D&D 5E Wondering Monster- Once Upon A Time

[gyor]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20130903

Any body starting to wonder if James Wyatt is running out of ideas for topics? I mean the fiend touched one was interesting, but Flumphs and now this it sounds like he's running out Monsters, even though he hasn't touched the question of the other plane touched races then Tieflings and Cambions.

 

[pemerton]

Any body starting to wonder if James Wyatt is running out of ideas for topics?

Not at all. This was far and away the best of these columns that he's written - although I thought the dryad story was more interesting than the redcap one, which had me up until she turns the bargainer into a redcap and then lost me.

These are the sorts of narrative hooks I want - not ecology or other elements of natural history, but theme and story that I can build on to confront my players (and their PCs) with dramatic situations and hard choices. This is something I really like about 4e, and its incorporation of this sort of thematic content into both monster lore and the mechanical design of monsters. It would be great to see this at least feeding into the lore of Next (and maybe into creature mechanics too, although that would be another, big, step that I am guessing they don't want to take).

 

[Minigiant]

Funny

In my setting...

Dryads are nymphs cursed by a Faerie Queen for charming a mortal into a marriage rather than using true love. They are tethered by a tree to keep them away from mortals, only allowed to leave during a wyldhunt or faerie war.

and

Redcaps are cursed mortals ho broken a fey contract. Most commonly the victims are fey warlocks and the patrons are faerie kings and hag covens. Also being once mortal, redcaps are the only fey immune to cold iron (but they can't cross threshold uninvited like other fey).

So.... yeah. Good article.

 

[Klaus]

This article is a great example of how "not everything needs to be a full race". I approve!

 

[TerraDave]

Its typical james wyatt. And completely the wrong approach. Each is inconistent with, well everything, and too specific to be of much use in many games.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I found the column pretty good and inspiring, and i can imagine using stories like this in my game. I liked the dryad banishement from the fey world for loving a mortal and thought it gave her more of a tale-like origin, one children could hear around fire. At least as the fate of one poor Nymph...

I also liked the story of a redcap fallen under a hag's curse and think it make both creatures more interesting. I like hag capable of cursing and thinks it makes them more dreadful than with only a handful of attacks and spell-like abilities.

 

[Blackwarder]

I absolutely love this, this stuff is great, it's the sort of things you can give a player that managed to roll high on his lore checks, instead of just giving bullet points you get the all story, absolutely brilliant.

Of course, I would love it if the core MM would have this little fairy tell origin stories in the monsters entry, I can totally see myself using the dryad as a unique creature in one game and as a race of creatures in another game, and tbh, I always though that redcaps were some sort of goblins and never used them but now they aren't and I can't wait to use them in a game, especially in conjunction with hags, it reminds me the Ettercap article from a few months ago that also connected hags to ettercaps, it's the sort of ecology that emerge from the game.

Thumbs up from me.

Warder

 

[Kinak]

I like stories, so this hit a good note with me.

Really, knowing what people say about a creature is easily as valuable as knowing about the creature itself. I'd rather have "here's where people think dryads come from" and leave the actual origins up to the GM. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, maybe I have some complex fae cosmology set up that I need to fit them into. But I can always use more fodder for knowledge checks.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Li Shenron]

I like the idea of strong narrative cues for some monsters, but I also want the ecology approach for other monsters. Not everything being the result of a "once upon a time" tale, but not everything being an entry in a fantasy biology book either.

I would however strongly prefer that the narrative hooks are solidly based on either real-world folklore or D&D tradition. IOW, I definitely disapprove the "let's reinvent the wheel" approach of 4e for monsters.

---

As a side note, they should definitely drop the pathetically useless polls... I mean, look at the results, they are pretty much invariably the same statistical curve, with "4" being always the most common vote, and only smaller variations on % results. It just shows that gamers (as a whole) who follow WotC articles invariably have the same reaction to anything they are proposed.

 

[Klaus]

I would however strongly prefer that the narrative hooks are solidly based on either real-world folklore or D&D tradition. IOW, I definitely disapprove the "let's reinvent the wheel" approach of 4e for monsters.

Except a lot of 4e's "reinventing of the wheel" is straight out of real-world folklore (world built out of Chaos, Gods vs. Titans, Eladrin/Sidhe vs. Fomorians) or expansions of D&D tradition (spriggans as distorted gnomes, durzagon as the core duergar, for instance).

Broad brushes paint an innacurate image.