There's a bit of news this week, but the big thing is all the D&D Monster Manual previews. Morrus, Jess, and PJ cover WotC's firehose of PR for the book over the last week! QI Mentions The Diana Jones Awards Diamond Comic Distributors Files Bankruptcy, Sells Alliance Game Distributors Polygon: Indie TTRPG Companies are "sitting in their own little corners of the internet and wringing their hands" WizKids to Release Glow-in-the-Dark D&D Miniatures A Time Traveler's Guide to Dinosaur Hunting Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual 2024 Preview Monster Manual Suggests Changes Are Coming to Some Playable Species More New Monsters From 2025 Monster Manual Revealed Monster Manual Previews Reveal New Statblocks Monster Manual Previews Reveal New Empyrean, Half Dragon, Cyclops, and Animal Lords Monster Manual 2025 Undead Video Monster Manual 2025 Monstrosities Video 2024 Monster Manual: Monstrosities Art Monster Manual Stat Block Compilation
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris's unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, aka Morris, or Morris, aka Russ, and with me this week is...
PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Role Players. Russ, as ever, I am delighted to be here and joining us now. Some have claimed that she's artificially intelligent, but I say it's all the real thing. She is the acme of digital perfection. She's the one. She's the only.
It's... It's me, Jessica from EM Publishing. What an intro. Thank you very much.
Hmm. That would be quite good fun if it turned out that you were in fact a robot.
For who?
Well, for me.
Might be a bit of a Blade Runner experience for me, you know.
Yeah, I suppose so.
Have you had a good week?
Yes, it's been quite nice, thank you.
Yeah, launched the Gatepass Gazette annual on Backerkit, which is the first time we've done a Backerkit crowdfunding campaign. And people backed it. Which is good.
I am enjoying this. I'm pleased for you. This is good. At least four people backed it.
Possibly more. Yes, it is more than four.
It is more than four.
Yeah.
very very generous people okay shall we dive into some news because we've got a big week this week mainly about the upcoming dnd monster manual that's the big topic this week um because the whole publicity machine's kind of geared up now and it's all coming out like the big old fire hose of sort of monster manual news has been sort of spraying all over the internet but before that i thought we could do a couple of bits of non-dnd news
And then do the Monster Manual stuff afterwards. How does that sound? Like a plan?
Sounds like a plan.
Okay. Right. Let's start with... Well, this is an interesting one. So there was an article recently by Polygon, which got a bit of pushback on social media.
Mm-hmm.
kind of in two minds about it i get why there was pushback but i also get why the situation is like it is being you know i publish news as well so i get it but basically it was um a longish article mainly talking about some of the missteps that dnd has taken over the last few years ogl um you know various controversies they've been involved i mean if if i might
read out the headline that might help people get some context for what's going on uh it's time for independent tabletop role-playing games to get loud subtitle the dragon is wounded and it's time to throw yourselves into the breach which is gonna ruffle some feathers
Well, it's the article more than the headline.
I imagine the article perhaps reflects the headline. That's why I'm saying how these things are supposed to work. But I interrupted. Please, please tell us more.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm being invaded by dogs yet again, as often happens on this show. So there's a general look at sort of the current state of D&D and it's a critical look. It's a D&D's not doing great at the moment kind of look in terms of controversies and things like that.
Then it goes on to talk about indie creators and kind of criticizes them for, and I quote, sitting in their own little corners of the internet and wringing their hands. rather than being heard. Which was a phrase which a lot of indie creators did take exception to.
Yes, I can see a few indie creators on this very screen. Yes.
Every indie creator would love to have their...
uh content on polygon and other sort of uh are they mainstream they're not sort of mainstream in the sense that the daily mail is but they are a lot more yeah yeah um so i i use the word mainstream then uh mainstream um sites they would absolutely love to have their stuff featured on sites like this and frequently they do send out press releases and things like that to these main sites
without getting a response or yeah so you know it's not like they're not trying yeah yeah like um rascal for instance is uninterested in things that don't affect north america um which yeah oh yeah yeah no um they they're just not interested it's like reached out myself um i know some people who've reached out with quite impressive stuff like um
basically an indie role playing game with quite a bit of community behind it. And they've also been rejected in fairly uncompromising terms.
I mean, Rascal is kind of more like Enworld. It's more of a niche indie sort of size site rather than like the polygons and IO nines and the really big sort of pop culture, proper mainstream size.
But when the indie role-playing game site is rejecting your articles, it's like, well, what are you going to do? How are you going to get the gumption to speak to Ian Wells or indeed the Polygons? Yeah.
Well, yeah, I mean, like, as I said, I can see it from the other side, because we at EN World, we will get like dozens and dozens of sort of, I'm not sure what the word is, but you know, press releases, reach out to us dozens and dozens of times a day. And there's just literally no way we can cover it all. It's just impossible. It is a firehose. It's so much stuff.
um there's there's like you know new Kickstarters every single day there's new games because more games more than one game a day coming out you know it's yeah and so I get it I get it but it's it's really unfair to put that back on the indie Creator yeah in their press release who's reaching out who's doing what they can it's not really I don't think it's on the indie Creator saying hey you're not doing enough because I
Most indie creators I know are trying really hard to promote their game and to get it out there. But like PJ was saying earlier, they don't have the same budgets that Hasbro and D&D have or indeed other bigger sites because you can't just drop five, ten grand on a marketing campaign when you're running your company.
And even a five, ten grand marketing campaign isn't much. It's not a lot of reach.
Yeah, especially compared to D&D. I was thinking even in the indie world, that is five or ten grand on a marketing campaign is quite a lot.
Yeah. But I was just going to say, just from this article about indie games mentions D&D something like 20 odd times and then mentions one indie game, Mothership.
Yeah.
And it's kind of like the article itself is an illustration of the problem because it's not talking about indie games. It's talking about D&D with one mention of Mothership.
Yeah. And Mothership is a great game.
It's an amazing game. It's a fantastic game. But the point is, the article should be filled with references to indie games, given the subject nature of the article. But it's not.
It's incredibly difficult to get any traction in this regard. The default setting for Made Conversations is to refer to things in terms of D&D, because it's especially fifth edition. It is the lingua franca, the common language. And persuading indie RPG creators to not talk about things in terms of D&D is challenging, to say the least. Basically, the problem is one of anchoring.
From the news publishing point of view, I also get it because people don't read the non-D&D stuff. You put up, I mean, we published quite a lot of non-D&D stuff because we kind of feel like it's our mission. That's our job. But the non-D&D stuff, people don't read it. You know, I mean, some people do, obviously.
But, you know, in terms of scale, like a D&D article will get a hundred times the eyeballs that a non-D&D article or more, a thousand times the eyeballs that a non-D&D article will.
I have an entire podcast, not D&D, where we talk about different indie things this week. And yeah.
Yeah. I mean, that is the nature of it.
The numbers aren't coming through on that. So it's, yeah.
So I get it from all sides. I just feel that the article was just totally off.
Yeah. I will say that back in the bad old days when I was working in sales, they were very clear to me that if I was going to talk to people, what I didn't do was I didn't mention the competition. Because if you mention the competition, then people think about your product in terms of the competition. Because then they're thinking about competitors, not about what you're selling.
I do try and explain that, but I am one small persistent.
We are talking about a news site here, though, not a publisher.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the publisher's job to mention the competition and to put everything into a context and to make sure that they cover the whole story.
yeah i i'm saying like there are things that in the publishers could do better but really we do need to be met halfway by like you know the ian wells the polygons the io9s uh the game uh screen rants you know they need to up their game as well we can't all rely on the financial times to carry our work yeah but yeah such is the nature of um well branding i guess and big brands and
We are but one-tenth of a percent of the pie that is D&D.
Indeed.
If that. If that. And that's just how it is, unfortunately.
Well, there we go.
Yeah. Right, shall we move on?
Yeah. What other news have we got?
That feels very doom and gloomy, but I would say it's still actually a fairly good time to be an indie. tabletop role playing. Which I don't know how it has been.
Don't get me wrong. With the advent of crowdfunding and things like that, it's an amazing time to be an indie rager.
Yeah. And there are more customers out there than ever before. It's just harder to get across them. Just reach them. Yes.
And there's also more creators out there than ever before as well. So, of course, it's also harder to stand out from the crowd because there's so much competition out there for basically eyeballs. And it's not just other creators that you're competing with. You're competing with the whole of the Internet. You're competing with cat pictures and you're competing with all sorts of things.
How am I meant to compete with a cat picture?
Exactly.
I'm setting myself up for failure right there.
Yeah, exactly. Or you could combine the two, which we might talk about a little later, D&D and cat pictures.
Okay. I thought you were about to announce Jessica was going to be doing future versions of not D&D whilst wearing cat ears, which I'm sure would have an effect on audience numbers.
I do have antlers and fawn ears.
Still not a cat.
It's not a cat, but it isn't an animal.
I'm not sure I particularly recognise a fawn ear as opposed to a cat ear.
No, you would.
Your biological recognition deficit decides for us.
I showed you last week on this very stream.
Size-wise, yes, but because they'll be scaled up anyway, won't they? They're not going to be cat-sized cat ears.
If we're not segueing into talking about the D&D news that includes animals, should we mention some other news? Yes. As we're in the doom and gloom side of things, shall we stay in that side of things?
All right, and then we'll move on to a slightly more cheerful thing.
All right, let's talk about bankruptcy.
Okay.
Bankruptcy is always fun. I mean, obviously, this isn't great. But yeah, so Diamond Comics own kind of Alliance game distribution in a very roundabout way. Alliance games distribution is a North American. I believe in other parts of the world as well, but they're very big in North America, I know. distributor of toys, games, including role-playing games.
And they are being sold because the parent company, which is Diamond Comics, are going bankrupt. Which kind of sucks for everybody that works there because when things are sold and things go bankrupt, that obviously creates job uncertainty. And also, I know a lot of stores use Alliance to get all the latest games and stuff for their distribution. So...
So this will impact a lot of people, so that's a shame. But it looks like Alliance is being purchased by Universal Distribution and Universal are a distributor in North America as well. So maybe that will just become part of that. Yes.
Yeah. So Alliance owes a lot of people a lot of money. Yes. Oh.
um so in the tabletop gaming segment i mean obviously diamond is a comics book distributor mainly yes um the alliance part of it is a small part of the whole um but it owes wizards the coast nearly a million dollars wow um hasbro separately to wizard the coast um because you know obviously comics toys all sorts of stuff that they handle uh over a million dollars wow
Catalyst Game Labs, which is Battletech, Shadowrun, things like that. Nearly half a million dollars. There's a whole bunch of tabletop gaming. I know they own Paizo some money. They own... Monty Cook Games was on the list, something some money. So there's a... A lot of sort of mid-tier tabletop RPG companies are going to be affected by this.
And significantly so. I mean, $2 million or $1 billion turnover, it's like, yeah, it's annoying. It's a problem. But yeah, it's not going to be the end of the world. Half a million when you're making significantly less than that, that is a big worry for Catalyst Game Labs, I'm sure. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like things like Penguin Random House, they owe like nearly 10 million and things like that. So I like the tip of the gaming. You look at the full list of the sort of top 30 creditors. Now, some of them are way, way much bigger. That's so it's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah.
When money gets to that level, it just stops making sense to me because I can't stop being just numb. Yeah, it's wild because it's not money that I would ever have in my hands.
You can't relate it to anything. You can't relate it to your house or your car or anything like that because it's so much bigger than even those things, which are the biggest things that you will ever own.
I don't even own either of those things. That's the scale I'm at.
Also that.
But, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully everybody that's owed money on that, they're able to move over to Universal and get their stock moving and get paid that way. Hopefully that resolves. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, this is a thing that will affect the North American tabletop industry.
Yes. So Chapter 11 bankruptcy isn't the worst type of insolvency. It's one that could be used to restructure and things like that. It's not the worst situation it could be.
Okay.
It's not everything's gone. Nobody's getting any money. Goodbye. It's not great. It's not great.
But as bankruptcies go, it's the least bad, maybe.
Lesser of the two evils sort of thing, if that makes any sense whatsoever.
Well, I'm glad there's less evil.
Yeah.
But anyway, that was my other sad news whilst we were on the not-so-positive side of things. Does anyone have anything positive?
Yeah. Should I do something a little bit more cheerful?
Yes.
QI. We all know what QI is, don't we?
Maybe not everyone on the internet does. You think so?
The TV show currently hosted by Sandy Toksvig. Oh, okay. Panel show basically about obscure knowledge, quite interesting facts and information. That's right. Yeah. Well, they mentioned the Diana Jones Award.
Which is a niche thing to mention.
Which is a niche thing to actually mention, yeah. So the Diana Jones Awards is one of the tabletop gaming awards. Happens every year just before Gen Con and it's awarded to one person, company, game, convention, event, concept, as has happened before each year.
I know that QI is a bit behind the times, though. Well, they're talking about the Diana Jones, which is obviously mentioning the etymology, which is that it's a burnt, partially burnt copy of the Indiana Jones role playing game that got burnt, but it's failed to keep up the times and notes that for the past couple of years it's been missing in action.
Yes, the actual award statuette, that pyramid there with the burnt copy inside it got lost in the post, basically. Missing, presumed eaten by a moose. Yes, yeah. I think it was going from Canada to America. I can't remember exactly.
I think it was like somebody had it in Canada, they tried to send it off and then, I don't know, it was a... We lead by wild bears.
I'm just wondering if somebody somewhere has found it or come across it somehow. Don't know what it is. Thought that was quite nice. And they've got it on their mantelpiece somewhere. No idea what this thing is. And it's just sitting there in some mantelpiece in North America somewhere.
I think it's most likely in landfill I imagine it got lost in the post some I mean I hate to say it but statistically most lost post ends up in some Depot in the wrong place stays there for a bit then it passes an amount of time and they just throw it out wow yeah which is depressing but is what happens so I still think it's very cool that QI mentioned it though It is. Yes, it is. It is.
That's a positive piece of news. Thank you.
But it's not every day that Morris' official tabletop RPG talk will be ahead of QI. So I think we should take a moment to feel stuck.
I think, I would say, if it's related to tabletop role-playing games, I think we would be every time.
Ahead of QI.
I feel confident saying that.
Unless QI were to release the official QITT RPG.
Hopefully they'll send us a press release.
I have no idea how that would work.
You know who they should send it to? Polygon. Because if they're doing it, they should talk about it.
They should.
Yeah.
I hear that's all the rage nowadays.
Yeah, apparently so.
Right.
What other news have we got? I've got something that might cheer you up. Yeah. I like things that cheer me up.
Well, I was happily minding my own business, cheerfully humming and whoring around on the old blue sky and so forth. When I came across this link here, a time traveler's guide to dinosaur hunting. Wow. I mean, I didn't really have much choice at this point, did I? I had to click through. It is four fifth edition, but you know what it is?
It's nearly 600 pages across two books of dinosaurs, pictures, stat blocks, the whole nine yards in full colour. I'm like, I bet I know someone who'd like that.
I would like that.
I also would quite like it. it's very shiny i like i like a dinosaur wow this has many all right favorite dinosaur quick off the top i'm gonna say ankylosaur i like a pterodactyl i'm a stegosaurus myself stegosaurus is good i i mean i i i did i was uh again humming and hollering about various things and now just like you know what
My wife keeps on describing the Anglosaur has an armoured coffee table. I'm like, what on earth is true? With a tail with a big spiked club on the end of it. Well, like we said, an armoured coffee table. Do your coffee tables not have big spiked clubs and tails? Why wouldn't you have? Yeah.
No, they do not. I'm clumsy. I walk into things constantly.
Well, Jessica, we've established that yours don't because you're supposed to have knots.
Of course.
Anyway, anyway. Yeah, no, this looks awesome. This does look awesome. What's this? The insatiable undead gigantosaurus roams the desolate tar fields of Lodros. Wow. Hunting fresh brains.
Yeah, yeah. It's at this time of recording, Friday 17th January. It is three days into the Kickstarter. It's £155,000 against £8,000. Wow. $190,000 shorter than a $10,000 goal. And yeah, it's taken off like nobody's business. Wow.
Nice. And in January as well, which typically the crowdfunding is a little bit more of a conservative time.
So because everyone's and going directly up against the monster monster book going directly up against the monster manual as well. So it's doing really well.
I mean, you're saying that. But if you go buy a monster book, then having 300 dinosaurs and prehistoric monsters, cyborg dinosaurs, mutant dinosaurs, alien dinosaurs, Eldritch horrors. I don't ventures.
I mean, I haven't seen the full monster manual for 2025 from D and D, but I feel confident saying it will not have that many dinosaurs.
I feel that Time Traveler's Guide to Dinosaurs does have them beat and Saurian heritages. One thing I did notice, which might appeal to the Ark Survival Evolved computer game fans, is it does have quite a crafting system attached to it.
don't have the details but crafting systems are always very exciting for people and it's I imagine there's a gameplay loop of find the dinosaur kill the dinosaur take the bits make better weapons to help you find and kill further dinosaurs more diamonds yeah I mean the plot is just writing itself at that point I have to say I'm I'm down I'm down well I'm gonna back that
That was a good bit of news.
I wasn't going to back anything in January.
The link is in the comments of the live stream or in the show notes of the podcast, however you are consuming it.
Spend some money.
Daryl Jones over at Splatterdink.com, you are very welcome. Yeah.
Wow. I noticed that some of those dinosaurs appear to be glowing slightly. All right.
I've picked up on the segue.
You've picked up on the segue, have you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So wouldn't it be great if you could have miniatures that glowed slightly? Well, yes. How useful would that be?
That would be wonderful. Well, wouldn't you know, have I got a piece of news for you to organically bring up in this conversation?
The dark miniatures.
Yeah. WizKids are releasing glow-in-the-dark D&D minis. Yeah.
Yeah.
We have an image of a very cool Underdark one covered in mushrooms.
Yeah. So these are a set called Underdark Expeditions, because I guess it's quite dark down there. So if you're going to glow in the dark, you might as well do it in the Underdark.
Yes, that makes sense.
Glow in the Underdark. Yeah. And it's going to have like gelatinous cubes, flumps, hook horrors, gas balls, things like that. And they're all going to glow in the dark. Nice.
I mean, for the benefits of those who are not watching our YouTube live stream, I think it's YouTube.
It's everywhere. It's on YouTube, on Facebook, and it's on Twitch as well. I'm not sure if it's on Twitch. It's around places.
Yes. Either way, those who are listening via the audio format, which I heartily recommend, what we're looking at is we're looking at like if an egg had ridges and an eyeball and was covered in a web of green tendrils which are glowing in the dark and then From that egg sprang a variety of green-capped mushrooms. What is that? I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
What is it?
I can describe it. It's like a beholder, but instead of eye stalks, it's got mushroom stalks.
Yeah, I don't know what that is.
Undisputed Beholder is my best guess, and that's probably wrong. I think from the, I can't see the bottom of it, but it looks like it's supposed to be floating along in a cloud of presumably noxious gas. Ice green is my understanding of that, so yeah. Maybe that's the gas spore they talked about. Well, that's significantly more intimidating than any gas spore I've ever seen.
I had the impression of those children's partly filled helium balloons when they're just walking along and then they explode. That's always been my understanding of fungal spores. I could be wrong. This one has a certain malevolently intelligent look about it. Either way, not ideal for the player to see across the table. They'll be like, oh, no, I don't like it.
Well, this set has 44 go in the dark miniatures. So between 4 and 16? Hmm?
44. 44. Oh, 44, right. 44, not 44.
I heard 44 as well, PJ, so I'm glad you made the joke on the reference there.
I literally thought Russ was saying 44, so I was just super confused.
That's a new take on randomised collectibles. You don't even know how many you'll get.
16 small ones and some mixed in between. They're on my way now.
Yeah, you just go to the table, roll your dice, get what you get.
Like a booster pack for magic or something.
Yeah.
You don't know what's in it until you open it. Yeah, sure. I think that's a terrible idea.
What you don't want to do is put these around your bedroom. Because you would never get to sleep at night with like 44 glow-in-the-dark, basically horrific monsters just staring at you while you're trying to sleep. That would never be happening. But anyway.
Yeah.
Right. What's next?
Well, I don't have much to talk about beyond the big news of Dungeons & Dragons because the Monster Manual is coming out. And like you said, the PR hype train is fully on now. So that's mostly what I have to talk about.
So shall we take a quick break? Yes. And then when we come back, we'll do the Monster Manual. We are back! So, I've got some good news for you, Jess.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, you're going to like this. Oh. So, we're about to talk about the Monster Manual.
We are.
But, before we do that, there was a press event by Wizards of the Coast, mainly about the Monster Manual. And Beth from EN World went to this press event, and it started with a presentation by Jess Lanzillo, who's the VP of D&D Franchise and Products over at Wizards of the Coast.
and before this is before they dove into the monster manual they just talked about what the business of g d in general briefly there were a couple of tidbits in that one of which mentioned your favorite thing in the entire world i do know what you're talking about now yes yes please carry on though so about escape three this is the way we talk about boulders gate three this week on the podcast as we do every week
Yeah, we found some circular way to get around to it. But there's going to be some new subclasses.
I know.
I know. I don't know what they are or when that will be. Apart from it will be 2025. But it's happening. How happy does this make you feel?
It's good. I still have so much to explore in this game. Just yesterday, I started my first ever honor mode run on the game. Honor what? Yeah, honor mode. So that's the highest difficulty setting. You only have one save. So if you die, you just die. There's no going back. There's no scum saving. There's no nothing. And it's very challenging.
I would find that very frustrating, I think.
Yes, it is very, I've done the tactician one, which is like the hard mode, but this is like another level. There's no saving. If you fluff a dice roll, people die. I've already killed Gail by accident on a bad dice roll, just immediately died. And that was it. It's not forgiving. But yes.
Okay. Okay.
So anyway, that means all the subclasses and stuff we're getting in the 2025 D&D stuff is going to be put into Baldur's Gate. That is a bit of news you're sharing.
Yes.
Cool.
I thought it would make you happy.
It does make me happy. Thank you very much.
We talked about another couple of bits and pieces before talking about the Monster Emanuel. Oh, yes. The Monster Emanuel. So the 2014... Coral books way back 10 years ago in 2014. Yes. So over three years sold the same as the 2024 Coral books have today. Wow. Which is astonishing.
That's a lot of books. That is a lot of books. Have they said how many books?
No. Okay. um that is something you could probably dig into and find out but um i don't know how many books that is i'm thinking like a couple of warehouses for you know definitely more than four
Definitely. I'm thinking probably like those Indiana Jones.
Maybe eight or nine books, maybe. Oh, that many? That many.
You might get a medal on DriveThruRPG for the number of books.
Yes. What's under copper? Tin. There is nothing under copper. anyway yeah i thought that was interesting um um they they say that the things that they credit to this massive growth is things like stranger things they credit honor among thieves the movie to it um okay obviously has uh helped grow the audience i know when you say like one of among these i mean on cinema scales it didn't do that well
But that doesn't mean that on D&D scales, that wasn't a lot of eyeballs seeing stuff about D&D that would not have normally seen stuff about D&D.
That's true. That's true. I wondered how many people watched that movie that hadn't played D&D. I wonder if you know what I mean?
It was presented as a mainstream Chris Pine Guardians of the Galaxy-esque comedy, wasn't it? Yeah.
I can only speak anecdotally, but I can say that, like, There's a fairly regular stream of people saying, oh, I've just seen Horror Amongst Thieves. This Dungeons and Dragons thing looks quite interesting. It's happened quite a bit. I mean, it's not like a lot of people. It's just like my single observations. I am just a single observer. But yeah, it does happen.
Yeah. So also, this is quite interesting. They mentioned that they have 85 plus million global fans. Notice this is not 85 plus million players. This is people who have seen the film, who've interacted with the brand in some way, watched Stranger Things. All the different ways you can interact with D&D. Novels, films, TV shows, cartoons, video games.
No attempt has been made to say whether there's any double counting or not, because how would you? You can maybe do some surveys or something. Okay, but we'll take 85 million just as a...
it's a number as good as any yeah well i mean how many people played baldur's gate three for example they're all counted that's a good few million i'm sure oh yeah absolutely just that one game on its own let alone all the other things that that's just me playing it many times that's just you playing it 85 million times yeah yeah this is talking on multiple computers playing them all simultaneously on tactician mode that's just what she does to relax nowadays
It's like all these walls just filled with different walls of screens, all with different instances of Baldur's Gate 3.
It's both terrifying and slightly intriguing.
Set up for a LAN party. Now I just need friends.
Let's go LAN party. I do find it amusing, especially coming from Jess. I can't be bothered learning complex rules, Hancock especially. What? Oh, I could never learn how to GM. I could never learn the rules for D&D. It's far too complicated. Yes, you did.
I do. Yeah. All right. I run games now. I haven't done it for a while. Yes, you do. No, I did last month. I ran games last month. There we go.
Yeah. All right. Sorry. I have derailed the conversation. I apologise.
Yeah, a little bit.
On this podcast...
That's not the sort of thing we do. We're so professional.
Shall we talk about Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual 2020?
I just want to do the last little stat that they threw in there. Okay. The last little stat was D&D Beyond now has more than 19 million registered users.
It's more than Level Up Gateway.
Considerably more than Level Up Gateway. Yeah. But that's only because Level Up Gateway is just in private alpha testing.
That's the reason. Yeah. As soon as it opens up, we'll have 19 million. Yeah, straight away. Absolutely.
The journey to 19 million users begins with just a simple move to the open beta.
Indeed, indeed. Yeah.
That's a lot of people. I mean, that's not subscribers. No. Not necessarily paying users. There's a free tier on D&D Beyond, and that'll be the bulk of it. 19 million is a lot.
that is a lot yeah yeah i mean my account's a free account i haven't got a i'm not a subscriber i think i have one i haven't used it in years but i used to so maybe and i bought the thing i bought the dragon lance book and that's it you do like to lance dragons i do like to lance a good dragon no a bad dragon i like that's evil dragons
Oh, sorry.
I don't like to announce the good dragons.
I apologise.
That would be bad.
I apologise.
Right, where are we? Let me get the Monster Manual then. Okay, let's do the Monster Manual. Ta-da! A lot of information about the Monster Manual.
So it's coming out in like a month now.
I don't even know where to start. It's like this fire hose of information here.
It is.
I think this is going to be a little bit scattered, but hey.
So it's coming out on the 18th of February. Is that correct?
Mm-hmm.
Great.
Correct. And that's, is that a mainstream release? So it will come out two weeks before in hobby stores in America.
Mm-hmm. Which will be the 4th of February, I think I want to say. Definitely early February.
this soon very soon yeah um yeah so um they had this big press event and they went through the monster manual with people from various outlets youtubers all sorts of different people were there as a big thing um and they went into quite a bit of detail so um they reiterated like the 85 new monsters that are going to be in there
in addition to the ones that we're familiar with already, bringing up to a total of 500 odd. There's a lot of monsters. There's a lot of monsters. And some of these were sort of like the primeval owlbear, which is a really nasty version of the owlbear. The blob of annihilation. Which sounds nasty. The Vampire Nightbringer, which I think is an even more powerful vampire.
Is that the Blob of Annihilation? No, that's the holder of some kind. That's an under-beholder. I don't know.
I have some images here.
We've seen the cover of the Monster Manual. Is that the Primeval Oddbear?
It's a picture of an oddbear I have.
Looks a bit cute, to be honest. Looks a little bit cute.
I know. If not friend, we're friend-shaped.
Yeah. Except that beak is jagged.
Yeah, but he's smiling with teeth.
Cercerated, which is a function which helps avoid things from escaping from the beak forwards, so that they only go backwards to exit from the so-called south mouth.
So your love and friendship will never leave it.
Yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway. And the haunting reverend. We can see the art for that. That's the house. The haunting revenant.
That looks like a werewolf to me.
No, there's a piece of art that's like a revenant that's a house. That's it. Ah, yes. I love that piece of art. That is amazing. We've basically got a house where two windows are glowing as eyes and then the bottom half of it is like opening up like a mouth.
Yeah, Tudor timber framed... meets Ghostbusters with a lot of jaggedy timber teeth and so forth.
Yeah.
That's pretty good. That's a strong one.
And as well as the images, also stats for lots of monsters have been revealed as well. So we have some stats to discuss and.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one thing they said about this is that there's a lot more high level stuff in here compared to the 2014 book. So I've still got all the usual low level stuff that the 2014 book had, but they've added a whole bunch of high level stuff. I guess the, I mean, I know that sometimes like D&D did get sort of like criticism for not supporting high level play.
And there's that sort of chicken or the egg situation. Is that because people don't play it or do people not play high level play because it's not supported or what? I don't know the answer to that. We've got a question. Oh, people are watching. Amazing. Yeah, they are new monsters. Yeah, there are new monsters like this Haunting Revenant that you can see on screen right now.
It's a brand new monster. Jonathan Nassar asked that question. Are the monsters just old monsters but with different templates applied? Yeah, yeah, 85 new monsters. I mean, I imagine some of them will be variants, to be fair.
Yeah.
I suppose that counts as a version of an existing monster, I guess. I guess. But that Haunting Revenant, I love. I love that. It's just amazing. I want to use that in my... I just like... Just the art. I just want to use that monster.
Yeah.
You meet in a tavern, but there's a twist.
I'm assuming it's got speed. Oh, no, it's got speed. At 30 feet, it can move. It can be cased by a house.
Yeah. That's why it's terrifying.
Yeah. Indeed. Listener Michael Shine does note that the Haunting Revenant does explain why the Baba Yaga's hut has legs.
time when it needs to run away yeah or in this case pursue adventurers at high speed yeah yeah i mean other new creatures we have sphinxes of wonder which we had the artwork for um last week on i don't know if i have it on this they're like little painted cats but yeah i mean pretty much yeah look like painted cats i don't think i've got this week for that
And there's also, as you mentioned, the blob of annihilation. I don't have the artwork there for that, but it's a high CR ooze threat. So there is new stuff in the book. And obviously all the old stuff as well has had a tweak with the stats and things like that.
Yeah. One of the other things they've done, and this is a brilliant idea, I don't know where they got it from, but they've included tables of random fluff text to be applied to each creature. For example, the gelatinous cube I'm looking at right now, you roll D6 and it says what's floating in the cube.
It could be a chest or a recently trapped mimic or a key to a nearby door or coffer, a remarkable weapon in need of repair, a skeleton belonging to a famous adventurer, a tablet bearing a mysterious message. So it's like contextual tables of information along with each monster. It's an amazing idea.
Yes, incredibly good idea. You know what, they could have gone the extra mile. And maybe this just like crazy idea. Hear me out. But I know stuff like Rangers. Yeah, they have advantage on intelligence and wisdom checks to determine information about like, you know, certain enemies, right?
Do you know, I don't have actually seen any evidence that there's knowledge checks in there. There might be but I haven't seen them if and they haven't been mentioned.
like you know i mean that's the extra mile it'd be like if they had some sort of i don't know tables where you could get information about the monsters that maybe the rangers could roll for that would be for or even yeah i don't think i don't think that's in there i don't think it is you'd have to look in uh in different different books for that i think yeah
Yeah. So we got here, we got a... So we previewed the Ancient Gold Dragon, I think it was last week, but we only had the left half of the stat block last week. We've now got the full stat block and also some notes about how it's different to the old one. And this is like the stat block format. You can see the different... I mean, we've covered a lot of this stuff already, to be honest. Yeah.
But it's all kind of compiled into one kind of image. So you can see the initiative modifier at the top there. which is a very useful idea. I like that. You can see the new layout, the stat modifiers and the saves. You can see how traits and actions are separated into different sections with headers now. Different phraseology, like they're using the term D20 test.
Yeah.
One thing that I have noticed is spells are So if you look at these stat blocks, all it does is tell you that they can cast a spell, but you still have to go and look it up somewhere else.
Flipping back and forth. Do they at least give you ribbon bookmarks?
The mark of a truly high quality product.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you see this dragon. You see this dragon. You can see what spells it's got, you know, detect magic and guiding bolt and things like that. But you've got to go and look those spells up elsewhere.
Hmm.
Yeah.
One thing I do notice, which is maybe more of a metadata sort of thing, is it mentions, just on the right-hand side, the second one from the bottom, new legendary actions, crowd control, ranged attack, mobility, and melee attacks.
which is a use of language which I find quite intriguing because that's the sort of language that you will come across quite frequently if you are looking through Reddit forums and so forth and shows heavy influence in the world of MMORPGs. So I'm just looking at that and thinking, okay, so that's a bit of a departure for them to actually explicitly use that text in a customer facing context.
Yeah.
I don't think there's anything wrong with them taking, you know, learning lessons from other, you know, mediums.
I don't at all either. I do find it interesting that they are bringing it in because I think that was a criticism that was, rightly or wrongly, often levelled at 4th edition. So it's interesting to see that sort of language starting to make a comeback.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not in the book itself, it doesn't look like.
It's just that sort of, like, infographic.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I think there's been a few different, like, Bloodied is back. in the hit points. I don't think, they don't actually mention it in the stat block there, but bloodied as a condition is back. We know that. And that's at half hit points. And like in 4e and level up advanced 5e, it doesn't do anything itself.
It's just a trigger for other things, which possibly an ability that can only be used when bloodied or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
A coup for, say, elite monsters to switch into their more powerful form and go extra berserk, which I must say I have rather enjoyed using.
Yeah. There's one other thing they're doing. Like, each entry has a little kind of byline. Each monster has a byline. Just kind of like a one sentence that tells you what the monster is before it delves into the whole page of fluff text. So, for example, the gargoyle is a sculpted sentinel hidden in plain sight. And I think that's quite useful and quite cool.
Yeah, we're flashing through on the screen a whole bunch of stat blocks here because I put a little compilation together of all of the different stat blocks that have been previewed so far. There's been like, I don't know, like eight or 10 of them or something so far. And we'll put a link in the show notes. So wherever you're watching this, we will put a link in the show notes.
You can go and see these actual stat blocks, because there's quite a few of them. And you can sort of see how these things actually manifest. Just Digital Alchemist Q, for example, that little table I was referring to. Yeah.
Yeah. It's so nice to see that they've updated the artwork as well. All of the artwork's redone.
Yes, yes, yes. And there's a lot. Sorry, Jess, go on.
No, no, I was going to say I've got artwork for some of the new monsters as well because we were talking about that earlier.
So one thing they said about their approach to the artwork is in the 2014 book they had what's called hero shots, which is kind of like you see the monster but not on a background, not in a context. It's just a monster. In this book, every monster is shown in a context. So it's like doing something or is somewhere. So it's not like just the isolated image of the monster.
Yeah, it's not like a shambling skeleton and that's your skeleton. It's like you'd have a skeleton in a dungeon, say.
I don't know if that's better or worse. It's just a design choice. Either way is fine. I mean, the artwork does look amazing.
I mean, yeah, there's the half dragon. It looks really cool. I thought that was interesting because they look different from Dragonborn. So they are kind of a humanoid dragon, but very different design to Dragonborn. And they're not a playable character race. They are a monster to kind of fight.
They're more dragon like than Dragonborn, aren't they?
Yeah. I was thinking it was very odd choice to have A red dragon that looked like it had been a steroid sort of thing.
That is one hench red dragon.
Yeah. Like I say, it has not skipped leg day either. It deals an average of 29 points of damage when using its multi attack action.
Wow. I'd ruin your day, wouldn't it?
It would ruin my day. I'm like an NPC with like four hit points. I would be gone.
Yes, absolutely.
I'm just a village townsfolk, the local bookseller. Four hit points.
Yeah, I mean, we'd just be one shot the lot of us. That's it, game over.
Absolutely. We also have, I was just going through some new ones. We have some Cyclops as well.
Complete with realistic armpit hair.
Yes, which we'd love to see. Yeah, CR of 10 and Radiant Strike melee attack.
What is interesting is that everything is in alphabetical order in this book. It's not like before they had NPCs and animals in separate sections. They literally just put everything in alphabetical order. So if you're looking for a cultist, you just look at C in the book. You don't go to the appendix and then look in the NPCs and look for C there.
Or if you're looking for, say, a Maralith, you're now looking at M.
instead of demons, sort of thing. Yeah.
Which I can understand the joys of that and so forth. I think for some things it makes sense. Some things like oozes, for example, they call those out. Like, if you're looking for a Celestinus cube, do you look under G or O? So now you look under G, not oozes, and then find Celestinus cube within the oozes section.
No, I mean, yeah, it's just like, but if you're looking into a demon or devil, you're not 100% sure.
What that does mean you can't do, though. You can't have an overall section on devils introducing the concept of devils and hell and all this sort of stuff and then delve into each devil because you'd have to repeat that in each devil then in that case. So I'm not sure how they're handling that.
what is a devil it's a different choice isn't it of structuring it so it's just yeah yeah i mean the way i'd handle it i suppose no one asked me but i'm gonna tell you anyway is um i would probably have that sort of section maybe at the back and then list out the various devils so if you were thinking of doing something themed you'd be like oh Let's have a look at dragons. Oh, yeah.
Here's all the dragons. Devils.
I'm pretty sure they're doing that.
It seems like a really obvious way to make the experience for the players and the new masters better. So I would hope they do that. That seems like a real gimme as a way to organize things. But again, it's like different times, different places. No one knew that fifth edition was going to take off. like a rocket all the way to the moon and so forth.
So they had a different budget back in their days. That is true.
Yeah. So the NPCs, for example, they talk about pirates as being a new sort of category of NPCs. And what they're saying is they're trying to make sure that the NPCs represent different tiers of play. So you've got like pirates, pirate captains, pirate admirals at different CRs for low level and high level characters.
So whatever level you are, you can have an adventure themed around baddie pirates, if that's what you want to do.
I mean, you've always been able to do that to a certain extent. I've always been a big fan of saying, knights gladiators yeah we'll just describe them as kobolds yeah yeah of course and use those stat blocks and people like these kobolds are very crunchy yeah yeah yeah um what else what else is there the bullet pup is quite amusing
Baby Bulette, the land shark.
If not friend.
I don't know how cute you would be.
If they don't have rules for when your players inevitably try and befriend it, then they are missing a trick, I assure you. Yeah.
And do we want to talk about the animal lords as well that we briefly talked about?
We can talk about the animal lords, yeah.
Yeah. yes 5e have they so they are they are new to 5e so this is a new thing so they're celestials um and there's three different variants of them there's forager hunter and sage they're all cr20 and have different effects oh i think my internet just went funny
Yeah, you've frozen and you've disappeared. We've lost Jess and she's back. Anyway, you're back.
Someone else took the animal lords for a minute then.
So previously there would be things like, and I can't remember their names, but it'd be like the cat lord and the wolf lord and things like that. Looks like they're sort of making them more sort of three generic ones here to cover larger categories. I'm not sure how they're doing it exactly. But they're kind of like the epitome of an animal type.
Maybe not even that more than the manifestation of the not the God of perhaps. Yeah. I mean, they're not manifestations of gods. Okay.
So maybe the essential form has in the very essence of that creature type.
Yeah. yeah yeah sounds cool yeah yeah so yeah like like just said cr20 hanging around in the beast lands which is a outer plane yeah yeah but well they still want to play fetch that's the question um depends whether it's the cat or the dog yeah that's play fetch too russ if you don't know that then your cat doesn't pay your cat your cat doesn't talk to you russ Occasionally talks to me.
Thank you very much. My cat doesn't talk to you. That is true.
Your cat has never bought me flowers either. That is true.
My cat hides whenever people come round. And there are some people who do not believe that we have a cat. But we do have a cat.
I mean, I do the same thing.
But we're able to lay you out from behind the sofa with a plate of chocolate biscuits. So it's all OK. What's this picture we have here?
We have new, like, yes, we do. And there's, like, chimeras and krakens and rust monsters and all sorts. And there's lots of undead things as well. So I'll skim through some of the artwork there as well. But there's, like, lots of lich lords and new versions, undead versions. No, we're looking here.
So we're looking here at a beholder, which is like a sort of undead beholder with a glowing red eye in the centre. And then the eyes around it aren't on stalks. They appear to be just flowing orbs kind of around it. I'm assuming they're supposed to be the eyes, but they're not connected by flesh.
Yeah, because it is an undead. So there's lots of gruesome undead cool things in there, which I like the artwork for. Some nice spirits and ghasts and things like that. And just general grossness that I enjoy.
I've got to say, the artwork in this thing is gorgeous. It is really nice.
Yeah. But there's lots of, like, stat previews, and I put the link in the chat for that. There's some, like, Skeleton, not Skellington.
Skellington.
But they've got different variants of them. So there's a flaming one, a Minotaur one, a horse. Minotaur. Minotaur.
You are not American. It's Minotaur.
I know. It's a carryover from the... carryover from the uh art from the 2014 edition but still very good i mean i must say looking at this artwork it's very reminiscent to me of like say 1980s early 90s book covers
of each of each illustration which is absolutely incredible to me like you know it's the sort of thing that like a publisher for for a horror book say would have had commissioned like a full-size Vallejo and it's like that on almost every page and that is I I know just yeah it's gorgeous I'm I'm I'm just reeling reeling in yeah culture shop has a time travel from the past
It is a pretty book. Yeah, no, it's a pretty book, and there's some really talented artists that worked on it.
They talked about alignment a little bit as well, which is interesting. So what are they doing with alignment regarding sentient creatures?
Well, there's a vampire familiar stat block here that says neutral evil next to it.
So they are keeping alignment.
Okay.
Alignment is in there.
um um but what they are saying is that um even though there's an alignment in there what they say in the introduction is this doesn't mean that every creature of this type is that alignment it's a suggestion and it sort of says in introduction it's a suggestion if you want it to be different it's different it's you know it's whatever you need it to be for your encounter if you're seeing your scenario of your adventure whatever
I mean, it does make more sense. I mean, surely fifth edition is not the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons to come out and say this. I mean, this has been received wisdom for over 20 years.
It bears repeating because you do have some people like, no, you can't have this because their species is like this.
Yeah, we've got the whole orcs and evil controversy last year or the year before whenever it was and you know so people do are invested in that as a topic so whether you explicitly say it or don't for better or worse does matter because people do care whether you say it or not.
Interestingly, the Haunting Revenant, that spooky house, is just neutral. It's not evil. It's just existing as a giant undead house.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, Jeremy Crawford talked about neutral, actually, because neutral... It kind of used to be a stance rather than a lack of alignment. Like Druid would be neutral and it'd be like Switzerland. It would be like we are carefully balancing the good and the evil and not joining one side or the other. It's a deliberate choice and stance.
Whereas neutral could also mean they don't have an alignment whatsoever. It's just they're unaligned.
I took it to mean it's like a force of nature. Like a lot of wild animals and beasts aren't acting in a way that's good or evil. They're just running on instinct and survival. So it doesn't have a philosophy behind it.
So it's been different in different editions. Here, they're definitely going like that. Neutral basically means kind of whatever you want, really. But in the past, neutrality has been an actual alignment. Yeah. On the sort of moral axis, which is good to evil. Neutral was actually a thing that you chose to actually choose to be a manifest. Yeah.
Sorry, I'm talking to you again. I do apologise. But they're using neutral and maybe a better term might be unaligned.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying there. That's different to unaligned, I think. Unaligned means you don't have an alignment. Neutral means you do have an alignment and it is proactively neutral. You're going out of your way to be neutral.
You know, like the BBC.
So to be clear, the Haunted Revenant is going out of its way to be neutral.
But no, that's how it used to be, is what I'm saying. Now they're saying it kind of just means Well, I'll read the quote. How about that?
Yeah.
So Jeremy Crawford, he said this. So our humanoid creatures and stuff, it does still have a suggested alignment, but it's one that you never saw in 2014, neutral, because in the old days, neutral really just meant whatever. And so we've really embraced that.
And we give you guidance in the new monster manual that when you see neutral, that is especially an invitation for you as a dungeon master to decide. So that's kind of what it's saying. I see. It's whatever alignment you want it to be. So that revenant, the haunting revenant there could be good. That's true.
Yeah. So it just eats criminals. Bad people that come into the village. It's protecting the village.
It's like the Batman of haunted houses.
Yeah.
It's like if Wayne Manor followed Batman.
Became sentient.
Yes.
And started hunting criminals on its own. why not it would certainly make going down a dark alley a lot more a lot more interesting yeah shoulder checks you wow i'm not gonna get that image out of my head now
I will. I will use it in my game. But it's a thing that I will do. Right. What else? What other news about... We've got quite a lot of bits about the Monster Manual, kind of all just sort of like all over the place. Did we want to go through those stat blocks quickly or not?
Sure. I've got some on the screen.
Okay. So this is the... Where are we? Here we go. The Empyrean Iota.
Tell us about those, Ross.
Yeah. So this is a new monster. Not seen this one before. But as I understand it, it's a very, very sort of low-level monster, which is kind of a mote of thought, almost. Yeah. It just kind of floats around as a concept or a mote of thought. Is it a celestial or something, is it? Yeah. Celestial or fiend. Ah. What kind is it? Let's have a look. So it's got a bonus action of a healing word.
It can cast Bless and Lesser Restoration. Nice. And also it can do radiant or necrotic damage to you. And basically it can just float around. It's a little CR1 creature. Yeah.
They look a lot more powerful than a CR1 creature. When you look at the artwork, they look really big and imposing and warrior-like.
I'm expecting a Smitey in my future if I saw one of them. I'd be like, oh, don't fancy my chances. But it's like a CR1. It's like, well, you know. What size are they? Well, medium, I'd expect. Medium. Oh, there we go, yeah. So it's medium-sized. Okay, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it's not infeasible, but it's like, you know, terrible things in medium sized packages.
Anyway. This is the gargoyle and the gelatinous cube.
Anything interesting about those that you spotted on those stat blocks?
So you can see both of those have context tables.
Okay.
As you can see. So the gelatinous cube has stuff that it's very small. It's got stuff that you might find floating in the cube. The gargoyle has gargoyle sculptures. The gargoyle is sculpted to appear like, and then six different things. And it's got where the gargoyle's located. The gargoyle conceals itself amidst, and that's a D8 table.
so you can roll between those and just i mean this is all right i i i like made jokes earlier about where they got the idea from because obviously we did all that in our books ages ago um but i'm not saying they shouldn't do it and i'm not saying that we were the first to do it either no no and it has been in dnd books before so you know i was i was joking but um i think i think it's i think it's good stuff to put in there i think it's important stuff to put in there because it's just stuff from the gm digital the dm just fresh out the encounter or the
you know without having to rack their brains at the table and come up with stuff with all this kind of like overload of things that you've got to be doing I think when the party makes a quick right turn when they were supposed to go left there yeah it's what GM's want I think when running campaigns so and it's it's what they've liked in other books that like third party D&D stuff so it makes perfect sense that it's putting yeah
Yeah. So that's the adult green dragon you've called up there, Jess, which is the first one we ever saw, I think, isn't it?
It was a while back. Yeah. And that's what we talked about. Yeah. So we talked about the initial stat block changes with that, like with the initiative. That was a big shining thing we liked about that, the way that's to the side.
Yeah. Yeah. So what else have we got? So this is the Kiwatoa. We've seen that one before as well. That one, the skeletons and the Kiwatoa, we saw about nine months ago.
Oh, okay.
So the Kewa Toa, you can see on there, it's got like deity features. So you roll D10 twice to find out what its head and what its body is like.
it's all these kind of contextual things that they put in there i mean looking at it it looks like each um monster only has like one or two things like that usually one in the case of the gargoyles too so it's not like we did where you've got the signs and you've got the treasure and you've got the um names and you've got all the all the different things that we put in there the idle behaviors yeah the knowledge tables and stuff like that so step towards what we did yeah yeah
So they crammed the next five monsters. I know what I would find very useful for the tactical combat side of things. It would be really good to have a sort of like maybe a table.
Again, I'm leaning on fourth edition because I really liked it from there, but like where you could have various different roles for the monsters and different ways to put them together to help you make more interesting encounters. Yeah.
Because like a lot, I mean, there are books out there like Kieferman's The Monsters Know What They're Doing, but for a lot of the times it's like the tactics boil down to it screams and charges at you.
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a tactics entry in these monsters, unless it's buried in the fluff text. It doesn't seem to be there at all.
Yeah, that's something that does quite well.
Yeah, I think it's a useful thing.
He has done that before as well. Yeah, I was thinking on a wider scale, which is like ways to mix up the monsters to give you more interesting things. Oh, we've got a question.
Yeah, like kobolds making traps and putting a gelatinous cube in the 10-foot pit, that sort of thing.
We have more of a statement. So Bane has said, it hurts my brain that they've decided to remove the spellcasting modifier for attacks and now want you to just do the maths instead.
for context people listening on the podcast as opposed to watching as we're live streaming for the first time ever and we've got we didn't really announce it um but a few people have have discovered that we're doing it and uh making comments in the chat so we're trying to we're trying to make this as interactive as we can so that was a comment from bane tbc um who commented in the chat i mean we talked about that earlier didn't we the um spells are just listed as spells they can cast and you kind of have to go and look all that up
Which I'm really surprised by.
Yeah. And the spellcasting DC is there, but not the attack modifier, they were saying. So.
Right. Yeah. Which is, I mean, you can calculate it, but I wouldn't like to have to keep on having to do that on the fly.
Yeah.
No.
I think that's what they were saying.
Yeah.
But yeah.
What else have we got? With the vampire familiar, we've got called up there.
Yep.
So not a lot to see there because you've only got the stat block itself and the art. We haven't actually got any of the fluff text or the tables or anything with that. But you can basically see it's CR3, a medium or small humanoid. I don't know what to say about this. It's a very basic stat block. Low-level vampire sort of thing.
And those are the stat blocks we have. The rest is just a lot of pretty art pieces and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.
So we got two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yeah. Eight stat blocks have been shared so far.
But yeah, that we've gone through. And they've released the pretty edition of the cover as well, which has a very nice mind flayer on top.
Yeah, the alternate edition for hobby stores.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah. I do like those alternate edition covers, to be honest. I haven't got any of the 2014 books yet. I think if I get them, I will try and get the...
alternate covers i like them a lot yeah oh yeah yeah like the one of the dragon and drawing tea with adventurers is is i would say an attractive piece of art exactly the i noticed the monster manual minefield has appeared to be holding a tadpole would you agree jessica yes in a very boulders gate 3-esque fashion and it's even got its hand outstretched offering it to us
Oh, would you care for a tadpole?
No, thanks. No, thanks. I spend a lot of my time trying to get tadpoles out of my brain in Baldur's Gate, so, yeah.
Yeah. Well, what else have we got to talk about, about the Monster Manual? Is there anything else?
I don't have a huge amount more to say, really, than what we initially saw when we first saw the first stat block. It looks like it's going to be very pretty as a nice thing to have. I'm not sure it's something I'm going to pick up, but if people are picking up and playing D&D, I think it will be a pretty nice thing to have that has monsters in.
Yeah, more monsters is always useful. If you've got 85 new monsters in there, why not?
I guess.
Yeah, I mean, the art upgrade is definitely significant. Yeah. I mean, but yeah, I'm looking at it and thinking, well, that Tomb of Beasts from Cobalt Press.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. um uh it's like you know yeah i mean yeah sure it's got 85 new monsters but then if i've already got all the old monsters has it has it changed that much i mean um i guess yeah i suppose 50 50 quid for 85 new monsters it's quite an ask yeah I mean, that's not the scale of things we're after. And again, it's like those value ads I'm after, which is, does it have themed tables?
So you can see how all the various monsters exist in an ecosystem because they have removed that. which is, I would generally say, a good idea. Like you were saying with the devils, there's no introduction of devils. These are all the devils you find. That was actually quite solid.
I'm interested to see how they handled that, because I feel like things like devils need an overarching... Like a framework.
Yeah.
And if they're not doing that... I don't know. Well, maybe they've done it for some things and not other things. Maybe. I don't know.
It feels like we're losing world building power there, which puts more work onto the DM in a game which puts a lot of work onto the DM. As someone who is a hobbyist, I do not look kindly upon having extra work being assigned homework. I guess what it needs to do, have the index list both.
How do you mean? So it would go ooze comma gelatinous cube and also gelatinous cube.
Yeah, yeah.
And if it did that in the appropriate place in the index, that would go a long way to alleviating that, I think.
Certainly moving away from the Player's Handbook style of 2014, where it had out of air, C, lack of breathing, C, low oxygen, C, suffocation, and then finally give you a page reference. that moving away from that would be good. That was bad. Everyone agrees that was terrible. Well, I mean, indexing is done by hand. It is a skill profession. I found out more about it.
I'm like, wow, that is a lot of work.
I've had to do it myself a couple of times. I don't like doing that. I do not like it. That is not a fun job. It takes so long. Especially when you're talking like a big sort of 500 page book. Yeah. And you're going through it word by word. Oh, it's horrible.
You're not seeing a lot of indexes in indie books for a reason. It's very labor intensive. Yeah. Having more monster set blocks. Brilliant. Love it. Advice on how to use monsters. That's more interesting.
That's in there. Definitely. They talked a bit about that. Yeah.
um and yeah uh how to mix and match monsters to make it good and yeah the balancing encounters yeah it'd be interesting to see what they do about encounter building i don't i haven't really talked a lot about that at least yet Well, I mean, it's pretty key, because that's your number one complaint. How do I balance an encounter?
And nowadays, I'm just like, oh, well, here's the table from Level Up. Enjoy. I suppose you could also use the online computer tool, if you like, or there's COBOL, if you want.
but if you've just got to see ours this is a table does it it's really easy yeah i'm not saying it's not in there i don't know it's we don't know just because they haven't talked about it yet doesn't mean it's not in there i mean it might not be in the next month is going to be littered with more information as the release is coming up so i'm sure next week we'll have something more to share as well yeah yeah so i mean it is going straight on to dnd beyond
Yeah.
Like on day one release and do it into that. So that will help with the counter building to an extent, I imagine. I mean, speaking as fans, what's your first impressions of the book? I think it looks gorgeous. I really think it looks like a great book. All the three books as to what I'm interested in.
Yes. I think it's going to be a pretty, pretty book. It's probably not one I'm going to buy, but I think it's pretty.
I don't want to compare it to stuff that we published because I just think that feels a little bit... Oh no, this isn't me comparing it to that.
It was just... I'm comparing it to all the other indie games out there. If I've got 50 quid to spend on tabletop RPG, I'd rather buy two or three zines or something from the smaller creators. But that's just me because I'm not running D&D regularly. If I was running D&D regularly 5e, then yeah, this would be something I'd pick up.
It looks like a better monster book than the first one. It looks prettier.
And I think the little tweaks in the stats will make it.
So it's prettier. I think they've done some good stuff with it. I think they've made some things are a bit odd, like the way the spells are listed. The fact that they made a nod towards including sort of encounter and world building tools in the monster entries, but not gone anywhere near as far as I'd like.
They basically, like a little token nod, they'll include a little table with like what a gargoyle looks like. But I wish they'd gone further. I wish they'd gone further.
What was it doing?
What's it doing? What are signs of it? Little encounter tables for each one. And they haven't gone that far, which I guess I suppose I shouldn't complain because that still gives us our USB.
I mean, for me, I'm like, well, I do like the art. The art is nice. It's strong. But I do tend to be a bit more tools oriented. I'm like, what new tools? Because like 85 new monsters. That's pretty cool. I can make my own monsters if I want to. I can reskin things quite happily.
And to be honest, monsters are a dime a dozen, aren't they?
Yeah. I mean, you can get a lot of monsters very easily. Yeah. Random tools like just grabbing off shelves. It's very easy to get. But what I'm interested in is how do I use it? Can I do monsters better? If we do monsters better, that might be worth the second price.
Yeah. Well, I guess we'll find out soon. We'll find out more.
We'll talk more about this next week. Yeah, no. I mean, as I say, excellent job, excellent job, I think, and an excellent product. But whether it's relevant to me and my particular set of things, we just don't know.
I think I wasn't sure whether to pick up the other two. I think I will pick this one up. I think I will in the alternate cover. I just think this does look like a nice book. I mean, would I buy this over the dinosaur book we talked about earlier? That's the question. And the answer is I would buy the dinosaur book first.
Yeah.
Well, there we go. Yeah.
I think if you like your dinosaurs and your dinosaur hunting, the dinosaur books are strong. Yeah.
Love it. Well, there we go.
Right, I think we're probably done for today, aren't we?
Yeah, we are. And if people listening to the podcast want to come along and watch us live record it, we'll be at 2pm GMT, which I believe is like 9am Eastern. We haven't really talked about this, have we? No.
But last week, we recorded it, but we didn't stream it.
Not live.
But it is available live on YouTube and... Anyone else? Or is it just YouTube? I'm not sure.
We posted it on YouTube, yeah. But we'll be live streaming going forward on the EN World Facebook page, the EN World YouTube page, and the EN World Twitch page as well.
So you can... Yeah. You can literally join in the show and make comments. And those who have been watching have seen it within flashing comments on screen as well.
Yeah.
So it's just kind of fun just having people join in a little bit.
Yeah. And if you can't make it live, you can still email in or write to us and ask your questions that way as well.
And of course, it'll still be available in the usual audio format. That's not changing. This isn't changing that in the slightest.
It's just a yes and situation.
Yeah. This is an additional thing, not an instead of thing.
Okay. Well, on that note, shall we call it a day?
I think we are done. Oh, look, see, look, someone, look, I'm going to show that comment. See, someone's just commented. Hello from 7.30 PST as I head to work.
Have a great day. We're just finishing.
Yeah, it's early. It's early.
It's early.
I know.
5.30 PST.
5.30 in the a.m.
oh yeah yeah michael shannon there says so as it happens this is the first time we've done this live excellent yeah yep it is first time we've done this live yep and nothing was set on fire so we take that as a win yeah i think you know we're kind of learning as we go it's going to change a little bit yeah as we learn how to do it yeah absolutely i think we we're having fun aren't we we're having a nice time on that note shall we leave
Yeah, let's get out of here. Let's go and have a weekend.
Thanks to everyone that watched and thanks to everyone who listened. Bye, bye, bye.
Bye.