The Weird Story Behind D&D 5E's Very Own Slenderman Legend

this video was sponsored by hitpoint press and humble wood tails now on kickstarter hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that will try to convince you you should be terrified of your backpack this week's episode is a special one normally on monster of the week i find creatures from d's history to talk about and discover and regular viewers will know that part of the show is converting those monsters into fifth edition stat blocks that can be used by those of us who want to continue using them in the current edition of the game however this episode marks the first time i've ever talked about a creature who got its start in a 5th edition dnd book but that's because today we're talking about an entity so mysterious it was never given proper stats in fact depending on who you ask it might not even exist so whether you're a d d fan or you're just here for some creepy monster lore buckle up because this episode is a doozy [Music] on may 18 2021 van rickton's guide to ravenloft hit store shelves promising to be a breath of fresh horror for the 5th edition catalog and goth nerds the world over rejoiced the book mostly focused on the titular ravenloft setting as well as the domains of dread which are pocket dimensions each having unique horrific elements and various themes at play as well as a named dark lord to act as the primary antagonist being held in each domain the book also continued the tradition of straud von zerovic being the largest in-cell to never live and included general sections on running horror-themed dnd games all broken down into categories such as cosmic horror dark fantasy and several others as a quick aside for those who don't know what a bag of holding is basically it's like a magical tote bag that's a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside a single bag has an internal storage of 64 cubic feet and weighs 15 pounds regardless of how much stuff you put in it i only mention this here because it's important for what we're about to talk about now within the pages of vin richton's guide our first glimpse of the bagman is pretty early on in the corner of page seven as part of the introduction there is some splash art of a menacing figure clawing their way through a purple bag like a reverse christmas present with flavor text that reads in ravenloft tales like the treasure-haunting bagman come to terrifying life this near-immediate mentioning of the bag man is simply meant to set the tone and plant the seed for what's to come once again on page 217 the bagman is mentioned but not entirely shown as part of the introductory dnd adventure the house of lament in one of the house's many rooms there are broken fingernails littering the floor and a series of ominous scratches that seem to form a trail a trail that leads to a bag of holding in the corner of the room and once again more ominous artwork of the bag man is in the corner it isn't until page 225 that we get our first proper look at the bag man and a bit more of an explanation about what the bag man even is and it's here that the bag man's tail comes to life [Music] the bag man is an urban legend about an adventurer who sought to escape doom by abandoning his party and hiding inside a bag of holding when he tried to leave though he became lost amid a constantly increasing number of extra dimensional spaces over time the strange forces of this magical in-between place transformed the adventure to a monstrous creature now every night bad man slips out from a random bag of holding if he doesn't find his home he drags someone back into the bag with him and leaves behind some trinket from his hidden kingdom of lost junk some say that if you speak too loudly over an open bag of holding or whisper follow my voice into a magical storage space three times the batman will come for you [Music] [ __ ] that this monster struck a chord with the d d community in a profound way that few other monsters have during the time surrounding the release of van ricken's guide the bagman was all anybody was talking about i remember having conversations with friends about the book and inevitably one of the first things that was always brought up was the bag man normally this wouldn't be that weird every time a new dnd book comes out that has monsters in it there are always one or two standouts which are talked up amongst the community but when we look at van rickton's guide there are 32 new monsters in the book but the bagman isn't one of them as i mentioned the bagman never got actual in-game stats it was always just an idea it's used in the book as an example of creating a unique nightmare the author suggests that while you're playing a horror-centric dnd campaign instead of just using your typical monsters the way they're presented in the monster manual you should try giving them a bit of a twist the bag man is their example of a troll encounter or at least how you could create a troll encounter in a horrific world the idea is instead of just sending a troll after the party by ascribing this creepy urban legend and terrifying description to it the encounter can become much scarier and therefore add to the game in a way normal trolls swinging around a branch just can't this is generally really good advice and when we start to think of monsters in this narrative way there are so many new stories and possibilities that open up but for a lot of folks myself included this single page with the suggestion of an alternate troll encounter was beyond evocative if not a bit on the short side the story just raises so many questions how did someone manage to access this magical in-between space are there other creatures that live there what about this space transformed the bagman into what they are are there multiple bag men what would happen if the bagman ever did find his way home are all bags of holding connected and is the space connecting all of them the equivalent of the back rooms and dungeons and dragons is our understanding of the dnd multiverse entirely flawed and is there a huge part of it that we're just not aware of my goal today is to answer all of those questions and then some i also want to take a crack at making my own stats for this thing because while i do agree that the bagman can kind of be whatever it needs to be for any story and i think that's great in some instances i want to share how i would build this monster and give you a version of its stats that you can take straight to the game table lastly i want to talk about some of the ways we might be able to use the bagman when it comes to building encounters telling stories and providing your players with some juicy plot hooks so to get things started let's take a look at where it all began [Music] the bagman was originally created by sean wood and f wesley schneider in an interview published in issue number 37 of dragon plus the official online dnd zine schneider who was the senior designer on van richton's guide tells us about how they came up with the idea for the bag man we were looking for d d slenderman a terror that has always been there always been right in the background but that you never noticed this led them down the path of trying to find a way to make adventurers feel unsafe when they should be at their safest we hit on pervasive magic items pretty fast and bags of holding were at the top of the list there's already a measure of mystery about how they work where they go and how they might be dangerous so we wanted to make that even worse sean had his first sketch of the bagman pretty much the next day the core idea behind the bagman's creation is part of what makes it so compelling it really hammers home the idea that no matter how safe you think you are in a place like ravenloft you're never truly secure and that's just good horror whether they realized it or not this was about to open up a massive conversation and the first part of that conversation is regarding the true nature of the bag of holding for a long time the assumption was that the space inside a bag of holding is its own individual plane of existence it may be a tiny plane but sizes and everything and most people assumed it was just that a microscopic pocket in the multiverse however the existence of the bagman seems to suggest that all microplanes and pocket dimensions created in bags of holding and other such items are actually all interconnected somehow it starts to become a lot more likely that these tiny microplanes are not individual separate dimensions but rather smaller pieces of some massive as of yet unknown or unexplored plane of existence think about it we have a spell that allows us to create new planes of existence it's called demiplane it's an eighth level spell which means that only the most powerful magic users in the multiverse are going to be capable of using it the bag of holding is a magic item whose rarity is uncommon putting it one step above a magic rock that lights up sometimes to me that doesn't sound like something which takes tremendous mastery of the arcane arts to create also take a look at the bagman's text it refers to its home plane as a magical in-between place now that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue so i've been calling it the space between spaces but wait isn't that the astral plane you might find yourself thinking after all it is often described as the empty ocean of space that connects all the planes right i mean d and d third edition's manual of the planes literally says it is a space between everything it is the road that goes everywhere it is where you are when you aren't anywhere else this sounds a lot like it might be describing the space between spaces but we know that the space inside of a bag of holding likely isn't part of the astral plane because if you try to put a bag of holding inside another bag of holding or similar space the result is a feedback loop that causes the space to rupture and create a 10-foot one-way portal to a random location on the astral plane to me this would seem to imply that it's talking about a different space other than the astral sea and while the space between spaces likely overlaps with the astral plane they're probably not the same place also jeremy crawford confirmed on twitter that a bag of holding is an extra dimensional space separate from the astral plane so i'm just gonna trust him on this one now unfortunately this leaves us with more questions than it does answers we know nothing about this space between spaces or what lives there but we do at least know for certain the bagman isn't the only thing that lives there don't believe me let's take a look at the description for the bag of devouring this item is the cursed counterpart to the bag of holding rather than functioning as a useful storage space for health potions that are definitely not going to get erased off of someone's character sheet and forgotten the bag devours the items placed inside of it and that isn't just flowery language all bags of devouring are literally hungry mouths the description of the bag reads this bag superficially resembles a bag of holding but is a feeding orifice for a gigantic extra dimensional creature the implication here seems to be that some kind of massive organism is lurking in the space between spaces with its many mouths connected to all bags of devouring in the multiverse by some magical means [ __ ] i've spent a lot of time pouring over d d item descriptions and researching any other leads on this and i wasn't able to come up with anything else alluding to whatever this bizarre extra dimensional dimension truly is and i find that really fascinating to me it feels like we're on the edge of discovering something new and frightening that's been there the entire time i suppose that was the mission statement of the bagman's creator so good job i guess but i find talking about this self i can't help but wonder what else might be out there in the space between that is a nicer ring to it let's go with that name because what comes next as a dungeon master and as a storyteller is ultimately up to us so while i do have a few ideas of my own i really want to hear yours whether in the comments or over on the discord server or if you decide to make your own video about it i want to know what you think might be lurking in the space between i've definitely got a few ideas myself and i'm going to get into that here in a minute but before i do i want to talk about how i would stat out this monster and the process i went through when trying to build it and make it an interesting creature to actually use mechanically at the game table [Music] [Laughter] as you can probably imagine there are a fair amount of homebrew stat blocks out there for the bagman there are some pretty cool ones but much like when i covered the false hydra i wanted to give you guys a new option as i imagine it in no way am i trying to say that my version of the bagman stats are going to be the best out there or even the one we should all agree upon but i hope some of you find it useful and at the very least i hope it inspires you to make your own now when it comes to assigning stats to this monster we know we want it to be stealthy creepy and have cool mechanics and abilities to back that up i started with the trolls stats since that was what the original creators had in mind but quickly realized i wanted something like the bagman to be a bit more threatening trolls are at a comfortable challenge rating of six so with all that in mind i set out to build a bagman with a cr of ten lending from the book's suggestions i immediately gave our cryptid to be the amorphous alien mind and grappler traits grappler is gonna make him a lot more effective at killing the people he's grabbed and amorphous is going to allow him to slip through his space as narrow as one inch this will come in handy for actually getting in and out of the bag because after all the most embarrassing thing that could happen to a bag man would be getting caught stuck half in the bag also the idea of this thing slipping under the crack in a door is just unsettling in the best way to me alien mind will give us some headway in showing anyone who tries mind-reading shenanigans that this is a monster beyond comprehension so if this trade ever comes up i would make a point of describing how the person trying to see into the bagman's psyche is just overwhelmed with despair and loneliness as they are flooded with all the feelings of torment the bagman must feel as he tries to find his way home speaking of despair i gave our bagman a once per day action called the despondent whale this ability has nothing to do with cetacea's sea life but it is going to be the bagman's encounter opener as we know the modus operandi of the bag man is to jump out of the bag and kidnap someone if he is caught in the act he's going to unleash this horrific whale that will frighten everybody around him and when it comes to actual damage dealing potential he has two claw attacks and a bite he can make every round this is for dealing damage but the claws are also going to grapple anyone he strikes because again he's not trying to kill everyone he's trying to kidnap one person the bite attack is going to provide another means of dealing damage but will also enforce a saving throw if the victim fails they gain one level of exhaustion i also included text here that if the exhaustion effect of this attack actually manages to kill somebody that individual will rise from the dead as another bag man much later but more on that in a minute the final action you're gonna see listed on the sheet is called egress this is essentially here to provide the dm with mechanics on how the bagman's ability to slip in and out of bags of holding actually works it takes one action so that way the bagman can't just jump out of his bag grab somebody and then jump back in within the same turn this means at the very least the person being kidnapped and anyone who might be nearby will have one round to do something i also made a point of including the ability to speak common because i love monsters that can talk and i feel like while the bag man might not have much to say when he does speak it's going to be so so many layers of unsettling when we actually get into combat your average bagman encounter flow is going to go something like this round one the bag man is going to emerge from the party's bag of holding they have a plus nine to stealth so it should be mostly silent while it does so it's then immediately going to find a target for kidnapping and move to attack at this point we have what i like to call a pivotal moment the party is either going to a detect the bag man's movements and rise from their slumber because remember the bagman only strikes at night or he's going to go completely unnoticed and one of the party members is in for a rude awakening however regardless of circumstance at this point the bagman is very likely to unleash its despondent whale to start off round two and then it will continue attacking until it grapples someone if it already has someone grappled at this point it's gonna just start heading back towards its bag of holding this will pretty much continue until it is able to start its turn next to a bag of holding with someone grappled once this happens it will use its egress ability to crawl back into the bag of holding and slip into the space between but this is not the end i have included one saving grace when the bag man returns back to the space between the portal he creates to do so remains open for 10 seconds this is just shy of two in-game combat rounds and will give the victims friends a chance to do something and make a choice do they jump in the portal and go after their friend trying to rescue them or do they simply accept the loss and try to move on if they choose the latter that's a pretty horrific note for the encounter to end on but if they choose to literally dive in then we've got a story on our hands [Music] when an individual is dragged back to the domain of the bag man nobody really knows what we might find there it is possible that the bag man simply drags victims back to the space between in order to consume them for food but if chowing down was his only pejorative then he wouldn't need to bring them back into the bag with him so why the abductions perhaps the bag man is compelled to do so by whatever forces twisted him into this foul creature and there are actually multiple bagged men lurking in the space between maybe he's not a singular individual but rather a type of creature and these creatures are all serving some kind of dark entity perhaps it's even the very same gigantic entity that's connected to all the bags of devouring one clue we do have about the bagman's home can actually be found in the text describing the legend of the creature itself it specifically mentions that after he kidnaps someone he leaves behind a trinket from his kingdom of lost junk that tells us at the very least this space likely contains countless trinkets and items the bag man or bag men have pilfered and found on their travels through multitude bags of holding so we can imagine that the space between is littered with such things something else about the bagman's legend that strikes me is the act of leaving something behind why do that does he take some kind of sick pleasure and leaving behind his calling card telling everyone that this wasn't some random disappearance but an act perpetrated by the legendary bagman or perhaps it's meant as a genuine gift because the bag man feels a sense of remorse for his actions which are maybe beyond his control and done at the behest of this dark master or some other third creepy thing whatever the case it's weird and adds another layer to this whole equation it's also a really fun detail to include if your group of adventurers happens to be investigating a kidnapping they might be going through a town looking for kidnapped citizens and all they have to go on initially is that at the scene of every crime some kind of bobble was left behind of course the next major clue whether they realize it or not would be that every victim owned a bag of holding it's also possible that the bagman isn't even responsible and someone is using the legend of the bagman to try and misdirect the party leaving these trinkets behind to create the illusion that the bagman has come to town but in a situation where it is the real bag man maybe those bags are being sold on the cheap by someone in town with a connection to the creature perhaps the jolly merchant at the bag of holding store is actually a cultist trying to help the bag man find new victims by selling these extremely convenient items for one-tenth of their normal cost otherwise i also like the idea that maybe the party is looking for a very important item or artifact that was known to be lost inside a bag of holding since getting to the space between isn't exactly easy maybe they simply call out into a bag of holding by saying follow my voice knowing that the bagman will come and hoping to either negotiate passage into the space between or simply follow him through as he kidnaps one of them something else to consider is that if a party actually manages to make it into the space between how do they get back do they have to find another bagman and follow him out as he goes on a nightly hunt or is there truly some other way to get into the space between that is connected to the rest of the multiverse in the original text there's a single line that feels almost like an afterthought but it's ripe with potential is there truly a bad man or is he just a story if an object vanishes overnight or if someone finds something that isn't theirs in a bag of holding is the bad man to blame is the bad man just a monster that preys on adventurers or is he the dark lord of his own hidden domain is he the dark lord of his own hidden domain that is an amazing question let me go on a little tangent here the domains of dread are all individual planes of existence that are built almost expressly as prisons to torture one singular individual the one individual is the dark lord of that domain the most notable example i can think of is strong von zarovic he might seem like an all-powerful vampire in curse of strod which he is but the entire point of berovia and why it's a punishment is because strod can never leave he is trapped there for eternity in stagnation forever damned to meditate on his shortcomings and failures those of you who have actually played the module will know exactly what i'm talking about but the point is all of these dark lords in these countless domains of dread are prisoners so perhaps the bagman is a prisoner trapped by the dark powers that control the domains of dread to eternally seek his home night after night knowing that he will never truly find his way perhaps he is the dark lord of the space between and this is his punishment for cowardice the bagman is a legend about an adventurer who sought to escape his doom by abandoning his party inside a bag of holding and maybe that one singular act has forever marred his soul or maybe the batman is just a legend honestly i don't think that really takes away from the story maybe he is truly just a cautionary tale told at taverns and ends across the world meant to remind adventurers there are fates worse than death and that you should always double check to make sure your bag of holding is shut tight or maybe you just use him to punish players who abuse the mechanics of the portable whole you know who you are thank you guys so much for watching i appreciate it immensely and i wouldn't be able to do any of this without you and if you do want to use my version of the bagman at your dnd table in the description down below you will find linked a google document that has all the stats and everything you'll need to successfully run this creature at your table and if you are one of my lovely patrons you will of course find the dungeon dad patreon exclusive stat block with the beautiful layout and all that good stuff over on patreon which is also linked down below and speaking of patrons it is time for patron of the week this week's randomly selected patron is none other than zeno thank you so much for your support my friend you are truly out of this world i would also be remiss if i did not give a shout-out to this week's sponsor hit point press and the humble wood tails kickstarter which is now live on kickstarter humblewood tales is a companion book to the humblewood campaign setting for 5th edition featuring expanded lore around the mystical tree city of alderheart gather your party and embark on 5 new humblewood adventures for levels three through eight where you'll encounter pirate mercenaries face off against a slime king take on the amaranthine kren in a nightmarish dreamscape and much more with over 200 pages of new content that's fully compatible with all your 5e games including pre-made characters a full bestiary myriads of new magic items and more there's plenty of thrills to be had for both new and seasoned humble wood adventurers humble wood tails is available as a book boxset and kickstarter exclusive collectors edition what tales will you tell so be sure to check out humble wood tales today by visiting dd.humblewoodtails.com or simply by clicking that link in the description down below thank you so much to hitpoint press for bringing us here this week to talk about the bag man and thank you for watching i also want to give a shout out to some of the lovely folks who helped me by recording voice lines for this week's episode the lovely xerodoxie jordan from flute's loot the bear bird and wally dm thank you guys so much for your cameos and lending me your voices you can find links to all their stuff in the pinned comment down in the comments section so be sure to go show them some love and tell them dungeon dad sent ya also yeah i wasn't kidding earlier when i said i want to hear what you have to say about the space between maybe you have a better name for but regardless i want to hear what you guys think might be there it's not often that the community gets to kind of grab a piece of the d d multiverse and just run wild with it and i think this is a really cool opportunity to make something awesome happen here so let me know what you think man look at all these names you guys are truly incredible thank you so much i'll see you in the next one until then [Music] [Music] whoa how'd i end up here oh man i'm gonna have to make a video about this aren't i you

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Keywords: How to play Dungeons and Dragons, dungeons and dragons lore, dungeons and dragons combat, d&d lore, d&d story, d&d online, d&d basics, d&d battle, dnd monsters, d&d monsters lore, dnd monsters explained, dnd monsters for level 1, d&d game breaking monsters, best d&d monsters, d&d cool monsters, creepy d&d monsters, d&d 5e custom monsters, classic d&d monsters, Dungeon Dad, Monster of the Week, D&D 5e, Dungeons and Dragons 5E, aj pickett, mr rhexx, D&D explained, homebrew

Id: hzzbyhPoAao

Length: 28min 19sec (1699 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022