Monster Catalogue vs. Monster Creation Rules (vs. Why Not Both?)

[Wolfpack48]

Not surprisingly we all want “Why Not Both?” When we can get it. But let’s refocus on games that, for whatever reason, do not provide a Monster Catalogue.

How robust and well explained should the Monster Creation Rules be? Of course, “it depends”, but….

As several people pointed out, even games that give you instructions for how to create monsters seldom explain beyond the numerical mechanics. What is the secret sauce that determines whether a monster’s special attack should do less than normal damage but carry a rider of some sort? (Typically a debuff.) Is changing the damage type from “untyped” or “physical” damage to something like “fire” or “electricity” damage worth a reduction in the total damage output? How much can you or should you tweak a monster’s defenses within a range before it becomes a “harder” or “higher level” monster? How should you model something other than “a single corporeal creature that fights with natural or manufactured weapons”, such as a mob or swarm or ghost or mob of ghosts. And so on, and so on, and so on.

This is where the Monster Catalogue becomes helpful, because you can see what the game’s designers actually did. (Although my fear and gut feeling is that many published monsters don’t follow their game’s Monster Creation Rules, so the examples aren’t that helpful.)

Here's a quote from a recent article in Dragonzine #2 accompanying the (excellent) monster generation system in Dragonbane, which I think rings very true.

The monster generator has been put together on the basis of a careful study of the Dragonbane Bestiary to ensure that the monsters it produces are roughly in line with those in the Bestiary in terms of their power and range of abilities. However, it should not be taken as an attempt to make a definitive formula or ‘the rules’ for building a monster. As Magnus Seter says in his interview with Dragonzine: it's an art not a science.

If you are looking for a magic bulletproof system for generating perfectly "balanced" monsters without any additional work, you're doing it wrong. That said, the step-by-step system detailed in the magazine is very good. The zine also has that same interview with Magnus on the art of creating monsters, with some really good rules of thumb when creating them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Expanding out a bit, what matters more is clear encounter design guidelines with examples. Give a sense of scale. How hard will a given challenge be for a give caliber of PCs?

Probably unsurprisingly, this can require quite a lot of experience to get reasonably right. Just because I'm running it right now and thus have it on the mind, the encounter build rules evolved considerably over time with 13th Age.

 

[overgeeked]

Expanding out a bit, what matters more is clear encounter design guidelines with examples. Give a sense of scale. How hard will a given challenge be for a give caliber of PCs?

Depends entirely on the tone the game is trying to set. I love 4E and love good encounter design, but it’s neither necessary nor a good idea for every game. I also love good OSR and old-school games where “encounter balance” consists entirely of the players deciding whether to risk a fight or not. Combat as war vs combat as sport and all that.

 

[GMMichael]

With a side helping of addressing the point about "how much workload is this going to be for the game we are playing?"
(For example, the workload to create a 3e D&D monster is much higher than the workload to create a Fate Accelerated monster.)

This isn't the side. This is the main course. If making monsters is easy, I'll do it myself. If it's a PITA, give me a manual of monsters.

As several people pointed out, even games that give you instructions for how to create monsters seldom explain beyond the numerical mechanics. What is the secret sauce that determines whether a monster’s special attack should do less than normal damage but carry a rider of some sort? (Typically a debuff.) Is changing the damage type from “untyped” or “physical” damage to something like “fire” or “electricity” damage worth a reduction in the total damage output? How much can you or should you tweak a monster’s defenses within a range before it becomes a “harder” or “higher level” monster? How should you model something other than “a single corporeal creature that fights with natural or manufactured weapons”, such as a mob or swarm or ghost or mob of ghosts. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Art vs. science. Simulation vs. narrative. I leave the answers to the quoted questions to those who feel a need to optimize their mechanics.

 

[aramis erak]

I like the idea of a solid baseline set of monsters and additionally a system for creating your own.

Same. But it's seldom happened.
At least a few benchmarks and a system is better than just a pile of exemplars.

 

[Professor Murder]

Depends entirely on the tone the game is trying to set. I love 4E and love good encounter design, but it’s neither necessary nor a good idea for every game. I also love good OSR and old-school games where “encounter balance” consists entirely of the players deciding whether to risk a fight or not. Combat as war vs combat as sport and all that.

Calibration is still a needed element even in games that allow for unwinnable scenarios, else how can the players recognize the scenario is unwinnable prior to the tpk?

 

[Wolfpack48]

Same. But it's seldom happened.
At least a few benchmarks and a system is better than just a pile of exemplars.

The system I have seen for Dragonbane in Dragonzine 2 is better than most I've seen and still isn't going to satisfy someone looking for a "bulletproof" system.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Expanding out a bit, what matters more is clear encounter design guidelines with examples. Give a sense of scale. How hard will a given challenge be for a give caliber of PCs?

Yes, exactly. I'm fine with the admission that this is a blend of art and science, but at least tell me how hard you, the designer, were trying to make the monster / encounter / trap / whatever. Is this a routine speedbump encounter that the PCs roll over expending few resources? Is this a tough encounter that requires significant expenditure to defeat, but is intended to be beatable? Or is this an encounter of the type "you must be this tall to fight the dragon and you're not tall enough" where the PCs are expected to flee or die?

Then, depending upon what happens at my table, I can calibrate my expectations.

If you are looking for a magic bulletproof system for generating perfectly "balanced" monsters without any additional work, you're doing it wrong.

Of course we're not. We don't need reductio ad absurdum to realize that all Monster Creation Rules are inherently flawed, arbitrary (at least somewhat), highly prone to error, and strongly dependent upon table variation.

However. If a game abandons any attempt at rules / guidelines / guardrails / whatever -- that irks me. Because I pay for games so that I don't have to do as much work. Of course I expect to do some work, but equally I expect the designer to have laid enough groundwork and put in enough trial and error that I am not a beta tester. That said...

the encounter build rules evolved considerably over time with 13th Age.

... as they always do once the beta test begins in earnest. And by "beta test", of course I mean, "Thousands of players buy the game and play it." That said, if a game comes out of the gate with clearly ill considered monster / encounter rules, that's (to me) a failure in today's day and age. It's a failure because, (A) we have decades of TTRPG experience and published rules to draw upon, and (B) it's never been easier to get feedback on your monsters than it is now.

This isn't the side. This is the main course. If making monsters is easy, I'll do it myself. If it's a PITA, give me a manual of monsters.

100% agreed.

It strikes me as telling that over four decades of RPG-ing, the most fun and most success I ever had making monsters was in 4e D&D and 13th Age (1e) where the rules were relatively minimal and easy to apply (and even the secret sauce of special abilities was easy, particularly with 4e's digital tools that allowed me to drag-and-drop from another monster), and the least fun and least success I ever had was in 3e D&D where the rules were not easy to apply despite being very extensive.

No surprise that for games with even simpler systems, monster creation becomes that much easier (Fate Accelerated monsters are what, 3 numbers?), until you get to the point that the monster doesn't have any stats at but is some game-rule level of punishment the PCs try to mitigate (Blades in the Dark "monsters" are some amount of Harm / positional disadvantage, and that's it).

a few benchmarks and a system is better than just a pile of exemplars.

Yes. I'd also like the designer to break down the examples and show their work: how was Generic Humanoid Enemy built via the system, vs. Terrifying Flying Lizard, vs. Lovecraftian Ancient Evil, vs. etc?

And even if part of the answer is, "I [the game designer] deliberate deviated from my own rules because it seemed cool" -- then SAY THAT!

 

[Committed Hero]

The more a game is an exercise in tactical combat, the more it will benefit from a catalog of monsters. This is both for the novelty of encountering different challenges, and the likely necessity of antagonists at different power levels.

Gumshoe occupies an interesting middle ground - in most of its games, humans comprise a large segment of the opposition. It's a lot harder to design a human enemy in tactical games - in D&D, you essentially have to make a character - but trivial in that system.

 

[GMMichael]

Calibration is still a needed element even in games that allow for unwinnable scenarios, else how can the players recognize the scenario is unwinnable prior to the tpk?

By running away? (Bravely, of course.)