The mukad are insect-like aberrations following the orders of a slumbering god of destruction as they lurk in the walls.

Read the transcript and get more from the show:

https://scintilla.studio/monster-mukad-grim-hollow-ghostfire-games/

Get stat blocks, bonus content, and other monstrous perks: www.patreon.com/scintillastudio

Join the conversation: www.twitter.com/SparkOtter

Meet my guests:

Joe Raso: https://twitter.com/_joe_raso

Grim Hollow by Ghostfire Games: https://ghostfiregaming.com/grim-hollow/

Music by Jason Shaw at Audionautix.com

As the adventurers walk

down the dark stairwell they notice

scrabbling sounds coming from perhaps

within the walls themselves and

in the darkness, there's movement

stirring in the bottom of the steps.

You see forms slowly coming into focus,

which are small worm like creatures and,

for many in, your group, there's probably

a bit of a revulsion cuz it reminds you

of centipedes that writhe together and

start flowing up the steps towards you.

Welcome to Making a Monster,

the bite-sized podcast where game

designers show us their favorite

monster and we discover how it works,

why it works, and what it means.

I'm Lucas Zellers.

Monsters are often

simply a matter of scale.

Many of nature's most perfect

predators are simply too small to

be any threat to humans, and some of

history's most famous monsters are

those too big for what we perceive

as their place in the natural order.

Designer Joe Raso showed his keen eye for

how this works in the context of D&D with

his aberrant insect harbinger, the mukad.

So Joe, your title has changed a

couple of times since I've known you.

My official title right now is

writing coordinator for Ghostfire Games.

That was effective as of.

Wow end of March this year.

Prior to that, I started doing freelance

writing for a bunch of RPG folks.

I guess I went full time

in July of that last year.

Before that I was just doing my

own work on DMS Guild, in addition

to my day job, so to speak.

But I'm, I'm fully vested in the

whole RPG space at this point.

I think you and I we're sort

of in each other's orbit circa 2019.

And I, I think back in December, we

had talked about getting you on the

podcast for the Dunwood project.

Dunwood is a forest in D&D's Forgotten

Realms setting that feels a lot like

Tolkien's Mirkwood or the balanced

growth and decay of the green-black

Witherbloom College of magic in Magic

the Gathering's Strixhaven University.

In real-world terms, this would be

an old-growth forest, a term coined

in the 1940s to describe the later

stages of stand development with truly

massive trees, multiple canopy layers

blocking the sun, and a forest floor

covered in large dead woody material.

These are forests that feel more like

oceans, and the oldest of them sheltered

the last vestiges of Ice Age megafauna

like bush-antlered deer and dire wolves.

In lore, Dunwood is a part of

a region called the Great Dale.

The first big effort that I did

was, um, The Great Dale Campaign Guide.

It's a, a Forgotten Realms source book.

It was sort of paying homage to

a third edition production, um,

that I really loved called, um,

Why the heck, I can't remember the

name of the production right now.

Oh, the, the Unapproachable East.

I got a suggestion to reach out to

some other folks and me building a

little source guide, um, expansion to

bring things up to fifth edition, over

period of two or three weeks exploded.

12 authors or 10 authors.

I can't remember the number I had,

um, and a a hundred plus source book

that, that I ended up producing.

Um, my first real effort

that big, it was it.

I really shouldn't have done it,

cuz it was, it was way too way

too large, but it was a fantastic.

Learning experience for me.

So that was, that was the first big one.

Joe's work on Dunwood and

other projects over the past few years

led him to become a contributor for

the 5th edition setting Grim Hollow.

Grim Hollow is a grimdark

sort of horror based campaign

that Ghostfire games has produced.

And I felt astoundingly,

astoundingly, astoundingly, lucky.

Um, when Sean me Merwin asked if I'd

like to contribute a bunch of monsters

to the to this monster book that

they're creating for that setting,

Oh, so this is

in progress right now.

It it's in delivery actually.

Yeah, I, I did the actual

writing for this last.

Oh, what was it?

in the June, June, July timeframe

is when I, when I was working on,

on these Grim Hollow creatures.

And I think the, the products are

actually showing up in people's

doorsteps in the last month or so.

So I haven't got my hard copy yet, but

I've, I've, I've seen the seen the,

the PDF, which is pretty fantastic.

You've dropped a buzzword and

I'm all about breaking those apart

and figuring out what that means.

What does grimdark mean to you,

especially in the context of what

Grim Hollow is trying to do and be?

For me, grimdark means stories

that fear and dread are a key component

and the survival of the heroes is not

necessarily guaranteed as opposed to

uh, heroic fantasy where, um, you're,

you're dealing with giant threats and

ultimately you expect the heroes to,

to survive in the end victoriously.

Um, in, in a grimdark setting.

I, I don't think that's the assumption.

I, I think it's, we hope that

they'll get through whatever terrible

onslaught that they're going through.

Um, but it's, it's perilous might be the

good, the correct word to use for that.

Um, overwhelming.

Bad stuff is, is maybe

the, the simpler way.

Yeah, What I've heard from people

who have played older editions is that

they have somewhat of a more adversarial

relationship between player and DM and

mechanics and character than fifth edition

does such that fifth edition is kind

of, kinder to, to player characters.

It leans more into the heroic

fantasy element of this.

Does that jive with your experience?

And do you think Grim Hollow

might be a return to that sort

of attitude from older editions?

Possibly that that

might be a nice way to look at it.

I, I, I think the earlier editions, it

was the, the game was still being figured

out by everybody, in my opinion, um, where

you, it was the first time you, you had

these role playing games available to the

public, to purchase and, and play with.

And it was such a different or

change to what, um, everybody

had experienced up to that point.

I mean, I I'd played risk.

I'd played all the typical board games.

So to actually play a game that

didn't have a board on it, um, was

a bit of a leap for, for most folks.

And I think whenever you go into

something new, you, you hold onto

pieces of things that you understand.

And in all those board games, it's

usually a person versus a person.

So I could see the default assumption

being the, the dungeon master against

the players as here's your challenge.

I'm trying to defeat you

and the, the players.

Okay.

We're gonna try to, to overcome that.

So I, I can see how a grimdark theme

might echo some of that same setup.

Um, and yeah, I agree in, in the.

The more modern game of fifth edition,

the storytelling bit is much, um,

greater piece of it where, you're

looking to see how can I get my group

to play a fun and exciting story and

get them through it and engaged There's

almost always combat involved depending

on your group, obviously, but, um,

it's, that shared group experience.

Whereas in the earlier

days, I, I saw it as, yeah.

We're gonna try to get through this

thing and hopefully the DM won't kill us.

Um,

When we're talking

about Grim Hollow is there kind

of a hook for this setting?

Is there a thing that is peculiar

to the way that this works?

A thing that makes Grim Hollow what it is?

It's very much a dark setting

the gods have somewhat disappeared

because of a terrible that's gone on.

So there's, their surrogates have kind

of tried to pick up the mantle, but, um,

overall the, the world itself is in a, a

terrible state where I think fear and just

survival are a key aspect of this setting.

They've got a lot of different uh,

regions that explore certain areas.

Like there's a, a vampire controlled

area and sort of, rougher savage northern

Viking ish type region along with others.

But in general, the, the world itself

is, is a, a dreadful, scary place.

Let's talk about one of

the monsters that you've made.

Okay.

Pronounce this for me.

If you can, the mukad?

Yeah, in my head I pronounced

it mukad, but, um, mukad sounds fantastic.

Um,

Well, we're going with authorial

intent because you happen to be here.

So.

Well, clearly mukad, if

you don't get it, you're you're uh,

no I've, accepted that, um, all the

fantasy names and words that I've

read for the last 20 or 30 years.

The, the way it sounds in my

head is not the way most other

people would pronounce it.

Um, and so I'm quite happy for people to

come up with their own interpretations.

Do you know why that is?

Is that just a quirk of the genre or?

I, I, I don't know.

I, I don't know if it's the genre.

I don't know if it's my own background.

Um, I, I suspect it's probably

a combination of both.

Both my parents are Hungarian, actually.

You'd think that with the name

Raso is, is Italian, but, um,

my both folks are from there.

And so I, when I write often I,

I'm trying to come up with a, a, a

strange fantasy name and I'll, I'll

think of a, sort of a Hungarian term.

And I realize I can't actually translate

the sound properly because there's

certain vowels or consonants that don't

translate into English terribly well.

Um, so that's probably the same thing

what happened with, with this name?

That's fantastic.

Well, yeah, I mean, I've

seen many times people suggest

using Google translate to take

a, a word from one language and

shove it into the, to another.

I kind of use my vague understanding of

Hungarian to, oh, well, how Hungarian

language speakers that might read my work

and go, oh, that's, that's almost like,

would dad say, that thing and then I'll

sort of twist the, the letters around.

It's the cheat that I do when I'm writing.

When Sean originally asked me to

contribute monsters, one of the things

he was hoping for was more urban based

creatures that would threaten players.

So I was trying to think of creatures

that could sort of scrabble away in

the darkness of some large building,

like somehow how hidden in the walls.

There's a, there's these unnatural

beasts that are, are scheming in the

darkness and you better not go down

that dark place, cuz uh, they'll decide

to use you to, to some nefarious end.

I had in the house that I

grew up with an unfinished basement,

so like cold rock walls and.

I think you've nailed it.

Like that is the feeling that I get

here of there are grubs in the walls.

I mean like this is D and D

so these aren't just grubs.

Of course not.

Uh, what makes this different,

what is, what makes a mukad what it is?

One of the, I guess the concepts

for the, setting is the Ather kindred.

It's this very esque villain

godlike creature in the

background that slumbers away.

Um, and people dread the time

that it'll awaken and come back

and devastate the land again.

Um, so I figured, well just because

the master god or whatever, this

giant beast entity is, is slumbering

doesn't mean his foot soldiers

aren't doing something currently.

So I wanted to create a tier one challenge

that would start to pull in some of that.

Um, I guess C'thulhu-esque feel of

a strange unknown entity that could

potentially overwhelm or, or hurt

the, the populace at large is kind

of where I was coming from with it.

What makes them

good at filling that role?

I think a tunneling aspect

where they, they could hide through,

um, the walls and, and, um, be hidden in

sort of public, um, structures per se.

The attacks of these monsters are

sort of psychically charged where

they're they unleash bursts of energy

that, um, will stun or paralyze the

victims that they're going to use.

I think I had the larger one, be somewhat

more intelligent than you would expect for

a, from a sort of centipede-like creature.

yeah.

Intelligence 10,

So just an average.

yeah.

but still like, this is a

full on sapient being.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so that was the, the idea to have this

animalistic thing but smart enough that

it would be able to stare you in the eyes.

So let's talk about why we

had to make a suite of these things

because one of the fundamental truths

of Dungeons and Dragons and most role

playing games is that characters, i.e.

heroes, level up and monsters do not.

You just fight bigger and bigger monsters.

So this is, it reads as though

you have laid these out in

the order of their life cycle.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think so.

For me the life cycle, wasn't,

they're either larva or they

transform into the whatever creature.

I, I was thinking of insects in

terms of, you know, how an ant colony

might be managing their brood.

They have eggs and then they become grubs.

And then the grubs eventually

transform into the more adult form.

When I was thinking about this,

I thought, okay, I'll have these,

these larval grubs then the

transformed versions of them with.

Depending on their specialization,

they would have different capabilities.

One might be stronger than another.

And, and then the big master progenitor

that's actually creating all the little,

little bugs, um, would be the, the,

the one that's toughest to take on.

I, I want to make sure that all of

the more sort of a, a tier one threat.

I almost feel like there's not enough

tier one threats that really can

scare, um, creatures or parties.

I wanted a whole suite.

So if a, a DM created a, a set of

adventures that they'd have enough

of a toolbox that they could create,

you know, a first encounter where, oh,

what the heck are these little things?

And then, then slowly the, the

adventures would follow the, the clues

and discover where the, the source

of the infestation actually was.

Yeah, this is a really classic

storytelling structure that you have

coded into this series of stat blocks

I mean, my favorite example is Bruce

Lee's I think it was Game of Death where

he started at the bottom of this tower

and he fought his way up to the top.

Only you've done it in reverse that

you start in the basement and then

you work your way lower and lower

to the terrible truth at the bottom.

It's such a common trope that

it's, if you can set the pieces up for DMS

to use, then it makes their job easier.

As a game designer, that's.

That's what I'm trying to do is give

all the tools to let someone at their

own table, make the game that they want.

Um, and so if you have a lot of

options, then you, there's a bunch

of different ways that you can, can

approach the game for your own table.

Cause every table's different,

somebody just wants to.

Go head first at the big bad guy.

And let's, don't worry about the

lead up, whereas others love that

slow uncovering of the truth and,

and figuring out what the mystery is.

So I wanted to make sure that you

could play it however you wished.

So anytime you say C'thulhu I have

to do another like buzzword thing wherein.

I call it the Lovecraft protocol

that even for his time, Lovecraft

was a problematic person.

And the genre that he created has far

exceeded his personal ideology in order to

create something that I think people are,

are using to find a lot of truth and make

some really interesting statements about

the way the world does and should work.

Was that part of your design

scheme or did that just sort of

happen when you created the mukad?

Does this tell you anything about the way

the world works when you work through it?

Um, C'thulhu has a whole

bunch of baggage left for, for sure.

But it's, it's a shorthand from a

design perspective in that, for me,

it's, it's this unknowable, evil

that can't be understood, even if you

try and if you try then it's likely

gonna cause you grief in the end.

And probably the demise of whoever is

trying to understand whatever that is.

Um, and I guess I wanted

these beasties to be similar.

They're this thing that you

as humans or humanoids can

never really fully understand.

You just know that they have

intentions that are associated with

this evil monstrosity that's caused

horror havoc in the world already.

So if you come across them, it's not

terribly ambiguous in terms of, is

this a humanoid with good intentions?

This is a big nasty that has no moral

compass that's gonna challenge whether

or not what you're doing is correct.

And I mean, that's the easy

way to how do I say this?

Um, I think there's a, a challenge, um,

particularly , in the modern game where

we're realizing that there's so many nasty

nasty is the wrong word, but ill-advised

approaches to how, um, creatures and

threats are presented in the game itself.

Um, and.

Sometimes you just want to play the game

and not have to be in a moral quandary

of am I really presenting this correctly?

And so I wanted to make sure that the

creature, the threat you presented

here is unquestionably something

that you could go up against.

Um, I don't know if the, I

answered your question there

No, absolutely.

For me, part of the magic of the

show is grappling with some of

those questions and figuring out,

like, is it a monster really?

And who's the, you know, it's,

it's a very old kind of subversion.

To the point that subverting it is.

You know, it's wrapping

around back on itself.

But I have had a lot of people

talk about, you know, the role

of catharsis in this game.

And just being able to say, very clearly

this is wrong and we're gonna stop it.

And the value that that has

for a player experience.

Assuming that the mukad have their way

and nothing stops them, what happens?

What happens?

Uh, They will do whatever mystical

scribblings in the darkness that these

unnatural beings do and help bring about

the, the Ather kindred again, which is

that slumbering unknowable evil beast that

had previously destroyed their gods and

created the terrible setting as it was.

So it's almost like, if you don't stop

these guys, then the already grimdark

setting might, might get worse.

Any of these attacks or features

or traits that you were particularly

proud of that resonated with people

who play tested this or, or other

designers that you worked on it with?

I like the thematic way that

I've woven some of the bits in here,

cuz I was trying to replicate, um, real

world creatures a little bit where you've

got insects that, oh, they've a spider

has trapped some insect for it to devour

it doesn't do it right away it sort of

paralyzes it and webs it in some coating

to, to ingest that it's leisure later on.

So it, I mean, I wanted that

sort of disgusting kinda, um,

feel for these creatures as well.

Like something where it's using you to,

um, propagate itself and it doesn't care

what's suffering or whatever is gonna

happen to the creature that it's captured.

So the progenitor has this etheric

incubation, um, ability where it

takes a paralyzed creature and wraps

it in a cocoon and basically injects

it with, little bug worms that

erupt somewhat later to, to devour

whoever the poor and fortunate, um,

beast is inside it kind of thing.

So I, I kind of like that, that it,

it, it replicates sort of things that

actually happen in the small insect

world that we have, but kind of blown

up to the, the heroic challenges

that, that players are gonna face.

It goes from a swarm of

tiny creatures to the mukad

progenitor, a large aberration,

lawful evil, interesting choice.

Alignment has become a tricky

subject since the so-called Tasha

apocalypse back in December of 21.

So, just out of curiosity, did you have

any conversations about alignment here

or, or any sort of deliberate way of what

how to represent these guys that way?

Um, no, I, I, I don't, I don't

remember having any discussions on the

design of related to the alignment bit.

For me it was, um, trying to

describe the creature, um,

in terms of how it functions.

And I, I saw it very much as a group

entity, it's this, this swarm of beasts.

So they're, they're following

the directions of the, the

big, bad progenitor guy.

They're not following individual

aims or, or doing some choice

that furthers their own direction.

It's the, whatever the big beastie

says is what the entire swarm

infestation is trying to accomplish.

So that's kind of the lawful bit for me

is that, that ordered decision making

the fact that there's someone at the top

describing what's going on and the, the

followers doing that to their ability.

The evil bit is that, Hey, they're,

they're not really caring what their

actions do to others around them.

There is no, um, sort of

moral compass for them.

They're just following this, this

evil plan to bring back their,

their a or kindred over overlord

or whatever the, the beast is.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

I'm always trying to get to the bottom

of how useful that alignment chart is.

And this is a good example.

Yeah, I think it's

just, it's, it's a tool.

Anything that you use in a D&D

game, I would hope DMs feel

comfortable on throwing out the

window if they don't like it.

so for me, it's, shorthand to say,

okay, how does this monster work

and what are the intentions of it.

And I think the recent, um, 5E sort of

style design choices that they've made

with newer things by saying usually, or

I can't remember the actual words that

they they have in terms of the, the

alignment, um, perspective, um, is, is

I think helpful for some people that.

May maybe are newer to the game.

I think if, if you've played the

game for a while you realize,

um, all rules are optional.

Um,

Yeah, you always

had that permission.

Yeah, but I, completely

understand why WotC's kind of going

down the, the path they are is it's.

How do you make the game as accessible

as you can to, to new folks coming in?

So you do that by giving him guidance

if they, they haven't had that before.

So I, have no issue with the way that

the, the alignment's being presented.

Thanks for listening

to Making a Monster.

If you like what you've heard and you

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I'm approaching 50 episodes covering

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Your recommendation goes a long

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You can also join the show's email

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the stat blocks for the mukad family tree

and other monsters featured on the show.

It's a great addition to any campaign,

and a fascinating introduction

to the Ether Kindred and the

Grim Hollow campaign setting.

Just go to scintilla dot studio

slash monster or follow the link in

the description to get your copy of

these monsters from the Grim Hollow,

with art by Anastassia Grigorieva.

She's done a fantastic job

on, on illustrating these creatures.

They look appropriately

horrendously disgusting.

Um,

awful and I hate them.

And that is a high compliment.

how do I find Grim Hollow?

That's a great question

and you'd think I would've prepared.

Um, so, Ghostfires website has a store

on it where you're able to they have for

sale both the, this monster grimoire and

the, the campaign and player guides that

sort of flesh out the world as well.

If someone wants to get in touch

with you specifically and what you

do on web and who you are and how you

think about things, how do they do that?

Probably the best way to

do that is follow me on Twitter.

My handles at underscore Joe

underscore Raso, R a S O.

I have a, a blog that

I'm horribly behind on.

I think for a while I was, doing

it once a month, but it's been a

number of months since I've done it.

That's scheming DM, wordpress.com

is the, the full if you type the

scheming DM, you, you probably find it.

Um, but yeah, Twitter's probably the best