What Creatures "Break" A Fantasy Game World For You?

Olaf the Stout · Jan 23, 2008

I recently had a situation where a player quit my game due to another player creating a Druid with a dinosaur as an animal companion. To him it "broke" the game world for him seeing a PC riding around on a dinosaur. I really didn't see that coming so I am wondering what other things (creatures, items, whatever) there are out there that you might go "What the.....?" if you saw one in the game, either friendly with a PC or just in an encounter? Assume that this is a fairly generic D&D campaign world.

For me I don't think too much would "break" a game for me. Most "creatures" I could deal with, although I wouldn't really like to see good-aligned character with evil creatures as companions (think demons and devils). That's more just my preference not to play games where the PC's are evil though.

The other thing I can think of at the moment is that I'm not too big a fan of sciene-fiction type elements and high-level technology in my game (i.e. alien spaceships, machine guns, etc.,). I could have fun playing an adventure where the PC's investigate a crashed alien spaceship but I wouldn't want to play a game where one PC has a gun as his main weapon in the campaign. If I wanted that I would play a Sci-fi RPG. I wouldn't play D&D.

Olaf the Stout

Wiseblood · Jan 23, 2008

I don't have much of a problem with anything. Dinosaurs are Ok but there are some things that leave me with a bad impression. In fact some of the culprits are dinosaurs. Every dinosaur found in the MM3 like the swindlesplitter, fleshraker and whatnot are just statblock fodder as far as I can tell. I would rather not see the creature type animal on anything that does not exist or has never existed in the real world. I would think magical beast fit better. Unless of course we are dealing with a nonstandard world like Ebberron with such things already uncluded in the canon.

freyar · Jan 23, 2008

Wiseblood said:
I don't have much of a problem with anything. Dinosaurs are Ok but there are some things that leave me with a bad impression. In fact some of the culprits are dinosaurs. Every dinosaur found in the MM3 like the swindlesplitter, fleshraker and whatnot are just statblock fodder as far as I can tell. I would rather not see the creature type animal on anything that does not exist or has never existed in the real world. I would think magical beast fit better. Unless of course we are dealing with a nonstandard world like Ebberron with such things already uncluded in the canon.

Sounds like that's more of a problem with WotC's monster design, though...

DreadPirateMurphy · Jan 23, 2008

I think the only thing that would bother me would be really absurd things, like a cube made of jelly, or a sphere covered with eyes...or maybe a bear crossed with some kind of bird.

Seriously, how can ANYTHING be too absurd for D&D? If a DM presented us with a dancing bowler hat that shot acidic ice cream through the mouth of a frog, I thing the party would still just try to kill it and take its stuff, screaming "Death to the bowlcreamhemoth!"

HeavenShallBurn · Jan 23, 2008

Ditto nothing too strange for D&D. In fact revelling in that strangeness is part of the core of D&D. Landshark, More power to ya? Giant flying squid, Again? Your familiar is a cat made of fuzzy pink gel you say? Run with it, it's all good.

Set · Jan 23, 2008

Flumphs (Flumphes? Flumphi?) and Beholders are too silly for my games. I don't use 'em.

Grell, on the other hand, are perfectly fine. I make no claims to consistency...

CanadienneBacon · Jan 23, 2008

I hate to be a parrot, but this did come up last year during Shackled City. Dinosaurs. Totally spoiled that evening's fun at the game table. For me, I found that they killed the joy--not only were they totally not in keeping with the rest of the adventure, but we'd never seen them before at our gaming table. I was DMing and I know that I was the only one who was let down. They just seemed so...I dunno...out of place. If I see them in a future module, I will swap them for something else.

That's the only monster so far that I've struggled to accept at the table.

As far as technology goes, we tend to run a very run-of-the-mill type of fantasy game without any Victorianisms or guns. I can't comment on the use of technology in my games because we haven't had much of the particularly 'evolved' type of tech. Fire, iron-working, steel, some magic--that's about it. I'd run a game with guns but then I'd be calling it d20 Modern, not D&D.

Naturally, YMMV!

Olaf the Stout · Jan 23, 2008

CanadienneBacon said:
I hate to be a parrot, but this did come up last year during Shackled City. Dinosaurs. Totally spoiled that evening's fun at the game table. For me, I found that they killed the joy--not only were they totally not in keeping with the rest of the adventure, but we'd never seen them before at our gaming table. I was DMing and I know that I was the only one who was let down. They just seemed so...I dunno...out of place. If I see them in a future module, I will swap them for something else.

That's the only monster so far that I've struggled to accept at the table.

As far as technology goes, we tend to run a very run-of-the-mill type of fantasy game without any Victorianisms or guns. I can't comment on the use of technology in my games because we haven't had much of the particularly 'evolved' type of tech. Fire, iron-working, steel, some magic--that's about it. I'd run a game with guns but then I'd be calling it d20 Modern, not D&D.

Naturally, YMMV!

It's funny that you should mention the SCAP and dinosaurs CB. The SCAP is the campaign that I am kicking off next week!

I saw that there are dinosaurs in there and I personally plan on keeping them in there. I will however be letting the players know of the types of creatures that tend to be in the area though (including the dinosaurs) so the group isn't all that surprised when they do actually run into one.

Olaf the Stout

Ajax1979 · Jan 23, 2008

For me it depends on where the dinosaurs are used. If they are in a "Lost World" or "Isle of Dread" area then I have no problem. If a party is exploring some ruins in a typical "Robin Hood meets Middle Earth" area and hobgoblins mounted on utahraptors attack I see that as a game breaker.

Some things just ruin games because they don't fit into a player's idea of what a game is. For the mentioned player it seems like the dinosaurs spoiled his fun by taking him out of the story. Sometimes too many wild cards spoil a game.

I have never had a character get to a point where a beholder would be a viable opponent. For me beholders are "too far" because they don't fit into my brain's D&D folder. The same things goes for mind flayers and drow-as-PCs. Oddly enought more, or just as, illogical creatures like gelatinous cubes, owlbears, rust monsters, mimics, and displacer beasts get a free pass, because to me that's what D&D is.

I'd talk to the player and ask him what he expects from D&D. There really is nothing wrong with having dinosaurs in the game, but it is clearly upsetting him.

Pseudopsyche · Jan 23, 2008

The elements that ruin my immersion in a fantasy game world do so by bringing along with them associations with some other world or genre. It's not about how weird or outlandish a creature is; as others have pointed out, beholders and gelatinous cubes are pretty far out there. However, if (medieval) Klingons or Vulcans were introduced into the game world, I wouldn't care if they had reasonable stats and only medieval levels of technology. They belong in a different time and place: Star Trek. Godzilla would not be out of place in D&D in literal terms, but a walking Japanese metaphor for nuclear proliferation doesn't belong in my fantasy role-playing game. I could understand how other people might consign mounted dinosaurs to pulp fiction or comic books.

What Creatures "Break" A Fantasy Game World For You?

Olaf the Stout

Hero

Wiseblood

Adventurer

freyar

Extradimensional Explorer

DreadPirateMurphy

Explorer

HeavenShallBurn

First Post

Set

First Post

CanadienneBacon

Explorer

Olaf the Stout

Hero

Ajax1979

First Post

Pseudopsyche

First Post

Similar Threads