More than two years since filming and it was well worth the wait. Stranger Thingsat last fulfilled its mash-up pop culture promise in its fourth season. Hidden inside a mix of a B-movie style homage to low-budget horror and Steven Spielberg movies of the E.T. and Goonies vintage, the story finally came full circle in nine big hours over seven episodes. What do you get when you take 1980s pop culture, a haunted house, a superman lab, more Upside Down, more D&D, not-rabid mynocks, a monster to rival Freddy Kruger, and a huge cast of characters you’ve grown to love (and watch grow up)? The best season of one of the streaming era’s best series.
It’s been a long road, getting from there to here–that is, getting from Stranger Things′ third season to a final trailer and a fourth season beginning a long six weeks from now. It may not seem like it, but it’s been more than two years since we first saw a glimpse at what lies ahead on Stranger Things. At last the breakout hit retro-sci-fi-horror series finally has a full trailer and a coming go-live date for part of the next season.
Dungeons & Dragons fans may notice the new oogy threat to be Vecna, an undead sorcerer last seen in your weekly D&D game or the 5th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide (discussed here). With Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund joining the show, and the Creepshow vibe in its new creepy baddie, Stranger Things Season 4 looks to lean more on darker monster horror than previous seasons.
At last here’s the trailer for the fourth season of Stranger Things:
This week the team over at Wizards of the Coast that produced the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragonsis coming out with the newest addition to the line of hardcover books which make up the rules and playable content for the game. Fifth Edition is by far the most popular and widely-played edition of the grandfather of all role-playing games for the last few decades and may be the most popular edition ever. This newest book is titled Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes,and its primary function is to provide nearly 150 new monsters for use in the game’s adventures, but the book itself is so much more than that. Previous editions have focused their monster books on stuffing as many creatures into them as possible. The more monsters, the more players will find the book useful, and (presumably) the more copies will sell. What the current team has excelled at is deviating away from that “more stats are better” mentality, and instead focuses on the “why” of the monsters instead of the “how many”. And Wizards of the Coast continues to pull this off beautifully in Tome of Foes.
Whereas previous D&D editions would have had the Monster Manual, and then Monster Manual II, followed by Monster Manual III, etc., 5th Edition has the requisite Monster Manual (reviewed here) but then wowed fans with Volo’s Guide to Monsters (reviewed here). Essentially a book full of monsters, Volo’s deviated from previous norms and expectations in that it provided a wealth of information (re: text) about the monsters, their origins, histories, societies, clans and behaviors rather than just their hit points and ever-more-creative ways to wreck a party of characters. And people bought in, big time. The stories behind why mind flayers eat brains and how they manage to have a functioning society, or about the different kinds of giants and how drastically different their societies were and how they view their own roles amongst giants and their gods, were fascinating, and provided many a DM (and player) ideas for running their campaigns and players.
Limited edition, alternate-art cover by Vance Kelly.
At its core Tome of Foes still is a book full of monsters, but the background information it provides is just as deep and satisfying as that found in Volo’s. The chapters on The Blood War and the Elves are especially valuable in providing players with more sparks for their imagination. There are many new player options available in Tome of Foes in the form of playable races and sub-races. Of particular note are the new options for tieflings (a playable race from the Player’s Handbook) and the gith (a D&D favorite dating all the way back to the 1st EditionFiend Folio). The gith are a race with two sub-races who roam the Astral plane with their silver swords, marauding and fighting each other in an endless conflict that sometimes spills over into the players’ world. Tieflings currently have only one race option in the Player’s Handbook, as compared to other playable races such as elves, dwarves, and halflings, who each have two or more sub-race alternatives to customize their characters. In the Player’s Handbook all tieflings are described as being infused with the essence of Asmodeus, the ruler of the Nine Hells in D&D lore, and they have one set of abilities for their race. In Tome of Foes tieflings are provided with eight other alternatives, one for each of the rules of the eight layers of Hell that are ruled in Asmodeus’ name (he himself rules the bottom-most, or ninth layer of the Nine Hells). These options provide a wide range of play for tiefling characters, specifically different stat modifiers and innate spellcasting abilities.
For the gith, the playable race is an interesting addition to the game, with two sub-races, the githzerai and the githyanki, the two original 1st Edition races of gith. The gith are structured as other races, with a major and minor stat bonus (depending on sub-race chosen), additional abilities, alignment tendencies (though again, as with all previous 5th Edition publications, no restrictions or mandates), and of course, psionics. As with previous psionic abilities, these are spellcasting abilities with a “psionics” attribute, which allows for casting without components. In other words, a mental method of casting. Although many players continue to clamor for a psionics mechanic in this edition, it seems as though the designers are sticking to their guns: psionics is just spellcasting without mumbling, hand-waving, and balls of bat guano. And in the current version of the game, which nicely balances a wealth of meaningful character-building choices with rules mechanics that are easily accessible to the game-playing public at-large, this seems a wise choice.
So let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Your time is valuable and so are your hard-earned gold pieces, unless you are a thief, in which case let’s face it, it’s not really your gold no matter how hard you “worked” to pick that fat merchant’s belt pouch (c’mon, be honest, we both know it’s true). The 5th Edition Monster Manual from Wizards of the Coast (or WotC, for short), which goes on sale on the 30th of this month, is a well put-together book, with tons of classic monsters in it, and is really a must-have for anyone looking to run a homebrew 5th Edition game, or looking to convert any of their existing modules/adventures to 5th Edition. Go out and buy it, though please do not pay the $49.99 suggested retail price. Most game stores and online retailers will have it for around $30, including Amazon.
Okay, so… if you are still reading this then I will assume that: (A) you don’t fit the Dungeon Master description I used above, (B) need some more convincing, or (C) you have some time to kill right now. Either way, cool.
The book itself is nicely bound with thick high-quality covers which are a must for a book that’s primarily going to be hauled around from game session to game session in a book bag, backpack, plastic tote or other means. So, it’s going to see a lot of handling and miles (unless you are nice enough to be hosting the game, in which case, Huzzah to you!!!), and it should take the abuse quite well.
“Knock, knock.” “Who is it?” “Land shark.”
The pages are also high quality, thick glossy paper stock and the book is lively and colorful throughout. I was not a huge fan of the background on every page which was introduced in 3.0, but in this series of books (the Players Handbook and Monster Manual so far, anyway) WotC is not placing thick borders on every page which in previous versions squeezed the content and gave it a skimpier feel (lots of artwork, less content). The Monster Manual is chock-full of good information and continues their current trend of combining good humor and retro-elements into the content, as was done in the Starter Set and the Player’s Handbook. The references to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Emirkol the Chaotic and the Demi-Lich Acererak are nice touches and an appreciated wink to both older gamers and the previous creators and contributors who have helped keep the game going for so many years. I especially like the disclaimers at the beginning of each book so far, which are quite humorous and show that while the WotC Team took its work seriously, they didn’t fall prey to taking themselves so.
You will find nearly every classic monster you could ask for in the book. And while at 350 pages it is a hefty brick of a book, its usefulness to the Dungeon Master can’t be denied. From the mandatory entries of giants, dragons, fiends, elementals, constructs, undead and humanoids of all flavors, to the more exotic modrons, yuan-ti, the warring githyanki and githzerai, and the ever-present but rarely used axe beak, the book has a ton of monsters across the spectrum of challenge ratings. (Seriously, how many times have you encountered an axe beak in all of your adventures?)
