Flee, Mortals! The MCDM Monster Book

Lairs & Layout
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 02:46:04 PM

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It's The Final Packeettt! Deedle Dee Doo!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:56:51 AM

Deedle Deet Deet Dooo!

Folks, this is the final packet! With Packet Seven you’ve gotten the vast majority of monsters and retainers and companions. There’s more monsters to come! But we’re saving the rest for the actual finished book just to give everyone something to look forward to. The PDF will release later this year (barring unforeseen weirdness in the world, knock on wood) and then a couple months after that, you’ll get the actual hardcover book!

So what’s in this final packet? Did we save anything particularly epic for the finale? You tell us!

You get both Demons & Devils, each with unique mechanics, Corporeal Undead, THREE different Environments with new unique monsters, the MCDM Otyugh, two TITANS, and the MCDM DRAGONS! Feels like a whole monster book in itself!

Before we get stuck in on the monsters, I want to say: I hope you folks have enjoyed this process as much as we have. It’s a lot of work! And we learned a lot doing it and there definitely some stuff we wouldn’t do again (mostly stuff like: don’t do all the Lairs last, spread them out during the project so as not to overload our cartographers). But I am incredibly proud of this team and the work everyone has done. It feels like we really moved the needle here on what a proverbially Good Monster Book can be.

We started with a simple premise; that it should be fun to run and fight monsters in D&D, we partnered with some amazing designers and writers, consultants, testers and editors and you all got to see the results. But not just that, there’s been this amazing feeling over the last seven months that what we wanted to do, what we believe in, is also what YOU want. That sense of “we are doing what our audience wants,” brings us a deep sense of satisfaction.

We made some good monsters, yo.

Also, it seems sorta like a miracle after the nightmare that was 2020-2022, but SO FAR this project has gone…about as smoothly as we could have hoped! Y’all got a packet every month for like seven months WHILE we were also producing an issue of Arcadia every month! That was NOT easy! :D

So, thanks for believing in this project and supporting it. We think you’re getting good value for money here and we’re all DYING to get you the finished printed book. I think this is going to be a really pretty book.

Anyway, Packet Seven!

Fiends

We just think Devils and Demons should be more obviously different. This was the first thing our art director said, looking through the classic Devils and Demons. “How do you tell which is which?” Good question!

Well, the reality is the game that came out in 1974 needed monsters and, as the game grew and became more popular, it needed a LOT of monsters and so words that, here in the real world are basically synonyms, needed to become different monsters. Like Ghoul and Wight. Demons and Devils, once synonymous with each other, arrive in 1979 as distinct factions but they’re mostly distinguished by their alignment. Each faction comes in many different shapes and sizes, including humanoid or bestial and the game has never really bothered to make that distinction any more clear.

Well, we think it would be cool if they were really, obviously different. Not just visually, but in how they play and this MAY also make it easier to use them at your table. Or at least, it’ll be easier to decide which you should use when designing adventures or encounters. And if we’ve done a good job, when you read about these critters (and especially when you see the ART) you’ll be inspired to tell tons of new, cooler stories using these monsters and the new mechanics within.

Devils

MCDM Devils are humanoid, civilized, intelligent, cultured. There would probably be a PC ancestry for these folks. Each devil has some array of classic Devilish physical traits: wings, horns, hooves, tails, but the expression of each is unique. Here’s one particularly delightful example.

Look at his little briefcase!! THAT is a devil. That is clearly a devil!

Notice the contract? That’s a visual theme that recurs throughout the devil art, because these devils come with a new, unique mechanic that allows anyone (with the right ingredients and knowledge of the ritual) to summon a devil. You can even do it in the middle of combat!

There is a price, of course, and this is all presented in a pretty robust system we cooked up because it seemed obvious to us that the whole point of devils should be the contract. It’s a sort of MLM scheme some Devils join through which they may advance their station in the Lists of Hell.

That notion: that any sufficiently motivated and desperate person could, should they get hold of the ritual and the ingredients, summon a devil and sign a contract and gain power which (they think) will give them control over others is a core part of the idea of devils. Powerful wizards summon devils to do their bidding! Desperate people seeking revenge against the world pledge their souls in exchange for power! Classic.

You’re not required to use these rules, you can just use these devils like you would any previous devils, but we hope this idea stimulates the imagination and inspires some interesting ideas for your adventures. And maybe one of your players will think “hmm, summon a devil you say? Well, my character is very close to death and this battle seems like a total party kill. I think I got some blessed human blood on me somewhere!”

Also we love the idea that tieflings (or whatever they end up being called in the MCDM Legendarium) are just run-of-the-mill devils from The Seven Cities of Hell who were summoned by a desperate person who died in the performance of the ritual, stranding the devil in the Mundane World. “Great. I guess I live here now.”

In this book, you get!

The Devil Adjudicator (CR 14 Controller)

A Devil Jurist (CR 10 Artillery)

Devil Legate (sense a theme? 😀 CR 8 Soldier)

Devil Magistrate (CR 12 Skirmisher)

Devil Notary (CR 6 Minion. It’s a notary minion!!)

Infernal Chancellor Lazivos (CR 16 Leader)

That is PLENTY of Devils for this book!

Demons

Demons are, or we think should be, bestial and wild. Not normally intelligent, not cultured, not civilized. They’re monsters from the Abyssal Wasteland. Mostly just random collections of limbs and organs. Like so….

Wow! That is a demon! Demons start out fierce and animalistic, but as they fight for territory with other demons of the Waste, they accumulate souls. Any demon that appears in the Mundane World arrives with a limited supply of souls they can spend to power up their abilities and, should they kill anyone, they add that creature’s soul to their collection.

If a demon accumulates enough souls, it develops an identity. It becomes self-aware and intelligent. It evolves a personality. It becomes aware of what it is, and where, and it does not like it. It does not want to fight endlessly with the other demons of the Waste because it is desperate not to lose the souls it’s accumulated.

They will therefore fight like…well, demons, to hang on to their souls. They aren’t much afraid of the PCs (even when they should be) they’re mostly afraid of the Waste’s sea of demons.

Demons collecting souls that both grant them power as well as self-awareness is, we hope, an idea that reinforces what we all thought was cool about demons in the first place and, like the idea that devils can be summoned, we hope this will stimulate new cool ideas for adventures and scenarios.

Lastly, and this doesn’t really come up in the monster book? It’s more appropriate for a Timescape book, but the MCDM Legendarium doesn’t have a Blood War. There’s no special animosity between Devils and Demons. Devils consider themselves just other citizens of the Timescape. It just so happens that the Abyssal Wasteland exists at the bottom of the Timescape and the next highest energy level is the Seven Cities of Hell. So demons trying to escape damnation in the Waste have to get through Hell before they can escape into the rest of the Timescape.

Devils just see this as an annoyance.

In this packet, you get!

CHIMERON  (CR 12 Brute, name in all caps just because I think it’s a bad-ass name)

A Ruinant (CR 6 Skirmisher)

A Spitling (CR 4 Minion)

Tormenauk (CR 8 Brute)

Wobalas (CR 10 Artillery)

Aurumvas of Meaningless Greed (CR 14 Leader)

That’s a goodly amount of fiends! Could there be more? Absolutely, we could fill a whole BOOK with these! But not right now….

Corporeal Undead (Lesser)

This packet features all the MEATY undead! Or, you know, BONEY ones. MEATY BONEY UNDEAD! “Lesser” just meaning like, Not Mummies And Liches And Vampires.

You get a few minions here! A Crawling CLAW (classic), a Decrepit Skeleton, and a Rotting Zombie. But you also get a beefier, non-minion skeleton and zombie, along with a GIANT Zombie, a Wight (with this packet, you might fight a bright wight tonight!), and the MCDM GHOUL.

Otyugh

You also get the MCDM Otyugh, another classic monster. Companion version included just in case you manage to like TAME one or raise one from an…egg? Tadpole? Zygote? I dunno man I just work here. How you got a pet Otyugh is between you and your god.

Titans

You get to meet 2 of the 8 Titans of Orden! Goxomoc, the Titan of Ix, and the Kraken, Titan of Higara. These are, basically, our Kaiju. If you need a Kaiju for some insane reason, we got two of ‘em. Let us know how it goes. 😀

New Environments

You get two new environments, the Road and Underground, and the last of the Enchanted Forest monsters, which we saw the beginning of way back with Packet 1. Bonestalkers! Rotbeasts! Ankhegs! Jellies! Weeping Willows! All that good stuff.

DRAGONS

The best, saved for last.

So, our attitude toward dragons is; they should be end bosses. Like, CAMPAIGN end-bosses. Not just a winged fire-breathing lizard you might fight at third level while wandering around a forest NO! Dragons are ancient and powerful demigods! Bitter and twisted with hate and pain and extreme old age.

So that’s these.

Now it may be that in some future product we decide these ones are Draco Draconis, the Royal Dragon and there’s also Lesser Dragons like what you get in the 5E Monster Manual because I think there can still be a place for those, but I think that FIRST Dragons should be EPIC. And these are that. Those. They. This is them.

So you get Five Dragons in this book, all solo monsters, therefore all action-oriented, and they’re all CR 20-24. Now, this means there are nastier, more powerful beasties in this book (GOXOMOC) but to be fair, the Queen of the Crystal Dragons already appeared in Kingdoms & Warfare: CTHRION URONIZIIR. I’m not sure more dragons would help, as it’s unlikely anyone will use all five of THESE, but if you need a real dragon god, go check out the Time Ender.

Hag Lair

We’ve got another lair in this packet. Shtriga Nonna, the humanoid-devouring hag is coming to visit you in her walking hut that’s bigger on the inside. This lair is ready-to-play for 4th-level characters. Just… don’t stay for dinner.

That’s All For Now

That’s it folks! That’s packet seven, the last packet until the final PDF is released! We know everyone wishes there were more stat blocks for whichever monsters you’re using in your game right now, and we want to give those to you! But they would have to be in some other product, as we really packed this book full of stuff and there’s no room for more.

This is by NO MEANS the last update though! Next update will probably be about the layout of the book; i.e. getting all the text and art in the same document with pretty fonts and headers and graphic design. And we might just do an Art Update at some point as more and more art comes in.

But really, once the layout is done, which is gonna be a little while, couple of months, the book is basically done! We are (knock on wood) still on track for an October delivery of the physical book but that is VERY precarious as we’ve learned. Lots of external nonsense we have no control over could go wahooni-shaped without warning but IF that happens we’ll let you know and do our best to work around it.

I am really excited to see the final product. Thanks for supporting this project folks. See you in the next update!

Packet 6!
almost 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 03:02:53 PM

It’s starting to feel like a real monster book!

This is another one of those packets that goes a long way toward filling in all the nooks and crannies that folks expect a monster book to cover. It’s a challenge figuring out exactly which monsters belong in this book.

We started with just a huge wish list of monsters, pretty much what you’d expect. We used that list until we had a few monsters done, finished, through testing and editing and everything and then we had better data about “how many monsters can we get done in the time allotted?”

Once we had real data on how many monsters we could make, we had to go back to the wish list and start cutting. I think folks imagine “cutting” as “removing stuff we thought was going to be in the book” but no, nothing could be further from the truth.

That first list was just a wish list. We knew that when we made it. The pie in the sky, “if we had infinite time and money” list. So there were maybe 5 or 6 “aquatic reptile people/monsters” on there. Frog-people, Fish-people, Snake-people, all that. But we never imagined “oh yes, all of these will be in the final book,” we knew we’d have to cut some, we just didn’t know how many.

Cutting monsters wasn’t hard, I literally just went down the list thinking “how important is this? If this was literally the only monster book you had, what would you really need?

Well, there’s no correct answer to that, different people are gonna need different things, but I’ve been running the game long enough, and I’m pretty basic? Very much a pumpkin-spice latte DM I think so I felt like I had a pretty good idea what counted as “we NEED this” and what was an extra.

So for instance, we thought if there’s a Death Knight, right? Shouldn’t there be a War, Plague, and Famine knight? THE APOCALYPSE KNIGHTS! Yes that is a cool idea, but do most DMs need those? Nah, by definition if it’s a new idea it’s not something folks have already been using for years and years. They’re cool, but would you rather have 4 cool death knight variants, or Dragons?

Some things were hard to cut, like Elves and Dwarves. I really wanted to present new better options for normal ancestries as enemies, but we got Humans in here and that covers a LOT, very high utility there. And I’m sure we’ll see those Elves and Dwarves and Apocalypse Knights eventually.

This is the next to last packet! After Packet 7 everything else will be going straight into the book. Partly for scheduling reasons, partly because we want to save some stuff for the finished book so even those of you who’ve been reading all these updates and using the packets in your game will still have something new and cool to look forward to.

In THIS packet you’re getting a lot of classic enemies…

Elementals

More like HELLAmentals! Right?? No, not really, but I like saying that. I think this is the big Faction chunk in this packet. SIXTEEN new stat blocks including a new Action Oriented Elemental Queen.

MCDM elementals are not just Big Lumps Of Matter. We don’t think that’s the most interesting way to contextualize these elemental essences and our attitude is; well if folks are married to the Big Lumps idea, there’s already a ton of those in other books!

Instead we favor the idea (I would say “We came up with” which is literally accurate in that we had a meeting where we started from scratch and just talked about what excited us about elementals and what made sense, but as always someone, somewhere, has had all these ideas already even if we don’t know about it. All ideas are original, it’s just that some of them have been thought of before) that elementals are the primordial forces of creation and so naturally assume the form of wildlife appropriate to whatever world, or part of a world, they appear in.

So different elementals could look like bears or turtles or octopi (of course, octopus being greek, the correct plural would be “octopodules” but you all know that already) or lions each with some elemental manifestation. FIRE BEAR! That creates a fun space for Elementals because even with sixteen stat blocks, we can all imagine tons more.

Hopefully this gives everyone enough elementals to cover a wide range of adventures and encounters.

More Undead!

This packet gives you both Liches AND Mummies! Now, there aren’t a lot of these, one generic, one action-oriented of each and folks always want more (“Why can’t everything be a whole faction?!”) but they’re pretty cool! And you’ll get lairs for the named villain versions, so you got that to look forward to. And you’ll get the meaty crunchy Corporeal Undead (very different from Corporal Undead) in the next packet.

Ogres, Stirges, & Medusas

Hopefully you see what I mean about how this packet really fills in a lot of the “...and the rest!” monsters. You get two medusae (Generic and Extra Spicy), an Ogre-Ogre and an Ogre Minion (I mean, if you’re high-level enough, almost anything can be a minion!) and one of my all time favorite monsters (also I think one of Jim’s favorite) STIRGES!

Look, there’s always room in your adventure for some stirges, you’ll never regret using them. They liven up even the most bland and flavorless encounter. They’re basically the Paprika of Monsters.

I think you’re gonna get some concept art in this packet? So here’s a preview.

5…

4…

3…

2…

1…

Beef. I mean…Ogre!

Ha HAH! Yeah that’s an ogre. It’s very ogre. It may be the most ogre? Not my place to say, but it’s gotta be pretty close to the most ogre.

The Cave

I really like the direction these Environments have gone and this one is a good example of the strength of the whole idea. Because we just never would have come up with the Yumgrub if we hadn’t started with “what kinds of weird things might you find in a cave?” I’ve seen the concept art for the Yumgrub and…it’s exactly what you imagine just from the name.

The Keep

Another environment with three new original monsters. I hope folks get use out of this stuff because I think these monsters would really make “exploring a ruined keep” fun and exciting even for an experienced group of dungeon crawlers. It’s always nice to throw something new and cool at veteran die hards who’ve seen it all. 😀

Lord Syuul’s Lair

Behold the Terminal Excrescence! Lord Syuul, the action-oriented voiceless talker, debuted in the first packet we sent out after the Kickstarter funded. His lair is an interplanar vessel and lab surrounded by living flesh! Beware the horrors that await within (and without). And if you’re feeling adventurous, give the enucleator a spin! This voiceless talker lair is optimized for five 11th-level characters.

That’s it folks! Tons of new monsters, lots to play with and talk about. Next month (or thereabouts) you’ll get the Final Packet!

Then there’s nothing left but the final PDF! Oh speaking of which….

The Campaign For North Africa

CNA is a scenario-based game (the stated “hours to play” numbers assume you play through every scenario which obviously we’re not doing). So we’re gone through the rules for CNA and we’ve picked a scenario that’ll be fun to play and relatively short, and we’re planning on actually playing that scenario around when the PDF for Flee, Mortals drops, so the CNA event will act like a wrap party for the book.

I dunno when this will be! But probably in the first half of this year.

Is that crazy? It seems like this project just flew by in spite of it being an enormous amount of work. Mind you, James and the art team probably don’t feel this way, I have the privilege of being almost as much a customer of this book as you folks. I thought we already dropped a packet this month!

You all probably know this, but we announced that we’re working on our own, original, Heroic Fantasy RPG designed from the ground up (i.e. not a fork or a clone of some D&D edition) and this is obviously a big risk because our audience (i.e., you) is a 5e audience.

But working on this book gave us a lot of confidence because we basically want to make the game that this book implies. We started this project by saying “we could make a WAY better book than the 5E monster book!” Streamline a lot of the language, make a better stat block, better rules for handling debuffs and just everything, but we said “no, we want to make sure anyone used to the 5E books will be able to easily use this book,” so we concentrated on just a few modifications we think make the experience of using the book or the monsters better, without overloading you with all new terminology and organization.

I mean it wouldn’t have been ALL new, but it would have been different than what you’re getting.

But just generally the feeling that “the people like our design and lore” meant that, even though only a fraction of players will check out our game, we’ll be able to deliver for those who do.

So thanks for going on this journey with us. We LOVE seeing folks talking about their experiences using and fighting our monsters, it brings us all deep joy, and see you next months for THE FINAL PACKET!

Peace, out!

—Matt Colville

Packet Five, Is Alive!
almost 2 years ago – Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 02:08:24 PM

Hello, hello, what’s all this then? A packet?! Full of ghoulies and ghosties. And long-leggedy beasties?!

Well no, in point of fact this packet is full of Hobgoblins! And Treants and Manticores and Minotaurs! And a few other things. But first, we got some business to do…

Charging Preorders

If you ordered Flee Mortals and you live in the United States, we’re about to charge you for your order! At this point you’ve gotten 5 packets (plus the preview) so it seems a reasonable time to pay for the goods!

Also please make sure you’ve filled out the backerkit survey! You got an email about this. This is how we collect addresses. If you don’t fill out the survey you won’t continue to get packets! If you can’t find the email, no worries just follow this link to backerkit.

https://mcdm-monster-book.backerkit.com/

And, as always, if you have any questions or problems, email [email protected] and we’ll see you right.

On with the show!

The Packet

Actually this is a very meat-and-potatoes packet! You get the MCDM Hobgoblins which I predict you’re gonna get a LOT of use out of. We sorta doubled-down on the “Hob” part of Hobgoblin imagining them as demon/goblin hybrids descended from goblins who made a PACT with HELL! Dope.

So you’re gonna get to meet Bloodlord Varrox (not Vorrax, totally different dude) and the hobgoblin DEATH CAPTAIN. As well as their critter, the Grilp (can’t wait to see an illustration of that thing) and their own pet warbeast the SLAUGHTER DEMON! It’s always fun putting a lot of thought into an original name, but sometimes you just gotta call something what it is.

All in all you’re getting seven different flavors of Hobgoblin, their critter, their warbeast, an action-oriented Hobgoblin leader, and in the very unlikely circumstance that your party recruits a Hobgoblin ally, you get a Hobgoblin retainer!

And a BUNCH more monsters!

Harpies! Giant Worms! Manticores! Including a pet manticore! Minotaurs! Mambling Shounds! Pretty sure I spelled that right. Also Treants! You can now have your very own MCDM Walking Forest in case you were super let down by Act V of the Scottish Play and think a grappling tree would have spiced things up a treat. Or a treant.

And Wyverns! Why not verns?

This packet goes a long way toward fleshing out all the classic fantasy monsters you expect to see in a book like this, but hopefully each has its own unique MCDM feel and playstyle.

The Sewer

As promised, you get another Environment! This time we’re featuring The Sewer, a classic environment for fantasy adventures. Always a good time in the sewers.

You get to meet the Arcana Amalgam, an ooze made up of all the magical runoff goop that drains from a Magic Metropolis into the sewers. A rollie pollie isopod the size of like a big dog. Gross. And a Valochera! Basically a big mushroom that helps decompose whatever ends up in the sewer. Including adventurers!

Finally, last but not least….

The First Lair!

Hey it’s the first Flee, Mortals! Boss lair!! This is the most modest of the lairs, it’s just the Goblin Queen’s hideout. But it gives you an idea of how Lairs are going to work moving forward. Each lair after this gets progressively weirder and also cooler. 😀

The lair comes with a map of Queen Bargnot’s lair, including a gridded and non-gridded version, a keyed version for GMs and players, as well as a unique treasure hoard and several keyed encounters showing off the MDCM goblins! It’s like a tiny little self-contained adventure!

These are a lot of fun because they’re basically self-contained scenarios you can use tonight, or actually deploy in your normal campaign! No special rules required.

So check it out, and let us know what you think! There’s tons more cool stuff on the way!

Oh by the way…

Have We Mentioned…

Probably you already know this? But maybe not! MCDM is working on its own original Heroic Fantasy RPG! It’s so new we don’t even know the name yet! 😀

This is an original game, not based on any existing rule set, but using the kind of design principles you see in ARCADIA, Flee, Mortals! and the Beastheart. In fact I think it’s safe to assume that if you like that stuff, you’re gonna like our game.

Now if you’re happy with the RPGs you already got, feel free to skip all this. But every time we work on new monsters, or new classes and rules like the Beastheart or Kingdoms & Warfare, we regularly run into really annoying problems with the 5E ruleset. It was only a matter of time, after saying “Augh! Why does it work this way!?” over and over again that we’d feel inspired to make our own game. And that is happening!

We flew James and Hannah out to the MCDM offices for a week earlier this month and just hammered on the core design. We made a lot of progress! We now know many ways we don’t want this game to work. :D

It’s still gonna be a while before there’s anything concrete to show, but we’re making steady progress! This will in no way impact the development of Flee, Mortals. Like for instance we got this packet done this month without our RPG meetings interfering with anything. The RPG is basically the thing we all work on when we’re between tasks on our normal jobs.

If you want the inside scoop on development, if you want to be the first folks to try out the prototype (whenever it’s done, sometime later this year), we encourage you to come by our Patreon where we’ve already dropped several updates walking folks through the first full-week of meetings and design ideas. Very little is concrete yet so don’t get too attached to anything (THE COSMIC DIE) but for some people, just getting to see how the sausage is made is worth the price of admission.

While we develop the rules for the RPG, we’re also developing the lore for our worlds of Orden and the Timescape. Orden is the medieval fantasy world you’ve been reading about in our products for years now, the world of the Chain of Acheron and DUSK. The world we use in Flee, Mortals! any time we need really specific lore. So the Patrons will be getting a bunch of cool lore drops as well.

This is, basically, live development of an original AAA TTRPG documenting almost every decision, meeting, test, process. I’m not sure anything like this has been done before, at this scale? It’s already pretty cool!

I want to stress, no one needs to join the Patreon. This product will eventually come to market just like any other and if you want to wait until then and check it out, that makes total sense. But some folks like what we’re doing and want to support development and in exchange we enjoy sharing the inside scoop on development.

If that sounds cool to you, come on by! 

That’s it folks! Hope you like the monsters and lair! Next month you’ll get an MCDM Mummy, the MCDM Medusa, our Elementals (a lot of them!) Fan favorite, the Stirge. And Lord Syuul Lair!

Get excited! 😀

—Matt Colville

Packet Four is Out the Door!
about 2 years ago – Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 04:48:34 AM

Yay! Hey folks, Matt Colville here with a new batch of monsters! There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to which monsters end up in which packet, that’s sort of the power of the way we’re doing this. We assign a bunch of monsters to designers and as they come in and work their way through testing, we package them up and give them to you in whatever order they come off the assembly line in.

It’s not clear exactly where the half-way point in development on this book is? There’s a ton of content in here, but I believe this roughly represents the halfway point. Certainly in terms of monsters we’re past the halfway mark. We’re currently mostly working on the VIllain Parties and Enemy Lairs right now so things are moving along briskly!

Hopefully you’re happy with the content thus far, but THIS packet seems unusually COOLER than the average packet, so let’s get stuck in.

The Monsters

We got some classic meat-and-potatoes monsters in here. First of all, one of my all-time favorite monsters, featured prominently in an encounter from the Chain of Acheron (the one where Boots retreated from a Gelatinous Cube, into an alcove with a sarcophagus, and the sarcophagus revealed itself to be a MIMIC and grabbed Boots, immobilizing him so the Gelatinous Cube could catch up and SCHLORP itself over Boots. Muahahah! *cough* *cough* Ahem.) the MCDM MIMIC! Classic. And, of COURSE we got a Mimic Companion. Pet mimics should be more popular! They’re brilliant!

We also got your classic Griffon and a Gibbering Mouther and pet versions of BOTH! Quite high utility, a pet Griffon.

We got Hags (three different kinds) and an Action Oriented Hag, perfect for the GM who needs a swampy boss monster that could challenge an entire party.

Our first major undead drop, the Spectral Undead! Breaking undead into two factions, spectral and corporeal was useful to us when we were scheduling things. You know, undead are a huge bucket and one of those creature types you can use at all levels in your game so there’s a LOT of them and they do sort of naturally slot into two categories, so using spectral and corporeal as natural subcategories made our lives easier and might make it easier for the GM to decide which kind they want to use in their game? We’ll see.

You get Shades, Specters, Shadows and Wraiths! Plus our Action Oriented Wraith Lady: KIONA THE DREAD LORD! Sweet!

We’re also happy to present the MCDM Frog People, the Angulotl! These are brightly-colored tree frog folks who I think are a lot of fun and suitable for any sufficiently damp forest, jungle, or swamp. You get frog-folk minions as well as their slightly domesticated critter the clawfish. We’re getting to the point now with Packet 4 where there is a pretty robust depth and breadth of monsters already finished.

We’re sorta working through the packet in terms of epic-ness and the next-most-epic thing in here are the MCDM Gnolls! I love this design, Gnolls are one of my favorite go-to monsters when I feel like Orcs are too passé and I need something a little tougher. And we have quite an array of gnolls in here, including their quadrupedal, infernal ancestors the Abyssal Hyena, and their big warbeast, the Tusker Demon! I think these guys are gonna be pretty popular.

We are also proud to present the stat blocks for the TIME RAIDERS! Veterans of a Thousand Psychic Wars, the Kuran’zoi sail the Sea of Stars pillaging worlds across the Timescape. I have previously mentioned my enormous affection for Jason’s visual design here, but now you actually get to use them! Five new Time Raider stat blocks! These guys are a cool psionic enemy OR ally for your game. I really hope you folks like these guys.

Of course, sooner or later you knew you were gonna get the MCDM Vampire and, by association, an MCDM Vampire Lord. Well, this is that packet. It brings me profound joy to introduce you to Count Rhodar von Glauer! He Does The Devil’s Work.

I got to work on the lore for this dude and Mike Shea supplied some brilliant design, I cannot wait to use this dude and I think I already got an idea for how he’ll crop up in a future game. Muahaha!

The Scenario

I think this might be the last scenario? Because you’re gonna start getting the Lairs soon and those basically are scenarios. So we came up with something special for the last scenario proper. THE FURIOUS ROAD!

This is, as you may have guessed from the title, a Mad Max-inspired scenario where your PCs race across a wasteland on an arcane war machine to deliver supplies to desperate desert dwellers. But there are gnoll raiders planning to steal the supplies, and they don't take prisoners. Players earn points by killing gnolls and taking risks, like jumping from one vehicle to another, in this high-action, over-the-top game. If you stream your group's attempt at all seven rounds of high-speed mayhem and survive, you can come by our Discord and link us to your attempt and we’ll put it on the Leaderboard! Top five groups will get some prizes from the warehouse which probably means some cool minis.

I love this stuff, I love these scenarios, they give burned out groups something FUN they can play TONIGHT with literally no prep. We provide all the maps and the monsters and even pre-generated characters. We sorta have to do that, you have to use the pregens if you want to get on the leaderboard because otherwise OBVIOUSLY people could make characters deliberately to cheese the whole thing.

So it’s ready to run, TONIGHT, and it’s super fun and you can always just copy it and paste it into your game if your players are the right level. It’s just super fun for us to take these rules and create these little scenarios that aren’t a whole adventure, but they’re way more fun than a normal encounter.

I think that’s it folks! Packet Four is PACKED. Everyone is working hard on this project and I think I speak for the whole team when I say; we love doing this. The work is fun, creative, collaborative. We get to work with the best designers in the business and I think it shows in the results.

Please let us know what you think and if you use the monsters in your game, come by our Discord and tell us how it went! Folks love hearing the after-action reports!

Packet Five will be live early in the new year! Stay tuned!

Peace, out!