‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Froghemoth Rises Again!

Welcome to the table,

So I don’t know how it started. I think it was a party or a post-con bar visit — maybe some other moment in time. It’s been close to 15 years or more since this weird tradition started, but at some point somewhere in the far-flung past Cullen Bunn and I started sending pictures of a Froghemoth to each other. The only thing I remember with crystal clarity about the seed that grew this strange practice was that at some point Cullen said “What do you know about the Froghemoth?!” in the same tone a tent preacher on one of those 1990s TV shows would ask a congregation about their faith. There was power and myth behind it and it cracked me up to a degree that it’s now one of my favorite things when I find random stuff with the Froghemoth on it in the wild.

Now, for those of you who don’t know what the Froghemoth is, this delightful Dungeons & Dragons monster has been around since the early days of the hobby. They are massive amphibious swamp-dwelling carnivores with four lashing tentacles, webbed stocky feet, big bulbous bodies, mouths full of rows of sharp teeth, and a lashing tongue that looks like a frog tongue through the lens of your worst nightmare. Atop their head is a thick stalk with three eyes that often poke out above the water line, watching their prey as it draws close, and then leaping out and attacking with devastating strikes and gnashing bites.

I adore this weird-looking beast and have since I first encountered it in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks when I was a kid. It’s one of those really cool elements of D&D that feels rooted in the strange sword & sorcery stories where science gets so advanced that it could be seen as magic, and then it gets forgotten and the natural world reclaims it. In this case, it is a crashed spaceship that has been stuck in the side of a mountain and iron-age adventurers wander off into this massive buried craft to find adorable robots, wandering spoor monsters, a cosmic zoo, and a rad collection of retro-future tech items that make adventuring in a high fantasy landscape a ton of fun until a rust monster swarm descends on you to take away your toys because your Storyteller gets tired of you blasting Orcs with a laser gun.

While these monstrosities exist in 5e, they have not seen a ton of play. We drop them into homebrew games from time to time, but it was double delightful to find out that the upcoming Quests from the Infinite Staircase (out July 16th, 2024 with early access on D&D Beyond on July 9th) is going to have an updated version of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, along with a ton of other updated classic adventures. I can tell you first hand, they have done a phenomenal job with this offering.

The pals over at WizKids even have a super rad miniature of the Froghemoth Elder coming out soon that you can pre-order right now. They always do a stellar job with their minis and while I have only seen this one in renders you can already tell this is going to be a good one that I will need for my shelf.

I always love seeing how a creature so near-and-dear gets attention across the board and, right now, the little old Froghemoth is having its day.

Until next time, what D&D monster do you want to see get more time in the spotlight?