Matt Colville is a very productive individual. His current offering on Kickstarter is a book of monsters designed for 5th edition D&D. It joins a library full of monster manuals, tomes, codex, compendiums, etc, that are already out or coming out over the next month to two years. Don't let that stop you from investigating the details.
Here's the Kickstarter link https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattcolville/mcdm-monster-book?ref=nav_search&result=popular&term=flee%2C%20mort
At the time this is being written the campaign has funded at over a million dollars and still has a couple weeks to go.
The plan is to provide familiar monsters with some additional abilities in combat to spice them up, and to introduce new monsters to surprise and entertain the DM and players. Also, there will be new rules for retainers, companions, minions (remember minions from 4e?) and a few more things.
Matt has not been shy about admitting that he likes a number of things from 4th edition D&D. In this book he brings a few of them back such as minions mentioned above, but he makes them his own with a variant of the idea. He also uses the monster types from 4e like Brute, Skirmisher, Solo, Controller, etc.
Don't panic, this is not a work designed for 4e, but squarely aimed at 5th edition D&D. His application of types, and of minions should actually be useful, and doesn't burden the game with the cumbersome aspects of 4e.
Additionally this work aims to include rival adventuring parties, which might split out to a separate book to keep the monster book page count down (already expected to top 320 pages). Named monster lairs are another bonus along with the unique treasure items to be found within.
In the campaign info of the Kickstarter is a link to a free sample of the kinds of material intended for the book. Have a look and see if this is something you can support.
I presently have a ton of monster books for 5e, with more on the way, having recently backed Tome of Beasts 3 from Kobold Press (which means I'll have 4 thick monster books from Kobold). I am very interested in MCDM's offering, but have not made up my mind for a couple of reasons. 1) it won't arrive as a complete physical work until about October of 2023, and 2) it is $40 just for the .pdf and $70 for the hard cover. Sure, that's not a lot more than the other ones I bought, but do I need another book of monsters?
Currently I'm experimenting and learning how to convert, modify, and create new monsters in 5e, inspired in part by Matt Colville and more so by my own curiosity and penchant for tinkering with monsters. I also already create rival adventuring groups in my campaign, so I don't need more at the moment.
MCDM produce plenty of good, entertaining material and Matt is a great presenter. If you don't already watch his Youtube channel, I recommend it highly. Check out the Flee, Mortals! Kickstarter campaign for yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment