Review: Mordenkainen Presents: Multiverse of Monsters

Written by on May 27, 2022

I came at this book with a vague distaste for its premise.

One of the major conceits for Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse is that it compiles a lot of content from both Volo’s Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes into a sleek, single book. Don’t try to trick people into buying a book for again if they’ve already paid for the content once. This long has been my issue with D&D Beyond and the requirement that you repurchase digital copies of books you already own to be able to use them in your online campaign.

It’s a publisher’s grift.

If you’re going to repurpose content, then advertising and marketing materials should be clear that this is the case. It’s different if people know upfront what they’re getting. For a book that retails at $50 MSRP you should err toward overexplaining those kinds of details.

The cover of Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. It features a menacing mosnter sneaking up behind Mordenkainen the wizard.

I consider myself somewhat plugged into Wizards of the Coast’s release schedule, but this new Mordenkainen almost snuck past me. I saw “multiverse” in the title and immediately thought they chose the name to tie into Spiderman: No Way Home and Doctor Strange the Multiverse of Madness. There was an Unearthed Arcana in 2021 called Travelers of the Multiverse and it mainly featured player races associated with the Spelljammer setting, which we all knew was coming out in 2022. My mind immediately went there. “This must be some kind of additional bestiary for Spelljammer!”

So that’s on me for not investigating further before I supported my Local Gaming Store to the tune of $50.

I alternated between reading and feeling miffed until both activities merged into a melange of mild dejection. I put it away and sat with the feeling for a couple of days.

Then, my co-host, Josh, and I decided we’d talk about the book for the next recording of The Goblins and Growlers Podcast, so I reread parts of it while taking notes. I also went to its product page on the Wizards website to see if there were any other details I’d missed. It turns out Wizards actually recorded a series of video interviews with Jeremy Crawford, the primary game design architect for Dungeons and Dragons. They were delightful and insightful.

Crawford went into detail explaining all the changes they made (my mind was one of them) to the repurposed content. It turns out it wasn’t a simple copy and paste and there was logic behind every change:

  • Altered monster challenge ratings: This is based on feedback from player groups concerning high-level monsters being too easy to beat with the right (wrong) combination of DM actions. They’ve adjusted a lot of monster abilities to compensate.
  • Revised spell casting: Monster spell casting now is streamlined to make it easier to run encounters with multiple casting monsters. Some of their spell lists have been offloaded into in-born magical abilities rather than spell casting.
  • Changes to expanded player race options: De-homogenizing the demi-human and non-demi-human races, which has been a concern for years now. Mordenkainen even offers an in-story explanation for the changes. “Well, yes, maybe a lot of those elves in ‘Greyhawk’ are all like that, but we’re describing elves across the multiverse here. They’re different!”
  • More useful NPC stat blocks: It’s such a simple thing, but providing tables can help develop a spur-of-the-moment NPC. It’s a great tool and major assist to the always-harried DM.
  • Better alphabetization: Hallelujah.

As with most things, my knee-jerk reaction was more than a little ill-informed and, with the benefit of context and reflection, I’m on board with the book’s premise. I still think Wizards of the Coast dropped the ball a little in explaining exactly what Mordenkainen is, though. The marketing on these useful and desirable changes could have been a little more transparent, especially for something that costs $50. That can be someone’s gaming budget for months.

Despite all that, it’s a nice opportunity to consolidate the best of two books. It also moves forward with changes that bring increased inclusivity along with mechanical tweaks designed to make playing and DMing easier. When you make the hobby more accessible, and that’s always change.


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