A World Without Monsters

[talien]

I've been kicking around this idea for a 4th edition campaign for awhile and I wanted to get your thoughts, because frankly the concept is a little too big for me to actually pull it off. I'm half-hoping someone's already thought of it.

It works like this:

There are no magical creatures of any sort in the game world. Period.

They can be summoned from another plane, so evil extraplanar critters are entirely possible. But no dragons, no unicorns, no rust monsters, none of that.

Taking their place are creatures that actually existed in earth's history. Dragons are actually Quetzalcoatlus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus). Land wyrms are tyrannosauruses. Dire animals are all their equivalent prehistoric counterparts.

Of course, this might be a little boring if Quetzalcoatlus just flies around all day eating fish. So a few tweaks are allowed in a nod to fantasy:

1) If any defense or attack mechanism can be justified in a naturally occuring animal, the monster can have it to fit the archetype. For example, Quetzalcoatlus can spit venom, which burns the eyes. And a sucker that big could pretty much melt your face off with a well-aimed spit.

2) Again for thematic reasons, creatures can have their diets, environment, etc. changed to match the setting. So maybe Quetzalcoatlus grazes on sheep instead of fishing, which brings it into conflict with farmers all the time.

Why do this? I find that every adventure tends to throw a monkey wrench into a game setting by introducing a new magical monster, a monster that I'm not necessarily sure makes sense within the game world. If you play enough store-bought adventures, the "natural reality" of the world starts to get pretty wonky, until just about any beast is possible under the right circumstances. My own ten-year fantasy campaign was like this, and after awhile it was difficult to postulate what the wilder parts of the world might look like because I had used every monster that was in every adventure. I like the idea of providing a base reality, so to speak, for the world, then converting the monsters over.

So the question then is: has anyone done this as a campaign world? And then, what adventures would be appropriate without requiring a massive and difficult conversion? I'm assuming the Savage Tide Adventure Path is a good place to start.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

I've thought about this every now and then. I've actually considered stripping out humanoids and monstrous humanoids as well, essentially leaving humans and animals, which I think could be interesting from a simplistic point of view. Summoning would still work, and outsiders would still exist.

 

[The Green Adam]

I haven't done anything quite like this...though I have run worlds in which the only "monsters" were faeries, giants, dragons and other creatures directly from folklore, believed to be very real at the time those stories were written. Remember the works of Pliny the Elder were considered factual, zoological studies.

In one campaign of this type the players went several adventures without seeing a monster of any kind, though villagers were 'certain' devils lived in the crack in the Earth just beyond the mountains.

AD

 

[Fallen Seraph]

In many of my campaigns while there are still some creatures, they are usually less "magical" or "fantastical" and have more of a "supernatural" or "mystical" feeling (if you get what I mean).

Also, in most of my campaigns the antagonist and most of the combat-encounters the PCs face are against Humanoid Races.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I tried it several years ago, while the game was still in 2nd edition. Monsters weren't entirely lacking, but they were extremely rare and would usually be used as a guardian for the real BBEG. The adventures were mostly political, where their opponents were human. For a while it was fun, and then after a while people got bored fighting other people all the time. I adjusted the campaign via Spelljammer, and we went to a more traditional D&D model.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

My homebrew for the past 15 years have had no Orcs, no Hobgoblins, no Dragons, nothing of the sorts. Granted, there was a lot of shoehorning human foes and less fantastic monsters into the low magic, low fantasy setting, but it worked. And when I did have the rare or unique monster in the game? It was truly fantastic, instead of commonplace like most DND games.

For 4e, it works out extremely well following the "monster" creation tables in the DMG (limited damage expressions, monster templates and foe types). Otherwise, I use classed human foes and/or transpose the humanoid monsters from the MM as general guidelines for all-human foes.

Read my wiki, it explains it all. http://deismaar.pbwiki.com

 

[Frostmarrow]

I think pseudo-realism is better served by having a monster palette prepared. You just kick the problem around. With a monster palette you decide which monsters/animals exist and how they interact.

 

[talien]

There are a couple of implications I've thought of as a result of this kind of campaign, and judging from the comments so far they're valid concerns:

* It becomes a humanoid-centric game. Unilaterally non-intelligent creatures means the only critters with smarts (and casting spells, and building civilizations) are plausible humanoids. This might get boring after awhile, as Darrin mentioned.

* Certain cool powers never get used. While it's great having some consistency in monsters and their origins, it also means some of the more outrageous abilities are lacking from monsters. If few monsters have energy attacks (assuming for the moment that poison and acid are the only "realistic" types of attacks), then there's really no need for weapons that inflict a certain kind of damage and defenses that protect against it.

* Magic items aren't as important. Unless you're fighting something truly extraordinary, you can pretty much assume any monster you fight is going to die through the tried and true method: hacking it to death.

On the other hand:

* This doesn't really remove a huge chunk of the monster population. Extra-planar beings of all types are still feasible. Constructed opponents are still possible. It's just the weird native stuff. In theory, anything truly necessary to an adventure could be hand-waved by changing it to a summoned being.

* Humanoid-centric games can be very interesting. Certainly this was one of the main thrusts of the Arcanis campaign I DMed and enjoyed. It highlights politics and the consequences of one's actions, and keeps PCs out of dungeons.

I just realized why this campaign idea keeps sticking in my head. I've been watching Jurassic Fight Club, then playing Turok on the Xbox 360. There's nothing quite like listening to an hour of how dinosaurs kill each other, then kill said dinosaurs. With a knife. And lots of explosives.

 

[Warehouse23]

A world without monsters sounds a lot like the Conan setting--sure there were some large, fantasy creatures, but they were unusual "bosses." Most of the baddies are just mercenaries, thieves, cultists, or slavers. I kind of like a compromise position where the Really Evil Things From Beyond have a lot of human minions (many of whom don't know who their real overlords are)--meaning an adventurer works their way through hordes of non-fantastical creatures, to a culminating battle with something truly freaky. Let's face it, with Dragonborn wandering around 4e, how many adventurers are really going to be freaked out by the appearance of a wyrmling?

 

[Kristian Serrano]

The other thing to consider is that humanoids (or humans specifically) don't have to be boring. Fantasy and pulp fiction are loaded with cannibals, barbarian hordes, megalomaniacs, serial killers, mutants (not X-Men), underground dwellers, and more.

Why couldn't the horde of orcs be replaced by a horde of humans? The only difference is darkvision and some ability scores. What's boring about the shaman leader of the horde summoning a fiendish creature or fire elemental to raze a village or a fort? The horde could even include dire bears as mounts!

If you want really freaky things from human threats, create a human cult that summons old ones (advanced aboleths and other aberrations) from the Far Realm, or a mad naturist who creates life from death (i.e. - flesh golems). In a humanoid centric setting, undead could still be a great threat.

There are plenty of ways to mix things up without the need for weird monsters running all over your continent.