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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4564736" data-attributes="member: 54707">Hot Blood and IchorWell JM, this is just one particular essay, focusing on just one narrow aspect of Monster Design in fantasy RPGs. However I do plan other essays on other subjects, including overall game design. I didn't want to narrow the subject matter too much at first, but rather open the title wide enough to accommodate everything I eventually intend.However you raise a very good point. I'm not anti-Monster Manual. You're right, you need a basic set of information, encounter and description parameters from which to base or design your own "monsters" (I'm using that term in the widest possible sense). Otherwise everyone would have to create every monster as they went along. and without a Monster Manual, which I often use in a "Template sense" you'd have no real comparative method, set of common aspects, or common paradigm that would allow commonality between various games. (I didn't mean commonality between gaming genres, but between one D&D game and another D&D game down the block.) The game itself must strike a balance between "commonality" which allows everyone to understand basic aspects of the game, and originality and individuality which prevents the game from becoming stale, predictable, and uninteresting.What I'm saying is that for individual games, or in this sense, as you pointed out, for individual campaigns, neither the DM nor the way in which the game is designed (to provide basic, common formulae and descriptions for monsters) should limit monsters and monster design to being "as is."The game designers of course have to create (well, they don't have to, they could have just created a loose set of guidelines, but a lot of people would have wanted most of the work done for them, that's why they buy product, to avoid work, just as you buy a car so you don't have to build your own) a Monster Manual, but it is just a manual and once it replaces the very idea of what a true monster really is, then the manual becomes not a book of monsters, but a book of mere statistics. The monster becomes not a Lethal Danger, and a Dangerous Adversary, but only a Mathematical Obstruction (or Construction, take your pick), and a Paper Tiger.I'm saying, as a part of this essay, yes, use the Monster Manual, or myth, or religion, or any source you wish from which to draw a base of ideas about various monsters, but you're not hamstrung at that point, not limited to that expression. You can build entirely new kinds of monsters by unique reinterpretation, by redesigned methods of construction, and by re-evaluating the very idea of, "what is a real monster and how would it behave if it really existed?"And monsters would not act and react as a set of statistics, but as a set of desires, motivations, and objectives. They would be every bit as unique (by very definition of being "monstrous") and unpredictable, and dangerous, as would be a very dangerous, unpredictable, and evil man. Monsters would be driven by their personal attributes, their peculiar modes of behavior, and their innermost intentions, not by their number of hit points, AC, or a set of predisposed and easily predicted tactical maneuvers. Yes, in some respects everything and everyone is predictable (at least to a degree) but one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of being "monstrous" in fantasy games is the very fact that being monstrous makes you far more unpredictable, dangerous, and lethal than would be the case with a typical, routine-oriented, heavily-habituated man. Just as criminals are violent, unpredictable, and cunning (though not necessarily very bright) so would be a monster. Monsters, if they were real, in order to be a real monster, would not be "common," ", ordinary," "typical," or "predictable."Ordinary is the very opposite of monster, and yet far too often fantasy games confuse the idea that because monsters are visibly apparent and perhaps even populous, they would also be "common, predictable, and unremarkable."So I'm saying, "no, they wouldn't." They would be many things, but they would not be "common, predictable, and unremarkable." Monsters would be full of hot blood and acidic ichor, not full of mild manners, and easily understood.Monsters should be truly monstrous, not just scaled, fanged, and full of hit points.Instead they would be cunning, dangerous, and full of fury.If you make a monster in that way then you've made a real and lasting threat, not just a run of the mill, easily dispatched nuisance.</blockquote>

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