The giant space hamster is a beast; the space hamster is a monstrosity

January 10, 2024 9:37 AM

The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a blog that examines all of the D&D 5th Edition monsters, according to their rulebook stats and descriptions, and offers strategy ideas for the interested DM.
posted by JHarris (30 comments total)

This web site is so invaluable for our weekly D&D games that it's become a watchword around our table. I have his first book/collection on my nightstand and will likely get the follow-ons (up to #4) at some point.
posted by bonehead at 10:06 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]

I'm still exploring the site. The second post of the blog's whole run was a lesson on basic monster tactics.
posted by JHarris at 10:12 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

When the OGL debacle happened it was the final straw for my relationship with WotC and I donated all of my 5e books to the Venice High School Adventurer's Club (the Dungeons & Dragons club at the school where my wife was teaching at the time). I figured if I was ever going to come back to Dungeons & Dragons it probably wouldn't be before a new edition invalidated all my books, and even if I returned to 5e I'd also purchased the digital information for all of my books on D&D Beyond so I could just resubscribe there if I ever needed to do so.

Anyway, TMKWTD is so good that I still read it for a game that I'm unlikely to ever play again. If he ever did a Pathfinder 2e version of it I'd be ecstatic, but I don't feel that's likely to happen.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 10:20 AM on January 10 [6 favorites]

Early useful articles:
Goblins (uses Stealth, tries to ambush, attacks as individuals, eschews melee, doesn't look out for other goblins, disengages with bonus action at low HP and flees, may use simple traps)
Kobolds (even weaker and dumber than goblins, has Pack Tactics so tries to swarm, avoids combat without at least a 3-to-1 advantage)
Orcs (melee fighters, may choose to fight to the death, may try to parley before fight and Intimidate)
posted by JHarris at 10:40 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I love this site!

Now I'm sad about how long it's been since I DMd.
posted by ominous_paws at 11:02 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]

Love this blog, and I use it a lot. Should note that, though it does offer lots of help specific to 5e mechanics, a lot of its advice is system-neutral for your usual fantasy rpg monsters, e.g. a simple example on dinosaurs.
posted by HeroZero at 11:03 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

That’s miniature giant space hamster, to be precise. Just as the giant space hamster was the result of a careful breeding program over many (hamster and gnomish) generations, the miniature giant space hamster was an even more precise program to breed it back down in size. Essential to the second program was to prevent the inadvertent entry of any wild-type hamster specimens that could taint the purebred result!

Why go to all this effort, you ask? Is it not obvious? It is all preparation to the true third and final stage of the breeding program: the Giant Miniature Giant Space Hamster!

FOR SCIENCE!
posted by notoriety public at 11:05 AM on January 10 [8 favorites]

I knew Keith back in college, and I wish I'd played D&D with him. I was trying to be a Serious Grownup but I would've had more fun if I'd loosened up a little a played more rpgs.

I was also salty about the move to 2e which seemed more like a cash grab than an improvement (sort of like now). My groups are transitioning from 5e to Shadowdark, which I think is the Platonic ideal of a fantasy roleplaying game.
posted by rikschell at 11:33 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]

I just got my kickstarter edition of a thing called Shadowdark. This is one of the most exciting things I've bought in the D&D space, in the RPG space really, in years.

About 20 or so years ago, there was considerable push back against the change from 2e to 3e D&D. Third edition was a much different game from the relatively static years of the 70s and 80s. The 3rd edition was a lot more complex and detailed and played into a different conception of what the RPG was simulating. So people looking for the older feel of the hobby started something called (variously) the Old School Revival (or renewal or...) OSR, at any rate, and based it on late 70s/early 80s product called Basic and Expert set D&D. With some legal work, new versions could be published as long as certain licences were respected and the exact texts weren't copied.

So many "retro-clones" bloomed. One of the best is currently produced by Necrotic Gnome/Gavin Norman that took the B/X sets, stripped out the extras and created the Old School Essentials. OSE is one of the best designed RPGs from a layout perspective ever. This book design, the way it's layed out, the way info is presented, the graphic design, should be studied in university courses. It's absolutely amazing. It collects not only the original B/X rules, but also includes some popular fixes to the worst of its issues and many extra tools to help GMs run a game, including 3rd party extra options, bestiaries etc in associated publications. And a premade world now in their Dolmenwood series.

And this was all fantastic, but it was for the older B/X system which had a lot of wiggly bits and inconsistencies even with the fixes. WotC has now been through several more editions of "official" D&D and have landed in the jam with 5th edition. It's in many ways a Goldilocks version of the game. Fifth edition has largely turned away from the game-for-games sake excesses of the late 3rd and 4th editions--where players made decisions mostly because those were the "winning" choices purely from the point of view of how the rules worked---and revisited the idea of fronting the roleplaying and world simulation parts of the game instead. This made for a simpler game, that balanced formal rules with improvisational rulings, gave room for the game to become more popular than ever before. I think this was mostly having the right thing at the right time---when the internet started to enable real-time streaming, when it became possible to have break-out stars that didn't depend on corporate sponsorship, and when we were all locked into our homes for a couple of years and needed comfort and distractions. So we had an RPG gaming boom with 5th edition as the poster child of it.

WotC, being owned by corporate with fiduciary responsibilities, of course was going to make the wrong choices, especially when they got the notion that D&D was "under-montetized". D&D can be enshittified, just like anything else. Indeed, TSR and Gary Gygax themselves had both done it before. That's why Wizards of the Coast had bought them after the collapse of 2nd edition. So 5e itself isn't a fantastic choice either, but right now, it's the game most people know and as I said above, it actually does have some really nice attributes interms of hitting that sweet spot of not too much complexity and just enough space for free-form roleplay.

Here's where Shadowdark comes in. Kelsey Dionne is one of the most popular publishers of 3rd party 5e content. WotC is repeatedly causing itself self-inflicted wounds, driven by personal and corporate failings. So, in the spirit of Mr. Norman, decides to apply a similar level of design ability and simplification to the 5e rule set. And this is Shadowdark. It's the best of both worlds, a system that's familiar (and easier to learn) to any former 5e player, has a design aesthetic that enhances usability in the best tradition of OSE (something significantly lacking in WotC 5e design). and is contained in a single affordable volume. I have no fear that Arcane Library will continue to support the system for years either. Kelsey has shown that she's in this for the longer haul, not just a quick profit taking.

I'd be remiss though in not mentioning a couple of alternatives to Shadowdark---Dionne wasn't the only one with that idea. Also hotly anticipated this year is Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and de-grim-and-grittified companion of The Shadow of the Demon Lord. SotDL is a similar simplification of 5e idea by Robert J. Schwalb that holds a lot of people's attention. MAny don't like the "grimdark" setting and SotWW promises to make that game more suited to a standard D&D experience. Not out quite yet, but expected soon. the Other related game that deserves mention is Dungeon Crawl Classics, the over-the-top D&D from Goodman Games. This is a simplification of 3rd edition rules, and answers the question: "what if D&D had a prog-rock soundtrack?" It's highly random, based on extensive (100s of pages) of tables and guaranteed to turn your players characters into crwaling horrors from beyond/insane cripples/more monstrous than the monsters themselves. But you'll have a fantastic time getting there.

I think we've got way more, and better options than the official Wizards of the Coast D&D right now, more and better options than we've ever had before: Shadowdark, Shadow of the Weird Wizard and Dungeon Crawl Classics being just some of the higher points. Community support is amazing too. One group is never going to run out of stuff to play, and it's mostly inter-compatible anyway. And Keith's TMKWTD works for all these games.
posted by bonehead at 11:35 AM on January 10 [9 favorites]

As a former kid who spent way more time reading the Monster Manual by myself than playing the game with others, this took me back to those days very powerfully. Thanks for sharing it, JHarris!
posted by straight at 11:42 AM on January 10 [5 favorites]

Sorry, That's Secret of the Weird Wizard/Shadow of the Demon Lord. For the better to google.
posted by bonehead at 11:46 AM on January 10 [3 favorites]

Secret of the Weird Wizard needs to BE a prog-rock album.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:43 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

My whole group was already heartily sick of D&D 5e—it's totally unbalanced, especially with regard to martials v casters—even before the OGL debacle, the even further dumbing down of "One D&D" and the obvious future of having to pay to play in a walled garden. So we switched to Pathfinder 2e, which is brilliant and works so much better. Dungeons and Dragons, the brand, is a classic example of "enshittification": its Hasbro overlords don't understand it and want to milk every penny for it, even if that destroys 50+ years of player/DM goodwill.

But thanks for the link, because this site is cool as hell, and 90% of it will apply to PF2 as well.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:45 PM on January 10 [4 favorites]

Go for the eyes Boo!
posted by some loser at 12:46 PM on January 10 [5 favorites]

Early useful articles:
Goblins
Kobolds
Orcs

Late one night, pondering the lackluster combat performance of a few goblins during that evening's game session, I set about looking for a better way to play them. I pondered their brutish demeanor, their lack of strategic insight, and their simplistic approaches to problems, searching resolutely for the method by which they could be seen in all their fearsome glory. Then, with the crack of thunder, it hit me. It hit me hard— in the back of the head.

The room began to spin and grow dark.

An odor reminiscent of a barn in need of a good mucking out assaulted my nostrils. A low, guttural voice growled, "You got food?"

posted by zamboni at 1:03 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

It really is an invaluable blog and book for any system you decide to run; probably moreso for fantasy settings, but it is still much more complete and helpful than most sourcebooks. I love having more explicit "why/when" behind each adversary's "how." The NPC's tag on the blog is quite useful (especially as you move backwards in time towards more generic humanoid NPCs).

I've played a not-quite-one-shot in Fantasy AGE and it was great. Very satisfying game to play, and the mechanics are flexible and fun.

I picked copies of Modern AGE (and will probably be picking up the Expanse rulebook for some of the mechanics they use that are cross compatible) for a game I'd like to run in the future. It's a pretty good setting-neutral ruleset and is a "medium crunch" set of rules. It straddles that line between being complex but also fairly beginner friendly well (except, I'd say, for character creation, it can be a bit daunting, and the books aren't physically laid out super well in those sections).

The highlight of the system is that it takes the equivalent of critical successes (which happen slightly more frequently) and lets you use them in a wider variety of ways, and pushes them to be a narrative drive in the game. It gently nudges you towards a bit more cinematic play style, and I think it works really well for folks who come to TTRPG's secondhand through sources like The Adventures Zone, Dimension20, or Critical Role, and aren't as familiar with some of the less explicit expectations or rules around the roleplaying portion of these games.
posted by furnace.heart at 1:08 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Oh no, I just noticed that this post came immediately after the obit post for Jennell Jaquays! That was completely accidental!
posted by JHarris at 1:15 PM on January 10

I DM 5e, despite the flaws and wince-worthy corporate behavior, for the same reason I measure temperatures in Fahrenheit and speak in English. Lengua franca. Path of least resistance. I'm not out there on the frontier, starting up a group to play for a year based on a PDF that came out last month.

But I'm so, so glad some of you are. Thanks for pushing the gaming space in directions I want it to go. I'll join you someday.
posted by gurple at 3:14 PM on January 10 [8 favorites]

I have the great luxury of a group that is happy to try new things and take flyers on me getting excited about my new sparkly thing. They really liked the DCC Dying earth one we did last fall. I'm hoping they'll like this too.
posted by bonehead at 3:42 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Secret of the Weird Wizard needs to BE a prog-rock album

Get ye a copy of Black Hole Space Wizard, by Howling Giant. And then, their magnum opus - The Space Between Worlds.
posted by FatherDagon at 3:44 PM on January 10 [7 favorites]

Kobolds (even weaker and dumber than goblins)

Somewhere, Tucker just had an aneurysm.
posted by delfin at 4:07 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

Somewhere, Tucker just had an aneurysm.

Oh, that's wonderful. But:

Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds.

The awful, cunning, devious, master-tactician kobolds who... didn't just cut the ropes?
posted by gurple at 4:52 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

Never mind, I figured it out for myself: the kobolds didn't cut the ropes because they wanted the party to go kill some demons, take their treasure and bring it back for them to steal.
posted by gurple at 4:54 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

I DM 5e, despite the flaws and wince-worthy corporate behavior, for the same reason I measure temperatures in Fahrenheit and speak in English. Lengua franca. Path of least resistance.

I'm the DM, too, and am lucky enough to have a steady and consistent group, so when the last campaign ended, we discussed what we wanted to do next, and all came to the conclusion that switching to PF2 was best. If I constantly had to scout around for players, I might have to go back to 5e, but the last 5e campaign had five and a half pages of rules additions/modifications/deletions, so whether it was actually 5e was a philosophical question.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:03 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]

I read the first book in the early pandemic months. It provided a pretty good framework; I always ran monsters thinking about their personality, intelligence and martial skill, but he tied it explicitly to tactics and encounter design better than I had done.

IMHO the thing D&D since 3e (and Pathfinder) is especially good at is the wargame-style tactical combat. Pieces on the board, everyone knows the legal moves, go for it. That's not all a session should be, of course, but if I'm not providing challenging tactical combat I feel like I should be using a different system--preferably one easier to prep and improvise in. And designing encounters isn't something I love (I tend to be too nice) so the tips definitely improved my GM game when I do d20.
posted by mark k at 5:50 PM on January 10 [1 favorite]

My D&D group still plays 1e. Every so often we talk about trying one of the new systems, but you know, we already own the 1e books and after all these decades why change now?
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:12 PM on January 10 [3 favorites]

> Black Hole Space Wizard, by Howling Giant

holy crap, Father Dagon, that is some good-ass fantasy prog.
posted by egypturnash at 8:23 PM on January 10

I'm the DM, too, and am lucky enough to have a steady and consistent group...

I've got that now, and this thread has me thinking that, whenever our 5e campaign wraps up, that'd be a good time to try something new, with the same people. I'll probably pitch that.

But: two of my five players are in multiple campaigns right now (one of them is in two others). And those campaigns, well, they're not Shadowdark. They're 5e. And if one of them ends, they'll likely be looking to replace it with another 5e campaign.

I'm thinking about tennis and pickleball, ten [or whatever] years ago. Some folks want to play a fun racquet sport. Lots of folks want to play tennis. There's a tension between what I'm playing and who I'm playing with, and I care about both those things.

Anyway, that's why I personally am waiting for pickleball to really take off. But good on all of you who are drawing lines on your driveway and setting up nets!
posted by gurple at 9:00 AM on January 11

One-shots. That's how I do new things a lot of the time. If someone's not able to make it we do one shots instead. And those can be anything, including DCC or Traveller or the Witch is Dead. If they like it, they're not shy about asking for more. I think a Traveller campaign is coming soon too.
posted by bonehead at 12:23 PM on January 11

The comments here are a very distressing read for a newbie DM deciding to start a 5e campaign this year...
posted by destrius at 8:26 PM on January 11 [1 favorite]