D&D General Curated monster lists - world building

[Quickleaf]

The idea of curating the monsters in your world came up in another thread, so I thought I'd start a this on the topic as it's interesting to me. I remember reading, (or maybe it was watched in a youtube vid?) that 16 is a good number of unique monster species to have in setting.

It's one of those ideas that just seems to always be kicking around in the back of mind.

Now, I should say that I've never done this, I tend to have a lot of unexplored 'here be monsters' type areas on my homebrew world maps.
I also like to show off my miniature collection when playing, so I like the potential possibility to use anything in my games.

But, that being said, I do see the value in the curated monster list as a way of giving your world a theme or flavour. It’s also easier to then think about how the select monsters would shape the world, interact with each other, etc…

So...
...tell me about your curated monster list...

What monsters are on the list?
Is there a theme, and if so, what is it?
Did you have a set number you were aimed for and if so what was it?
What were the issues, advantages, or things that surprised you when you started running your world at the table?

Thanks in advance.

I'm more likely to assemble a list of monsters for an adventure, rather than a campaign setting. Uh, that said, here are some unique monsters from my old homebrew setting "Witching Grounds" (fey, Welsh, Arthurian-esque themes)...

• The Alder King & shadow wood elves
• Brownies
• Cauldron-born (mix of Lloyd Alexander & Witcher lore)
• Dragons which are unique individuals, not color-coded
• Faerie Fiddler & his Grigs
• Garland Maiden (undead by day, living by night)
• The Gray Sisters (neutral mist-themed arch-hags)
• Gremlins
• Leshe (mix of real-world lore & Witcher lore)
• Various mystical knights, eg. The Pale Knight
• Various NPC factions
• Pugwampus (swamp goblin that can rapidly grow in size)
• Sword Spirit (undead haunting battlefields)
• White Ravens (never statted these ones up - they were more a narrative device)

 

[Stormonu]

Generally, I find very little value to curating monster lists.

Suppose you have a game set in the Bronze Age. You wouldn’t expect there to be any beholders, right?

Of course, there was that one myth of Argos, Hera’s watchman that had 100 eyes. In order to make him a credible threat to a mid-level party, it would be pretty cool if each eye could shoot a different ray. You might change the beholder’s appearance cosmetically to match a celestial guardian, but otherwise, you’re not really making substantial changes to the statblock.

Overall, I agree on this. I don't like iron-clad locking myself out of using a monster and a lot of D&D's older campaign worlds were created before several monsters or races showed up in the game.

Conversely, for the past couple of campaign worlds I have been writing up I have focused on certain monsters or monster groups having prominence. Focusing in on the origins of these monsters and saying "these are the creatures you'll most likely run afoul of" - but not limiting them to just those monsters. For me, this "curated" list allowed me to do some worldbuilding to decide how these came to be, certain areas where they could be found and how someone would likely interact/perceive with them.

An an example, for Dragons Must Die, I wrote up blurbs on the following creatures to be considered common (at least, well enough known):

Spoiler

Humans*
Dragonwracked (Dragonborn/Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers,Half-Dragons)
Goblins (Goblins, Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Nilbogs)
Dwarves
Goliath
Tauren
Cyclops & Giants
Elves/Drow
Bullywugs/Lizardfolk
Centaurs/Pegatuars
Hags/Ogres
Beguiled (Medusa/Maerdar, Harpies, Yuan-Ti, Gith, Kalashtar)
Trolls
Giant Animals/Insects
Nagas/Sphinx/Lammasu
Wyverns/Manticores/Hydras
Golems/Elementals
Undead (Vampires, Liches, Ghosts, Wraiths, Skeletons & Zombies only)
Lycanthropes
Demons (no Devils or Yugoloths)
Devilspawn
Godleft (unique Celestials)
Dragons
Bats
Cats
Dogs/Wolves
Behemoths (Dinosaurs & Kiaju)

* Only playable race

 

[ezo]

What monsters are on the list?

Only the 5E equivilent of those which were in the AD&D MM, MM2, and FF.

Is there a theme, and if so, what is it?

AD&D-style.

Did you have a set number you were aimed for and if so what was it?

Nope.

What were the issues, advantages, or things that surprised you when you started running your world at the table?

Best advantage--I am familair with them. Things that surprised me were how bloated hit points are in 5E.

 

[Voadam]

I generally like going with themes over full on curation.

When I ran my Wildwood game it was set in Oathbound which is the most cantina of all settings, but I focused in on an area I populated with stronger themes, three territories one dominated by a dover (humanoid german shepherds) tribe, one that was elven territory, and one with goblins, with the PCs starting in the dover territory. No humans or halflings or dwarves other than the PCs. Each of the territories had been at war with the others previously but were currently at peace.

I had a secondary string of themes including lycanthropes, nomadic gnoll hordes, and black and green dragons that I had introduced as setting elements and planned to develop over the campaign.

I had strong themes of natural but weird animals, so there were encounters with a lion with green fur, monstrous centipedes, etc.

 

[Older Beholder]

Thanks everyone for the responses so far.

I'm more likely to assemble a list of monsters for an adventure, rather than a campaign setting.

Yeah, I think it's more common to think about this for specific adventures or when populating a dungeon (or for the starting area of a campaign as was mentioned by another poster).
I do this somewhat subconsciously, often using two monster types, such as...

undead and plants (elven tomb)
constructs and gnomes (puzzlebox type dungeon)
fiends and oozes (caverns around a portal to the lower planes)

---

Bonus question for anyone that wants to answer:
Hypothetically, you're making a curated list of monsters for a homebrew world, what's the first monster you're putting on the list, (or, put another way: what monster could you not live without)?

 

[Yora]

I'm more likely to assemble a list of monsters for an adventure, rather than a campaign setting.

For wandering monster lists, that's super important. If you make a random list of any creatures that exist in the campaign setting, your randomized encounters become actual random nonsense.

 

[Bitbrain]

Bonus question for anyone that wants to answer:
Hypothetically, you're making a curated list of monsters for a homebrew world, what's the first monster you're putting on the list, (or, put another way: what monster could you not live without)?

Dragons. I always include them and I throw at least two dragons at my players in every campaign.

 

[Oofta]

I was thinking about this a bit more and it's not so much that I go through the book and make a curated list, it's more that I'm thinking about monster population at the regional level. I don't do dungeons in the old school sense although encounters have to happen somewhere which sometimes includes ruins. It's more that I'm thinking about regional politics, power structures, what's going on in the area. What do I want the overall theme and feel of an area to be is what I go for.

So I go through the book and pick out a handful of monsters (or monster types) that make sense for the area and then think twice about adding any more. Even if that means that my dinosaur infested region also has some upgraded dinos for high levels.

 

[MNblockhead]

In my first 5e campaign I created a homebrew world using Realmworks, which allowed me to create and cross-link articles on locations, persons, flora, fauna, monsters, NPCs, etc. Similar to World Anvil and similar campaign management tools.

So nothing was in my game unless I entered it into Realmworks. So that was a very curated list.

My next campaign was the Curse of Strahd adventure, which I ran as written. So, again, a very curated list.

My last campaign was Rappan Athuk which I ran in Foundry. Nearly all of the monsters were entered into Foundry. But I also used a module to sync my D&D Beyond content to Foundry, so I had all of the monsters from D&D Beyond in Foundry. So it was not exactly currated. But I mostly only used monsters found in the Rappan Athuk book with the occasional modifications.

For the Warhammer Campaign, I have the Cubicle7 modules for Foundry, so I have all the published monsters from the core book and the adventures I've purchased. I'm only planning a few sessions in advance, so I guess I'm not curating much in advance.

I found the conversation in the other thread perplexing. Anyone who is running a published adventure as written or as written with limited modifications is, in essence, using a curated monster list. So I don't see why the concept is so hard for some people to grok or why they think that would be some kind of gotcha to use against DMs who limit PC options in their games.

 

[Older Beholder]

In my first 5e campaign I created a homebrew world using Realmworks, which allowed me to create and cross-link articles on locations, persons, flora, fauna, monsters, NPCs, etc. Similar to World Anvil and similar campaign management tools.

So nothing was in my game unless I entered it into Realmworks. So that was a very curated list.

For the campaign where you were entering all the monsters into Realmworks, do you remember how many you ended up with?
I'm kinda curious on how many monsters it takes to run a campaign.