Mordenkainen’s Tome of foes
so the new book our first book for 2018
is Morton Kamen’s tome oofos not to MU
foes as we showed off in the stream the
perils of picking up something off
someone’s desk so structurally it’s very
similar to Volos guide to monsters both
books have a good chunk of lore they’re
presenting and then they also have big
chunks of new monsters where Volo wrote
about the culture of some of the most
common monsters and Dungeons and Dragons
like orcs and mind flayers Morden Canon
takes a bit more of a cosmic approach to
things but Morden Canon being Morden
Canon he’s very interested in conflict
so his writing and his research focuses
on the history of some of the big
conflicts that have spanned the cosmos
of D&D he writes about the struggle
between the elves and the drow he writes
about the blood war he writes about the
gift and their war both with the mind
flayers among themselves and he talks
about these sort of creatures in a
big-picture cosmic sense and then the
other really exciting thing about this
book for me at least is that we’ve seen
a lot of feedback of people asking for
higher level monsters so our goal with
this book and now I don’t have the final
table of contents so the things may have
shifted in playtesting and as we made
our final development but our goal was
for half of the monsters present in this
book to be challenged 10 or higher we
really wanted to focus on very powerful
creatures ones that would pose a real
threat to your campaign and to help
build out levels 10 and higher we know
now as we’re entering it’s kind of funny
to say this like you know it’s it’s year
five now the
or depending on how you count and so we
think players now want broader range of
levels both players and DMS we know most
campaigns don’t reach beyond level 10
but we want to not only provide that
aspirational element but also give
dungeon masses some very powerful
creatures that you might just use as a
part of the events of your campaign
world maybe not something that you’re
meant to fight but maybe something you
interact with or a creature that
threatens a region that you might defeat
not by fighting it but by say enacting a
ritual to banish it things like that we
really wanted to show off that higher
end of power for monsters and so we look
at the complete collection of creatures
that we’ve made for the game we have
some more balanced brought in across
challenge ratings Volos was very much
focused on lower challenge creatures so
we thought this would be a nice way to
balance that off so when we look at why
this book there’s obviously a lot of
different things we can do why this so
the first thing we saw was that we had a
very positive response to bolos the
reviews were very positive community
feedback was great and the sales were
we’re really good we’re very happy with
the sales so we knew we had a formula
that seemed to work now one thing we try
to do though is avoid becoming too
predictable there is a little tension
there though in the sense that we have
other types of creatures and places that
we do want to go into detail about to
provide some more lore about so we
didn’t want to just scrap a format that
seemed to work for the sake of being
different but we also didn’t just want
to repeat what we did in the past so the
main two things that drove this book in
its differences were first this idea
that looking at feedback from players in
Dungeon Master’s there is demand for
higher challenge creatures so we wanted
to really focus on what are very
powerful creatures that can come in
later on in the campaign or that can
present a really daunting challenge for
parties below 10th level and as we
thought of that that told us we needed
to think big picture we needed to really
think cosmically about D&D and one thing
we try to do there are many methods we
do to settle on the final form of a book
but in this case we thought to ourselves
having Volo as of the auth is they sort
of voice again just didn’t feel right
and then we thought well warden Caymans
seem to be a good candidate we had a few
a few people to choose from but we’d
like Morden Canaan because of his idea
that he focuses focus is on this concept
of the balance to Morden Canaan today’s
friend could be tomorrow’s enemy he’s
really concerned with this idea that if
any faction or any group becomes too
powerful in the cosmos of D&D that could
lead to not an apocalypse in the sense
that the cosmos is destroyed but that
one faction could just rise to dominate
everything similar to how the mind
flayers at one point ruled almost the
entire material plane and so warding
cannon not only would look at evil
creatures he’d also look at good
creatures and he would keep a close eye
on any of the conflicts that had gone on
for a very long time indeed he
essentially that were just part of the
background element of the cosmos of
deity like the blood war or like the
feud between the drow and other elves
these would be things he would keep tabs
on because quite likely if one of those
struggles went from the the low level
constant you know level of intensity no
one side getting a decisive advantage if
one of those tipped and one side was to
win decisively an end that conflict that
could be something that’s that signaled
the end that the balance was coming to
an end and that he would have to step in
or he would have to work with others to
try to restore it the way I like to
think of it is you might think a cosmos
dominated by lawful good well that would
be a lawful good place the way Morden
Canon sees it is well in the lawful good
universe the neutral good people the
last ones sent to prison for the rest of
their lives that eventually you know the
classic thing power corrupts absolute
power corrupts absolutely that the
cosmos functions because of the nine
alignments and because they are largely
kept in balance so very much a very much
more cosmic focus
yeah really going
to the distant history of D&D and how it
reflects today why is it that we have
drow living in the Underdark and an
elves and their relationship with
quarrel on with loaf
the dwarves what’s their origin and
their ongoing war at the dura gar
it also looks at a variety of the
player-character races and I think if
you’re looking at the players handbook
all the common races or at least touched
upon except you manatee Humanity is kind
of a different beast but it talks about
dwarves covers their history culture and
their ongoing war with the dura gar and
its origins elves and the drow and it
talks about gnomes and halflings and how
they kind of stand out especially
halflings is not really being embroiled
in these cosmic long-term struggles that
the other folk of the world are and so
it gives you some insight into why these
folk have become so prominent across the
many worlds of Dungeons & Dragons and
how they ended up not only where they
are today but why we time and again see
in D&D worlds that humans typically are
the most numerous and most powerful even
though if you’re to look at elves and
dwarves they live much longer
they have much tighter connections their
deities what is it about their culture
and about their gods that stops them
from achieving the ubiquitous powered
Empire building that we see out of
humanity not that it’s impossible but
typically it’s humans who engage in that
kind of endeavor if you were a new part
person to D&D entirely this is one of
the first books that you can just hand
this to them and like this is the dmt
multiverse yeah and and that’s one of
the things we wanted to do was create
something where a new player in Dungeon
Master could read the chapter say on
dwarves if you’re playing a dwarf and
really understand what it means to be a
dwarf in Dungeons and Dragons now the
background and definitions we give don’t
determine old dwarves we know there are
always exceptions but we wanted to build
a good starting point to really let you
get inside the psychology of a dwarf how
dude warps think how do they see the
world applying that to elves halflings
gnomes the gift
demons and devils to the blood war gets
a similar treatment we’ve talked about
we don’t go so much into their history
but we do talk about demons and devils
and for devils their society for devils
you know they actually have a hierarchy
and in government of bureaucracy where
demons are more well we kind of want to
flesh out like what does it mean to be a
demon how do demons think they’re
chaotic evil they don’t have these this
movie these real strict organizations
they don’t have a hierarchy in the sense
of someone is a pointed leader and they
tell us what to do well how is the abyss
anything other than just a realm of
complete random chaos and violence we
talked about a bit how demons organize
themselves and we show how that is
reflected in the blood war the ongoing
war between demons and devils that
ranges across wherever the river Styx
goes and the lower plains demons and
devils fight or at least try to fight
you don’t get into the divine though so
much of this no it’s so much here we do
talk about deities for instance Morden
in his relation to the dwarves core LAN
and their relation to the elves and
coralline religions of gender so it’s
you know the and really though use that
rather than say here are the gods
abilities and powers we focus a lot more
on the cultural and mythic influence
that these figures have since they tower
over you know the folk they’ve created
and have an enormous direct influence on
them they really shape their culture
their attitude and their viewpoints so
we really want to illuminate what that
would mean for playing a dwarf or
thinking about dwarves as are building
your campaign and and like everything
rewrite this is just the point of view
of the sort of typical D&D world we know
for instance that in Dark Sun elves are
very different than they are say in fair
room but we also have some ideas of why
that is but we don’t really touch on
that too much in this book you can
pre-order Morton Kamen’s tomb of foes
right here on D&D beyond.com
by clicking on the link in this video
description Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes Interview with Mike Mearls https://t.co/rYYgLiHbIW

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) February 5, 2018