die_kluge said:
I know that back in the very early days of the Dragon Magazine, there was a semi-regular column about a campaign run by "Monty", in it all of the characters were uber powerful with lots of artifacts, psionic powers etc... however Monty could and did take them out on a regular basis. I think the term comes from that column or at least it popularized it. The connection to the TV show seems likely, but I'm unclear as to exactly what was the connection. Here's something I dug up on the Web.
http://www.fastforwardgames.com/900index.cfm
Monty Haul
by
James M. Ward
The subject of this article is the creation of the Monty Haul referee. The highly conservative d20 role-playing world currently looks down on the Monty Haul DM. They are of course missing out on a lot of fun. The Monty Haul DM likes to spread magic items and treasures far and wide in his campaign. They enjoy the look on their player's faces when they find a Staff of Power, a Deck of Many Things, or a Sphere of Annihilation all in the same pile of 99,000 gold pieces and 58,000 platinum pieces.
I can just see the grimaces of disgust on all of those proud d20 players. They're saying, "Oh that game can't be fun. What an idiot to put so many powerful magic items together." The basic concern is that players with lots of treasure and lots of magic items will have too easy a time with the dangers of role-playing. I laugh at such an idea, and apparently so do the Wizards of the Coast people. Their Epic Level Handbook written by Andy Collins and Bruce R. Cordell is the perfect tribute to the Monty Haul referee. While I'm slightly irritated that they didn't make this product part of the OGL, I'm pleased that there are some hidden Monty Haul referee's calling themselves "epic" referees.
I think giving a guide for how much treasure is a good idea, I don't want that guide to become a straightjacket to DMs everywhere. DMs who have been playing for more than 6 months can adjust their campaign to any level of treasure giving. To me it's not logical for a powerful monster, alive for a long time, to have a treasure of a few gold or no magic items at all.
Although I understand the thinking behind the present highly conservative d20 group, I like the Monty Haul style of play much better. If you want to look down your nose at my high level treasures and tougher encounters, fine; but you are missing out on a level of play allowing characters to have even more fun.
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THE STORY
I have many fond memories of going over to Gary Gygax's house to play D&D. Often we would come over and Gary would be working on other things. On one of the occasions I was able to haul out my own Dungeon and get a little DM practice in. I was running Ernie, Gary's son, through a dungeon and he had gotten a magical sash that allowed him to have some martial arts powers. I was in the middle of a melee where Ernie was facing a bugbear, easily defeating it with karate chops and foot kicks. In walked Rob Kuntz and Gary, and they were smirking at what was going on. Afterwards I asked if the bugbear had been too much for the encounter. I really felt uncomfortable at Rob's sneer when he said, "One bugbear, you should have given him three the way he easily killed just the one." On that day Monty was born. I immediately started upping the danger of my dungeon and so too felt the need to up the level of treasure in my game play and design work. As the years went I wrote a few short
stories in DRAGON magazine about Monty Haul and his friends. I'll brush the dust off of some of those and post them on the website. I've had a great deal of fun over the years Monty Haul DMing and I hope these brief glimpses into the past encourage others to try role-playing as well.
Rackhir's Favorite Monty Haul moments
A friends character who had an artifact that automatically resurected him like 4 times a month, decided that he wanted to kill Tiamat and her consorts. He quickly wasted Tiamat and I think some of the consorts, but the remaining ones were going to toast him. So he randomly teleported in the middle of the city where Tiamat ruled. I forget exactly where the % chance came from (me or charts), but he wound up teleported into a wall. That of course instantly killed him, but 4 times a month his screams would echo through the halls as the artifact resurected him only to have him instantly die from being part of a wall.
One time our group of "reasonable" monty haul characters had been gathered together
for an adventure. On it we killed these two giant owls that had attacked us. It turned out that they each were carrying an artifact. Where, we were never told, presumably in their feathers....
What finally convinced me to give up on monty haul gaming was when a character of mine killed every single demon lord and major devil without sustaining a single point of damage (It was a teleport/backstab combo for like x5 damage and in 1e they had as little as 80-90 Hp for the lesser ones like Jubbelix). After the game was over I realized that my character had just wiped out all the most powerful creatures in the D&D universe with ease (this was pre-Dieties & demi-gods). So what could possibly challenge him and that there was no point in running a character with that amount of power
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