D&D 5E (2014) L&L: Monsters and Stories

[Pseudopsyche]

I'm also a busy adult who appreciates story hooks and thematic content in his monster manuals. DMs who enjoy building their own worlds and mythologies will likely be able to pull crunch from the Next version of the online Compendium.

 

[Stormonu]

IF this sort of stuff is going to be baked into 5E's monsters, I wish they'd put it into ecology-like articles or make it clear its one of many options for a backstory (i.e, "some tales claim medusas were once humans who bargained for more beauty and were transformed into vile creatures when unable or unwilling to later pay for their transformations").

I've been burned by baked-in assumptions in D&D before (2E's book of Elves). I don't want to go through similar arguments again in any edition.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Let me start with something that apparently Mearls would find shocking: that ink spilt over the ecology and biology of these monstrous creatures was not wasted ink.

The 2e Medusa entry, under Habitat/Society, gives me the following gameplay information:

• Lair Info: Setting my medusa encounter in a shallow cave or shadowy ruin is key. It is suggested that visibility play an important tactical role: PC's or medusae in shadows can't be seen. Deception is key for this encounter.
• Pre- and Post-Combat Info: The encounter area should be strewn with rubble, and perhaps a few "statues," but not many. The Medusa will probably destroy characters that don't make "interesting" statues, making retreival of the petrified body unlikely.
• Special Tactic Info: Mirrors are useful weapons against a medusa -- they keep none in their lair.
• Plot Hook/Encounter Tone Info: A man petrified in his own bed may be a victim of a medusa out looking for a mate. If the PC's discover the lair, they may find a "momma bear" style medusa who is protecting her offspring. The moral grey zone about what to do with the children helps define the tone of the PC's: are these mercenaries, heroes, or something a little greyer?

So, not a waste of space or effort at all, really. That info is useful in gameplay, it just needs significantly better organization.

And for my next bit, I get to bang this drum I have again.

The Medusa story they offer is nice. It'd make a good medusa story. I'd use the heck out of it.

But it is only a medusa story and it is silly for the most recent designers of this 40 year old game to act like it should be the Medusa Story that D&D presumes.

Lets make an easy change:

The rumormongers in taverns would have you believe that buried within the ruins of Bael Turath, there is a secret to eternal beauty and influence. They say there was a ritual there that the ambitious noble women used to become flawless, gorgeous, and powerful. Like many rumors, there is a grain of truth to these. It's just that the ritual, like all Turathi pacts, eventually turned against the souls that made it. The women gained beauty, influence, and youth. But in the end, they lost their humanity, and became monstrous -- they became Medusas.

Before their transformation, most Turathi medusas were ambitious, grasping, and self centered, willing to amplify their appearance and charms to work their way up the social ladder. Some used their temporary gifts to marry into wealth and power. Others built their own base of power.

When it came time to pay the price of the bargain, the transformation was sudden and hideous. Some medusas planned for their change and retired to a distant villa or keep, shielding themselves from the outside world while still enjoying the wealth and power they have accumulated. Others forgot about their bargain, attempted to reverse it, or remained ignorant of its true price. These poor wretches were killed or driven into hiding.

Now, along with the devils and the beast-cults and Ioun knows what else, the remnants of the most beautiful people in the world haunt the ruins in the former empire of Bael Turath. The transformation has broken some who have grown to regret the pact, but others simply transferred their ambition and control to the monstrous creatures they now found themselves enmeshed in. It turns out that human ambition is not something that can so easily be quelled.

I'd totally run that adventure. I even think it kind of supports the 2e setup (which was probably something that they were going for!).

But I'd also run a campaign where biological Amazon-Medusae serve as petrifying assassins in the employ of the nefarious baron and where a teenage medusae has a legitimate claim to the throne, being the first-born daughter of the king and all, which Mearls's idea pretty much torpedoes.

And I'd also run a campaign where Medusa is one of the three Gorgon Sisters and lives on an island and basically is a monstrous Other.

I think his problem is here:

By keeping the frontward-facing parts of the medusa intact—the elements that have been most prominent throughout the game's history—we can ensure that existing adventures and campaigns don't need to be altered to fit into D&D Next.

That's not entirely, true, though. Just the change from "basically biological race of nefarious snake-women" to "cursed beauty-seekers" changes the nature of the stories that WE can tell through it, and the nature of the worlds we can build. If the latter is the default, it changes what our own games are about by default. And it's not a zero-sum game: there can be both. We can have Turathi medusae living alongside assassin medusae and nearby have a mythic medusa. If the stat blocks are small enough (4e-style!) we could maybe even fit them all in one book a la 4e's half-dozen goblins. One designed to be masterminds, one designed to be fast-striking murderers, one designed to be a Big Bad Evil Snakelady. We can have one of them in the MM without ruling out the other ones, but the other ones don't have to be ruled out.

There's a D&D that empowers me to make my own fantasy story for me and my friends, and still gives lazy DMs (often, like me) something they can use right away without much thought, and what Wyatt and Mearls have been on about isn't that D&D, and I don't yet understand why. Maybe to them, the D&D brand isn't about imagination and inventiveness, it's about canon and branding and new IP?

 

[Savage Wombat]

In my last game, medusae (like all monstrous humanoids) were created when Anu had his son Marduk steal the bowl that Tiamat used to create all life. He could not use it properly and thus his creations were both monstrous and mono-gendered, unable to reproduce with their own kind.

Medusae as "cursed humans" works fine if your module has one lone medusa in a cave somewhere (ala Caves of Chaos) but not so well for four medusa assassins popping out of crystal pillars.

 

[MarkB]

Minor until a Bard's player goes "I'll take that deal! How do I sign up?" Setting up a mechanism in-world for such a trade without any mechanics is very annoying for me as a DM. I'm forced to either say no or on the spot build something with all the potential of screwing up that comes from no sober fore and after thought.

The trade has to be good enough that others took it and built power bases from the "great beauty and personal magnetism" gained, but weak enough to not overshadow the other PCs for the next decade.

Easily enough solved. Just tell the Bard's player "The exact nature of the deal is obscure, and it will take you some time to research it. I'll let you know what you find out next session."

Then take a week or two to contemplate the matter, decide whether you can build something balanced, and if you can't, then come up with a reason why the deal isn't available to that character - which could be something as simple as "this 'gift' is not something sought out - it is offered spontaneously to particular individuals, for reasons known only to the being who provides the deal."

 

[Mistwell]

I'm not "summarizing" Mearls's post. I'm observing a trend in James Wyatt's monster posts, wherein he presents us with a monster and then reworks all the lore about that monster, sometimes subtly and sometimes radically. This post from Mearls follows the same pattern.



Possibly the dumbest idea Gary Gygax ever had was the conceit that there would be a rigorous separation of player from DM, and the former would never read material intended for the latter. I thought that particular idea had long ago been consigned to the dustbin of history. Engaged and interested players read the books, and that includes monster books. Furthermore, DMing duties are often traded around; I myself am currently a player after some years as the primary DM for my group, while one of my former players tries his hand behind the screen. But I still know more D&D monster lore than he does.

I said the players should not FOCUS on the monster manual. Does it make more sense now? There should be no expectation that what they read in the Monster Manual is what's going to be in your game. Their focus is what's in the player's handbook, not the books for use for the DM. Reading it for when they DM is perfectly understandable, but it should not be their focus as a player, and the purpose of the monster manual is not to build expectations for players. If your players are having a problem with metagaming monsters because they read the monster manual, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. As long as your world is internally consistent, it does not have to be consistent with what's in the monster manual. It's a tool for a DM, not a bible for players.

 

[fjw70]

I like the idea that this medusa story would be one of several in the monster manual leaving the exact nature of the medusa (and other monsters) vague. It also gives the new and/or busy DM several options that are already laid out to pick and choose between. Dragon magazine articles can then expand and add to these options.

Something along these lines.

An obscure legend claims that when Corellon put out Gruumsh's eye in a primeval battle, part of the savage god's essence fell to earth, where it transformed a race of humans into fierce half-orcs. Another story suggests that an ancient hobgoblin empire created half-orcs to lead orc tribes on the empire's behalf. Yet another legend claims that a tribe of brutal human barbarians chose to breed with orcs to strengthen their bloodline. Some say that Kord created half-orcs, copying the best elements from the human and orc races to make a strong and fierce people after his own heart. If you ask a half-orc about his origin, you might hear one of these stories. You might also get a punch in the face for asking such a rude question.

 

[Li Shenron]

Let me start with something that apparently Mearls would find shocking: that ink spilt over the ecology and biology of these monstrous creatures was not wasted ink.

Maybe my previous post mislead someone into thinking I am against monsters narrative, but truth is that I totally agree that it's not wasted ink!

What I am against, is changing a monster's narrative into something new.

I strongly value the idea of continuity between editions' narrative. I wish my children will play D&D 7e or 8e and will encounter the same monsters with the same backstories that I have, so that we have something to share. I dread the idea of hearing stuff like "but this is how drow are nowadays, they are all demons, they have wings, and they ride dinosaurs". I even hate campaign settings with metaplots having big changes to conform to new rules, instead of the rules conforming to a campaign setting's needs.

On a tangent, I have generally always preferred when a D&D monster taken from classic literature actually follows that literature. Do you want Cyclops in D&D? Make them as close as possible as Cyclops in Homer's Odyssey, which is the most famous literary source of them. It's understandable that many creatures have multiple sources or conflicting folklore: well maybe that's the perfect occasion to leave things blurry and multiple options open. It is also ok to stick to one version when there are truly many incompatible ones (e.g. Orcs), in which case we can have "D&D own orcs", but not changing at every edition.

 

[Stormonu]

Se, that's the thing that bothers me about this article. Its not that they gave us an origin story, it that the origin story is "one-true-wayism", which was one of the things I was hoping 5E was leaving behind.

Give us the option to take, leave or create our own monster origin stories. Don't give us "this is the way it is" - or do we want Mearls & Co. telling us next that it was one of Mordenkainen's (or Vecna's or Elminster's) failed magical experiments that resulted in the owlbear. Even if those NPCs aren't in your campaign world?

 

[Mistwell]

Se, that's the thing that bothers me about this article. Its not that they gave us an origin story, it that the origin story is "one-true-wayism", which was one of the things I was hoping 5E was leaving behind.

Give us the option to take, leave or create our own monster origin stories. Don't give us "this is the way it is" - or do we want Mearls & Co. telling us next that it was one of Mordenkainen's (or Vecna's or Elminster's) failed magical experiments that resulted in the owlbear. Even if those NPCs aren't in your campaign world?

But the story we created remains there to serve as a good read in the Monster Manual or to inspire your own ideas.

By keeping the frontward-facing parts of the medusa intact—the elements that have been most prominent throughout the game's history—we can ensure that existing adventures and campaigns don't need to be altered to fit into D&D Next. By the same token, the new mythology of the medusa can hopefully inspire adventure ideas, NPCs, and campaign settings of your own.

You're reading too much into it. What he says is this is material to hopefully inspire you to create your own ideas for your campaign. At no point does he say this is the "one-true-way" to do it. Indeed, suggesting the material is there to inspire your own ideas is pretty much the opposite of declaring something the one true way. He's saying you do have the option to take it or leave it, but hopefully you will find the material inspiring for your own ideas.