Changing monster names

[LazerPointer]

Do you guys ever change monster names and/or descriptions? If I tell my group that they see a troll over the crest of the hill, they get out their acid/fire items.

Is it irritating as a player if Gnolls are called Grollups, Orcs are Zul'Ruk, etc.?

 

[Sejs]

When I DM, I change the names and descriptions of critters, particularly things the PCs have had no contact with and/or no reason to have heard of them. In my games, mind flayers look like normal people until they're levitating around, blasting you with mental powers, and when it's time to feed, their tentacles come streaming out of their nose and mouth to latch on. Feral Bugbears with Scent arn't called such - they're Loupara: black furred wolf men with red glowing eyes that hunt in packs, and are the terror of many a peasant. And that howling they let loose with isn't just for effect - they're talking to eachother with it.

Intelligent races have their own names for themselves. You call them orcs, they call themselves Zul'Ruk for example.


For what I've seen, players don't dislike that sort of thing, quite to the contrary they enjoy it - it adds depth to the setting and gives 'em the renewed joy of discovery.

 

[Wombat]

My players like the fact that I use non-standard or name-changed monsters, as that means the MM is just a book of suggestions, rather than hard & fast realities. Many of the monsters we meet are one-shots, rather like legends. They have learned how certain monsters fit into the world (the better known/more common variaties) and don't look for "cheats" in the MM.

We like it that way, but we have all run in games where this is very far from the case: "Nuh-uh! It says on p121 that vampires have ..."

 

[Sejs]

We like it that way, but we have all run in games where this is very far from the case: "Nuh-uh! It says on p121 that vampires have ..."

Exactly - that gets real old real fast.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Do you guys ever change monster names and/or descriptions? If I tell my group that they see a troll over the crest of the hill, they get out their acid/fire items.

Is it irritating as a player if Gnolls are called Grollups, Orcs are Zul'Ruk, etc.?

As a player, I only get irritated if the GM doesn't give the characters the opportunity to learn about monsters. He can change them to his heart's content, so long as the adventurers can make reasonable efforts to learn and be prepared. Changing things just to mess with players is bad form.

In one campaign, I tried changing the names of most of the monsters the group encountered, but soon stopped - there were too many times I actually wanted the characters to have a pre-set idea of what they were facing (everyone knows what an orc is). In any campaign, there's a certain amount of common knowledge that the characters would have access to, e.g., all trolls regenerate if not burned. Keeping the same name is one way of emphasizing this element. At the same time, I still changed the names of certain creatures, to add an element of uncertainty.

In one adventure, I changed the name of gnolls (and made a few minor modifications to their appearance and weapons mix) and watched the characters treat them as something completely new. Instead of immediately attacking, they decided to parley, reached an agreement that allowed each side to go its own way, and generally had to use their brains, not just their weapons. They had no idea what they were facing.

IMO, it really comes down to how much you want the characters to know about the world around them, and how different your creatures are from the standard archetype. If you want the party to treat orcs as orcs, leave the name alone. If you want them to treat them very differently, change the name.

 

[Steve Jung]

If you can find Dragon #158 (6/1990), there's an article about alternate names for monsters. "Also Known As… the Orc" by Ethan Ham on pages 30–34 has a list of monsters with historic names for them (or their variants).

 

[Harlock]

I find with the wealth of d20 critter books on the market I can always stay ahead of my players. Thing is, I want my players to learn the traits of monsters and to have a basic knowledge of the more common kinds. To me it enhances the flavor of the setting so much when the characters start to identify monsters with certain areas, etc. I don't find it too metagamey for a character to know trolls need a healthy dousing of acid to keep them down. Haven't all of us grown up knowing you stake a vampire through the heart and shoot a werewolf with a silver bullet? And these are only myths. Which brings up another point...

I think it is perfectly okay, if players are alerted ahead of time, to feed the players false information via myths. Maybe a huckster weaponsmith is trying to move some old merchandise on what he perceives as the new arrivals in town and informs the party that the only way to kill a Hill Troll is with cold iron. Just the parties bad luck if they believe it. Maybe growing up the fighter was always told by a grizzled old veteran that undead are blinded by torches. This kind of stuff does wonders to enhance the flavor of a setting.

 

[arwink]

It's irritating if it's done badly. If I'm going to go to the trouble of changing the name, I'll also go to the trouble of changing the appearance and the society so the PC's don't feel like they're being short-changed. If the end result is to obvious then I have no problem writing it off as a failed attempt and calling it what it is. The Desert dwelling ogres covered with snake-skin and susceptable to cold are now refered to as snake-ogres, because it's inherantly obvious that that's all they are in the PC's eyes. Big, dumb, hard-hitting but ultimately just another ogre with a funny costume.

I've played in games where elves and orcs where re-written with different names and socities, but still filled much the same function in the game. After the DM got pissed at our insistance at calling them elves and orcs rather than their "proper" names, we converted to refering to them as elf-analogue and orc-analogue. There wasn't enough work done to be bothered learning the new names and cultures, and it was irritating to have someone insist that it was necessary for the game.

 

[Buttercup]

If everybody knows that Orcs live up in the mountains and raid periodically, there's no reason to call them anything but orcs, since it's a convenient way for the PCs to know some things about what they're facing.

However, changing the name and/or description of a monster they aren't likely to know about in-game makes good sense.

The think I'm most likely to do though, is to call the monster by it's regular name, but tinker with it so it has different skills or abilities than the MM says it does. In fact, I think the only monsters I've ever run right out of the book are normal wild animals like wolves and bears.

 

[Starfox]

The more different monsters I use in a game, the less I feel the need to change their names. If I have Orcs, goblins, schwarts, hobgoblins, gnolls, kobolds, mites and leprechauns each in the same game, it might take the players a while to figure out which of these they are encountering but once they do, I don't fib the names. If I only have orcs and varieties of orcs, I might change their names to give variety. The human brain handles a medium number of terms better than too few or too many.

I love to do variant races. For my homebrew, gnomes, goblins, halflings, mites, leprochauns, boggards, redcaps and more are all the same race in different variants. They look slightly different, and act vastly different. And since it is point bye, they can each have different attributes within one general framework. And that is really how I see them in DnD too - as variants on the same theme.