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The Weird Story Behind D&D 5E's Very Own Slenderman Legend
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ส.ค. 2024
- The Bagman is a cryptid from the pages of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. It's an incredible monster, but it was never given proper stats... until now. Join me today on Monster of the Week as we dive in and discover everything there is to know about The Bagman! This bizarre viral monster is the first 5th edition creature I've ever talked about on the channel, and I can't wait to show you why. From the space inside a bag of holding, to the backrooms, and beyond!
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0:00 - INTRO
01:08 - WHAT IS THE BAGMAN?
03:31 - THE URBAN LEGEND AS ITS TOLD
04:23 - WHAT IS THE BAGMAN? CONTINUED
07:18 - FOLLOW MY VOICE // BAGS OF HOLDING
13:23 - BUILDING A MONSTER
18:30 - PLOT HOOKS
25:28 - HUMBLEWOOD IS AWESOME!
26:25 - OUTRO // SMOOCHES
28:02 - ???????????
Thanks for watching! I can't wait to see what you guys come up with surround "The Space Between"! Much love to my friends who helped me with some voice over stuff! Check them all out here;
Zer0Doxy: th-cam.com/users/Zer0Doxy
Bear Bard Tales: th-cam.com/users/BearBardTales
Flutes Loot: th-cam.com/users/FlutesLoot
Wally DM: th-cam.com/users/WallyDM
could you cover the great beast from grim hollow's monster grimoire? It's in the same situation as the bagman. More of a narrative piece than a stat block but dam do i ever want to throw this thing at my players. It has the coolest visual design
The space between spaces is full of left socks and gloves, lint, spare change, and the occasional tiny g string!
It's really awesome to hear your friends and yourself acting in character. Thank you.
I would probably refer to it as the forgotten place, as only items that the users of bags of holding believe can be in the bag actually can be pulled from the bag or come from the bag, if items that are forgotten, or creatures for that matter that are placed in a bag of holding are somehow forgotten either from from the user dying, the bag being stolen, or it being lost, then the items become a fixture of this place, until belief or probability of the item appearing in a bag of holding is thought of by a current bag user.
I like the thought of a serial killer trying to take advantage of the bagman legend to get away with his murders but during the final confrontation with the party, the killer reaches into his bag
And a long emaciated hand reaches back out.
Stealing this
@@Nechrostriker4Seconded.
Sounds similar to what happend at the end of princess and he frog
@@MaxanArchyRandomXenic he actually believed in and was using his magic, it was just that his gods turned on him at the end. I'm talking about a man trying to get away with crime by blaming it on an urban legend. Only to on the end meet the exact entity which he has been impersonating
Bonus points if the bag man doesn't even attack the party. They just see the villain get dragged into his own bag of holding and is never seen again
@thesatelliteslickers907 I ment like exactly that. That happens at the end of princess and the frog except for what you say. A whole end song ad the bagman's grotesquely long arms pull the man away into a
If the bagman is perpetually lost, maybe he's leaving trinkets behind as a way to remember where he's been, or as a key so he can locate those places again!
That's very astute. I like this!
@@DungeonDad I am intrigued by your ideas, and have already subscribed to your newsletter!
What if you use wish to send him back to his home?
Maybe for something to enter this dimension, something else must leave. So when the bagman brings someone into the bag, something must be left behind. Effectively swapping the victim with a useless trinket
Something like the dimension is full after so many items lost in a bag of holding ended up there
A sufficiently high charisma check should convince it that it is home, if the party reacts by welcoming it I think it should negate the combat encounter and potentially convince the bagman that it shpuld protect that party to make up for abandoning its original one, it is a lost soul and finding a place to call home should be its greatest want
I also like having a hack to bring peace to the mosters I fight, my character isn't a pacifist by any means but his tormented backstory leads him to commiserate with anything lost and in pain, his people were slaughtered and his home destroyed, it was a fae democratic socialist paradise so kinda like billbo from LOTR he wants to see everyone have a place to call home
I love that they left canonical details on the Bagman extremely few, almost nonexistent. That means every time he shows up in a game he'll be different, which adds to the feel of him as an urban legend, like there's thousands of stories about what he's really like but nobody knows for sure.
There is NO canonical details, actually. Just fluff. Cool monster idea.
@@sinisterthoughts2896 he’s less of a monster and more a tool for a dm to use in how he wishes as long as it fits the bagman’s description.
Gives the idea that the bagman could be terrified of the entity behind the bag of devouring. And a bag of devouring can be a way to ward it off.
Same energy as the 5e Tarrasque.
Tarrasque: "I fear no man, but this thing (referring to an Aaracokra with a bow)...it scares me."
or lead a bagmen into a bag of devouring. lose a teammate though.
Imagine your character is pulled into the space of The Bagman, and when they wake up they find themselves in a strange hovel made of random objects roughly glued together by god-knows-what, surrounded by an assortment of other people. The people seem to be nervously playing out characters, interacting with the Bagman as if they were old acquaintances, even family. When one of them does something that doesn't fit their character the Bagman becomes agitated, prompting them to hastily correct themselves.
Yo, this is messed up in the best way. Love it
That feels like WandaVision, or a more messed up version of The Truman Show.
Bag man is actually just the other mother from Coraline
oooh I would like to add to this. The people it captures are supposed to act like its old party. This could be the reason why the Bagman targets adventurers mainly. If one of its "party members" die due to old age, hunger, disease or even the Bagman itself, the Bagman will immediately hunt for another replacement. When the Bagman finds his new "party member", he leaves behind a trinket that the previous "party member" owned.
@@KevinVideo as if the original idea for the Truman show wasn’t messed up enough XD
One thing I love about this monster is that it brings up the horrific implications of physics based and spacial magic. That space has to come from somewhere, but the bags are so useful that no one bothered to question where that space came from…
Which makes you wonder, did someone discover this space and not investigate it enough to realize the danger? Or is there a greater intelligence (possibly the entity linked to bags of devouring) behind it all, one that hunts by giving this seemingly convient bit of magic while hiding the truth.
@@somerandomschmuck2547 This gives me big "crazy scientist who is actually right" vibes. I could see a party being tasked with helping an eccentric wizard investigate the truth behind the bag of holding. And once they discover the truth, there are those who want to keep them silent as to not rouse a panic and mess up a massively profitable/convenient industry.
@@DungeonDad That’s EXACTLY the kinda thing that would work perfectly for this guy, and it could lead into more cosmic silliness as these little leather dimension pockets get explored to an extent that no one ever really has.
The potential of this is staggering, especially if you add in the massive cosmic entity and the bag of feeding you mentioned.
I also gotta say that the idea that the Bag man is a dread lord is an amazing concept. The Dread lords seem to often reference classical monsters, the most obvious one being Strahd with Dracula.
And the Bag man fits the mold as this campfire story spook that is like an urban legend or boogeyman.
My take on the bags of holding has always been on the tone of "people who know enough about space-time magic to understand how they behave - or sometimes misbehave - don't need them and accidents are rare enough that they prefer not to explain. Accidents are brushed off as superstitious nonsense."
I've always had fun picturing some adventurer joking about their bag of holding having once again "swallowed" some trinket while the wizard chuckled awkwardly in the corner.
@@somerandomschmuck2547 I feel like it should be a pocket of junk with langolier type creatures (Stephen king book/ movie)
I like the idea that the Bagman leaves the item as a receipt. Like some sort of twisted payment for the one he took.
It's fey rules. an equal exchange.
It also reminds me a little of the Negative Energy Plane and Nightwalkers. They can only pass the barrier when a living creature moves from the Prime Material into the NEP, and vice versa.
@@torazelymy fey warlock feels that engaging in combat is consent to have your spirit stolen and fed to his archfey patron (a kilorean spirit shamen) to revive his lost loved one's (3.5 kiloreans are born from the slaughter of fey so she contains the spirits of the deceased and as a student of the Quess'Ar'Teranthvar she cam revive them)
@@ConstantChaos1 my exact point. Fey are obsessed with the idea of an equal exchange. The problem comes with what they consider equal. While the Bagman may have started off as ANY race, he certainly would qualify as some form of fey now, and this is beholden to their rules
@torazely yeah I love playing with the fae but then again I'm a short charismatic chaotic queer pagan so of course I love the fey
For what it's worth, in 2E (old magic, I know), bags of holding were specifically linked to the Astral Plane; the old "bag of holding/portable hole" trick created a one way portal to the astral plane, but if used normally, all of your stuff was basically just sitting out in some random spot on the astral plane.
Like a big junkyard. Where some curious denizen might wander by and decide "why, I quite like this neat looking thing," or "huh; I wonder what the owner looks like." :) Love the critter!
Not calling it "The Bagrooms" was a shameful missed opportunity, lol
Just came down here to make this joke
"The Sackrooms" is an equally valid pun imo
You're hired.
@@DungeonDad how's the pay
@@burninghands8883 mostly bags
I absolutely love this creature. In my west marches setting, the first clue that a bag man is near is a mad, childlike giggling and a voice that asks someone to come and play. There's an ancient nursery rhyme in our lore that is a warning about the bagman:
"A maniacal laugh and childlike glee, always asking to play with me.
Offers you gifts and coins for free if only you would just play with me.
Don't let him out and don't reach inside, for the madman in the bag resides,
And though the temptation is strong, you see, death awaits when you play with me.
Play with me,
Play with me,
Come in my home and stay with me,
It all will be worth it, I'm sure you'll agree,
Just please come play with me."
My players have been absolutely scarred by this creature, and have actively decided *not* to take bags of holding when offered.
Fucking hell that terrified me I'm not playing in your game or anything but by the gods you're good at setting up horror
@@Icefox96-5 Haha thanks! I just posted a new quest hook for them inspired by this video (GE is the guild of engineers):
Exciting news turned to horror and mystery when GE's new Printing Press released its first paper today. Thought to be a major advancement that would revolutionize everything from education to military tactics, the Estrian company had planned on putting out a news story about the latest results of GateTown's jackal races. Instead, the paper that was found in the empty shop the morning after the machine was completed read thusly:
------------------------------------------
*Come to GateTown! Bet on the Jackals! See them run and join in the fun!*
The jackals have been runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
itshereplescomhlp
--Strange lines of ink draw across the page--
playwithme
-----------------------------------------------
Requests for comment from GE's President, Dr. Magewall, have been unanswered, and four members of the Eastwatch garrison failed to return when sent to investigate.
That’s a pretty good poem.
That is awesome. I agree, I'm definitely going to be adding this to my setting. And also it sounds like you would be an amazing call of Cthulhu keeper otherwise known as dungeon master for dungeons and dragons.
Your westmarches setting sounds like a lot of fun. Any chance I could get a link to check it out?
I modified a magic item once which was designed for pickpockets-originally, each palm had a hidden bag of holding, for hiding evidence. I made it so that was true for one, but the other was a bag of devouring. The gloves had ancient runes on their backs, for “Hide” & “Destroy” respectively. Spite-destroy that evidence. And it says something very unnerving about the person who made it, and *purposefully* created/bound a bag of devouring like that.
I’m very proud of that one.
I was worried you were going to "de-mystify" the Bagman and in essence make it less evocative. Instead you gave me some great stats and even more mystery to explore. Subscribed!
Thanks for watching and welcome to the channel!
I would try to keep the monster's motivations simple and tragic. It's cowardly so it won't fight unless it has no other option or maybe it's so afraid of everything all the time it lashes out the moment things go wrong. It kidnappes people out of loneliness from extreme isolation, trying to connect or out of some sense of penance for abandoning it's former comrads. No torture or transformations for victims, just being trapped in a nonlinear junkyard space with a monster that desperately wants to befriend you but has lost the ability to relate on a human level.
Breathless. Those broad strokes are perfection.
I like the idea that as it tries it keeps trying until it get frustrated... and eventually loses the person they took with them.
And from that loss the Bagman tries again... Leaving someone else to experience what they did.
Multiplying... as they each one become Twisted in their loneliness.
That is FANTASTIC.
Imagine a Player gets in a situation where they are about to die when suddenly a hand comes out from the bag of holding pulls them inside in a way save them
@@HimitsuHunterimagine if you could play as a bagman who got back their humanity and is now a part of the party
I like the idea that the Bagman is a single entity and that whenever he does abduct someone, he doesn't really *do* anything to them, he just grapples them and "cradles" them while crying and doesn't stop until either the person breaks free and runs away (only to be tracked down again, since they're stuck in an in-between place), or until the person expires and can't lend any "comfort" anymore
this is absolutely horrific and I love it.
i had a similar thought. The urban legend of a cowardly man hiding in his bag of holding hides the darker truth. the man had turned against his adventuring party after they wiped out a family of trolls. the man had managed to save the youngest child, but when he and the child became cornered, he hid the child in his bag of holding out of desperation. he had intended to pull them out, but was killed before he could do so.
I just now had the idea to do a backrooms themed dnd session, where they all get inside a bag of holding to hide from the town guard and end up in a place far worse then prison
My thoughts on the "space between" is that the bags of holding and devouring are the same thing.
Each is a mouth which leads to the extra dimensional stomach, and the only thing that differentiates the bags, is that the bags of holding have been stitched shut from the rest of the beast.
The bagman is but an interloper that cuts through the stitches, searching for his bag.
I actually ended up turning The Bagman into a Darklord of a space I called “The In-Between” (as in the Space Between Spaces). All those magic items you forgot in your Bag of Holding eventually end up in his domain. A castle of trinkets, an ocean of misplaced potions that create strange effects, even fields of rotting food or fabrics.
I love that this analysis exists, because it’s got me excited to work with it again.
I have an in-between dimension as well with similar effects, but instead the entire pseudo-plane actively steals and transforms both people, places and objects. Beholders can access this place in their dreams and can get lost or inadvertently pull objects from it. People can get consumed and lost within it, Ghosts can be drawn and trapped in it, never to escape without a naturally or artificial back door. Some people learn to “control” the in-between, using it to hop through not only planes but dimensions as well.
I used mine to kidnap a ranger who had to leave for several months. She returned as a scarred and broken gloomstalker.
There should absolutely be some nasty things in those rotlansa
A year late but I had the same thought watching this video, a place of lost things. If a bag of holding can be considered to work off of the memory of the items inside of it then when those items are forgotten, or no one is left alive to remember them, they slowly fade into this place of lost things. Perhaps that is how the bag man himself came to be, with none of his comrades left alive to know he was trapped within the bag he was slowly forgotten and faded into the place between. Perhaps he leaves these trinkets in a hopeless attempt to restore the memories of forgotten things. Also, taking the concept of a bag of holding working off of a person's memories further, if a spell modified someone's memory to recall an object in their posession that never existed (or that now only exists in the space between) could they retrieve that item from the bag?
Is that where all my socks go in the dryer?
I love the idea of a monster born from the punishment of isolation. For abandoning his party, the adventurer that hid within the bag of holding faced some sort of justice at the hands of, idk, the universe. He found a tear within the the bag, and with it an entire hidden dimension, which would become his home and prison. Time wouldn't work the same way, the rules of life and death would not apply. In the Space-Between (the Bagrooms, as another comment said), he'd slowly go mad with immortality, loneliness and guilt, losing himself in the pain. Eventually, his mind and body changed and decayed into a monstrous form. he'd explore enough to find a way to leave, maybe first collecting trinkets and magical items that brought him comfort, that reminded him of a life he once lived. One day, he leaves the Bagrooms, and manages to leave a Bag of holding itself. The people outside, they reminded him of the company he once had, their presence staving off his loneliness.
Like the items and trinkets, he decided he'd want to keep those people for himself.
Love the concept, love the stats, will use in the future.
I dig that interpretation a lot!
It makes me think of the lesser domains from the older editions that had things that didn't quite work for a full domain for the dark lord, or just creepier by having them be semi-mobile planes that can overlap the main ones for a short time. There were two of them that I remember from it...the first was a Unicorn/Pegasus hybrid who's herd was captured...first by fiends who turned the Pegasus into Nighmares while he was left behind unable to do anything, and then by others who slew the other half...he becomes an almost omnicidal thing that had a wandering glade that could pop up in any of the domains where there was woodlands on the night of a new moon and he'd stalk the players...who he'd see as those responsible until he slays them and realizes when dawn comes...then his glade takes him away for another night.
The other was a cannibal running an inn...which wandered around. His big thing was that the propriator first got to Ravenloft after being kicked out of the World Serpent Inn for trying to eat one of the waitresses into Ravenloft.
This almost makes it seem like some form of stockholm syndrome between the bagman and the bagrooms, he can leave, but has become so accustomed to his own prison that the sense of freedom is completely lost on him.
Our DM used the Bagman in our campaign and we had no idea what it was. It ended up taking one of our party members and we are at a loss on how to get him back, if we ever can bring him back. It was the most terrifying experience we ever had. Especially since the incident started innocently with us just trying to get some rations out of the bag of holding in order to have a meal while we camped and rested.
I had an idea that the bagman might start by taking small things first and then slowly escalate. Like for example, maybe first things vanish from inside the bag of holding, but as time goes on, maybe they vanish from camp, more valuable items each time. Finally, if the problem persists, the bagman takes an entire person.
I like the idea that the Bagmen leave a trinket as a 'trade' of sorts or the 'trinket' is the kidnapped individual polymorphed into a new form(similar to the white whistles in Made in Abyss) by the Bagmen or their master
Imagine the party discarding the "trinket" as useless junk, only to later have to go on a wild goose chase to get their polymorphed companion back. Meanwhile the polymorphed party member is going on a One Ring adventure, attempting to passively manipulate the various creatures that find them into taking them to someone who can help
Had exactly the same idea!
@@Gloomdrake hm ya know that sounds like a HELL of a concept for not just a single person but a player run because half of the game could have them be just abusing anyone stupid enough to put their form on and when damaged critically so low health or on a crit the person may be able to excape control posable knowing the item that was controlling them and they could throw it. as if anything it gives the party a hell of a toy because leave the morphed "trinket" person who maybe shaped as really valuble rings ends up on a bandit lords finger and suddenly they got a bandits eniter a tendary posable even a trap plan laied the morphed forces the bandit lord to think it maybe more worth it then it really is. as this could lead to as well of a man going completely insane for the morphed individual causing a smiegal/golom event where someone just mad ridden to protect them. but they are also vary willing to do what ever they are told.
@@lechking941 hell in a good way or a bad way?
@@Gloomdrake yes
ok jokes aside i say both ways because one your suddenly a fucking ring or other trinket and now ya dealing with figuring out completely on ya own on letting the party know ya live (somehow) but also how to reverse the problem if posable short of a wish spell, but you also got if its not reversible or you don't feel like reversing it it can become a good tool. but how it will work who knows. but either way the short is ya body is dead and your soul is stuck to what became of ya corpse.
I do like the idea of a relatively common and useful magic item having the smallest chance of releasing something terrifying
It's unlikely... but you never know!
The bagman skins the victims it pulls in creating a new bag of holding. The skinned creature is kept alive and their mind is corrupted by the process and can then crawl out of that specific bag of holding finding new victims.
Question: what kind of leather is used to make bags of holding and bags of devouring? 🤔
@Mike-ve3pt maybe humans for holding and monsters for devouring
@@Mike-ve3ptin my DnD campaign, their both made from a ever regenerating nephilim's, who are extremely masochistic, one cursed herself to forever be hungry, and the other cursed himself to forever hold something, so both create bags of holding and devouring from their skin, but it takes time and a lot of skin, thankfully their large, and yet they mostly make it for smaller races so ehh
aaaaah so that's why there's so many bags of holding
I feel like each individual Bag of Devouring is an individual extradimensional creature.
Also, there's a Free RPG Day module for Pathfinder 2e that takes place inside of a bag of holding that's been broken. A kid hid in it for years, much like the Bagman, and used magic chalk to draw an entire world inside of it. It's a We Be Goblins adventure, so of course it's a bit silly, and the players are all Goblins.
the bagman was an epic level 3.5e PC who had escape artist bonuses high enough to slip through walls of force and the like. he got trapped in a bag of holding and tried to escape through the walls of the bag, no clipping into the dnd version of the backrooms.
The punishment for min maxing
This sounds like a truly delightful addition to a party at Strixhaven, where young adventurer's in training dare each other to whisper into a bag of holding, like giving Bloody Mary a stat block.
I can also see the bagman as a great assassination tool. Take a bag of holding, whisper "follow my voice" into it, then gift the bag to someone you want disappeared.
Either way, love the content.
Oh man, that’s such a fun idea! Totally fits in with the magic school vibe. Thanks for watching!
Would be even funnier if sometimes instead of the players whispering "Follow my voice" you get the Bag of holding whispering "Follow my voice" three times.... (With any player that climbs into the bag after hearing this disappearing..... )
In my mind The bag man can be summon to the material realm using ritual to summon demon or monsters on bags of holding or bag of devouring but it only works when you making a sacrifice saying the little nursery rhythm and giving up anything of value binding bag man to your service. Very Rarely and randomly does bag man just show up out of the bag and grab people in less bind to service but if a bag man after you it can sealed into any bag and locking it away this also making great trap for anyone looking for a bag of loot.
I love this
I like to imagine an encounter where this happens and a primed bag is given to a player character, but instead of the bagman just trying to disappear that character, he starts seeking out the person who’s voice called out the follow my voice thing. Might be a really cool way to reveal to the party that a noble or one of that noble’s subordinates betrayed them and was trying to get rid of them.
I’m running a Ravenloft campaign with a group that I’m also running a forgotten realms campaign. Before they ever found a bag of holding in the Ravenloft campaign I had them hear a bard recite a poem he’d written about an experience with the Bagman. Then three sessions later they found one, and half of them were so afraid of it that they almost left it there. They’ve also shown fear towards their BoH in the forgotten realms campaign now. I love the Bagman. 😂
I know this video is over a year old but i just have to get this out. This video kind of changed my life. I didn't know what the bagman was before this video, but after i found out, I immediately started writing up a campaign about him. And because of this campaign, I've grown extremely close with my party and even managed to patch up some old friendships that ended badly. I was able to do this because of the campaign which wouldn't have existed if it weren't for this video. I've finally managed to get through my 1st long running campaign and I've created a world and characters that all hold a special place in my heart now. I've grown as a DM, a storyteller, a person, and a friend. So yeah, maybe im being dramatic but this all wouldn't have happened had i never learned about the Bagman. I know this is just a random dnd video on the internet but it impacted my life more than id like to admit. All i can really say is thank you. So, thank you.
My interpretation is that the Bagman's domain is like D&D's Infinite Ikea, a domain of endless junk that the Bagman hoards, with settlements of people that have gotten trapped there and now just do their best to survive in this strange and hostile place. Also, the bagman's presence in his domain is quantum. He can be in more than one place, but an observer will only ever see one of him at any given time, and once observed by someone, that instance of the Bagman is the one that people around will see, and if he stops being observed, he'll vanish/end up somewhere else.
Its all the worlds lost socks and loose change and, in my case, lost guitar picks. There was an episode of ren and stimpy where they went through a black hole... i kind of picture that cuz although it was a cartoon, john k had a very distinct style. Especially his backgrounds. And that sequence in the episode 'space madness' was full of unsettling liminal space kind of stuff. They also find all the worlds left socks. Thats what started this rant.
"The store is closed!"
The bag man just scratches an itch that isn't really reached by most monsters. We don't really get legends or monsters that could exist, just monsters that do. Also, there is the tie in to creepy pastas which I am sure some have nostalgia for. I know as soon as I heard about it I was intrigued.
But it does make me think this should be something that DMs do more. Come up with an urban legend, make a cool monster or even reflavour an old one, and let the fun begin. Like, you could do something with objects used for scrying. Something always watching you for as long as the object is near you.
Now that I think of it, it could be a theme for one of your monster contests: an urban legend all your own. ("all your own" just so you don't get 12 big foots and a lockness monster)
That is honestly a great idea! The next contest (after the currently running one) is going to end around Halloween, so inventing your own urban legend would be an amazing theme.
I used to play a setting which had an obscure monster that chase and kill gulible people. The creature only could be sumoned by people believing in really obnoxious lies (something like a sucess in a Deception check with Epic level dificulty, and even then there's something like a one digit percent chance the demon would be sumoned), but this caused the people in the setting to tell cautionary tales about being too naive, as if any lie have a chance of bringing the creature.
Move that to Ravnica and have an Izzit lab experimenting on bags of holding to see to what extent they can use the space within and accidentally creates the upside down. The party arrives in a district that’s being haunted by the Bag Man who periodically kidnapps someone who returns from the extra dimensional space covered in alien Raggamoffyns who attempt to replace that person, slowly turning the district into an unnerving parody of itself that the regular people desperately try not to acknowledge because it puts them into the monsters sights.
I was also thinking bagman would be a great punishment for abusing the bag of holding. If the party ever starts to do that, then I would have them hear about some rumors, possibly an NPC mentions the bagman legend. Then watch the party go absolutely paranoid over their bag.
I like the idea of the Bagman being this interdimensional junk hoarder able to float around between different bags of holding. Kind of like the junk lady in Labyrinth too, in that they'll try to encumber you with all the stuff they've collected. Essentially flipping the script on why the bag even exists.
Bonus points if you reskin him as the merchant from RE4.
I had the same though about the junk lady as I was watching and came up with this explanation.
The Bagman works for the Trash Lady from the movie "Labyrinth". She gives it an item of her trash collection that is a "key" to a new bag that the bagman uses as a potential way home. When it is not their home it discards this useless key and brings home an offering (the kidnap victim) to the Trash Lady. The newcomer brings along with them all the broken and used things they have discarded in their life to this astral conceptional rubbish dump, creating a new garbage pile that also has a version of their childhood bedroom within. The space in between is filled with all the missing socks and couch eaten change of the multiverse. Bagmen victims soon lose all memories of their life like so much other rubbish and bury themselves in their childhood paraphernalia, the only thing that makes them calm. Attempting to remove them, or take items from their sanctuary, or if for some reason they find themselves outside of it or it is destroyed, they will go into a complete rage.
Those few that reject their safe haven are offered a way out by the Trash Lady, the chance to try new keys, under the condition if it is not their home, they will replace what she has given them with a new person to fill and grow her land, thus a new Bagman is born. The trajedy also being that possibly their home no longer exists, or with most of their memories gone they may not even recognise it should they discover it.
Other dangers that stalk this place are the forgotten and discarded magical experiments of wizards. Poor wretches that are forgotten or discarded by society can sometimes slip into this place too, not being tied to a sanctuary they quickly wither in the endless trash maze into spirits of desperation and longing. The more benign simply attempt to beg any living folks they find to allow them to follow them for company, whilst most will attempt to posses a living person and take over their life.
@@IanWright_au you should be writing man. That taste is super compelling. Id read that as a novel and for sure play a campaign with this as a playsetting.
Bro I was at this camp, and for 3 / 4 years my group did the kind of skit on skit night. It always featured the superhero Bagman, he was a parody of Batman, and his only superpowers were picking up trash, and knowing when people littered. The title opened up that memory vault and I'm so glad I remember this now.
Incredible. Take that show to Broadway!
He needs to have a silence ability so that the screams for help from his victims go unheard
It speaks to me as someone who has used several bags of holding to escape death. Avoid falling damage, detection, bypass traps, all kinds of methods to use a large bag of holding, in a way like thinking with portals. I'd guess that the easiest in game explanation for The Bagman would be that the Ravenloft Evil warped the normally benign gateway to the Bag of Holding interior.
What's funny is that here in Brazil we have a folklore monster called the Bag Man.
This one is definitely cooler though. Ours just kidnaps children at night.
Let me guess, the naughty ones?
One of my last characters had an irrational fear of bags of holding thanks to this very creature, thanks so much for covering it!
She was a private detective on a mission to discover where children were going, the only clue she could find was "follow my voice" late one night, she tried it into her own bag of holding, and barely escaped with her life.
I really like the idea of the bagman being unable to maintain a physical form outside of a bag of holding, hence the kidnapping. His collection of things come from the rare instances of bags ripping from being overloaded.
I'm glad I got to be apart of this! That being said I would make the bagman an omen / warning. The bagman himself is actually good. There's a serial killer out there and the bagman just tries to warn people but people are so afraid of him they end up right in the killers grasp. The trinkets he leaves are clues to the real killer.
Ooh that's a good idea!
I have a reason for the trinkets, the Bagman, or the thing that made and controls the Bagman, is not chaotic, but Lawful Evil. It doesn't view these encounters as random kidnappings but a transaction for connecting the bags of holding to the place between, so for each soul taken, the entity leaves something it thinks of equal value.
I like that, it gives the bagman a very otherworldly feel
This seems like a mean encounter to set up while the party has an escort quest going on.
If the party doesn't have their own bag yet, the escort could be the one carrying one; Someone wealthy enough to hire the party as bodyguards at a level where they could fight off such a creature would plausibly have such an item. Could even have some foreshadowing where if the party goes looking for their own bag nobody's selling them, and if they ask why nobody stocks bags of holding that's where they get told the rumours of the bagman and how it's considered dangerous to house such an item, let alone multiple in one place. Then when the wealthy prospective employer shows up with their own bag, it can be used as a sign of their disregard for certain dangers the commoners speak of, or a sense of arrogance.
Bagman encounter _doesn't_ happen for a few nights, then when they show up, if things go well the employer's thoroughly shook and tries to dump the bag on the party (calls it a "bonus"). Alternatively it never shows up but the party's expecting it will the whole time because you set that up. Maybe they just hear the guy went missing a couple days after they finished the escort and separated from them, only traces left being the bag & a trinket.
Whether the Bagman ever returns to the same bag isn't explicit, and they certainly could, but it makes sense they wouldn't based on their stated motivations, so clearing the encounter once would make that bag "safe" while never actually removing the potential to pull them out again at a later point, be it as a round 2 fight or just gaslighting the party once or twice by moving things/ kidnapping while the bag's unattended. Aggravate a member of the party by having him eat only 1/3rd of their sandwich stored inside the bag.
god dam this got the mind twisting in cold ways.
I've got to say, as one of the designers for the 5E Bagman, this video is fantastic! Love your ideas for its stat-block as well and abilities. Such a fun format for videos too, instant Sub.
This HAS to be one of my favorite D&D monster videos, and some of your best work. TBH the idea of the bagman and its origins are so evocative and eerie that I absolutely want to use this in a game and scare the daylight spells out of my players. As a horror junkie who doesn't often find truly satisfying abominations in her play, I'm absolutely here for this. Just the idea of this mournful creature driven insane by loneliness and the marring of their soul for leaving their party behind is...very stirring.
We need more creatures like this. Creepy and unsettling creatures spawned from misuse of magic. Maybe instead of spawning a portal to the Astral Plane, two Bags of Holding coming together create a portal to the Bagrooms through which someone can enter. Or perhaps if you enter, something else exits at the same time. Maybe each time you polymorph, your real body is shunted into this place for another creature in there to play with
There is another example. Deep in the ethereal plane there is a place that people go when they dream. Every dream happens here and it is how gods can influence it to create visions. The ethereal plane itself is filled with primordial energy that has no form. Due to this illusion spells, magic taking the form of something without actually being there have a chance to become real. The spell phantasmal killer was cast on that plane once. A creature that kills with terror lurks down there.
@@evilminion6326 that's pretty cool. A kind of sleep killer spawned from harmful illusion spells.
That polymorph idea is giving me chills.
@@agoblintrippingonhorrordus145 Imagine polymorphing back to your original form, with gashes, cuts, and bruises, that weren't there.
So I have a rather intriguing thought to what the space between might be, especially considering a line in the description of the bag of holding an how to retrieve items from it. The fact that you have to think of the item you are trying to grab in order to grab it maybe the dimensional space it links to is a space linked to the psyche of all living creatures, a space more accurately residing within the deep recesses of the mind. It would be a place in which any creature both of dream and nightmare may reside, a place in which monstrosities are conceptualized before being created in the physical plane.
What if that place of dreams/nightmares is actually that of a beholder?!
Now that, is a really dang cool idea. I'm currently working on a video about the space between where I want to expand on some of the stuff I talked about. Would you be okay with me showing a screenshot of this comment in the video and extrapolating on this idea a bit?
@@DungeonDad I'd definitely be okay with you showing a screenshot of my comment (if you're referring to mine. YT isn't making it clear whether you're replying to me or the original comment)
Either way, if it is to you or me, I am fine with my comment being used as well.
I actually spent some more time thinking on it, it's a possibility of said dream scape being in a quasi dimensional time shell in which time truly doesn't exist there and is linked to the psyche of all who have, had, and will exist. A place where even the dreams of the gods come to be born, or rise to haunt.
I really like the idea that the Bagman's trinkets are more innocent and also somehow dark than they seem. I can imagine a party following him to the space between, and interrogating him about his little gifts, and hearing his first words to them. "Fair... trade... It was a fair trade." As far as he's concerned, the life and freedom of his prey, whatever he's doing to them, is worth about as much as a worthless trinket, which could mirror his origin; the lives of his friends and whatever their mission was was a fair trade for his own preservation. In fact, running with this, I think it could be cool to have a local legend of a wishing hole or something, where you make a wish to what is effectively a portable hole, and sometimes the Bagman responds, bringing you what you wanted but always at a cost, creeping from a bag or hole to take someone dear to you. Perhaps you wished for wealth, and he brings a hefty bag of platinum coins long forgotten by a dead adventurer in their Bag of Holding, but as "payment" he takes your oldest child. Why does he want all these people? There are plenty of directions to go, but I like the idea of running with the domain of dread thing. Just like Strahd has the Vistani bring strangers from the outside world to entertain him, the Bagman is simply looking for playmates, anyone to interact with, to feel warmth from. Men, women, and children all exist there, and have to struggle to subsist off of whatever junk exists, sometimes resorting to cannibalism when someone doesn't find enough food or water in the space between.. To make his role more threatening and less sympathetic, you could play up the insanity, whenever someone complains or doesn't smile at him when he arrives, he goes into a violent rage and beats them within an inch of their life. You could make whatever being controls the bag of devouring his captor, the dark power that keeps him stuck in this space between, and unlike other dark lords, he's allowed to leave, but always has to return before day comes or he'll die. Of course, if he were to die, his soul would be put back into the space between and he'd return like Strahd does, but his own sense of self preservation over all else has kept him from ever finding this out. Perhaps he even acts as a servant for this power, knowingly or unknowingly, bringing matter for this beast to consume once it overflows past the Bagman's little corner of this realm. This also opens up debate as to whether the space between actually is a domain of dread or if it's something else entirely that just happens to resemble it, if Bags of Holding were invented knowingly abusing the properties of such a dark place, and what implications it may have if this isn't a domain of dread but instead a paradoxical location that exists inside and outside of everywhere all at once. I could see a lot of interesting ideas to play with with the devouring entity, maybe it's a Galactus-style entity trying to basically absorb the prime material into its world for whatever purpose, be it to feed or exercise dominion, and it's an active threat closing in around certain areas, leaving expanses of void in its wake where there is no ground, no air, and no gravity. Or maybe it consumes living and magical matter from other worlds to regain power lost and will eventually attack Toril as a powerful conqueror. Moving to the space between, I would envision it as similar to the ethereal plane in that it overlaps with the prime material in a lot of ways, but make it moreso a part of the material, almost like the quantum realm in the MCU. Although the world appears as one contiguous thing, it's more like a bunch of scan lines imperfectly slotted together to create the illusion of a contiguous world, everything has a bit of nothing between it and the nearest thing, even if they are by all means touching, and if you shifted perspective and had the illusion of these little lines of nothing forming one contiguous image, that would be the space between, which exists between everything and itself, and everything and everything else.
Nice spin on a classic folktale, I think it's wild they didn't include him sooner given how old the concept is and how monsters from the same inspiration have been in other media
something that I think might be interesting is having the bag man exist in a sorta fantasy backrooms type place. like perhaps there are dopellgangers which roam the same space, looking only vaguely humanoid
I always had a sort of headcanon that when a Bag of Holding's owner got too greedy, that greed would rub off on the Bag and turn it into a Mimic. I wonder if I can incorporate the Bagman into that idea....
I don't get why you don't have more subscribers, your videos are high quality and you're consistently creating awesome DnD content for us to use in our campaigns! Even if some of them already existed, this still takes a lot of creativity
I appreciate that! I think the algorithm just dislikes me lol
When you mentioned that the bag of holding is only an uncommon item and the demiplane spell is incredibly powerful, my first thought was that someone discovered a plane of existence where making sub-pockets had a much lower threshold of skill/power.
Both the bagman and the creature attached to the bag of devouring could have been already there in the original plane. Maybe this plane IS the bag of devouring creature and the bagman fell in and became corrupted. Maybe the bag of devouring creature "steals" the pockets in this plane. Really tap into the "man messed with something he shouldn't" aspect, and bags of holding reach into an unknown realm of horror only held back by what makes its pocket.
Imagine if the Space Between was some twisting place where the fabrics of separate realities rub against each other, one crevice being some Backroom like structure but rounding the wrong turn leaves you on a barren rock flooded with useless treasures, their gold and shine dwarfed by the nightmarish sky of dead star gods. Perhaps the best way out is to loose a part of yourself, begin turning into a Bagman, so that in your flleting moments of final conscious thought before the transformation is complete and permanent, your party can act as a tether to yourself and have you lead them out; As a half Bagman, you can't do the usual egress, but what you can do is possibly more horrifying. You lead your party to a part of the Space Between that is more room like and use your elongated nails as claws, tearing at the wall, ripping open into another space, crossing the threshold gives everyone just a split second to look through the tiny Crack between the Space Between and this new place, see into a horror lurking underneath and around all realities, before you make it into the new space and then out of it too; Then, they realize they have exited out of a bag of holding, and every bag of holding constantly has both this horrid Space Between and the even worse nightmare lurking underneath it, brushing up against it and feeling what's within the bag, maybe even what's touching the bag outside it too.
Beautiful
Dragging their prey into the bag of holding to eat them actually makes a lot of sense. That's the Bagman's home turf, where it would feel most at ease. Many predators drag their prey to where it can't be easily reached before it eats.
I was given Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft as a winter holiday gift, and reminded my friends of the Bagman. This happened shortly after they found two Bags of Holding in a vault. Needles to say, their suspicion grows, and watching them is highly entertaining.
Looking forward to your follow-up video on the Space Between.
In a campaign I Gmed with a LOT of homebrew ideas, I invented a sort of "Bagmouse". Randomly a bag of holding in the party got full so I thought why not? Randomly, before closing the bag, the perceptive party would hear a small "psss". Reaching a hand down while the Bagmouse makes a sound causes the Bagman to drag said reaching player INTO the bag. The player had a sort of conversation with the Bagman along the lines of "Why did you pull me here?" "I'm lonely." "I could be your friend?" "I'm too HUNGRY" Before being pulled out by a teammate.
Talking about this and relating it to the bag of devouring got me thinking about what the kidnapped people are for. What if the ruler of the places between is an eldritch horror like an enormous gibbering mouther, no true form but a mass of screaming tormented faces. Each one is formed from one kidnapped soul and every new face creates a new bag of devouring. It's goal can be to grow in size and strength so that one day it might escape the places between and devour worlds. The bag man is an unwilling servant and may even leave trinkets to try to bring attention to the places between and it's horrible master in an effort to gain sweet release.
I love it
@@DungeonDad Draeden
One idea a I had for another magic item that MUST exist is an Advanced Wardrobe Of Holding. You know rich people would pay good money for infinite closets. That said, I can picture the Bag Man also able to possibly force his way through a regular closet or wardrobe, possibly turning it into a closet/wardrobe of holding. I can see him having a special taste for Aristocratic Children.
Oh man that’s brilliant
@@DungeonDad it also opens the question "Was it The Bagman, or Uncle Richard looking to make sure he gets to maintain his place running the country permanently instead of having to give it up to the young heirs to the Crown when the come of age?" You could always keep The Bagman JUST an Urban Legend but have people, ESPECIALLY in the Dark Domains of Ravenloft use this Boogeyman as a way to pawn their own misdeeds off onto creatures of myth & The Mists.
Speaking of the above scenario, do you think Richard III's actions would be enough to give him a place in the Domain Of Dread & if so what would you make him into?
I also had the idea to make a Modern Ravenloft setting nicknamed "Century Of Monsters," I imagine there's a dark mirror of Chicago where a Wererat version of Al Capone rules over an underworld in eternal fear of incarceration, & a Winter King like version of Joseph Stalin in a mirror if Siberia.
I mean, it does exist . . . just not in D&D (officially). The magical girl cartoon Winx Club has a shopaholic character who always enchants her closets to be pretty much infinite storage space.
Honestly I think of it as he went crazy after falling in and losing his party that now he kidnaps people to replace them and stop feeling so lonely. And he may leave a trinket as either a request for forgiveness or something to do with the idea that his party never looked for him and kept his bag instead as a trinket
As my party was starting to lose the fight, our Sorcerer used an item to bampf away into the Astral Sea, hoping to return once things had calmed down and either side was defeated. Well, turns out we were fighting in an unstable pocket dimension that vanished shorlty after we defeated our enemies. So Mr Sorcerer waited for a few hours, only to realize he had nowehere to return to.
He was Warforged, so he might float through the Astral Sea until the end of time. Or he might get eaten by a Dreadnought, who knows.
Don't abandon your party, folks.
I actually already did this when one of my players refused to give up on an eaten hand by the bag of devouring.
Each bag of holding was a pool of light from the opening on an endless plain. Every so often a tentacle with teeth on the end would stretch over and shove itself over the light opening.
They eventually realized the whole plane was the creature’s back and the ended up shunted to the far plane when they tried to fight it.
One of my players is playing an Ooze, and the bag of holding is held inside of her like all her other items, so the Bagman would just emerge into slime and get immediately stuck lmao
Oh Noooooo, that is just horrific hahaha
All the rest of the party hears is screaming and seeing their friend turning inside out as they're sucked into the bag of holding until with a wet pop the bag drops to the floor with the rest of their stuff.
Having a bagman slowly mess with the party’s bag of holding sounds like a ton of fun. Keeping watch at night and hearing a quiet whisper of “follow my voice” from seemingly nowhere, an item or two going missing from the bag of holding, or getting damaged or marked. If they go into it to investigate they see a crack in the extra dimensional room with a boney finger slowly receding into the crack that leads to the space between spaces where the bagman can stalk the party as they explore the space.
Idea for the Liminal (my term for the spaces between): Taking a page from one of the World of Darkness scenarios. A version of the Magnificent Mansion spell. It's slightly bigger and nicer than the normal version but once the door to the outside closes you're stuck in the Liminal. Spend too long in the Mansion and it'll start disappearing one room at a time. Taking whoever's in those rooms with it...
I love the idea that it's a domain of dread! The Bagman could also be the thing that actually gives you the items that you put inside, like it became a clerk inside it. So there are other bagmen but it's the only one that goes out to kidnap people, so every time you use it you roll a d100 to see if it comes out at night.
Edit: just saw the Grisgol video ( th-cam.com/video/xSY-AIlRWNY/w-d-xo.html ) and man can that be found in this domain of dread!! It totally syncs up with this idea.
The idea that each time you reach your hand inside a bag of holding for an object, and it is the bagman who literaly puts it in your hand and you never notice is terrifing.
The idea of the Bagman being a clerk kinda makes it less scary at first, until you consider that Infinite Ikea's exists and your fear of the Bagmen is reassured
The only thing you can't remove again is food, the less food placed in the bag, the more difficult it is to find items you placed in it
i love this idea, with maybe a flavor addition that the bagman will give you whatever you are knowingly looking for/reaching in the bag for, but when you rifle through the bag aimlessly, you put yourself at risk of being grabbed by the bagman. It's the summoning of specific items that calls to him and gives him a purpose, a direction. When you don't have something specific to summon, you are calling the bagman with nothing to distract him/no focus or purpose... so he reverts to his more sinister reactions
Every time a new bag of holding is crafted somewhere in the world, the "clerks" get a bit more overworked, so then that night they need to come out and abduct someone else to be a bag man too just to lessen their work load. 🤣
I'd like a bagman adventure where it turns out he's just a guy in a costume with a dodgy business interest and when unmasked he shouts "...and I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling adventurers."
DND Scooby Doo LET'S GO!
Can we appreciate that at 2:04 Dungeon Dad showed a Bionical?
What an amazing Dad, with Amazing tastes.
I’m glad I came across this video because the concept of the Bagman was something I’ve seen only a small amount, but I had the idea for a warlock subclass I call the Pact of Holding. I imagine that perhaps one day the Bagman decided to recruit a person (or was persuaded somehow) to gather neat little “trinkets” for it and the person just wakes up the next day knowing the details of the deal but no exact memories, as if their mind suppressed it to stay sane. I haven’t developed it much, but I came up with a pretty cool idea that goes like this:
Once a day, a week, or a month (depending on the dm’s discretion), a Pact of Holding player can take their focus (a special bag of holding of course) and chant “Follow my voice” like they’re trying to summon him. But instead, the top of a BoH appears on the ground, looking like a leather drawstring pouch, as two impossibly long fingers reach from the inside and pull the bag open as if it’s not sunken into the ground, until it’s roughly eight feet apart. Then the Bagman will emerge from this floorbag, walk over to one small or medium enemy, and drag them back into the floorbag alive or dead. And because the Bagman has no official statblock, it’ll be even more menacing when the other enemies try to hurt it and nothing happens, the bagman continues to walk. And perhaps after using the spell more than once, the Bagman will appear with the corpses of the previous victims floating in the air (either perfectly fine or messed up in some gnarly way) attached to him with some kind of rope harness.
The warlock in question would be able to get a sort of ‘message’ after every usage that would come as just a fuzzy understanding of the message as the actual telepathic communication would be enough to fry their brain a la eldritch horror.
And it could even be more menacing for a BBEG to get bagman’d, AND JUST HAVE THE FLOORBAG APPEAR ON A WALL WITH THE BAGMAN LETTING THE BBEG BACK OUT. That could be some top tier hype for a level 20 boss or something.
There are magics that can track people and locations based on objects from them.
These trinkets they leave could be an open challenge to track them, or… a cry for help.
This monster has been living rent free in the far corners off my mind for so long i actually forgot about it... Thanks for reawakening my nightmares
If we’re going with the theory of the bagmen then maybe the bagman kidnaps adventurers to replace his lost party only for them to slowly turn into another bagman the longer they stay in the alternate plane. Then the reason for the trinkets could be his way of apologizing to the victims party for the kidnapping and the fate the kidnapped member will succumb to should they fail to escape.
IDK if anyone said this already but within the lore, the ethereal plane is what contains all extra-dimensional spaces including the space within Bags of holding, Portable holes and Demi plains. There are theoretical ways in the lore to travel to the spaces above, although they are tough. Also due to their ethereal teleportation and similar appearance to the Bag man,you could use the night hag stats.
if a dnd session was a play, the space between is backstage. The space is filled with costume racks covered in guards uniforms from cities the party has been to, props resembling important objects from past sessions, and silent, emotionless "actors" that superficially resemble the npcs the party has encountered. the pcs are no more powerful here than lines from a script, and are just as easily erased if found offstage.
Another fun idea for the Bagman.... It turns out to be Myrkul's Avitar.... He likes to pop out of Bags of holding every so often to remind people to be afraid of death, but somewhere along the line people forgot that this story was about Myrkul... (That and I think it would be amusing to see how the players react when you basically describe Myrkul without name dropping him right off and letting them figure out what and who they are up against....)
I think it would be cool if the Bagman was the entire reason the bags even work.
The bags are portals to "the space between" which is a barren plane full of randomly opening and closing portals, all items put into a bag of holding float within this plane and occasionally fall out of random bags. When someone reaches into their bag, a Bagman is created by their thoughts and dives into a random portal to search for the desired item and hand it to them.
Sometimes the bag owners are ok illed/change their minds and rarely, the Bagman can't find the desired item, this causes the created creature to endlessly search for an item/person that they'll never find.
Currently running a campaign with a slightly beefier version of your bagman. CR 13ish, the thought was to use the bagman to do some kidnappings but also to have a person who’s being controlled by something on the other side of the bags of holding. The man was pulled in and managed to “escape” and now his whole deal is to be a cover up for the actual bagman. My players are hyped thinking it’s a bagman and are kind of closing in on the story as best they’re able since their characters don’t know yet. I fully plan to let them down with “just a dude” and then when they let their guard down roll to see who’s waking up in the night face to face with a big problem in their hands.
I’m using a Cthulhu-like creature on the other side of the bags deep within that space as the thing that forces the bagman creatures to do what it wants and my thought
As for why the guy escaped, I planned to have becoming a bagman take multiple trips in. One breaks the soul and mind and traps the host in their own body forcing them to comply and another trip turns them completely- this guy is currently acting super weird and shady
I absolutely adore monster mechanics like this. Just the idea that, in the middle of the night, a single person is trying to sleep and they just hear the gentlest sound of ripping fabric... only to then have a heavy hand placed upon their shoulder and the tiniest, sorrowful noise come from it.
I would absolutely crap myself.
I really got stuck on the devouring bag so here’s my idea, all bags of holding and devouring are connect. Basically imagine room with the door shut, that is a bag of holding. But then the bagman comes along and opens the door, now the door is open and leads to the space between spaces. Then now that the door is open the eldritch being can get in and eat anything that goes into the former bag of holding, that is now a bag of devouring.
A couple of sessions ago I had the PCs reach a hag (they were going to barter with for leads) who had been dragged off by a bagman and not quite killed but thoroughly vivisected. When pursuing a foe protected by other hags from their lair they reached a treeline where several magic mouths started whispering “follow the sound of my voice” one player fled to the sky on his Pegasus (from find greater steed) but the bagman was already “called”… the bagman grappled the Pegasus which fell out of the sky and was then dragged into the space between. Two members of the party spent their next turn emptying their bags of holding (each of which had some bonus Pegasus blood in) which very nearly let protected foe escape. It really helped racking up the drama of the chase, thanks dungeon dad!
My Bagman is a infinitely timewarped version of a child changeling that was sacrificed before the party came along. In the Bagrooms time flows differently and inside he rapidly evolves and eventually turns into the bagman gaining the ability to control his prison, but his ultimate goal is to warp time upon itself to undo his own sacrifice. D&D time-traveling babyyyy
Warhammer also had a "mysterious hungry entity from outside space" but rather than the creepy way, it went the most direct way: There is a (dangerously easy to cast) spell that allows you to get in touch with it, opening a hungry maw directly onto the battlefield. Unless you have the magic power to force it shut, that is the last moment to start running.
I think an interesting idea, especially in realms of horror like the planes of dread, that some urban legends… are just urban legends. A lot of legends and myths in dnd are true (or at least partially), so having at least one urban legends that’s not true is interesting to me.
It also makes sense for it to be an untrue legend as there are so many contradictions between the story and how the bag usually works. Living creatures can’t survive in a Bag of Holding, for example.
When this pops up randomly on my homepage and i’m like “Aaaah! Bagman!” Just a little.
And then i remember the intro.
You are a treasure, Dad.
This monster/character is just pure gold! And thanks for giving it a state page finally.
I imagine the portals being kind of like the door way from Coraline except slightly transparent with the stars of the astral sea gleaming through
also much larger
I love your take on this. I have a theme run that I do where everyone is a commoner. 10 in all stats + race modifiers and a free feat. I run this when I plan on killing characters often, because I want players back in as quick as possible. This monster will be my next commoner run. I'll start them with a bag of holding that just so happens to contain some pretty useful items 😈
I like the Idea of the bagman (a former adventurer) being alone in this "between" with endless hills of forgotten magic items, going mad before undergoing the transformation into a bagman. Then coming out into the material plane to look for "friends" and leaving the bauble as a gift for taking the person to live in their between space.
I remember reading a post that used this monster to a fun and horrifying effect. Pretty much the party was on a cargo ship carrying dozens of Bags of Holding as cargo. So there was a chance EVERY NIGHT that a Bagman would pop out of one and start picking off the crew/party one by one. So it became a survival horror at sea type of session.
I was going to use this for a questline of my players having to find the party that were doing their quest before them and failed, and already had my heart set on the bagman, so thanks for making this and making my job easier!
Heck yeah!
So in the cosmology of my setting, there's what is known as the Plane of Dreams (its true name long gone) that, for reasons lost to time, was severed from the rest of the planes. So now I'm playing with the idea that it might also be this Space Between connected to the Bags of Holding. Maybe the original Bags were it attempting to reconnect somehow, and as people have learned to create their own it is gradually starting to find its way back (though perhaps it was cut off for a reason, if the Bag Man truly was once a humanoid warped into what it is now)
There's an urban legend where I come from that talks about the "Homem do saco", the Bagman, which is a monster that kidnapps disobedient children and stuffs them inside a black bag that it carries. A monster directly inspired by this legend appeared in Bloodborne, and I wonder if it served for inspirarion here.
yeah i was thinking the same when i was little my grandma always said to me that "el hombre del saco" takes the bad kids
The leaving of a trinket puts me in the mind of the Space Between containing a "goblin market" esque space, and the Bagman thinking that it's paying the party fair value for the person it's abducted
this could be a fun way to place SCP like horrors into a game setting. things that would scare even the toughest adventurers to weeping children.
You could totally turn this monster into SCP 106. That would be awesome.
I definitely want to run a game doing something like that!
I'd love to see what idea's there are for a Monster of Devouring (aka what the bag of devouring is connected to)
I've only ever had one Bagman encounter in any of the games I played. But it was definitely the best of any I've ever heard of from others, and definitely one of the most haunting scenes ever described to me in DnD.
Interestingly, like you mentioned here. The big bad was using the legend of the Bagman to cover his crimes and scare away pursuers. Our Kobold Rogue was incredibly superstitious (and frankly made the adventure a little tedious), so when we finally cornered the villain it was in a room filled with emptied bags of holding just littered around. Our rogue spent 3 rounds shouting "Follow my voice" at the top of his lungs and providing cover as we fought to subdue and capture this guy.
Were we honestly losing thanks to a lot of poor rolls and falling for nearly every damn trap in his lair on the way to him. When, as it came to this guys turn, the dm paused combat to basically explain this scene.
He began to chant a spell before a large withered hand cupped his mouth from behind. Another grabbing his shoulder as we watched in the dim light while this mass of long gnarled arms ensnared his limbs and dug their nails into his flesh, dragging him towards the pile of bags where a single enormous leg was hanging out and firmly planted against the stone as if gaining leverage. He flailed in horror. Only managing to free his mouth long enough to utter a single horrified scream as we watched his body forced to fold and contort with gruesome snaps of bone from the immeasurable strength of the limbs pulling him into the smallest bag on the very top. A pair a hollow white eyes peering at us before it ever-so-calmly buttoned itself closed.
Our cleric fainted. And no one in the party so much as looked at a bag of holding again for that entire campaign. It wasn't even supposed to be a damn horror campaign, but our DM explained it later as being 'too poetic to pass up'.
i like the idea that the real explanation for a bag of holding is much more simple than a magic void, it being simply bigger on the inside and magically light, but someone whos never personally made one would have no way to know that and the magical void monster is a rumor as a result, it also justifies how relatively common they are
I'd ruled in my own lore that Bags of Devouring were linked to the extra-dimensional stomachs of Astral Dreadnaughts, usually a 1-to-1 link. It just lined up too well in the lore not to use. As such, Astral Dreadnaught stomachs contain things put into the bags, and opening a portal with one deposits you before the Dreadnaught itself. As for Bags of Holding and other demiplanes as a whole, I reasoned that all the pocket dimensions are located as pockets in the Astral Sea, not just floating loosely, but as little random floating compartmentalized spaces. It would be possible to come across a random cube of opaque, solid-seeming energy in the astral sea, and if you were able to break it open, it would be the interior of a BoH or Rope Trick room or et cetera. Thus why breaking the bag opens a portal to the Astral Sea and scatters everything there.
The trinket left behind is a thank you for the new friend he got :)
Kinda unrelated, but using Devil in the Churchyard for music while reading out the description of the Bagman was honestly really fitting