set list in brackets (with the full name below the list), and the card’s number in the set last:
BLB: Bloomburrow MH3: Modern Horizons 3 KTK: Khans of Tarkir DSK: Duskmourn: House of Horror RTR: Return to Ravnica WOE: Wilds of Eldraine OTJ: Outlaws of Thunder Junction
Use your spells to buff your creatures and rush in swinging. That’s the Boros aggro way! Every card is cheap, so a great strategy is to muligan until you have at least a plain, a mountain, and a creature in your starting hand. Sheltered by Ghosts will grab pesky blockers and pump Optimistic Scavenger up so you can get big hits in before your opponent musters effective blockers.
Do you want to be an RPG designer? Maybe you’ve created some great homebrew content, have a few products on sale already, or have a cool tabletop RPG (TTRPG) idea you want to publish. Maybe you’re just curious about what it takes to create RPGs for a living and wonder where to start. Whatever the case, this article’s for you.
First Steps
The first thing you need to do is start.
TTRPGs involve a lot of creative energy. From creating your first character to running a months-long campaign, the hobby expects your creative investment at many levels. The trick is to take that creative investment, develop your craft (the ability to create and package that creativity), and ultimately deliver professional products.
Those customers might be an RPG publisher like Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, or Rising Phoenix Games, or you might be self-publishing on a site like DriveThruRPG or Itch.io. Either way, produce good work and be an asset to the roleplaying community.
An RPG designer is often part of a team. I’ve written rules, edited stat blocks, laid out books, created covers, made art assets, drawn maps, managed development teams, and made the tea. Mostly, that work is shared by a team of talented individuals, each with strengths and flaws. Being a team player is important, as is balancing your ego with a healthy dose of humility.
So, it’s worth learning as much as possible about writing and game design to be an asset to any development team you’re a part of. This collection of resources has proved very helpful to me, and I hope it’s helpful to you too.
Recommended Reading
I maintain a bookshelf on GoodReads with great RPG design resources. Check it out. All of the books I’ve listed are ones I refer back to often.
Many people take issue with AI tools, but — like any tool — knowing how to use the tool gives you more options to create better works. Enhance, rather than replace.
Grammarly for AI-assisted text editing.
Free Web Tools
I use the following tools to improve my workflow, manage projects, and supplement my digital and real-world tools.
Do you ever feel alone? Do you feel like the world’s too much, and it’s banging on the door, trying to get you? I sometimes feel that way.
When that happens, it’s a struggle to stop my gloom-and-doom thought train and change my perspective. Recently, it was my RPG publisher friends who helped me see things differently. So, I want to talk about those friends and I want to give you a light to hold onto when things get rough.
When the Going Gets Tough, Collaborate
I reached out to a few indie RPG developers and asked if they’d join me on a bundle. The Hidden Indie RPG Treasures Bundle is available on DriveThruRPG, right now, until the end of February. I’m mentioning it now and again at the end of this post only, so the marketing is clear for you to see. Anyway, I had a great response from those friends and we made a neat little collection of indie RPG games.
I’m mentioning the collaboration because it provided a healthy change of perspective.
Toughen Up, RPG Creator
The perspective I’ve had for a long time is a warped idea of what success in the industry means. You can’t get a true sense of where you stand in the industry without friends to help you gauge it.
It’s important to understand the context here. Many of us do what we do with limited resources. We use our free time, our own money, and our sweat equity to make games. We’re passionate about the hobby, and that drives us. But it’s hard competing against bigger companies like Wizards of the Coast for those RPG dollars. If you don’t have a hit RPG title or a large social media presence, then it’s hard to get eyes on your work. Even professional, high-quality work can be ignored. Burnout is a real threat because of that. We work hard but don’t always see recognition for that effort. It can become a depressing, black hole.
Anybody, no matter what they do, might be a step away from that deep, dark abyss. Watch the news, suffer a string of bad luck, get hit with unexpected financial pressure, and the cracks start to show. Part of the issue is a false sense of the truth. Essentially, thinking we’re not good enough is a result of a foggy perception of reality.
Reaching out is incredibly hard for me to do. I’m a busy introvert. I spend a lot of time chatting with friends online, but these interactions are often superficial. The medium is restrictive. Those conversations seldom touch base with reality. That changes when friends are struggling with the same thing, like how to market an indie RPG bundle. Working together, we challenged our perceptions. We could better perceive the truth, but only together.
Perspective
I realized that Rising Phoenix wasn’t as insignificant as I thought we were. We could help guys with a handful of titles because we have a bucket-load of titles. We also saw how each effort brought in a few extra sales. Without data (or friends with experience) it’s hard to anticipate what sort of sales we might get, which leads to frustration if those sales seem lower than we hoped for.
There’s a Biblical aspect to this worth considering. In Galatians 6 verse 2 (that’s in the New International Version for this and the rest), Paul says: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” If you draw this back to Jesus’s words of “love one another” (John 13:34) and then further back to the 10 Commandments’ “Love your neighbour” (Leviticus 19:18) then it’s clear: we should help people.
I have no scientific research confirming what we gain from helping others, but my experience has been that it’s good to step into a leaking boat with someone. Struggling together sharpens a person and helps us see the same problem from different sides.
I’m just a dude trying to make great games and figure out this crazy thing called life, and those are my two cents. I hope it’s a useful idea for you to think about.
The Hidden Indie RPG Treasures Bundle
Now, let’s talk about that bundle one last time. Our goal is to make 50 sales. That boosts overall sales since customers are more likely to buy a best-selling title, and 50 sales gives you a Copper Best-Seller badge. With roughly nine days left, we currently need another 31 sales to hit that goal. Please consider telling a friend about the bundle. Ask them to tell their friends about it too. That’ll help us in the greatest way possible.
Here’s a copy of Road to Rhune, at rogue prices (free), to help you get the bundle even cheaper.
Space… the final planar frontier. In space, no one can hear you cast fireball. To boldly go where no gnome has gone before. Yes, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space is coming, and we thought we’d cast off, into the big black, and explore some of the possibilities of adventures in space. Three, two, one… teleport!
What is Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
To answer that question, we have a neat little promo video from Dungeons & Dragons’ own Trystan Falcone and Chris Perkins. But first, here’s the announcement trailer:
Got that? It’s basically Guardians of the Galaxy, with magic and ships instead of lasers and starships. Spelljammer is the name of one such ship, not some kind of arcane hacker (which would be an awesome character class, by the way).
Space is fascinating, and, when you add a touch of magic, anything is possible. Let’s get you ready for your own magical adventures in space — in the world of Spelljammer, Starfinder, or any other system or campaign setting.
All through May we’ll be hosting the RPG Blog Carnival with the theme “Magic Adventures in Space”. RPG bloggers from across the realms will bring ideas, stories, experiences, and mechanics, then post them in the comments below. At the end of the month, I’ll do a roundup of the articles, so you’ll have a meteor storm of ideas for when Spelljammer finally… ahem… launches.
Here are some ideas of things we might see, or you can use them to inspire your own homebrew campaign:
Magic Mechs. The world can never have enough clockwork creatures, especially ridable ones.
Space Pirates. Guardians of the Galaxy but with magic. They’re outlaws who do good, or maybe they’re mercenaries just out to make a few space credits to repair their ship. These NPCs (or pregenerated characters) could be valuable allies or irritating foes.
Space Faring Ships. We’ve already got rules for ship movement and combat, but we could always use more unique vessels. How about The Flying Duchman in space, a space snail with a helm built into its shell, 6-man boarding torpedoes for breaching ships, an ooze space vessel made of more gooey ooze, or a sentient clockwork ship?
Sci-Fantasy Weapons. Stun guns, laser swords, cannons that fire miniature black holes, EMP magic that stuns clockwork creatures… Sci-Fi is full of unique equipment that could get a fresh take if magic replaced science.
New Races and Monsters. I’m hoping we’ll see some unique creations, or some re-imaginings of creatures we know and love from other Sci-Fi properties. A playable Genestealer, anyone?
Be sure to check back here, throughout May, to see what new content has been posted, in the comments.
Star Foxes – New Spelljammer Race
Star Foxes are lithe creatures with incredible cunning. They are an opportunistic race that has crossed the stars in search of wealth and personal glory. They are expert manipulators and slippery adversaries.
Star Fox Traits
Your star fox character is nimble and cunning, yet frail.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and your Wisdom and Charisma score increases by 1.
Ability Score Penalty. Your Constitution score decreases by 2.
Age. Star Foxes mature a few years before humans. They live to about 80 years of age.
Alignment. Most star foxes are neutral, though their motivation to survive and thrive at all costs often drives them towards evil and chaos.
Size. Star foxes are smaller than gnomes, seldom topping 4 feet. They average around 40 pounds. Your size is Small.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. Your race has voyaged across the stars and through the darkness of space, and as such you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Cowering Survivalist. You can take the Dodge action as a reaction to a melee attack from a creature you can see, but you have disadvantage on your own melee attacks until the end of your next turn when you do so.
Deep Cunning. You can add your Wisdom bonus to Charisma checks you make to influence other humanoids. You don’t gain this bonus if the creature is hostile towards you.
Safe in Shadow. You have advantage on Stealth checks. You lose this ability in areas of bright light unless you have advantage from some other trait, feature, or effect.
The definition of a grimdark setting might vary wildly depending on who you ask, and certainly, the experts don’t always agree. For example, some will say grimdark fantasy lacks emotional depth, while others will say it is deeply nuanced in that respect. While definitions don’t always hold up perfectly to every example, having an idea of the common elements is useful. It will help you speak to your players, tweak your ideas, and ultimately create your own incarnation of grimdark at the table.
A Hopeless World
Grimdark settings take a pessimistic and often fatalistic world view that contrasts with the sometimes optimistic, happily-ever-after world view of other fantasy settings. The land is heading towards unavoidable disaster, war, or ultimate destruction. Perhaps the planet has gone through terrible trials already, and the survivors are clinging to what little they have, waiting for the end. If there is any hope left, it rests in the corruptible strength of people.
Corruptible Humanity
Magic may be less accessible to the everyday man in a grimdark setting, is wild and untameable, or is evil and corrupting. A man must therefore rely on his own hands, and he is doomed to fail often. So tested, his flaws are shown again and again. Every trial will try to distract him from his path, and he will encounter many who have fallen and been corrupted and wish to drag him down. This corruptibility is often based on a historical precedent.
Historical Precedent
Grimdark settings often borrow from history more closely than other fantasy settings. Kings that were the heroes of the people turn into violent despots, trusted advisors turn out to be corrupt spies—history is full of examples of such men. We can draw much inspiration from historical figures, as well as the ebb and flow of the world through time. Difficulty and consequences are ever-present, and hardship is to be expected. The rarity of resources, disease, drought, and our mortality and corruptibility are all themes that might appear in any fantasy, but they are brought to the forefront in grimdark settings. Exploring life’s trials is not a cynically minded endeavor, they highlight the morality present in a broken world.
Morality in a Broken World
Saying that grimdark settings are universally immoral misses an important point. Morality, and the sacrifices and difficulties we have in following a moral compass, are brought under the microscope when contrasted with a broken world. Our own world is broken, and every religion and philosophy provides their own set of guidelines to navigate this brokenness. Moral choices are tough and doing the right thing requires sacrifice. While some characters might punch and slash their way through the trials they face, there are violent consequences for these actions.
Violent Consequences
Characters in a grimdark setting might be involved in plots, tempted by demons, dragged to the edge of madness, succumb to the lure of chaos, or flirt with dangerous entities, yet a violent end is never far away. As raw emotion and hatred boil over into violence, we see the most graphic and poignant example of our fallen world. Death is the ultimate result of our brokenness, and it is often met at the point of a blade when life is cheap. That said, it is possible to play out long, entertaining campaigns without a weapon drawn, but the threat of violence and death is usually ever-present.
What makes grimdark for you? Did we miss anything? Do you disagree? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’re scratch building a Battle Cat wargaming miniature.
Psst, we have a secret coupon code for a new magus book for Pathfinder 1e, hidden in the text. You’ll need to read everything to find it.
Battle Cat is He-Man’s fearless feline friend, who transforms from the cowardly cat Cringer (erm, tiger) into a red-armored fighting fiend. Besides inspiring alliteration, Battle Cat is He-Man’s inseparable companion, with whom he shares the secret of the Sword of Power and also benefits from its transformative powers.
I’m busy working on my own little D&D Masters of the Universe set, so Battle Cat’s an important miniature to have. It’s possible to find him online, but it’s also very easy to kitbash or scratch build your own, which is why you should give it a go. This project is the perfect beginner project for learning how to use green stuff or modeling epoxy, and you can use the same method for all kinds of original mounts too.
Step 1: Obtain Miniature Animal of the Plastic Variety
Find a suitably sized plastic animal, preferably one with a high enough level of detail that it’ll look like an animal when your primer has made it monochrome. I found a great lioness that was the perfect size and easy to convert into a tiger.
Step 2: Snip and Clip, then Putty and Paste
To make the armored saddle and helmet I used Tamiya Epoxy Putty, which is a two-part clay (white and beige) that you mix together before working. I’ve never used green stuff, which most people swear by, but this stuff certainly does the job.
Saddles are the easiest thing to make, but barding (plate for a mount), isn’t much harder. Find a good reference to work from and break down the full shape into its component shapes and you’ll do fine. The rest of the armor, including the helmet, is just an extension of the same process.
To bulk up the shape of Battle Cat’s beard and chest hair I used hairpieces from some third edition Dark Eldar.
Some of my Masters of the Universe minis, from left to right: Battle Cat, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man, Prince Adam, and He-Man
Step 3: Paint and Play
I primed the mini white, then painted his fur orange and the saddle armor red. I then painted green over the fur, to leave exposed stripes. The stripes were a bit tricky, so decide on which direction you want them to run in before painting and you should be fine.
Finally, I dry brushed his beard white, painted his nose and eyes black, and his claws were brown, black, then white. Finally, I gave the fur a black wash and painted the base black. I didn’t texture the base so that other figures can stand on the base, to show they are riding him.
Unleash the Power of the Magus
One of the companies I work for is d20pfsrd.com Publishing, and we just released Art of Magic: Melee and Magic. The book has been doing amazingly well, reaching Copper Seller in under 24 hours. I guess it just proves how popular the magus is.
So, what’s in the book?
New magus archetypes, feats, magus arcana, and spells. Mark Thomas, the writer, did an excellent job of offering a wide variety of builds that should offer something for every magus player.
The book is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (first edition) and is $2.99 for 24 pages.
Welcome to a guest post, here on Rising Phoenix Games. Kim Frandsen is here to talk about the difficult road TTRPG designers have to walk to becoming masters of the craft. Enjoy.
Hi everyone! Rodney asked me to share some thoughts that I’d been having recently about the TTRPG industry.
In most creative industries, such as tabletop roleplaying game publishing, there are — at least to me — seemingly three levels of “achievement” a creator can reach:
Apprentice
Journeyman
Master
The Road to Mastering RPG Design
To give an example of what I mean, let’s compare the TTRPG industry to the film industry. Hollywood’s movie business is well known and has similar requirements to our own, in that it requires a lot of creative input and technical knowledge to achieve a coherent and appealing final product.
So an apprentice within the TTRPG world is someone who is just starting out. They may be self-publishing or they may have a few years of experience working as a freelancer for smaller publishers. In the film world, these are the folks putting out their first films, or who are just out of film school. They may have acquired some technical knowledge along the way, and they may have great creative ideas, but they still need a lot of help executing their ideas to a level where an audience can understand their work.
Masters are of course at the other end of the craft. They’re the ones who do the work that you always hear about. Within the gaming world, they’ll be people like Chris Perkins, Owens KC Stephens, Jason Buhlmann, and Skip Williams. They’re exceptionally capable and experienced designers who have had their hands in hundreds of projects. They not only have creative vision but also the technical know-how to realize that vision.
In the film world, these are people like Alfred Hitchcock, Stephen Spielberg, and Francis Ford Coppola for direction. They may be the Chris Evanses, Ryan Reynolds, and Scarlett Johansson for actors. They could also be the “invisible” people like John Williams, known for the soundscapes that complete the film experience. These are the creators that everyone has heard of, and who have staying power.
In between these two, you find the journeyman level. For films, these are the people who can live off their work but haven’t become famous. They might be the supporting actors on big-budget films, they may be the camera or sound crews, or they may be the director that does documentaries for the BBC — people that those in the business have potentially heard of, but who aren’t well known to the public.
And here comes the question: where is the journeyman level in the TTRPG Industry?
Making a living off your work in this business, even if you have multiple years of experience and projects behind you, is tough. In my case, I started in 2016 and at this point, I have more than 100 projects behind me as both author and editor, and I’ve started dabbling in layout, but I cannot make a living off what I do — even though I’d love to. (Editors Note: Kim has multiple credits for Paizo, including Pathfinder and Starfinder work. He was also an alternate in the top 32 for RPG Superstar, Season 9. Kim also wrote Heaven & Hell for Pathfinder Second Edition.)
The figure that you need to take home to live (please note I said “live”, not “survive” — there is a difference) varies by where you live of course. Generally, if you live in the West, things cost more. That’s just how it is.
But how big does the RPG industry have to be to support the Journeyman level folks? Nobody knows how much money is in the business, and the few who have an insight into that are really not interested in sharing that information. The fact is though that there are only a few companies out there that are big enough to supply more than a handful (5) employees full-time. This includes the juggernaut Wizards of the Coast and all the way down to smaller companies with permanent staff. Even just finding out who belongs in that category is difficult. (Truth be told, the industry really isn’t doing itself any favors on this, by being so opaque, but I digress).
Unfortunately, until we know what the business is worth in total, and where it has been in the past, it’ll be difficult to say where the “break” point in size is for the RPG industry, but there is one factor that we can comment on.
We’d like to see more people make a living by making TTRPGs, wouldn’t we? After all, it allows us to see more people progress to the master level, so we’ll eventually enjoy the stuff they put out. And it’d allow others who have the skill and knowledge to live off their earnings from roleplaying games too.
Do I have a personal stake in this? Yes. Of course, I do, and I’m obviously one who’d like to reach the Journeyman level. But more than that: I’d like to see my friends remain in the business. I started at a time where I was connected with something like 20 or 30 other people. Today, only 2 of them are left, with a 3rd on hiatus and a 4th mostly being too busy with his day job to work away at game design. So many people have fallen by the wayside that I know had the ability to make it, if there had been a future for them. For all of us, it wears us down. And while those who survive the first 3-4 years tend to stick around, I’d really like to see more of the talented newcomers staying with us.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
Catch you on the flip side.
So, you want to impress the boys at your local with your masterful storytelling? Figure you’ll show the ladies a good time with dice and an epic quest? Looking to put “Professional GM” on your CV? Well then, if you want to be a great GM (or DM, or Storyteller), then you need to get an education.
What kind of education? I’m not talking about school — stay in school kids — I’m talking about life experiences.
Why?
Rules are great. Acting skills are useful. Improv skills are even better. Knowing and understanding all the tools available to you, that’s the road to being really great.
But all of this isn’t very useful without some real experiences. Some fuel for the creative fire.
Go ride a horse. Practice martial arts. Write with a quill pen. Hike up a mountain. Go camping. Gut a fish. Travel.
Real experiences always beat book learning. What you’ve lived through becomes a part of you in a way clinical understanding never can.
Have you ever noticed that many writers, those brave souls who battle with pen and paper their whole lives, struggle to sell a good novel, while non-writers (usually sportspeople and explorers) seem to create best-selling books without much effort? There are exceptions, but I’ll bet that the key ingredient here is substance. Those with real experiences have something meaty to offer.
A poorly-researched example, as Exhibit A: Stephen King cited being hit by a car as inspiration for many of his books. I’m not sure which, but my Google-fu tells me it’s a bunch. Sorry, Stephen, you’re free to pipe up in the comments.
Your experiences are beautiful pigments for painting truly memorable images at the table. Your fantasy games will be so much more real when you embellish them with realistic details drawn from your experiences.
So look, listen, and learn. I promise it’ll be worth it.
While you’re here, please check out our store or our Drive-Thru RPG page. We have loads of publications for D&D 5e, Pathfinder, and unique systems we know you’ll love.
It’s Mini Monday, with customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week we’re building Dakka-Mart, our Gretchin Gun Shop.
The trash speaks to me. It tells me to make things. Inconceivable things of waste and scrap.
It’s all very Orky.
The Gretchin Gun Shop uses a bit of hardboard for the base, some corrugated cardboard for the walls, bits of old pens and medicinal sprays for the turret, and spaghetti for the bullets.
That’s right, I chopped up dry spaghetti for the piles of bullet casings. Don’t worry if they’re not of equal length or if they break skew. This is terrain, so it’s not worth stressing over if it’s just going to sit on the tabletop. It’ll look fine when you paint it.
In fact, you don’t want your terrain to outshine your models, so you have loads of leeway when crafting and painting something like this.
The guns and potato-mashers were made from bits of sprue and toy guns I had lying around. The knife was a bit of plastic card cut to shape, with cord glued to the handle. I twisted bits of thin wire around the weapons and then glued them to the walls.
Hold on though, I want to talk about effort more.
I knocked the main shape of this out in my lunch break, then spent another two hours or so on the details. Painting was quick too. I started this on Friday and was done by Sunday evening. It was a slap-dash paint job done in bad light, but I’m happy enough to have more Orky terrain. Which is the point: you don’t need to spend hours and hours on terrain pieces.
Heck, you don’t even need to spend loads of time on your miniatures.
A little effort is better than no effort. A little colour is better than grey plastic. The terrain you have is better than the terrain you don’t have.
So just go for it. Make stuff. Don’t let expectations of quality hold you back.
Take a look at your favourite RPG setting and you’ll find odd similarities with theme parks. These settings can easily kill your group’s story if you’re not careful. Here’s why theme park settings are so popular, their inherent pitfalls, and some ideas on how to fix them.
Why RPG Settings Feel Like Theme Parks
RPG designers, by necessity, need to give players plenty to play with. That’s why Golarion, Faerûn, the Mortal Realms, and even the mega-city of Ravnica are so cleanly divided into areas. It’s as if they were designed by a theme park designer. There’s usually a hot place, a dry place, a wet place, a funny magic place. There’s also often some form of Steampunk City, Pirate Island, Monkey Kingdom, Dragon Mountain, Asia Land, Snake Jungle… and the list goes on, covering all the tropes.
This is a good thing. GMs need options, players want to explore their favourite tropes, and RPG writers don’t want either of them to go looking elsewhere for their fun.
Unfortunately, all these choices can destroy a coherent story.
How Theme Park Settings Destroy Stories
Image your party heads to Tian Xia, the East Asian themed lands of Pathfinder’s Golarion. On the way there they stop off in the Mwangi Expanse (lush jungles) and take a session to explore the deep oceans around the Isle of Kortos.
Have magical portals, can travel.
Finally, the party gets to Tian Xia and they’re off to see an important diplomat. The encounter, an important setup for the rest of the campaign, has little buildup. The party have been in their bikinis or deep in the jungle for a few sessions now, with no time to dip their feet into the deep culture Tian Xia represents. As a result, your carefully prepared roleplaying encounter falls flat with the players missing vital cultural and historic clues dropped by the diplomat.
Bummer.
How to Fix Theme Park RPG Settings
One thing I love about the Game of Thrones setting is that the fantasy elements are relatively limited. I’d argue the same about the Lord of the Rings: there are no drow, flumphs, owlbears, or beholders. You could fit the LotR bestiary into one book. Both settings still have their worlds, but they’re doing more with less.
Similarly, you can get more out of the many options modern RPG settings present by picking and choosing. It’s that simple. Give it a try.
Check out the Battle Zoo Bestiary
The Battle Zoo Bestiary, for Pathfinder 2e and 5e, is now on Kick Starter. The book features many new monsters, so you’re sure to find some great additions to your campaign world. Remember, you can always reskin a monster to turn it into a variant of something prevalent in your world, which is one neat trick for keeping things simple.