Tools, not rules: Velvet Fang’s Additional Monster Mechanics 5e previews as a Pay What You Want

You can download Velvet Fang’s Additional Monster Mechanics for 5e as a Name Your Own Price from Tessery Games right now. That’ll likely change tomorrow.

The recommended price is $10, and in about a week, you’ll be able to find it on DriveThruRPG.

The 40-page 5e supplement emphasises providing tools, rather than rules, for DMs. As a result, the book helps DMs understand how they can make creatures – like a terrifying Ultra version – rather than filling all 40 pages with “static” monster blocks.

Crunchy? Velvet Fang says they specialise in “ludonarrative design” and I had to search to see what that means. It’s a reference, I think, to the video game concept of Ludonarrative dissonance.

Here’s how Wikipedia has chosen to describe it;

Ludonarrative dissonance is the conflict between a video game’s narrative told through the story and the narrative told through the gameplay. Ludonarrative, a compound of ludology and narrative, refers to the intersection in a video game of ludic elements (gameplay) and narrative elements.

I must admit before I went down that rabbit hole, I was first distracted by this Imgur album of Additional Monster Mechanics 5e previews provided by Velvet Fang.

Putting the two together, the crunchy monster bits and narrative-focused mechanics, Velvet Fang note;

…a whole new way to visualize encounter design, this guide doesn’t just offer new mechanics for GMs to utilize, it also takes the time to explain the narrative and design choices behind them.

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• Additional Monster Mechanics for 5e