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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drnuncheon" data-source="post: 414190" data-attributes="member: 96">Running an urban campaign as my primary game (see .sig), most of the opponents my players face are NPCs of one race or another - although undead has run a clos esecond.  When the PCs actually ran into a "real monster" (a gibbering mouther) it was all the more 'WTF is that?!' than it would have been otherwise.In my secondary (online) game, we're using published modules - right now it's Of Sound Mind - but all the monsters there are pretty much NPCs as well.  Which brings me to Agback's comment:You are so wrong.  Sorry, but there's no other way to say it.  If the only thing to do with a monster is fight it, you're not using them right.  Now granted, that might be true of some monsters - a purple worm perhaps - but far from all of them.Where would Oedipus have been without matching wits with the Sphinx?  What about Thor and Loki in Utgard-loki's hall?The secret is in making your monsters into NPCs.  Because once they have a name, a personality, goals - then you can actually interact with them.  You can talk to them, trust them, mistrust them, ferret them out, trick them into revealing themselves, love them, hate them, buy from them, sell to them, win their trust, rescue their children, hire them, get jobs with them, infiltrate their organizations, bring social pressure to bear on them, and discover that they are right and the person you work for is in the wrong.  And some monsters you can even dance with at the New Year's Ball, seduce, and wind up with children by.Of course, if you do all that, then you won't be able to think of them as a 'monster' anymore...Last but far from least:That's precisely why you should give those races class levels.  Shake 'em up a bit.  Really, kobolds aren't any more 'cannon fodder' than humans, and to think of them as such is pretty much metagaming.  Reducing an intelligent race to the status of walking targets simply because your players expect it is...limiting.J</blockquote>

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