Monster-free? Monster-lite?

[Particle_Man]

I had an idea I liked but my players didn't go for it. Sigh.

Anyhow, it was a world with 9 pc races. While there were some intelligent monsters (undead, evil outsider, good outsider), the 9 pc races were the only intelligent (i.e. with INT 3 or higher) Prime plane creatures (undead were kinda sorta negative material plane outsiders in my campaign). It was to do with the idea that you needed souls to have int 3 or higher and the outsiders undead arose from what the pc's might become. And each pc race has a sponsor god, a general alignment (at creation of the race, though some races have drifted and all individuals have free will to choose their alignments).

Maybe it was just too cute. Anyhow I did a thread on Enworld called the nine god world (or maybe the 9 god world) but I think it is lost in time somewhere.

 

[scadgrad]

Conan, Nehwon, and most other sword & sorcery settings are like that as they tend to be low magic.

Yes, but...

That's what I thought at first, my intention was to point out that Moorcock, certainly another giant in the S&S tradition doesn't reflect this dynamic, but actually he does doesn't he?

I mean to say that most of the odd creatures and races that Elric encounters are typically extra-planar in nature, having been summoned to the world by Sorcerers and the like.

One of the reasons I've tried to limit the overwhelming array of critters present in the core game (IMC that is) is because of I just didn't think it "felt right" and on some level, I was trying to limit myself to those beasties that I enjoyed back in 1st ed. I had not orignally considered the rarity of monsters per se as being a hallmark of S&S, but hey if it quacks like a duck...

Great thread by the way.

 

[Desdichado]

Conan, Nehwon, and most other sword & sorcery settings are like that as they tend to be low magic.

Except for all the weirdo outsiders, strange lost races of apemen or snakemen, etc.

I actually think my campaign is very similar in some ways to "classic S&S" -- and just about my only antagonists for the PCs are strange animals, classed NPCs, undead and various fiends.

 

[drnuncheon]

My Freeport game is mostly human(oid) opposition, with some exceptions. There's been outbursts of undead (which were once human) and the lost island with all the dinosaurs, but the actual monsters are pretty rare (and frequently part of some nefarious cultist plot).

 

[Galethorn]

The game I'm running--homebrew, tolkienesque, low-magic--is relatively low-monster. Sure, the PCs have faced giant spiders and some vengeful spirits of the dead, but that's about it. Everybody else they've fought has been human.

Now, in the new setting I'm working on--something like Westeros in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, albeit about 400-500 years behind in advancement, and with a much heavier viking/saxon/frankish influence--humans are literally the only humanoid race. Now, there's three major ethnicities of humans, and six or seven cultures, but they're all within the range of variation you'd find in 9th century europe. As for monsters, the strangest common creature you'd be likely to find would be an auroch--real-world 10-foot high relative of the 'common' cow that survived until the 17th century--and they aren't terribly adversarial, if not dangerous. However, the creatures of myth, like dragons, the undead, and various sea-monsters do exist, though in small enough numbers that somebody who hadn't ever seen one could reasonably deny their existence. At most, any particular type of monster could be the major plot-focus of an adventure or campaign in an isolated, wild sort of place, but you'd literally have to bring one of them, living (or undead), with you everywhere if you wanted people to believe you actually saw/fought/were nearly eaten by them.

Wow, that was one loooooong paragraph.

Anyway, I don't have anything against campaigns, as a DM or player, that have a lot of monsters, unless it's a large number and large variety, in which case it gets tiresome in no time.

 

[Wombat]

I've run a couple of "low monster" campaigns, one being set in Glorantha and the other in a D&D variant set in city.

It's actually very easy to run such games and quite enjoyable. When a monster actually shows up, people tend to freak because no one has seen one for generations, etc. Thus the monsters become monstrous. And it is interesting to run PC-style tactics against the PCs.

Monsters are actually less important to a game than you think. Fewer monsters can also lead to more moral questions like, "Do we kill these guys, let them go, or ransom them?", a question no one ever seems to ask even about goblins, much less grey renders...