Welcome to Mystara: Monster Manuals

A three-fer covering AC9, DRM2 and the Mystara Monstrous Compendium from 2nd edition. Covering a combined 200+ monsters the three books gave us some of the weirdest yet most memorable creatures in D&D history. Every type of new creature imaginable, with a heavy focus on paleolithic mammals for some reason. Covering the history and layout of the books more than just repeating all the monsters to help you work the monsters into your game rather than just rattle off all the beasties.

[@retrophone5249]

“Nothing says don’t mess with me like riding into town on the back of an armadillo the size of a VW Bug.” That is a Golden Quote if I have ever heard one.

[@rosskwolfe]

"WotC, it's about what makes YOU money." - Mr. Welch "LOL, forget Mystara, have another campaign that's nothing but a high school prom." - WotC

[@Zenas521]

Getting my hands on mega-fauna, dinosaurs, and mundane animals for D&D would be awesome! This would go quite nicely with a lost world steampunk setting idea I have.

[@aspektx]

Thanks for more Mystara.

[@mathewstoker2131]

Thank you again, Mr Welch. I wish you the best of luck getting Mystara, brought back into a better renown. It deserves the love, so unique and one of the original settings of D&D. I wish the Greyhawk grognards the same. For me I am middle-school, too young when the hobby originally took off and too old to love 5th Edition. So I do a lot of reverse engineering for my own games. More coming from Hyboria, Scarn and Greyhawk than anywhere outside of real world history and politics.However, I use weird, strange, alien and megalithic plants and creatures. Real world inspirations; for all the peoples, countries and Empires. Then sprinkle in the aberrant, scientifically advanced and magically different groups. I don't do a hollow world par se, I do what I call mega-cells; individual pockets of Underdark, each as unique to the next as people are from each other. For years though, I didn't realise Basic and Ad&d were even separate things. Since picking up the version 3 rules I am happy to take inspiration from anywhere I find it. Faerun, yawn! I mean it has it's place, but is as vanilla as it gets. If they expanded the world anywhere beyond the f***ing sword coast then maybe it could be interesting. The genre is fantasy, make something fantastic.

[@The_One_Ra]

I know you're working on the DM Guide now. Any plans on monster manuals and will you be adding unique monsters? I'm baffled as why Wotc hasn't given you the green light yet.

[@Mr_Welch]

Yes so they will be more expensive to produce from the sheer amount of Art needed. And yes there will be monsters of the new variety

[@The_One_Ra]

@@Mr_Welch I know people are spoiled and want art for everything, but the older books didn't always give it to ya as you know. Well if I have any art that matches up, you're welcome to a free digital copy and right to print. Of course it probably won't match the style of your artist. Anyway I wish you the best of luck getting your project out there.

[@alanmay6401]

I'd certainly be interested in that book you brought up.

[@Mr_Welch]

It's 99.99% done, the last readthroughs are being done and then as soon as the Guild opens up it goes live. $15 is the target price. 216 pages was the final page count.

[@SpacemanSmiley]

@@Mr_Welch Count me in! I hope they give the greenlight

[@denethorpalantir2815]

Mr. Welch you are the sage of Mystara.

[@nikolibarastov4487]

Ah yes, Glyptodon, the forgotten one.

[@lexington476]

3:36 preach it brother Welch 🙂.

[@rolanejo8512]

2:36 Amen to that brother.

[@spiderlime]

i wonder how many people preferred to play mystara as a whole with the AD&D rules because that would allow for much more to be added to the world

[@Mr_Welch]

When they converted the setting to 2nd edition it went over like a lead balloon. But I think that had more to do with the way they did it rather than just the rule said

[@ingridplata2411]

I am from Italy and to be fair I do think a massive amount of people here would buy Mystara products. Also, have you got a video on Top Ballista?

[@Mr_Welch]

Yes I covered the creature crucibles when I first started covering the gazetteers

[@thecosmic8248]

4 years late but monsters do have randomized hit points for you to roll. The number before thier hit points is the monsters average hit points is the average.

[@Bootstrap56]

I wonder which other monsters have been stolen from Mystara and placed in the forgotten realms. Anyone with any insight into this?

[@Mr_Welch]

5th edition took the juggernaut, tortle and nagpa. 3rd Edition got the black ball, brain collector, and nightwalker. Strangely enough I don't think they took the other night shades. 2nd edition took the frost salamanders. There might be more but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head

[@Bootstrap56]

Ha ha, I should have known you had some insight @@Mr_Welch . Thanks for replying.

[@JJbm4233]

God help me in the mist there a book would probably inspire me to buy all the fifth edition roebucks after I bought the Mystara Book.

[@patrickholt2270]

Fiend Folio was a collection of reader created monsters from early White Dwarf magazine (before the Games Workshop takeover), from its Fiend Factory section in every issue, featuring three to six new monsters, as many as would fit on a single page. That's where the creativity came from - thousands of British readers writing in. I remember a lot of those WD issues - there was a great creative freedom to them because it served the whole early RPG market rather than belonging to any one game company. Dragon seemed stale to me in comparison, and padded with surplus verbiage, because it belonged to TSR and only covered D&D. The Mystara monsters are one of the things I most love about the Known World. I think they're the best of setting specificity* that was ever accomplished during the BECMI and 2nd Edition period, better than the rather weak sauce Priest of a specific Immortal kits, which were really very minor variations on the old school "standard cleric". I always saw the Monster books as part of the core rule set, so whereas if you wanted to inculturate classes, you had to wade through expensive splat books and tweak the still generic-setting kits available, with the MC Appendix you had it all fulfilled, including random encounter tables for terrain types and gazeteer countries, albeit that it left out a lot of the monsters I liked from the BECMI books, like Thouls. *In the core game, which is what I believe in, in terms of a game being bedded into its setting fittingly, like Tolkien's particular monsters and cultures fit into Middle Earth very appropriately and help make it more immersive.

[@JJbm4233]

Is that is a true used to say I really don’t think WOTC Aren’t interested in making money so much is making social justice warrior political statements. Thanks again for releasing the fifth edition Mystara players guide

[@justinland5713]

They aren't adding letters to the ends of words, they were there originally. Rather, American revolutionaries changed certain words for the sole purpose of differentiating our spelling from the British variation. This is why Color and Armor lost their U, but the word of Irish etymology, Glamour, kept it's U.

[@gregolder1713]

The cover art had a gnome because it was recycled from Dragon Mag and the Complete Book series

[@starshiplazyboy475]

First!

[@bigtastyben5119]

2:10-3:43 boomer rant, skip

[@jamesc.2054]

Fucking wah.

[@bigtastyben5119]

@@jamesc.2054 Yes it is a cry fest

[@viktord2025]

I would rather die, let the Grognard speak