Publisher and Kobold-in-Chief, Wolfgang Baur, is here to give you some insight on the state of the industry and the place of the Tales of the Valiant (ToV) RPG in it!

As part of Thursday night game research, I dug up a blast from the distant past of 2012. BEHOLD! The derro ooze mage is a Pathfinder 1E prestige class that conjures up ooze minions, grants ooze-like abilities, and even delivers what every ooze lover secretly longs for: miniature ooze familiars. I kid you not.

You can look up the original by mad ooze scientist Nicolas Milasich in Kobold Quarterly #20. Transforming into oozes, gaining ooze powers, shimmering like a fine cup of deadly dessert. Ooze mages just make sense.

Of course (of course!), the derro get full credit for this mad invention, this innovation in slime, this jello of total arcane destruction. I’ve lined that ooze mage up for next week’s game. The local druid has Important Questions about “just how unnatural is this?” I understand her skepticism. I’m moving ahead with adora-baby-oozes anyway.

So, um, there you have it. My official home game is sometimes a little silly. Yes, the ooze mage is rather freaky-weird. And it’s far from alone. And that’s awesome.

“What the Actual Fireball?”

There’s plenty of weird stuff in tabletop. While my first reaction to it is often “What the ACTUAL fireball?”, I also find this stuff wonderfully inventive and pleasantly dumb. Exploding toads by James Introcaso (see Creature Codex) spring to mind. I wish there were a lot more of it sometimes.

I know the weirdness in fantasy has always been there. Now, I will briefly share some of my favorite weirdnesses with you as a celebration of just how odd fantasy can get—and how oddly delightful that can be. Here’s a short, guided tour to quirky creatures you might not already know about.

And dear reader, I know that I am far from alone in my love of all things ooz-a-licious. (Admit it.)

More Weird Oozes

OK, stick with glorious oozes for a minute. Scholars and sickos alike agree that the Dungeons & Dragons gelatinous ooze goes back to the 1974 white box D&D, and that it is likely related to the Midwestern 1970s love of jello molds and gelatinous desserts. Except the desserts are usually adventurers, in this case. The thing has spawned a totally ridiculous number of other oozes since there.

You can make your own Gelatinous Jell-O Mold, as described on YouTube. You can add the seasonal Cranberry Ooze by Kobold veteran, Ben McFarland, to a Thanksgiving game night. It makes a delicious topping to bread pudding (not a monster—just regular bread pudding).

Or perhaps you would rather ponder the amazing shark bowl ooze from Creature Codex, by designer Dylan Lloyd. The shark bowl ooze, it should be noted, also has a baby shark bowl ooze version used by Dr. Megan Connell, the GM for Clinical Roll.

The number of oozes in tabletop games is just . . . surprisingly high. Kobold Press has printed more than fifty oozes in 18 years, as you can see from the Monster Search Tool. The Creature Codex alone contains eleven new oozes—and a matching set of extremely ooze-adjacent aberrations!

To fact check my outlandish claims, use the Monster Search Tool and enter “ooze” under “Type” and stand back in wonder: the stench of a ripe manure ooze (see Tome of Beasts 3), the horribly genocidal tar ooze (see Tome of Beasts 2), the shining radiance of the ruby ooze (see Creature Codex again). You might shed a tear. Who could blame you, with such sights of glorious undulation?

Oozes are the least intelligent of the monster types, and yet, highly entertaining. Sentient slime always has a place in traps, in random hazards, and in the list of GM tools that mostly entertain the GM. And that’s ok.

Terry Prachett is To Blame

Weird creatures go well beyond the Kobold Press obsession with oozes, though. The fault, the delight, the hunger for freaky weird monsters seems to be baked into the fantasy field. I put the blame squarely where it belongs, with the late lamented Sir Terry Prachett.

If you are not familiar with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and the animate Luggage character that features in the Color of Magic, well, you are in for a treat. It is worth your time. It is funny, and it is ridiculous. And there are other silly creatures in Discworld that you may discover on your own. But Sir Terry had a way of making fantasy more whimsical than anyone, and he invented creatures mild and bizarre in a way that is worth celebrating. So more of that, please.

In this category I also would recognize the D&D rust monster by Gary Gygax, the ferocious almiraj of Arabian folklore, the nilbog, and the keg golem. The Snake with A Hundred Mage Hands (from Tome of Beasts 2) is so much fun I want legislation requiring one in every wizard’s lab. The Shoth are an entire species of plane-travelling, ooze-centric creatures with a CR 21 avatar and overlord of oozes leading them through the multiverse. (The Creature Codex has a lot to answer for, with a full dozen oozes and ooze-adjacent creatures. The connections between derro ooze mages and the Shoth practically write themselves.)

In a darker vein, consider the weresheep of the Apocalypse for Pathfinder 1E (It’s free! No really, go look at it!), and for 5E, the flutterflesh from Tome of Beasts 1, which I picture like bickering undead ettins arguing with each other.

Many others are just as strange, and your own tastes might run to other flavors of foolishness. Heck, the Fallout 76 video game did a whole thing on the weresheep cryptid named Sheepsquatch. I await the ToV version of Sheepsquatch with interest.

So, there you have it. A tour through some of truly odd stuff printed for many editions of D&D, Tales of the Valiant, and tabletop generally. It’s a strange hobby full of strange people, and that’s part of what is so lovable about it.

Slip Me Some Sugar, Baby

Perhaps it was an alternate universe Elvis who first said, “All hail the ooze mages, baby,” and that Elvis was so right. Which is a nonsensical way of saying, I’m on the hunt for more quirk, more peculiar critters, more bizarre monsters, lighthearted horrors, and more laughter-inducing moments.

If you know such a monster, PLEASE add you own bits of fantasy RPG WTAF material in the comments, with a link, a source, or a title if you’ve got one! Because I need more, weirder things for that druid player to investigate when she’s done with the ooze mages . . .