One D&D monster at a time: questioned, rebuilt, played.
Kill Every Monster takes classic Dungeons & Dragons creatures one at a time and asks what each one is, whether it has earned the label monster, and how it could be rebuilt for the table. Dylan and Aram bring in a guest for the discussion, and the guest then plays the creature in a one-shot.
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Kill Every Monster starts from a blunt premise about Dungeons & Dragons: the game rewards players for killing monsters, so which creatures actually deserve the name? Each monster episode takes one classic creature and puts three questions to it. What is it? Is it really a monster? How would you change it? Dylan and Aram co-host, and a guest joins them for the discussion before playing the creature in a one-shot actual play. Most of the opinions come out in the discussion. 'Yuan-Ti' shows how far that discussion can range. The conversation picks at how the game files its creatures, with some forms listed as monstrosities and the pureblood as a humanoid, and asks whether one of them eating a person is still cannibalism. Taxonomy is hard, as one voice puts it, and harder in D&D. The same episode argues that imagery in a creature's design should serve a purpose, and that designers should consult the relevant people instead of treating it as decoration. 'Gnoll' is more tactical. Gnolls moving in formation mean an ordinary battle; a mob charging all at once means a worse gnoll is somewhere and it is time to leave. The redesign idea there is a desert society that reveres the dead, closer to an Anubis-like take on eaters of the dead. 'Rust Monster' sets a scene in a small dwarven mining operation, where an emergency call comes in during a major excavation. Not every entry is built around a single creature. 'Season 3 Mailbag' and 'Season 4 Mailbag' also appear in the feed. The latter argues that the Tarrasque's real problem is boring design, not that it cannot be killed, since anything with stats can be killed. 'Dylan Is Mad About A Thing 001 - World Building' turns to regional magic: kingdoms blessed by particular gods, and characters who all arrive with a small spell from home. The tone is loose and blunt, and the language can get salty. In a running bit, Aram announces he has found a very clumsy dragon and Dylan insists dragons are not real. The bit leads into the Patreon pitch, where one of the perks is audio notes from the two of them on how each episode was made. The show describes each episode as a self-contained story, so the monster that sounds most interesting is a good place to start.
Made for: Suits a listener who runs or plays Dungeons & Dragons and enjoys hearing a familiar creature argued over, redesigned and then played, with blunt opinions on game design along the way.
What sets it apart: Instead of following a long campaign, each monster episode centres on one creature from the manual. A discussion of whether it deserves the monster label comes first, followed by a one-shot in which the guest plays the creature.
Kill Every Monster is an award-winning Dungeons and Dragons podcast about every monster in the manual. Co-hosts Dylan and Aram are joined by a guest for a DM-deep-dive into a classic D&D monster. The first part is a discussion, and the second is a one-shot actual play where our guest takes on the role of the monster.Dungeons & Dragons is many things to many people, but at its heart lies a system that rewards players for killing monsters. In each episode we ask three central questions:What is this creature?Are they really a monster?How would you change them in Dungeons and Dragons?Each episode of Kill Every Monster is a contained story, so you never have to worry about being caught up or list…
A gnoll with a culture is harder to file under "monster" than you might like.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused Yuan-Ti discussion about biased taxonomy, unreliable lore, and what fantasy creature design says about humanity.
Yuan-Ti give Kill Every Monster a clean route into the biases baked into fantasy creature design. The hosts ask what changes when a stat block treats a people as a problem to be corrected, then follow that question through cannibalism, the uneasy line between humanoid and…
A sharp gnoll episode that turns tactics into culture and asks what beast-headed characters can bring to fantasy roleplaying.
Kill Every Monster's "Gnoll" frames gnolls first as a table problem: if they move in formation, the danger is one thing; if they rush in a mass, something worse is probably nearby and leaving may be the smart play.
A dwarven mine disaster turns cosmic absurdity into deadpan workplace panic.
A small dwarven mining operation turns catastrophic when a tunnel suddenly goes hot, then tips into full cosmic nonsense: the sun burns through the mine, melts the ceiling, lands on the ground, and drops through the floor.
A funny, prickly argument about making magic answer to geography and the demands of survival.
Dylan is worked up about world building, which here means a loose, argumentative pass through magic, religion, geography, and survival as forces that should shape a setting.
A lively critique of unkillable monsters, player agency, and design that mistakes frustration for fear.
Kill Every Monster uses the unkillable monster as a clean way into a sharper design argument: once a creature has stats, players are invited to test, solve, and break it, while a sudden death clause can feel less like awe than punishment.
Dice, divine mysteries, and the trouble with good intentions.
Kill Every Monster: Yuan-Ti centers on Sebastian Yue, a game writer, editor, and designer who has worked on Daggerheart, the Cosmere RPG, Pathfinder, Apocalypse Keys, and Hitpoint Press.
Kill Every Monster's "Gnoll" episode features Aram, Dylan, and guest Khaldun Khaleeli, whose credits include Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mummy: The Cursed, and The Black Hand.
Kill Every Monster's "Rust Monster" episode starts by treating the creature less like a combat threat and more like a scavenging underground bug that ruins metal gear.
Dylan argues that fantasy settings should stop treating elves, dwarves, halflings, and humans as sealed-off nations, because trade, labor, and migration would mix them long before 10,000 years passed.
Kill Every Monster’s Season 4 mailbag opens with Aram advertising Patreon tiers from $2 to $50, including ad-free episodes, audio and video DM notes, and producer shout-outs.
Aram and Dylan use Kill Every Monster's season-four monster lineup to ask whether each creature commits murder.
Annika Seela, Hero Forge's brand director, joins Aram and Dylan to discuss Dungeons & Dragons treants and awakened trees.
Kill Every Monster hosts Aram and Dylan, joined by Pooja, examine the D&D parryton, a bird of prey with a stag's head and a humanoid shadow.
Co-hosts Dylan and Aram discuss and play as a D&D monster in a comedic actual-play podcast.
Co-hosts Dylan and Aram promote their D&D podcast with a dragon and discuss Patreon tiers and reviews.
Co-hosts Dylan and Aram promote their Patreon and review options while joking about a dragon appearing to promote their D&D podcast.
Co-hosts Dylan and Aram promote their Patreon and review options while joking about a dragon appearing to promote their D&D podcast.