Megan Maricle shares the deadliest catch for dungeon delvers everywhere!

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Music by Jason Shaw at Audionautix.com

This episode of Making a Monster is

brought to you by the Book of Extinction.

Pre-order now at

magehandpress.com/extinction.

At first it just looks

like a room with a treasure chest in it.

So it's more like, Hey look,

there's cool treasure over there.

You open the door, just

step right into it.

It's fine, it's fine.

There's no trap at all.

Cause you know, when they see the

treasure chest, they're gonna expect

ya know the treasure chest is either

a mimic or it's trapped or something.

They're not gonna expect that

the ooze is filling the room and

they just stepped into the ooze.

Now you're inside of a, an ooze that has a

shark that swims around and bites people!

Hello and welcome

back to Making a Monster.

I'm your host, Lucas Zellers,

author of Book of Extinction now

on pre-order and coming soon in

hardcover from Mage Hand Press.

I'm going to Gen Con again this year!

The best four days in gaming are in

Indianapolis from August 3rd through

sixth, and if you're coming to the

convention, I'd love to meet you.

Just stop by the Mage Hand

Press booth number 2563.

I'll probably be there.

In honor of my second year at the

Con, I wanted to share this episode

I recorded during Gen Con 2022, where

I was introduced to Megan Markle.

Hi.

I am Megan Maricle and I'm one

of the editors at Kobold Press.

I first came on board working

on their Monster books,

doing the editing for those.

We connected over the

Creature Codex, literally

I held a mic over the book.

Kobold Press has published three volumes

of the Creature Codex since 2013.

I asked Megan, which of her

monsters made her most proud.

Well, I'm

proud of all of them.

I worked a lot.

That's like asking a parent

to choose their favorite

child, like that is not fair.

I mean, every parent has a favorite,

but you can't actually ask them that.

Like, goodness gracious.

Um, well, let's see if we're looking at

things that are kind of underrepresented,

the Creature Codex has the giant Shark

Bowl ooze, which is a lot of fun.

I know this is like audio only, but

you can at least see the picture.

I can.

If you don't know, oozes are one

of 13 creature types in the fifth

edition Monster manual, which

describes them as gelatinous creatures

that rarely have aff fixed shape.

They're mostly subterranean dwelling

in caves and dungeons, and feeding

on refuse carrying or creatures

unlucky enough to get in their way.

The most famous ooze, I would argue,

is the one that conforms its shape

to occupy the most volume possible.

In dungeons with rectangular

corridors, it assumes its most

recognizable form the gelatinous cube.

In sewers, it would become a

cylinder as it pushes through pipes.

However, it might also respond to

strange magic and form a kind of

aquarium for another large predator.

I asked Megan where oozes

generally fit in the structure

of a Dungeons and Dragons game.

Well, a lot of people I

know use oozes kind of as traps, right?

Because oozes are not very

intelligent creatures, generally.

We do have one ooze that's kind of smart,

but for the most part, yeah, they're

meant to be this kind of force of nature.

They're kind of like the garbage

disposals of the dungeons and stuff

like that, but they're usually in, in a

kind of like trap oriented type thing.

You're usually used them as

a, Oh, this thing is here.

you stumble into it or it falls from

the ceiling, or something like that,

because they're not the brightest

and they're usually predators, but in

that kind of slow walking towards you

death, like, you know, Jason Vorhees

or something, they're not, they're

not like the cat that's gonna pounce

around you from the corner, you know?

So if I remember correctly, 2018

was when this book came out.

So please forgive my terrible memory,

but I believe the Giant Sharks was

actually something a backer submitted.

And we're Kobold Press, we don't do a

ton of goofy monsters, but we do like

some fun ones occasionally, right?

We have a "swol-bold,", so, We do like

some, some goofy stuff occasionally, but

yeah, so the giant shark bowl ooze just

made the whole judge's panel chuckle.

Uh, so they're like, All

right, you made us all chuckle.

Fine.

You'll put it in the book.

Writing the mechanics for this

Monster followed exactly the template

you would expect Fusing two existing stat

blocks to create a symbiotic relationship.

It has to have

everything crunched up first,

and that's what the shark is for.

It does all the crunching.

We've had some people make miniatures

of it, so it's very impactful for

some, if they make like fishbowls

and they put like resin and stuff

in it with the shark inside of it.

, People are excellent.

I, I love people.

What was the first

edition of D&D that you played?

First

edition that I played?

I played second edition,

Dungeons and Dragons.

I played in 1994.

I was, oh gosh, eight years old.

And uh, my parents both played,

my mom and my stepdad both played

and they were big fans of D&D.

They had a big group with

their college friends.

And, uh, I thought that it was just that

boring, grown up game, you know, in the

same way that like, when you're watching

movies, you see like the dudes around

the poker table, smoking and drinking

and just playing poker, and you're like,

Oh, that's the boring part of the movie.

Right.

Uh, and I was like, D&D just have

boring things that my parents do.

But then a book released that year, um,

it was either 94 or 95 that it released.

It was called Council of Wyrms.

And my, yeah, my parents were like, Hey,

because we move, we had moved further

out in the country, so they were away

from their friends and they're like,

Okay, well let's get the kids to play.

And we were both like, That's

the boring, grown up thing that's

like just as boring as poker.

Why would do that?

Um, and they were like, Well,

you could play a baby dragon.

And I was like, There's

dragons in this game.

Uh, so I've been playing

ever since myself.

So part of the reason I ask is that I

have heard in older editions that there

was a more adversarial relationship

between Dungeon Master and player.

Is that part of your experience

and do you think that oozes are

indicative of that in any way?

I don't think that that is edition based.

I actually think that's more of

the age of the players based.

Cause when I played as a kid,

my parents were in college and

they were playing with kids.

So we never had an

adversarial relationship.

It was all about telling a fun story.

Right.

One of my first encounters in D&D

was I was a dragon, polymorphed,

attempting to go help a village.

But I had to pretend that I didn't

know anything about human customs.

And that was the kind of fun we had.

We never had an adversarial

relationship or anything like that.

It was all meant to just be what story

we wanna tell, the fun we wanna have.

But later, when I played in

high school with my high school

friends, it did become much more

adversarial, much more us versus them.

Let's try and like beat

up whatever we can.

And I think that's, and I think that's

part of the growth of D&D, right?

Like, I don't wanna say teenagers

are more adversarial, right?

But it's, competitive thing.

You wanna, you know, be the best

at something or you wanna do

the most damage at something.

You see it in video games and stuff

too, when you've got like leaderboards

and everything, it's no different.

So I really just think it's kind of a life

stage thing rather than an edition thing.

The giant Shark Bowl ooze moves its

whole genre of Monster away from

a sort of gotcha style of running

the game into a comedy piece.

Yeah, cuz it's like the

dungeon master gotcha.

But then you're also like, I can't be mad.

It's a shark inside of a news and

the shark is eating me right now.

Like I did literally just fall for that.

Um, and I think that's kind of what

we like to do with Kobold Press

is a lot of our monsters is we

like them to be fun and flavorful.

So you can kind of like, so even the ones

that aren't the goofy giant sharks, right?

You can still see kind of the story of it.

You can see the place that they fit

in the world and they're just gonna

be fun and challenging encounters.

Right?

In just a minute, Megan

will give you her best advice

as an editor of Monster books on

Using Monsters Better in Your Game.

But first, let me say thank you

for listening to Making a Monster.

If you like what you've heard

and you wanna support the show,

please leave a rating or a review

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You can find it on the podcast page

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It's a small thing, but it does

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show and really makes a difference

for me moving forward as a creator.

And if you really appreciate my

approach to Monster Design, you can

check out my book, Book of Extinction,

resurrecting Extinct Animals as Monsters

for your Fifth Edition Tabletop Game.

You can pre-order now and get the first

130 pages of it immediately when you

order at MageHandPress.com/extinction.

That's MageHandPress.com/extinction.

And lastly, if you're at Gen Con

this year, don't forget to visit.

I'll be at the Mage Hand

Press booth number 25 63.

See you there.

Now Megan, what's the number one

thing you want Dungeon Masters

to do to use monsters better?

I mean, I'm not the pioneer of this.

There's a guy who wrote a whole book

on it, but think like the Monster,

like what do the monsters think about,?

You know, cuz they're not

just bags of hip points.

They're not just teeth that's hungry.

Right.

You know?

Sure.

It might be a lion coming after you,

but it also might have not eaten in

a day or it might have cubs nearby.

Right.

You know, bears that attack people

don't just attack people randomly.

It's usually cuz there's cubs nearby.

Right.

And I think people forget that

with monsters cuz they see it

as just something big and scary.

So really just think about

what the monsters think.

And I, I know there's a gentleman

that wrote a book on it and I

cannot remember his name for

the life of me, uh, Keith Ahman.

Yes, Yes.

The monsters know what they're doing.

Right, Exactly.

It's, it's wonderful and it's

a great concept to think about.

Right.

Like, cuz the monsters do, they

are living, breathing creatures.

I mean, oozes are kind of, and

undead don't breathe, but yeah.

You understand what I mean?

You get it.

You get it.