Categories
DM Resources

Monsters as Player Characters

a-to-z-letters-mIn D&D a handful of fantasy races populate the majority of the gaming world – Human, Elf, Dwarf, Half-Elf, and Halfling. These are the most common and well known races, but they’re certainly not the only ones. Over the years the D&D has allowed players to choose from a multitude of races when creating their characters. The Half-Orc, Gnome, Drow, Warforged, Goliath and even Dragonborn have all become commonplace in today’s D&D. As the list was expanded the game’s creators provided an explanation of how the new races fit into the world. In most cases these races had distinct culture and homelands in the same way as the Elves and Dwarves.

Over the years I’ve played my fair share of non-Human characters. Since 4e I’ve played an Elf, Dwarf, Eladrin, Half-Orc, Goliath, Drow, Shifter, Half-Elf, Warforged, and Dragonborn just to name the first few that come to mind. In my mind these are all “normal” races for a fantasy role-playing game. Sure a few of them might be a bit on the fringes of normal (the Goliath, Warforged and Dragonborn, for example), but I have no problem grouping these races in the same category as Humans, Elves and Dwarves. More to the point I do not consider these races to be monsters.

Throughout April Dungeon’s Master is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. The challenge is to write a new article ever day in April, excluding Sundays. That’s 26 articles over the course of the month. To make things even more interesting the title of each article will begin with a different letter of the alphabet. Today the “M” is for Monster as we venture into the possibility of having players run monsters as characters.

Categories
Book Reviews

Monster Manual 2: An Early Review

Monster Manual 2

I have the Monster Manual 2.
I know it’s not supposed to be out for another week, but I’ve got one. And I feel it’s my duty to share some of the greatness inside with my fellow gamers. Since many of you will have the book by this time next week, I’ll try to give you just enough to keep you salivating and not enough to ruin all of the surprises.