Week 2 Recap: Scouting Party: Doom, Templates, and Monster Bundles!
In the new Scouting Party video, the team discusses monster bundles, monster templates, and additional uses for Doom.
What is a Monster Bundle?
A monster bundle is a tool for inspiration during game preparation. Each bundle gives a very setting-light scenario, the basic themes of the scenario (like mountains, sea creatures, or political intrigue), and a boss the PCs could encounter in that scenario. Each bundle is then broken down further into the four tiers of play, with sample stat blocks for represent the boss, its lieutenants, and its minions. You can use a bundle as inspiration for building a single-session or even multi-session adventure, such as filling a dungeon or haunted manor, or it can provide inspiration for an entire story arc.
What are Adventure Escalations?
An adventure escalation means you, as a game master, use one or more bundles to advance the game’s overall story and escalate the danger the PCs face. For example, the PCs might hear rumors that hint at three different bundles, and they decide to follow one set of rumors toward one bundle.
However, your living, breathing world doesn’t need to wait for the PCs to come knocking, because you can advance the other two bundles to their next tiers. The rumors the PCs didn’t follow escalated and became a bigger problem while the PCs’ attention was elsewhere. Bundles provide the foundation from which to build rumors and later the encounters the PCs face, while reducing your preparation time, and it leaves the PCs free to decide where to go.
For more about monster bundles, adventure escalations, and all the other game master goodies going into Monster Vault 2,
check out the full Scouting Party video.
Here is a sneak peek at the Chasmal Horror, a horrific aberration from guest designer Luke Gygax. (As always, because this is a preview, the specifics of the Chasmal Horror are subject to change.)
- The chasmal horror is a sadistic hunter that screeches at its prey to frighten it, yet its barbed appendages pierce the flesh to trap and hold those it captures, increasing the torment.
- Created by a twisted, malevolent warlock, chasmal horrors are native to a plane of chaos and were used by the warlock in the dungeons beneath his fortress to punish his captives.
- When a chasmal horror kills its prey, it absorbs some of the creature’s essence, which manifests as additional eyes, mouths, and noses, making the aberration truly terrible to behold.
