Monster Groups and Encounters! (MD 231)

Episode 231 of Mastering Dungeons!  Main topic: Monster Groups and Encounters! The 2025 Monster Manual provides a variety of monster groupings, such as several goblins or bandits. How well do those monster groupings work to establish a theme, provide a DM with options, and provide for useful encounters? News: Sigil VTT is Live, Starter Set Preview, MtG Movie and TV Show, D&D Game Canceled, and more! Contents 00:00 ECCC Cometh 01:49 Video Game-Like Rules? 11:26 Intrigue for Convention Play? 17:42 Sigil VTT is Live! 22:37 Starter Set Previewed 26:52 MtG Movie and TV Shows 28:29 Revised Artificer UA 37:44 Smuggler's Secrets on Beyond 41:03 WotC Cancels Video Game 42:42 Ernie Gygax Passes 43:08 Mr Potato Head Beholder 45:47 Monster Groups and Encounters 45:58 The Conundrum of CR and Encounters 51:50 Monster Grouping Goals 52:51 2024 Monster Errata 01:00:52 Goblin Groupings 01:02:19 Monster Synergies? 01:03:11 Goblin Encounter Examples 01:10:53 Naming Monsters 01:12:09 Pirate CRs 01:15:27 Pirate Encounter Examples 01:19:52 CRs and Story 01:31:37 Shout-Outs 01:35:18 What Are We Gonna Do Now? Thank you for listening! Get the full show notes with links on Patreon. Show Search Engine: https://mdsearch.alphastream.org/  Our intro and outro music is Metropolis Fanfare, provided royalty-free by Tabletop Audio (https://tabletopaudio.com) under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). MP3 file metadata populated with Online MP3 Podcast Chapter Editor, built by Dominik Peters. https://mp3chapters.github.io/ and customized for Mastering Dungeons by Vladimir Prenner from Croatia.