I was thinking about how I might use modrons in a campaign and after a lot of thought, I realized I have no idea what modron society would look like. They're supposed to be beings of pure law and order, the fundamental expression of the lawful neutral alignment, right? But... I have trouble with the concept of laws that have no moral goal behind them. I've heard of societies whose laws are intended to oppress and give the rulers total dominance, which would be lawful evil; and I've heard of societies with laws intended to deliver justice and balance political power, which would be lawful good. But I can't think of a society that attempts to impose order without trying to achieve some moral ideal through it. Can you have a set of laws that are neither just nor unjust? If so, what purpose might they serve?
The best I can come up with is the sort of neutral order found in biological organisms. The overarching goal of the system is simply to survive and reproduce, and every organ has a particular duty to advance that goal. Every cell making up each organ follows its orders to keep the organ running. But that's for mindless lifeforms with no ability to make moral choices. And I guess the modrons are kind of like that —they have no sense of self and are literally machines built to follow orders— but what about the one giving the orders, Primus? The manual says he's ordering the modrons to "increase order in the universe in accordance with laws beyond the comprehension of mortal minds." So I guess technically it's not possible for me to come up with a motive behind Primus's actions? But that does nothing for me; I can't use a character I don't understand! No, if I want to do something with modrons, I have to give the one leading them a motive. Does anyone have any good ideas as to what the modrons could be trying to accomplish by imposing their idea of order on the universe?
You should be able to find some Planescape wikis out there that will tell you plenty about modron society and their goals. They were the focus of a major adventure arc in AD&D 2e called The Great Modron March and I'm pretty sure they get significant mention in the Planes of Law boxed set.
For my part, they are comical things and I'd give them some kind of seemingly dumb goal like "remove the letter "E" and replace it with a new, more orderly letter." By their logic, that will increase order in the multiverse by 0.264%. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. And while their goals may be inscrutable and comical, their relentless pursuit of them can give the adventurers pause.
Lawful Neutral, is, essentially, simple physics. If you want to get "philosphical" about it, go look up "Calvinism".
If you need a "mini", simply take one of your dice (but not a d10), and plop it on the table.
Think of "evil" enemies like the Borg of Star Trek, the Cybermen and Dalek of Doctor Who, the Agent Smiths of The Matrix. While people subjected to their sense of Law may call them evil, their actions and their mindset wasn't evil. That's what makes Modrons so dangerous. They think with logic and not emotion, they see no exceptions to the Law and they don't care one way or the other how others feel about having the Law imposed on them. They also have no personal motivation, not even Primus, just a biological imperative to have Law everywhere. They don't want to rule and they don't care about the life quality of others (usual motivations for evil and good respectively), they just want the worlds to "make sense". Neutral on the Good/Evil moral spectrum just means they have no moral bias or imperative, only an ethical one. In the case of Modrons that's to establish absolute order in the multiverse at any cost. They're as likely to raze a utopian kingdom of lawful good as they are a den of demons if either are seen as interfering with absolute Law.
Think like the movie The Giver and others in that line. We see them as dystopian and "evil" because of the choices made to achieve and maintain those socieites. This is often because their leaders are turned into evil villains with personal agendas that are selfish or unaltruistic. They do represent societies of pure law: no free will, uniformity, conformity, perfect abidance to law and an eradication of any source of deviation no matter how minor or anomalous.
It's possible Primus has determined that a specific color causes Chaotic behavior in a certain place so sends modrons to elminate all sources of that color which may mean killing and genocide of creatures if they have that color naturally, or simply destroying all sources of creating/applying that color to objects and destroying or re-coloring any object with that color. This means Modrons can be seen as doing evil acts when their motivation isn't evil, just absolute Law. It also means they can be a significant advesary of a good party that sees the world as more than a binary of Law and Chaos with no concept of Good and Evil.
iserith wrote:
iserith wrote:
After the modrons came, life was drab and difficult. But the trains run on time.
My PCs will likely encounter a contingent of Modron marching to accomplish some task. Take this, retrieve that, do this thing, whatever. The PCs can let them be, try to talk to them and either help, or get in the way as a cute side-show, or they end up being part of the story eventually. The interesting thing about Modrons is that they don't NEED a motive. Just a goal for the goal's sake. So I plan on making them do some silly things! If you want them to be more terrifying, they are, essentially, numberless. So a swath of an unthinking army being unleashed to accomplish the goal for no selfish reason that can't be reasoned with (remember the Axiomatic trait!)? That has the capacity to be quite scary! I might even make the Modron comical in one adventure, and then in a few down the line they open the floodgates...
Now, what would a typical command structure look like? Maybe I need a book to help with this, but math could work too:
1 Pentadrone commands 2 Quadrones
1 Quadrone commands 4 Tridrones
1 Tri drone commandss 8 Duodrones
1 Duodrone commands 16 Monodrones
Or! Using our buddy Fibonacci (a more "natural" approach than just doubling or using exponentials):
1 Pentadrone commands 2 Quadrones
1 Quadrone commands 3 Tridrones
1 Tridrone Commands 5 Duodrones
1 Duodrone Commands 8 Monodrones
Any suggestions? I personally like the Fibonacci sequence if only for the fact that it's a less "ordinary" pattern to pick up on for PCs than just doubling down the line
But to you, OP, since Mechanus is very much like a clockwork domain, I plan on treating Modrons similarly. Ever working, ticking, marching towards a goal. Very orderly and organized, without emotion they just are and they just do (similar to your "organism" analogy, but with a more distinct purpose than just surviving). They kinda remind me of these marching bad guys from the WiiU Super Mario 3D world game that march in parade-like fashion.
I remember a campaign where Modrons came out of nowhere and were the main foe for a while, and then disappeared.
Years later we found a friendly modron and asked about it, and he informed us that they were trying to help the local hobgoblin fort clear out it's enemies (hobgoblins were more 'lawful' than the native genasi) and we just got in the way. After some investigation, he confirmed that our presence there made it likely we would eliminate both if we were high enough level; and since *that* was even more lawful than the hobgoblin ascendency, they were attempting to 'train' us with random attacks that were supposed to mimic hobgoblin tactics (we never noticed).
Squares is another good way to go. 1, 4, 9,16, etc.
Grazel wrote:
Joe_the_Rat wrote:
Timborama wrote:
Ok, I have to confess, when I first saw this thread I thought it said 'What do Morons Actually Want?" Took me a moment to realize I had misread it.
Mechagamera wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
According to the Planescape monster manual, tridrones supervise 12 duodrones, and each duodrone supervises 12 monodrones. The quadrones are just noted as "field commanders" of the lower drones, and each modron battalion also has a special 12-man quadrone warrior unit. The pentadrones police the base population and act as intermediaries between the lower modrons and decaton hierarchs. Just in case anyone is interested.
Timborama wrote:
Grazel wrote:
Grazel wrote:
Fralex wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
The Modron presented in the MM are some kind of Walle. A kind robot, you maybe some basic feelings!
but it can be extend to more scary robots like the cylons or powerfull like the transformers
frbelanger wrote:
mellored wrote:
Well, maybe the effects of the last march finally reached WotC so they got put in the 5e MM. One goal checked off their list.
Next, they might want our dice. Maybe all the earth's polyhedral dice are either:
- a) their offspring, and we're abusing them by turning them into instruments of randomness, ie: chaos. (See that Futurama episode were they eat 'popplers' which turn out to be infant Omicronians.)
- or b) They see our dice as effigies, and they need to determine if they want to be worshipped in this way or not. (another 289 years or so of computations.)
Orethalion: +1. Modrons would not burn. They'd dismantle, and stack all deconstructed materials perfectly. 
(Hmm...We need a modron imoji. We have cthulhu, and the lady of pain...we need a monodrone one! I wonder who I talk to about that...I'm sure I could do a 16x16 pixel, or whatever, drawing/animated gif, lol.)
Shasarak wrote:
Bloodscythe wrote:
Grazel wrote:
This one is easy. They want to engage in endless pedantic debates over whether or not level 5 mages can kill Tarrasques, and whether or not giving said Tarrasque an ability to counter said 5th level mage counts as "homebrewing", and if that is a bad thing, etc.
Oh, wait, "MODRON" with a "D". My bad.
seti wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
Grazel wrote:
Orethalion wrote:
Elfcrusher wrote:
I know here in the states there are laws on the books that are outdated or silly though still legally binding.
Looking it up just now, I found things like it being illegal to leave Christmas lights up after January.
Or it's illegal to eat fried chicken in any way other than with your hands in one state.
I imagine Modrons would be very displeased with anyone disobeying these laws.
mellored wrote:
arnwolf666 wrote:
"What do Modrons actually want?"
PEZ. The most orderly of candy.
It would be a delicate balance portraying the Modrons as extremely Lawful but not evil.
Borg, Cybermen...very evil. Both seek to enslave people against their will. Daleks are also evil. They worship hate.
Perhaps the Modrons could believe in order by borders. They pledge to maintain order within the boundaries of their homeland. They recognize that there is a place for everything (including chaos) and that everything should stay in its place. When things spill over the boundaries they work to set it right again. Make sure that loose demon is sent back to the abyss. Keep the Far Realm outside our reality. Don't let that uppity solar enact too much change outside his realm.
What a Mordron wants
What a Mordron needs....
spelley wrote:
Grand Information Retriever Labelled Septon-12 just wanna have fun.
What happened to their resistances, is what I want to know.
Oh, hey, a bunch of people said words!
Grazel wrote:
Sounds kinda neat, Fralex. Maybe play it like the Super Brains from Futurama, if you're familiar. Their purpose was to gather all the knowledge in the universe! Then, once collected, they would blow it up, so there wasn't a chance for something else to come along that they wouldn't know...
So yeah, playing the unstoppable force with a mysterious goal works pretty well if you wanna be serious. But the problem is, once you work up the mystery so much, you DO have to come up with a reason at some point :-x
Modrons are not hostile to other creatures for the most part however.
I am reminded of the Nordom the Rogue Modron from planescape he still has a largely logical and lawful mindset despite being a rogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8s7iveWvBs
They are RAW...
MonsterEnvy wrote:
Fralex wrote:
I gotta admit, the first thing that popped into mind when reading that entry was "Skynet/The Reapers". I instantly had the idea for a campaign where the modrons adapted the view that living organisms were unpredictable/chaotic by nature and thus needed to be erradicated. I don't know if this is in line with what they're creators envisisioned, but in my make-believe world I'll do what I want with them.
spelley wrote:
A group of warforged and sharminds are binder warlocks, and they have created a "cult" for the Vestige "Primus" (Dragon Magazine #341).
There is a war between Modrons and Formians..
Modrons vs invander aberrations from Far Realm.
Modrons discover the world of New Cybertron, where there is a war between Optimus Prime and Megatron's followers.
Modrons has discovered the way to create an army of half-golems with incanatrixes (planetouched humanoid from 3rd ed Fiend Folio).
A chrashed alien mothership by "mechallus" (from d20 Future) has discovered the way to create their own army of modrons.
Mechanus or a steampunk demiplane is invaded by techno-organic race like the Phalanx-technarchy from Marvel comics, or the reapers from Mass Effect videogames.
A group of warforged and sharminds are binder warlocks, and they have created a "cult" for the Vestige "Primus" (Dragon Magazine #341).
There is a war between Modrons and Formians..
Modrons vs invander aberrations from Far Realm.
Modrons discover the world of New Cybertron, where there is a war between Optimus Prime and Megatron's followers.
Modrons has discovered the way to create an army of half-golems with incanatrixes (planetouched humanoid from 3rd ed Fiend Folio).
A chrashed alien mothership by "mechallus" (from d20 Future) has discovered the way to create their own army of modrons.
Mechanus or a steampunk demiplane is invaded by techno-organic race like the Phalanx-technarchy from Marvel comics, or the reapers from Mass Effect videogames.
Heh this takes me back. Anyone else remember the Modron March module?
From what I remember in my previous games they were alien, hive minded, and demonstrated a complete disregard for the points of view of others.
They could sometimes do evil things but never for evil reasons, the same with good.
If I was you i'd treat them more as background.
Theros wrote:
Sounds about right for Modron.