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

[WayneLigon]

Several things break it for me, but I usually run very genre-tight games.

A druid with a dinosaur would break D&D for me if I'm not running in a homebrew or setting where they are common or have otherwise been explained; Eberron is a good example. If I'm expecting Dark Ages Europe, though, I have a problem with dinosaurs even though they might be in the MM.

And there would be certain cases where they would be acceptable. Prince Valiant uses them at least once, where he goes to a far northern village menaced by 'sea dragons' only to discover they are plesiosaurs. If I was in a low-monster, low-magic world that would be a charming and wonderful addition - once. It's a trick you can pull a couple times a decade and get away with it.

Several of the really weird creatures 'break' D&D for me and I don't use them. That's why I've usually said that if I were in charge of D&D, you'd be able to slap the MM and DMG together at the very least and not lose page count. The digester and destrachan, Ethereal Filcher and marauder, Girallons, Lammasu, the rast and the ravid, the sea cat, skum, shocker lizards, Tojanida, xill and Yrthak are the worst offenders. Their looks are just too 'out there' in a bad way.

 

[Dragon Snack]

We've faced Calzone golems in the past in our campaign and we got through *that*...

Hey! That was years ago. I've run that adventure for 2 groups and both remember it. Maybe not fondly, but still...

I've sent my group up against Evil Gnome Druids with Dinosaurs (the biggest complaint was that they kicked the PCs butts), a Warforged with a magic rifle (I don't even think the party blinked), and an Undead Land Octopi (Crawling Apacolypse from Sandstorm). Obviously I'm pretty tolerant.

As a player, I can forgive odd one time monsters, but there are definitely things I would tire of quickly if there were too many of them. Mecha, Pokemons, Dragonborn...

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

Yeah but what if they had attacked you while running the old 1st Ed Alice in Wonderland based adventures? Reasonable then? I mean, the March Hare was a high level monk after all

As a matter of fact I ran that for one of my games back in the day and it was a nice break. But all of us knew going into it that it was going to be silly. Unlike the surprise cartoon attack in my example.

 

[werk]

I was going to say that nothing would break the world for me enough to leave a good group, but after thinking about it for a while, there is one thing...

Firearms.

I don't know why, but I loathe firearms in fantasy. They're obviously fine if not required in a present or future type setting, but for my medievalesque fantasy it is the one thing that will send me through the door if the DM isn't willing to reconsider.

But that's not a creature...so I guess I can still say that nothing would break the world for me.

 

[demiurge1138]

Sailor Ravenloft?! Color me intrigued.

"Halt, perpetrator of justice and kindness! I am the Pretty Soldier Sailor Gloom! In the name of the Mists, I shall punish you!"

Anyway...

There's nothing much that's a game-breaker for me. I love monsters to death, and think, with a proper explanation (note that sometimes the proper explanation is "we have no idea where it came from"), I'd swallow just about anything.

My one exception does come with dinosaurs, however. Specifically, the MMIII ones. I appreciate the idea of making "dinosaurs" not based on any prehistorical animal. The bloodstriker, swindlespitter and battletitan I'll all buy (battletitan with the caveat that it's explicitly a magi-engineered animal). But the fleshraker... with its poisonous acid claws and tail spikes... on what is purportedly a therapod...

ANIMALS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Make it an aberration or magical beast, though, and I'm suddenly a little softer towards it.

Animals should have abilities like animals, is all I ask. Hell, I'll ask that animals in 4e have cooler abilities, because the World of Nature's done some crazy things. Like tigers dazing prey with a subsonic roar before they leap, insects using chemical warfare, things like that.

Demiurge out.

 

[Fifth Element]

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?

I think the problem is that while gelatinous cubes, beholders and owlbears are pure fantasy constructs, dinosaurs are (were) real-world animals. I can see how it can hinder someone's immersion in the game world.

 

[barghus]

Dinosaurs out of context are a game breaker. As well as monks in a quasi-Western European campaign.

Dragonborn and warforged as standard PC races.

Mimics, piercers, Gelatinous Cubes, Vegepygmies, Wolf in Sheep's clothing and other monsters from the nearly randomly populated "Graph Paper Dungeon Age".

Sci-fi mixed with Fantasy. I don't want my peanut butter in my chocolate.

Bad NPC and PC names really drag down as well for some reason.

 

[Geoffrey]

Judges Guild's old Field Guide to Encounters includes as monsters:

giant over-easy eggs
giant strips of bacon
giant cups of coffee
giant burning cigarettes
etc.

And you thought that killing the giant with surprise attacks as he was sitting down to eat was easy? Ha! Just wait until you're attacked by his breakfast!

 

[Masquerade]

It takes a lot for me. I'm fairly open minded about dinosaurs, robots, oozes, etc. I've even used Legend of Zelda's goron race several times in my settings. I would definitely be fine with encountering wookies (heck, Wizardry has them under an alias), moogles, and prinnies, maybe even all at the same time, if it fit the setting and I had some reason to expect it ahead of time.

I would be bothered by some threatening monster introduced almost purely for comedic value, especially if that monster is an analogue of some harmless real-world animal. I'm thinking of giant space hamsters and Diablo's cows. I don't want my PC risking their life in battle against an animated gazebo or an anthropomorphic skunk because my DM thought it was clever.

Psionics....and steampunk...

What are "elements I always include in my homebrews"?

 

[GreatLemur]

I'm a lot less concerned about creatures or other elements in a game session fitting fantasy genre conventions than I am about them fitting into the specific setting. Who cares about what qualifies as "fantasy", as long as the contents of the campaign fit together as a working whole and follow a consistent internal logic?

If somebody signs on for an Eberron game and then complains that dinosaurs and robots shouldn't be included because they aren't "fantasy", I can only conclude that they're kind of fuzzy on the whole, fundamental concept of the "campaign setting" thing.

DUDE.

I SO want to play in a campaign like that. Just for the sheer squirting-Mountain-Dew-out-my-nostrils-and-suppressing-gut-wrenching-laughter-the-whole-time factor. That would be SWEET!

Dude. Rifts.