Monster Manual project

[James Holloway]

D&D rakshasa's are probably not that easy to find. There are probably a few cat people type miniatures around making it easy enough to find a humanoid tiger man but then his hands need to stuck on upside down 

looks like Ral partha did one back in the day

The upside-down hands thing is interesting. The rakshasa in the MM illustration just has normal hands, which I was surprised to see!

[James Holloway]

Today's episode was a tough one. I definitely don't have a remorhaz, and although I am pretty sure I have more than one rhinoceros in the creature drawer, a hasty search found nothing. Maybe I was thinking of baluchitheriums. But yesterday I did a quick swing through local charity shops (I work right near a load of them, which is handy) and got this ray for 20p.

I do a surprising amount of underwater photography for this show. I should put a filter on there.

Anyway, here's the ray, featuring a Poundland shot glass used as a cheapo flying stand.



You can check out the episode here: http://monsterman.libsyn.com/episode-52-ray-to-rhinoceros

[otherworld]

Looking forward to the next episode.

Just wondering if you'd seen my comments/questions added to ep. 49?  Probably arrived too late for the 'mailbag special' ep. 50.

[James Holloway]

Looking forward to the next episode.

Just wondering if you'd seen my comments/questions added to ep. 49?  Probably arrived too late for the 'mailbag special' ep. 50.

Dang it! Libsyn is supposed to send me an email, but I must have goofed up the setting somehow.

The good news is: you're going to get your wish. When I'm done, I'm going to do a little break, maybe do a few weeks of episodes about odd subjects just to cleanse the palate, and then yep, we're going to do the Fiend Folio.

I'm going to say "this goofy monster is redeemed by some good Russ Nicholson art" so often I'm thinking of setting it to music.

[James Holloway]

So, this is not technically a miniature, but I don't have any roc models, so when I needed one in my D&D game, this is what I did:



Anyway, the new episode covers the roc, the roper, the rot grub and the rust monsters. I'm astonished I don't have a rust monster. Could have sworn I did!

http://monsterman.libsyn.com/episode-43-roc-to-rust-monster

(Yeah, I know it says 43 but it's actually 53. The title on the page itself is correct, anyway.)

[SotF]

If you want a relatively cheap Roc, the best way to get them is to look for some of the plastic eagle toys and repainting them.

I've got one put up that showed up a few times, but is the right size that a lot of little hands try to get to it to play with, so it tends to be left up high.

If I remember right, DM Scotty did a video about one he converted with a few things as well.

[Spooktalker]

Honestly, the star of today's episode is the rakshasa, but I don't have a rakshasa model, so the rat, giant (Sumatran) it is!

Another great episode! I can 'lend' the thread a genuine rakshasa miniature: this old Grenadier one:

D&D rakshasa's are probably not that easy to find. There are probably a few cat people type miniatures around making it easy enough to find a humanoid tiger man but then his hands need to stuck on upside down 

looks like Ral partha did one back in the day

The Rakshasa shows us one of the pitfalls/gotchas waiting for those who would approach the Monster Manual with a collect-them-all mentality. I would suggest to those that have a dedicated Raksasha model and who are playing AD&D by-the-book, the chance you will have an opportunity to use it in a game is a slim-to-none, and that on the other hand, if you lack a dedicated Rakshasha model but have any kind of D&D miniatures collection, you already have a model better-suited to represent a Rakshasa than a said dedicated figure. The reason is simply that Rakshasa's almost never appear in their true form (and it's debatable whether a tiger-person is their true form, or even whether they have one true form). Even if you have a party with a player with a true-seeing ability, it will be one or two among the party, and the marjority will still see the creature in whatever guise it chooses.

The lesson is that monsters in the Monster Manual need to be read through thoroughly and placed in context before you go out and buy figures, and I speak from experience. I have a similar collect-them-all project going, although I am collecting and painting in the order of things I think I'll need most in the game. But I've often gone through the Monster Manual planning out what I'll do for whatever monster type "when I come to it" or when the opportunity to buy presents itself (on ebay for example). I was pleased with myself for collecting six dopplegangers from the Dwellers Below box set... until I went back to the entry to plan their use in a game, to realize the chance I would actually ever be able to place them on the table is nil. The rakshasa and doppleganger aren't the only ones, either.. the brain mole... the thought-eater... etc. With something like Slaadi, you will probably have an opportunity for a super-cool reveal late in an adventure, but most of the time you will be using other figures....

So you've got to ask yourself, are you collecting more as a display-case exhibit or as a practical collection for in-game use? Are you going to still paint a figure for a small chance of ever placing it on the table? If you have such a figure already, do you alter the monster's rules to give yourself a chance to play with it? Or do think further outside the box and play with it in a different sort of game, for example one with rules for cutaways to what the villain is doing in his lair with his minions a la Mum-Ra in Thundercats?

D&D presents a host of challenges like this to the would-be-collector. In any event your prep-to-play ratio for any one monster or group is probably going to be bad, but some are going to be abysmal.

There are tangents we could explore...let's take spriggans and duergar, for example. These guys can grow huge, so you need two different models to represent them. You can find giant dwarfs (the overwelming trend in giants is to proportion them like deformed dwarves anyway) but going back and modeling any 25 or 28mm dwarf to match your chosen giant is the challenge. I must have a 100 25mm dwarves or more, but none are a perfect match for the Asgard giant I picked from from Viking Forge that is a perfect for the big version. And that's just one spriggan or duergar. What if I want to have a party of 3 (and spriggans have a 3-12 encounter size and duergar 2-8 (201-300 in lair)?

Other thoughts to explore.... the MM illustrations don't always match up with the text, and were one artist's take on it working from a brief, and if I had to pick between text and illustration, I'd say text is more canonical. Also, MM entries are often stub entries where there may be an assumption that you're drawing from a wider body of mythology. The raksasha is a prime example. Your view of the raksasha will be ever so richer for visiting the wikipedia page and doing a google image search. Sometimes there is a specific and unspoken source for a creature rather than any kind of body of myth. For example the displacer beast. The baku is a particularly interesting example because it both has a body of myth but also a specific book of Japanese monsters that you can trace it's likely origin to.

[James Holloway]

The Rakshasa shows us one of the pitfalls/gotchas waiting for those who would approach the Monster Manual with a collect-them-all mentality. I would suggest to those that have a dedicated Raksasha model and who are playing AD&D by-the-book, the chance you will have an opportunity to use it in a game is a slim-to-none, and that on the other hand, if you lack a dedicated Rakshasha model but have any kind of D&D miniatures collection, you already have a model better-suited to represent a Rakshasa than a said dedicated figure. The reason is simply that Rakshasa's almost never appear in their true form (and it's debatable whether a tiger-person is their true form, or even whether they have one true form). Even if you have a party with a player with a true-seeing ability, it will be one or two among the party, and the marjority will still see the creature in whatever guise it chooses.

The lesson is that monsters in the Monster Manual need to be read through thoroughly and placed in context before you go out and buy figures, and I speak from experience. I have a similar collect-them-all project going, although I am collecting and painting in the order of things I think I'll need most in the game. But I've often gone through the Monster Manual planning out what I'll do for whatever monster type "when I come to it" or when the opportunity to buy presents itself (on ebay for example). I was pleased with myself for collecting six dopplegangers from the Dwellers Below box set... until I went back to the entry to plan their use in a game, to realize the chance I would actually ever be able to place them on the table is nil. The rakshasa and doppleganger aren't the only ones, either.. the brain mole... the thought-eater... etc. With something like Slaadi, you will probably have an opportunity for a super-cool reveal late in an adventure, but most of the time you will be using other figures....

So you've got to ask yourself, are you collecting more as a display-case exhibit or as a practical collection for in-game use? Are you going to still paint a figure for a small chance of ever placing it on the table? If you have such a figure already, do you alter the monster's rules to give yourself a chance to play with it? Or do think further outside the box and play with it in a different sort of game, for example one with rules for cutaways to what the villain is doing in his lair with his minions a la Mum-Ra in Thundercats?

I think those are all great points. To be perfectly honest, my motivation for the miniatures is simple: experience showed me that my links to podcast episodes were more popular when they had an image! So I figured that since I like painting models and I already have a good number of monster models lying around I could solve one problem with another and deal with both my social-media marketing problem and my pile of unpainted models simultaneously (well, at least a little).

Of course, that hasn't been how it worked out, because then I started wanting to acquire models I didn't have, like the unicorn or the mimic (speaking of a model that can look like anything). I should have anticipated that, I suppose.

[James Holloway]

If you want a relatively cheap Roc, the best way to get them is to look for some of the plastic eagle toys and repainting them.

I've got one put up that showed up a few times, but is the right size that a lot of little hands try to get to it to play with, so it tends to be left up high.

If I remember right, DM Scotty did a video about one he converted with a few things as well.

Yes, that is definitely my plan. I use a lot of toys in my D&D games, for philosophical as well as practical reasons. But in this instance, the player, who had just levelled up, sprang it on me as a surprise and I was forced to improvise. Polymorph and similar are really taxing when you use miniatures -- but it's good! You have to accept some shenanigans in this game and not get too precious about having just the right model or you'll never be satisfied.

[James Holloway]

Speaking of shenanigans ... wait, I've read that wrong. Speaking of sahuagin, it's time for a new episode!

http://monsterman.libsyn.com/episode-54-sahuagin-to-satyr

These Reaper Bones fishmen are clearly intended to be sahuagin, especially with the four-armed guy. I quite like their lures, although on these soft plastic models they tend to straighten out more than they probably should.

[James Holloway]

More toys in this episode -- I imagine this is not unrelated to why there are so many giant animals in the Monster Manual! I don't know where this giant scorpion -- excuse me, Scorpion, Giant -- is from. I expect I found it in a charity shop and threw it in the creature drawer.



http://monsterman.libsyn.com/episode-55-scorpion-giant-to-sea-lion

[Jet Simian]

I'm astonished I don't have a rust monster. Could have sworn I did!

James! That should present no problem to the Monster Man!

Triceratops bod + bug head and antennae + propellor = Rust Monster 

[beefcake]

That rust monster is a great conversion.

[James Holloway]

James! That should present no problem to the Monster Man!

Triceratops bod + bug head and antennae + propellor = Rust Monster 

Hah! I love it.

[James Holloway]

I promise actual miniatures for next episode, but it's more plastic toys this time as we take a look at the Shadow, the Shambling Mound, the Shark and the Shedu! I have a pretty good shambling mound stand-in, though maybe a bit small, but I haven't painted it yet. I wonder if there's a Heroclix Man-Thing?

Anyway, enjoy this shark:



And the episode:

http://monsterman.libsyn.com/episode-56-shadow-to-shedu