Hey, it's that time again: the time when I need to put something on sale so I can keep sleeping indoors!


This is one of my favorite things that evolved out of the Kickstarter: A Monster for Every Season, a comprehensive set of print-and-play miniatures covering a wide variety of monsters and adventurers for your D&D game. It's basically a PDF file with pages upon pages of new OOTS-style monster art that you can print, cut, fold, and tape before dropping them into your game. Each page looks like this:



And then when you're done assembling them, they look like this:



Also, every monster is included in both full color and toner-saving line art, so you can change the colors yourself:



The sets are loosely themed around the four seasons, with the first set being Spring. (Yes, it was supposed to come out a few weeks ago.)

The first set includes the following categories:
  • Animals (82 figures)
  • Centaurs (5 figures)
  • Dragons (11 figures)
  • Druids (28 figures)
  • Fey (31 figures)
  • Gnolls (13 figures)
  • Goblins (30 figures)
  • Monsters (9 figures)
  • Mounts (21 figures)
  • Orcs (28 figures)
  • Plants (22 figures)
  • Rangers (39 figures)
  • Trolls (13 figures)


For a full list of all the monsters, here's a helpful Content List to download. Future sets will include pretty much every major category of monster, once everything's said and done. Here's a pic from the forthcoming Autumn set (which will hopefully be on sale this Autumn):



I've set up a product page for the first set with more information, or you can head over to Gumroad and get it now. Or you can read the FAQ that is coming up.


Frequently Asked Questions:

I can't figure out how to buy them!
You can get to the purchase page by clicking here, or on the big cover pictures above, or you can get to the Giant in the Playground profile page at Gumroad (which lists all the products we have on one page) by clicking here.

Does this set have every monster I would need to play? Does it have the entire contents of the Monster Manual?
No. Rather than sample every type of monster shallowly, each set attempts to be comprehensive for a limited set of categories. For example, this set includes 82 animals but no undead (which will appear in the Autumn issue). The goal is that by the time the project is over, the collected set will include pretty much every monster that has ever been released for the game, or at least an exhaustive selection thereof.

Is this useful for players, rather than just DMs?
Yes! Each set includes a few pages dedicated to two or more character classes, showcasing a variety of player-ready characters in all of the most common player races. This Spring set includes 28 different druids and 39 different rangers (and if you wanted to use a druid as a cleric or a ranger as a rogue, no one is going to stop you). Also, the set includes a wide array of animals for players to use as familiars, animal companions, nature's ally summons, wild shape forms, etc. along with a selection of regular old mounts—horses, ponies, riding dogs, etc. There are plenty of miniatures that would be useful even if you never ran an adventure yourself.

When will the rest of the seasons be coming out?
Hopefully during their respective seasons! The Summer and Autumn sets are completed and just need some light file conversion, while the Winter set is expected for both Kickstarter backers and the general public late this year or early 2018.

Why did you waste your time drawing 332 monsters instead of doing more comics?!?
I didn't, at least not any time recently. This was originally part of the Kickstarter project, which means that the bulk of the work was done back in 2012. All I did now was some art conversion and a small number of new figures, which took only a few days total.

Why did you start with Spring since it's now July?
Finishing the O-Chul story for Kickstarter backers ran long, pushing back when I could start on this. I suppose I could have just started with Summer, but this was the first set released to the backers and I think it serves as the best introduction to the project. The Summer set has a lot of aquatic animals rather than land-based ones, which are a little more situational.

Is this the same set that I got in 2012 as a Kickstarter backer?
Mostly. The art has been updated to reflect the current style and to match the Autumn set, and switched over to vector images to allow for better scaling. The layout has been shuffled to fix the margin issue that the first set had, too. There are also 84 all-new miniatures that weren't in the original set, to bring the monster count closer to that of the later volumes.

What are the new miniatures that weren't in the 2012 Kickstarter version?
You can see the full list of included monsters, but briefly speaking, I added 24 animals, 13 druids, 13 fey, 3 gnolls, 2 goblins, 3 mounts, 5 orcs, 9 plants, 8 rangers, and 6 trolls. There are no completely new categories that weren't in the set before.

I'm a Kickstarter backer and I never got my free copy of this!
You must have missed the update with the download link. You can download the file for free from your Kickstarter account by going to the pledge drive's page and looking for Update #38 from May 16,2012. You'll need to be logged into your account in order to view that update.

How do I get my PDFs?
You'll get an email with a download link a few minutes after ordering. Keep an eye on your spam folder, just in case.

What does the watermark look like?
It's on the first page (the cover), and it's a small grey ribbon-shape with the Gumroad "G" logo, next to which it says "Sold to" and then the email address that you gave when you purchased the book. So don't buy using your top secret email.

Why does it say there are two files?
Your purchase includes a full color version of every monster, and also a separate black-and-white line art version. These two sets are in separate files, so you'll get one file that has everything in color and one file that has everything in line art.

Why are you using Gumroad instead of (insert name of other company)?
Because they charge the lowest commission, which means I could lower the price more. Plus, most other companies that offer a watermark service add it to every single page, which seemed like overkill to me. One page is enough.

I paid for the product but I didn't get it! What do I do?
The first thing to try is to go to your Library on Gumroad, at this link: https://gumroad.com/library You should be able to see everything you've bought from them, and you can just manually download the file. That only works if you have an account there, but if you bought it without one, you can just make a new account using the same email you used to buy it and it should show up in your Library retroactively. If that doesn't work, then you need to contact [email protected]. I don't have much control over Gumroad's technical side, since I don't own them or run their service, so your best bet is to talk to them directly.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or technical difficulties, feel free to post them here.