Dumb & Strange Dungeons & Dragons Monsters

We spoke with D&D's very own loremaster about why dumb monsters can be incredibly fun and why asking about the motivations and evolution of a creature can lead to great stories.

Matt Sernett: The last game I ran started with the characters in a tavern. 'Cause, of course, you just start with characters in the tavern. A cow comes through the window. It just crashes through the window and lands on the table and there's chaos and everything. It's because a hill giant just kicked it through the window of the tavern. The characters being first level, they can't fight a hill giant so they have to figure out essentially why this hill giant is so angry. When they run out there, it's yelling for Bighead and what happens is that the townsfolk get a big giant paper mache hill giant head and stand on one another's shoulders and come out and talk to it. The hill giant's so dumb that it negotiates with Bighead and then goes away. Of course, problems arise when the paper mache Bighead goes missing and the hill giant's still angry and adventure ensues.

Matt Sernett: I think that there's lots of things in monsters in D&D lore that we laugh at or poke fun of but it's just 'cause we haven't given them enough thought. We haven't given the opportunity to surface what's really cool about them. I think one of them's the mimic. I think if you go on the internet it's one of those, "This is the dumbest monster ever," kind of a thing. It's a treasure chest that eats you or that kind of thing. Honestly, if you think about it, the mimic's really fascinating. What does a mimic look like when it's not mimicking something? Right? Is it a puddle of goo? Is it purple? What does it do? And then how big or flat or whatever can a mimic get? Can it mimic a tablecloth? What's happening? If you start to sort of think about those questions and then come up with the right answers, neat ideas start happening.

Matt Sernett: Maybe the mimic isn't just the treasure chest that eats you. It is a predator, obviously. It eats meat and it's a carnivore and so on. It's taken this shape and it's hiding as objects. Is there another predator that goes after mimics? Is that why it turns itself into objects and things like that? Does the mimic mimic these other things so that it can just go over things like rats and so on? It typically wouldn't attack an adventurer because they're big and they're scary. Why would you attack that thing when you can eat rats and just go off and be a normal predator? Then it's like well maybe the mimic could, at some point, be the party's friend. Could you have a mimic that's basically to ply a character's pet?

Matt Sernett: There's all kinds of adventure opportunities there and fun for the DM role playing. 'Cause now you've got this thing that's in the party that's their pet. They have to feed it and take care of it and stuff like that. But it's a thing that can turn into other things and maybe there's fun things that you can do with role playing. Like if every time they're looking for it and they need it for something really critical, it's turned into their bedroll and doesn't wanna be bothered or whatever might be. There's all kinds of interesting things you can do with what seems to be a really silly creature.