A Brood Apart - U20 Refocuses

Those few of you who have been with U20 since our humblest beginnings will have witnessed quite a few changes around this big orange blog, and I'm here to announce another--a fundamental change that will refocus our efforts and provide you, our reader, with a specific service that all DMs and players need. That service is monsters.

I'm willing to bet that the average D&D party spends at least half of every playing session locked in combat with deadly monsters. For players, they are the meat and drink of adventure, representing both experience, treasure, and story-fulfillment rewards. At the beginning of a campaign, monsters hold the keys to all the locks. They know all the secrets, and they can answer all the questions. Monsters make the adventure, and they deserve to be treated as the core of each encounter, if not for whole campaigns.

For DMs, monsters represent vicarious bloodlust and superheroism, but also a lot of preparation time. Am I running this critter right? What do I do if the PCs score a critical hit? How would my critter react? Is my critter able to attack them directly? Do I need to add hit dice? A Template? A magic item?

Our new focus on monsters will provide you with the best critters on the net, but not just more monsters (let's face it, no one needs more monsters). No, our goal will be to have you open up our products and run them, sight unseen, as if you had spent hours reading the descriptions and developing your own tactics. We will provide you with all the tools you need to run the best, most challenging, and memorable encounters you've ever run, and your players have ever struggled against. We'll take out most of the work, and leave all of the fun.

We won't play favourites, though; when we aren't releasing our own critters we'll be explaining to you brave heroes how to effectively counter your DM's proxies. The blog posts will continue to flow with encounter ideas, tactics for both sides of the screen, and articles on creating encounters, crafting critters, and building enjoyment, all with a monstrous twist.

We look forward to proving that we are, indeed, a brood apart from the other D&D sites out there on the internets.

Thanks for tuning in, and stay tuned.