What monsters look like

[Anubus]

I was wondering how other go about presenting monsters to their PC's. Do you describe their picture? Do you read the description from the text? Do you show people a picture from a book? or what creative methods have you devised to convey the appearances of monsters.

I used to scan images and then print them off to pass around, but that's a huge waste of ink and paper. I quickly realized that the best thing for me to do was to scan images in, or download them from the net, or draw my own. Then burn them to VCD, slap it into my DVD player, and I can have the monsters appearances on the screen for my PC's the whole encounter. This way my PC's can appreciate the great artwork in many d20 products, but can't "accidentally" see that the creature has 5d10 HD, or that its rend does 5d6 damage, like they could if I showed it to them from a book.

 

[Ravellion]

From the book, though I tend to cover up the text - though I nearly always use modified stats for the creatures anyway.

Metagaming is a fruitless exercise in my campaign.

Rav

 

[Utrecht]

The 3.5 MM has a nifty 1 paragraph description of the critter - thought this was a nice touch.

edit for spelling

 

[Desdichado]

I scan my monsters pictures from various sources, and prepare a Powerpoint slide show ahead of time. Of course, we play in the board room, and the projector and laptop are what's expected in this kind of game. My players want their money's worth, after all.

 

[Utrecht]

My players want their money's worth, after all.

Ah, the Bugaboo style of DMing....

 

[alsih2o]

i use pictures (not from the mm) and what my players would probably call windy descriptions

 

[Blasphemonkey]

I scan the images from the MM or module, edit out unwanted things (like those annoying lines through 3rd Edition books...arrrghh!), blow it up to full page size, and then print them out with a photo printer.

That DVD idea is just terrific. Unfortunately, we play at the game store, so it's not an option.

 

[Anubus]

Thanks Blasphemonkey, oh and btw, in case it didn't go with out saying I use CD-RW, so the net cost to me is $0.00.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one crazy enough to go through the effort of scanning in pictures and editing out the lines and things.

 

[Grishnak]

The good old fashioned describe what the meanie looks like but not too clear as I like them to be slightly weary as most of the group know a great deal of the creatures throughout a lot of the books.

 

[Blasphemonkey]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one crazy enough to go through the effort of scanning in pictures and editing out the lines and things.

Well that's fine, we'll be crazy together then.

What really gets me fuming is the way they have the demons and celestials, etc, grouped together. It took me forever to "liberate" the Hound Archon from the Planetar next to it. I wonder if it would be considered illegal to trade or post these files? (They are big though - the Hound Archon is relatively small, and it's 826k.)