Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes PDF

Pictured: Me dealing with scheduling and personal organization

So, this officially starts my hiatus. I'm only going to be posting occasionally, as my work with Multivarious and on my own personal projects is ramping up. But before I go, I wanted to post this PDF of the Creature Loot articles I've been writing for the last few months.

I'm still working on PDFs of the Innate Magic NPCs and the Failed Magic Items. Those are also great article series, and you should definitely check them out.

But for now, everything is closing on the blog. I'll still post recaps of my major games (since my players use those for reference), and if I have some time I might do a Creature Loot article or two for a module. I'm reading through Dragon Heist right now and loving it!

I'm not sure how much of a break I'll need, but I definitely want to return to this project. I'm still interested in writing Creature Loot for some 3rd-Party books like Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts, but that's a huge commitment with over 400 monsters to sift through. It will definitely be better served when I can give it my full attention.

So, without further adieu, the PDF for Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

GM Binder Link
Google Drive Link

(Bonus! Google Drive links for my previous PDFs!)
Monster Manual
Volo's Guide to Monsters
Tomb of Annihilation

Until we meet again, thanks for reading!

Preparing for the Future

I always thought Divination Wizards would make a killing micro-trading on the stock market.

No big D&D article this Monday. However, some good news: This week, we'll be putting out a Failed Magic Items article on Wednesday and a Creature Loot article on Friday! This is mostly because I'm really pushing to wrap the blog by November 2nd, and there just aren't enough Fridays left in the month to cover anything. For those of you who enjoy my Wednesday mechanics and philosophy articles, don't worry, Will has been putting together a cool system for alternate spellcasting that will be up before the month ends.

Also, despite the long drought, there are finally some monthly games happening that will get full recaps! Hooray! Next week will be the latest chapter of Jandar's Lions, and after that we'll have the (possibly) last session of Chaos Quest. I can't say for sure, because I have no idea how this is going to play out. But I bet it will be fun!

For today, I wanted to step away from D&D and espouse a bit of personal life philosophy. Like any good life philosophy, it's a Frankenstein's Monster composed of various bits of material I've picked up from different places. The subject is: Long-term Planning for the future.

Life Plans

When people talk about life and the future, they often stick to vague plans and fearful suppositions. They want to travel, but don't really know where or how. They don't want to lose their job if the market crashes, so they find a safe bet and try to make themselves invaluable. They buy nice things for the moment (meals, cars, houses, D&D miniatures, etc.) because they don't know what will happen in the future, and they want to make sure their needs are met now. They have money now, they should buy things now.

The problem with vagueness and fear is that it can prevent you from actually accomplishing something. The old paradigm was that people would wake up from their office jobs and realize they were 50 years old, having spent their life dragging themselves to work and paying for minor, inane expenses. They then proceed to have a mid-life crisis, where they briefly break their routine and do something they want for themselves. A new car, a new home, a trip to Europe, whatever.

The new paradigm, espoused by "millennials", is that there's no need to wait until you're fifty to fear death and complacency. Stress out about your lack of planning right away! After all, being 25 is basically being a senior citizen if you live your life on the internet. Still trying to figure out your life and how to be an adult? Might as well buy a bunch of video games to deal with the stress. Go out for drinks! Buy experiences! Live now, because the world is ending and nobody can stop it.

Now, I'm not saying that either example is reacting to their situation poorly. Faced with uncertainty, it's human to cling to the things we are comfortable and familiar with. However, the problem is not with their reaction. The problem is with their planning and goal-setting. That vagueness and fear.

I struggled with this a lot as well. Like many young people, I had a plethora of interests and was asked to pick only one of them to base my life on. That's a tough question for a 17 year old. I read a lot of self help books, books about gaining skills and mastering disciplines, and spent a lot of time debating with myself what I really wanted to do with my life. The result of this introspection sent me to music school, despite my father's prophetic warning that such a degree would yield few stable jobs.

Sure enough, I graduated with a degree in Music Composition and immediately found myself working in a kitchen, writing music for theater companies who couldn't pay me if they wanted to. I moved out of my college town into the (relatively) big city, only to continue to work in kitchens and write music for those who couldn't pay me, though now it was a video game company which was neat.

I was doing a lot of soul-searching. Did I want to be a grill jockey for the rest of my life? I managed to get a job as a telemarketer, and as you might expect that only made things more stressful and sad. But I finally found a framework for planning my life, and planning my future. I devoured every post on the Mr. Money Mustache blog, finally realizing that my financial life needed to change. And I found this webcomic, which struck such a deep chord with me that I began to re-evaluate my entire future.

The premise of the comic is this: It takes about 7 years to master something. This coincides with the "10,000 Hour" rule from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which states that 10,000 hours of dedicated practice and study will grant you "expert" status in a subject. The key is that talent and income are secondary to this time limit. You just need to be able to put in the time. Obviously, this is easier if you don't have to work, but if you play it right you can earn income through your mastery.

Each 7-year stretch of mastering a topic, then, is one of your "lifetimes". You throw yourself at a subject, devote yourself to it, and then afterwards you can abandon it for your next endeavor. It says from age 11 to age 88, you get 11 "lifetimes" to explore. You can devote one to art, one to truth, one to health, one to wealth, whatever you want. But the point is, 7 years is a lot more manageable to think about than a career-long endeavor. It's a nice alternative to the paradox that you can do anything in the world, but you have limited time to do it.

So, by figuring out your interests, you can set yourself up to pursue different activities, and master them in different lifetimes. Of course, some things (like becoming a parent or doctor) require longer stretches of time, but you can still break them down into these 7-year chunks. Even if you work within a single company the rest of your life, 7 years is a good benchmark to move from employee to manager, and another 7 years is a good time to step up from manager to executive. Your lifetimes don't have to be radically different from each other, but they give you a concrete goal, a path to get there, and a release when the lifetime is complete.

This comic changed the way I thought about my life. I thought about what I had done from age 18 to 25, how I had devoted myself to music and composition. Suddenly, I realized that it didn't matter if I couldn't get a music job. I had done it. I had lived a lifetime of studying and mastering music. And I had discovered that I wasn't quite as skilled as I had hoped, but I had gained friends, skills, and enough musical ability to continue my work as a hobbyist. I wasn't going to write the next great symphony, but I could certainly kick out some chill jams while gamers solved puzzles or beat up monsters.

However, my father's words came back to haunt me. I was pretty broke. Sure, I was becoming smarter about my money and learning to save and invest it, but my years at music school had left me saddled with debt and unable to find a high-paying job in a field I was skilled in. I realized there was more to this planning thing than just following your interests. Order mattered.

I had always been interested in math, and knew that the finance and accounting sector paid well. If I could spend 7 years doing that, get a job that paid well, and saved like a maniac, I could set myself up for an "early retirement" a la Mr Money Mustache. Of course, my early retirement would consist of me pursuing my other interests (and even making money off of them), so the prospect of not being chained to a job was very enticing.

So, I decided to put my other interests (writing, acting, business, politics, etc) on hold while I got a degree in accounting. I managed to land a nice job that paid very well after just getting an associate's degree. Being 27 years old and suddenly having a lot of money, I finished paying off my student loans and started devoting myself to saving money and learning about finance. Fortunately, in the meantime I discovered that I had quite a bit of free time when we weren't in the busy parts of the month, and I started this blog to keep myself occupied.

Now, I still have a few years of finance lifetime left, but hopefully by then I will be able to move on to another area of interest of mine (possibly business) and continue to make the money I need to save up for a solid retirement. Then, I can begin to explore my other interests, free from the constrains of work.

So, to summarize....

• It takes about 7 years, or 10,000 hours, to master a subject.
• You can master many things in your life. There's no need to stick to one.
• By figuring out your interests and choosing when you will devote 7 years to them, you can plan out your entire life.

And some further tips from my own experience.

• Some things will take more than 7 years. However, it's possible to break down the task in 7 year chunks. Raising a child to survive and have basic human functions takes about 7 years. Raising a person to think for themselves and pursue their interests with confidence takes another 7 years.
• By putting high-paying jobs early in your life, you can set yourself up for later one, when you might be pursuing something that doesn't pay well or at all. If you like art, be a graphic designer first and an independent artist later.
• Just because you've mastered a topic doesn't mean you have to abandon it completely. Each stage will bring additional benefits, friendships, and skills that you can apply to your next subject. Raising a child teaches you a lot about people, and would be a great precursor to community service or leadership. Not to mention, the things you learn can remain as hobbies later in life.
• Take physical ability into account. If you are currently out-of-shape or weak, don't try to master something physically strenuous. Instead, focus on slow, habit-forming behaviors to build yourself up to the level needed to dive into the subject you want to explore. In the same vein, don't save physically strenuous goals until late in life, when your body may not be up to the task.
• Just because you are devoting yourself to a topic doesn't mean that's all you can do. People are multidimensional. If you are pursuing a highly mental task like a degree in mathematics, make sure you keep hobbies to maintain your physical, social, emotional, and spiritual lives. Otherwise, you may find your studies cut short by stress, bad health, tumultuous relationships, or lack of purpose.

As a last point, I want to talk about the fear that a lot of people are feeling. After all, what's the point of planning your future if the economy will crash, or World War 3 starts, or the planet warms up and everyone dies?

Well, if everyone dies then you don't really need to worry about your future that much. But at the very least, you can die knowing you were spending your life wisely and pursuing things that mattered to you, instead of drifting along in an office job or sitting in front of a TV playing video games.

If the economy crashes, you might need to put your financial plans on hold, or find a new way to become stable in the post-crash economy. However, since you were already planning to change jobs in 7 years, you can easily begin laying the groundwork for a future pursuit instead of lamenting your dream has been ruined.

And what if nothing major happens, but the world simply conspires to deny you your goals? Perhaps there's no economic crash, but you finish your computer science degree right as an AI that can develop software on its own is discovered. Maybe you decide to become a YouTube creator right as the site gets shut down. Maybe you try your hand at writing a book but discover you suck at it.

Well, in that scenario, you have one thing that the non-planners lack: purpose. Yes, you failed, but you set a goal, you pressed towards it, and you came out with skills and experiences that you wouldn't have had otherwise. A failed writer may have no more books that a writer who never started, but the failed writer has the peace of mind knowing they made the effort, did the work, and proved they couldn't do it. The other person might die wishing they gave it a shot.

In the end, life is short. But you can live it in a way that brings you purpose, mental comfort, and perhaps success. It all starts with setting aside vague desires and making a plan to pursue your interests.

I enjoy writing this blog. In one of my "lifetimes", I want to write a novel. Of course, right now I'm devoting myself to learning about business and finance, but I feel a great sense of purpose in my life. I hope people benefit from my blog, from my music, from my knowledge of accounting and finance. In fact, I hope they pay me for it if they can. But at its core, this plan is about me pursuing my interests as deeply as I can. It's about me figuring out what my dreams are, then following them.

Thanks for reading!

State of the Blog

Happy Monday! I always liked Mondays growing up, being a young nerdy introvert. I never really hung out with people on the weekends, so Monday was the day I could go back to school and learn. Unsurprisingly, the pressures of a day job have somewhat diminished this feeling.

I wanted to take an article to write up my plans for the blog, since I'm going to be changing things on here soon. I'm not deleting the blog, so as long as the internet exists you can check out the archives I've posted over the past two years. However, I am going to be starting an indeterminate hiatus.

At the end of October (or November 2nd, more likely), I'll be posting my final articles for a while. The reason for this is that, like many creative endeavors, the blog has become less fun and more work. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on the stuff I've posted, though, and many people have said they appreciate the work I've done. But coming up with articles, writing up tons of NPCs and Loot, and writing up recaps has started to become very chore-like and tedious.

I also find myself more interested in other areas of life, such as music and art, but writing the blog is taking up quite a bit of time in my week. I plan on continuing to write, but perhaps on more personal projects or as a side-project to make some cash. Certainly something less time-intensive than my current workload.

But the biggest thing that's making this blog difficult to maintain is that I feel like I'm running out of things to say.

There's plenty more that could be said about D&D and role-playing in general. I could talk more about my setting, different ideas for character builds, or even descend into the endless abyss of rule analysis. But I feel like that would move away from the core purpose of this blog: to provide stories, tools, and ideas for DMs about the game. I want to help people learn, maybe so they can get the same feeling when reading one of my articles that I got when I was younger and went to school on Mondays.

In this excellent interview, Bo Burnham talks about how artists are often constantly on tap due to the internet, and how they don't take time to develop their art in private. When I started this blog two years ago, I had a huge backlog of ideas, mechanics, and philosophy to share. Now, I feel like I need to re-fill my quiver of D&D ideas. I need to write games, not articles, so I can develop some good material to share in the future.

So, this hiatus will be indefinite, but I would like to return someday.I can't say if that will be in a couple months or in several years, but in the meantime I plan on running games and collecting cool things to share with you. I might jump on here to post an occasional recap, but that's about it.

So, please enjoy the next two months of articles, and thank you for reading everything!

Monday Recap: 2017

Carol of the Rings

Merry Christmas! And happy new year.

It's been over a year since I started writing this blog, and in that time I've gone from posting random garbage to posting random (but useful) garbage! To my readers, I'd like to say: thanks for reading! I never expected this to really go anywhere, it was more of a way for me to gather information on my D&D games and force myself to write every day.

So, in honor of my Monday Recaps (and also because all my players are on vacation...), I want to use the last Monday of the year to go over what I've written so far and look ahead at what I will be writing next year.

Looking Back at 2017

I started this blog to chronicle my games, put my homebrew content out there, and support the people in my life. At the time, I was running 3 campaigns of varying sizes, and I had plenty of backlog to put into blog form. Now, I'm running five campaigns, and have to write pretty much everything from scratch. It's been a wild ride.

My first "hit" article was the Alternative Uses for Trinkets list. Technically, I made this one a while back, and posted it to Reddit. When the article went up, I linked it from there and got a few extra pageviews. However, that ship had kind of already sailed, meaning it didn't really take off.

However, my next big article had a few more factors in its favor. The Monster Factory article was something I made to imitate one of my favorite D&D shows, The Adventure Zone. I posted the article to Facebook and Reddit, and those communities gave me a lot of amazing feedback. Not just on the list, either - I learned a few tips about writing a blog and being a good internet citizen from those groups.

My most recent success story was over three years in the making - the Creature Loot articles. It was such a massive undertaking, I had to post only a little bit at a time. Fortunately, that kept my momentum going while I wrote some other cool articles. When it was finally finished, I posted it on Reddit, and /u/writerchild85 turned it into an amazing PDF. I was so grateful, I offered to write music or a game for him, but he simply asked me to pay it forward. I intend to!

The rest of the articles have had their fair share of views, but not nearly as much discussion or feedback. I'm hoping that I might be able to increase the amount of discourse on this blog in the future, because my most valuable experiences have come from learning about my writing from other people's perspectives.

Into 2018

Speaking of moving forward, I plan to continue this blog for the time being. Since it's hosted through the free Blogger service, I don't think it will be archived anytime soon, but I'd like to keep contributing to it for the foreseeable future.

I already have a few ideas for what I can write about moving forward, including more Lore of Ahneria, more Monday Recaps, and maybe even a Creature Loot table for other D&D products such as Volo's Guide to Monsters.

However, now that I'm fortunate enough to have readers who check into the blog, I'd like to offer my services to any topic you'd like me to write about. Is there something you'd like me to dig into? More DM tools for your games? Another breakdown of a D&D module? Please let me know in the comments!

I don't want this to drag on too long, so please know that I'm very thankful that so many people have enjoyed my work. At this point, I'm not planning on monetizing this project, since it's more of a hobby than anything, but if things keep growing the way they have been, I might start a Patreon or something. We'll see!

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for reading. May your dice always roll criticals!

Old News: The Plastic Shatners

They still exist, which is nice

As predicted, there came a weekend where a game could not be played... Which was actually fine, since we saw The Adventure Zone Live in Nashville last night. Woot!

So, here's an Old News article that isn't about gaming at all, but all about how I got into acting and theater in the first place: Improv Comedy! I've mentioned this before, but never told the whole story.

Old News: The Plastic Shatners

First things first: the name is from a Captain Kirk action figure. At the very first Plastic Shatners show, someone had it in their backpack and it inspired the team.

When I came to Bowling Green State University, I was signed up for the music program (first education, then composition). It's common that, when you go to college, you find yourself among people who are far better than you, or anyone you knew in high school. The best saxophone player from Nowhere High is just another fish in the sea at Music Univeristy.

At that tender young age (19), I didn't really handle competition well. I either wanted to be the best at something, be a part of the best group doing something, or not do it at all. So being lost among a sea of amazingly talented musicians and composers was doing a number on my pride. I was told time and time again that if I kept practicing, I'd get to their level, and I took that to heart. I got working.

However, it's hard to stay motivated when you're in the grind, and I needed something to be proud of. After a fateful football game, I got to know some people in the school's theater fraternity, Theta Alpha Phi. Suddenly I was "The Music Guy." I latched on to this group because I had gained an identity there.

In my second year, I was told I should try out for the Plastic Shatners, one of two improv groups performing on campus at the time. I hadn't really done anything in theater, despite being involved with Theta. The Plastic Shatners were a cult hit among the students at BGSU - garnering crowds of students who had grown up with "Whose Line is it Anyway" and gaining dedicated fan followings.

I'm honestly not sure how I got in the group, but the director, Joe, took a chance on me. Now I had a strong presence in the group: I had music, and I had comedy. I could be the best at those things, within that group.

Of course, this isn't a story about why a fragile young ego found its footholds, but I think with the proper understanding of my motivations, you'll get a deeper picture of the story.

The Shatners, being a foothold for my identity, became a large part of my life. I wasn't just a improviser, I was a SHATNER. The lessons of improvisation became like a religious doctrine in my life: support your friends and contribute to their lives. Listen to other people. Don't worry about the future or the past, just make it up as you go. Treat people well and they will treat you well in return.

Which is why I was devastated when the team's numbers were cut down the following year, and I didn't make the grade.

Suddenly, I wasn't a Shatner.

It took a lot of deep conversations, a lot of long walks, a lot of terrible emo music, before I was ready to accept that a part of my identity was gone. Fortunately, I had continued to work on music, and had entrenched myself in the social circles of Theta, so I wasn't lost or alone. I had a lot of good friends and a lot of support. But man alive, did that hurt.

I made it a goal to improve myself to the point where I could get back on the team for my senior year. I would do stand-up, read all the improv and acting books I could, and perform in plays through Theta. I wanted my team back.

It was actually through that type of acting that I met my first D&D group. As I worked to improve my acting skills, I also built my first character and explored a homebrew fantasy world.

Near the end of that year, the Shatner's Director approached me privately. It seemed that cutting down the team's numbers had backfired - too many of the Shatners were graduating or had decided to leave the team. Those who remained had no interest in leading the group. The Plastic Shatners were in danger of dying out.

I was asked to come back to the team, not as a performer, but as the Director. I couldn't believe it. My persistence had not only paid off, but it had pushed me to a whole new level.

I spent the summer preparing everything I could possibly need. Training exercises. Teamwork exercises. An audition strategy. I even found a guy who was interested in helping me do the logistics of setting up our shows, raising awareness, and scheduling everything.

I won't go into too much detail about the wild ride that was the Plastic Shatners' 2011-12 season, but in summary, it became one of the best seasons in the history of the Shatners, filling up lecture halls and performing shows more often than ever before.

And in the process, I figured out how to lead a group, how to make a team. We did exercises together and learned how to make each other laugh. To this day, one of my strengths as a DM is that I can make a scene hilarious.

My other skills as a DM came later, when I actually started running games for my group. It was a total disaster, but we'll save that for another Old News.

If you are a DM or hoping to be a DM, I can't recommend a better place to learn performance and storytelling than improv. Doing it in front of your friends is a piece of cake after you've done it in front of a 200+ person audience.

Also, blah blah blah, follow your dreams and you can achieve them, i.e. the pathos of the story, etc.

Thanks for reading!