Monster Inflation

[Samloyal23]

One of the things about most game worlds that troubles me is the sheer number of monsters. At what point does even trying to conceive of an ecology in which they all fit become ludicrous? How many is too many?

 

[Dozen]

It won't. With all the monsters, humanoids and monstrous humanoids abound, no fantasy world's population reached a fraction of Earth's which would worth a comparison. In the real world, we have literally millions of species sharing this hellhole with us, and still the last thing I hear from people is that there should be less kinds of them. I doubt all the gamers of the world could come up with that much unless they tried, and even then, not a single thing will change. Bring those creature entries on! We're at no danger of overpopulating Faerun, and diversity is for the benefit of everyone.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Big question, many variables to consider.

Some monsters don't take up a big ecological niche. eg.: a tomb filled with undead. They just hide there in the dark, waiting for fools to come within their reach. The tomb takes no niche than the physical space it occupies.

Others may happily overlap. eg.: A forest is home to a few treants and some dryads; a tribe of forest dwelling orcs and myconids who live in the shallow caves that dot the forest. None of these are competing for the same food sources. The orcs could compete with the tree folk and the fungus folk for living space but for purposes of my example these ones aren't.

But throw in the sudden appearance of a dragon. The orcs are suddenly going to be very interested in living somewhere that dragon can't easily reach and begin to fight with the myconids for cave dwellings. They will also compete with the dragon for food in the form of game animals.

Let's say a purple worm burrows its way into the mix (bugs bunny style). Those caves become very dangerous. It's a bad time to be an orc or a myconid. (The myconids may not be preferred dragon chow but they die in bright sunlight.)

Mmmmm... The treants and dryads are fine so far. Neither dragons nor purple worms want to eat them. So, to put pressure on them: the orcs, in desperation, begin cutting down lots of trees to fortify and shore up their new caves.

Large game begins to flee the area. Both the dragon and the orcs begin looking toward the human farms for food.

I guess that's my way of saying "It depends..."

Cheers.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Awwww... and here I was hoping someone found a way to incorporate Dig-Dug into D&D.

I'm unaware of any DM that has used literally every monster in D&D. To me, it appears the variety means more options to choose from, not an obligation to use each one. Each DM gets to hand select what exists in his or her world.

In a world that posesses a multiverse with Planes and demiplanes that have regions left vague enough to fit anything, and where the phrase "A Wizard did it" justifies the existance of disturbing creatures, I really don't see any problem with the over abundance of scary things that would try to kill you.

In fact, my buddy & I are trying to make the most of the diversity of options in the campaign world we're considering creating, Which I've Discussed Here.

 

[Celebrim]

One of the things about most game worlds that troubles me is the sheer number of monsters. At what point does even trying to conceive of an ecology in which they all fit become ludicrous? How many is too many?

The thing to keep in mind is that monster books get published in order to sell them. In most cases, it is in fact ludicrous to assume that all the monsters in the monster book - much less a dozen or so books - are species, that they fit in an ecology, and so forth. And yes, it is entirely reasonable to pare down the book to just those monsters that fit the world of your imagination. The reason I tend to not buy monster manuals is that on average, I'd only use maybe 5% of the monsters in the book. That makes monster books terribly bad investments in terms of pages referenced per dollar. I really wish that I could by monsters at like $0.10 a page, rather than books of them.

The biggest problem with reconciling monster books with an ecology is that 99% of the monsters in the book are large top order predators. In the real world, we've got basicly cat, dogs, bears, sharks, whales, and cephalopods. We've got a handfull of highly similar species in each group, with only a handful of those breaking into the 200 lb+ class. Then we've got some smaller predators - weasels, raptors, etc. and their minor variants. If we really assumed all the monsters existed as species, then we'd have hundreds of variant types much less species. Think for example of all the sorts of Dragons that have been published. If those are all species of dragons, how are there more than a handful of each in the whole world? How if they are widely distributed at all do they manage to find mates? In my experience with world building, adult dragons so rarely appear on the map that any two of them are probably hundreds of miles a part. For this reason, I basically keep the large true dragons restricted to the 5 main species rather than assume all 60 or more published dragon variaties actually exist in the world.

But there is an even bigger problem with having that many sorts of monsters, and that is that it dillutes the mythological power of the monster. You can't give interesting backstories in a cosmology or give each monster meaningful mythological roles when you've got thousands of types of monsters. At some point all that diversity just serves to dillute and water down the setting.

There are a number of solutions in my opinion.

1) Return monsters to their roots: One thing you'll notice about D&D is that it tends to take something like The Minotaur or Medusa, and transform them from being the monsterous results of some sort of curse and the central character in what might be considered a sort of horror story, and turns them into mundane species - minotaurs, medusas, etc. Sometimes that might be warranted, but one option is to assume that most of the monsters in published monster manuals are basically unique beings. As unique beings, they are unique and don't have an ecological role per se. They will however acquire a narrative role, since each now has a story (or can be given a story) in your campaign as to how they came about. Many types of monsters are well suited to this. The greater sorts of undead are well suited to being the results of a unique curse. Constructs are well suited to being the results of a unique creation. Outsiders and fey are well suited to being unique individuals rather than members of a race. Aberations are well suited to being the results of unique magical events. Rather than relying on monster manuals, I tend to prefer to make unique variants of existing monster types. It's really easy to mix and match powers, add templates, change hit dice or appearance, add or alter spell-like abilities and use the same monster for an almost infinite variaty. When your monsters are unique and don't have an easily recallable stat block associated with them, they'll feel scarier to your players.

2) Focus on your favorites: I would strongly suggest if you were worldbuilding to pick out your favorite kinds of monsters and use them as your primary pallette. There is no need to assume that everything in a monster manual or all monster manuals reflects the diversity in your world, or even that what the MM's says about the stock D&D setting is true of your world. Figure out what you will use and assume that anything not in that list represents basically unique monsters or at most a small band found in only one place in the world as the result of some unique circumstance. When I set down as a junior high DM with the intention of creating my own setting, one of the first things I decided was that there were no orcs. Why? Because I didn't think I needed two races of ugly humanoids and I thought goblinkind was just cooler and more interesting. It was a good choice, and its paid dividends I didn't imagine at the time. Often quality is better than quantity.

3) Stay out of the food chain: One way to justify a large variaty of monsters is make the focus of your monster variaty those sorts of monsters that aren't part of the ecology. Undead, outsiders, constructs, elementals, and fey don't necessarily have normal caloric needs. Many of them are spirits that can live in parallel to a normal ecology, coming out only at night, or at certain times of the year, or 'when the stars are right' and the rest of the time being quiescent. The normal ecology of your world can be tight and believable, only you have in addition this supernatural and magical realm adjacent to and overlapping your world. This creates a nice fairy tale feel, and is one 'style' if you will.

4) Make a new food chain: One possibility is to get rid of the lions, tigers, and bears and assume that the fantastic beasts of the monster manual are the normal ecology of your world. This creates a really nice alien feel, but is a bit more work to build, maintain and describe since both you and your players loose all references to normality. In addition to a new ecology, you'll probably need new assumptions about animal husbandry, mounted warfare, heraldry, and iconic symbolism. One of the reasons fantasy normally retains bears, wolves, eagles, boars, cats, rats, and so forth is that these animals have symbolic, narrative, and mythological value as well as roles in an ecology. Think about even how the spells are named 'Bull's Strength', 'Eagle's Splendor', 'Fox Cunning' and so forth. You'll need to adapt monsters into this iconic roles, and it can take awhile for everyone to accept and believe in the new narrative.

5) Star Wars Cantina: Another possibility is to go ahead and make the diversity a trope of your setting, by providing some sort of explanation for it. Maybe your world is a crossroads of the multiverse, and is home to visitors and immigrants from many worlds (this was explicitly the case in the Tekumal setting). Maybe you are running a Planescape like setting. In the dungeons and dragons cartoon, the Star Wars like diversity is explained by the fact that the world is literally a Dungeon World, where beings from other worlds have become trapped (Perhaps at one time before the Realm was corrupted by Venger, many of the inhabitants are descended from beings exiled from their homes for crimes real or invented. Perhaps others are descended from the former gaurds.) It wasn't just the kids that wanted to go home. Whatever your explanation, diversity is an acceptable choice IF you actually take the time to explain it in your world's backstory.

 

[Deset Gled]

It won't. With all the monsters, humanoids and monstrous humanoids abound, no fantasy world's population reached a fraction of Earth's which would worth a comparison. In the real world, we have literally millions of species sharing this hellhole with us, and still the last thing I hear from people is that there should be less kinds of them.

The only caveat to this is that the game world will need to have the same diversity as the real world; different climates, different geography, isolated regions to allow different species to develop on their own, etc. As long as your world is has enough variety, the variety of monsters should never be a conceptual problem.

Now, the fact that every new species the explorers discover has more hitpoints than the last and is exactly strong enough to be a legitimate but surmountable threat is just going to be something you willingly suspend your disbelief for.

 

[Jacob Marley]

I'm unaware of any DM that has used literally every monster in D&D.

This is one of the primary purposes of the hexcrawl I am writing: to make a campaign world that makes sense, while including every officially published monster. (Note: this includes all WotC books, Dragon/Dungeon magazine, and the miniatures line.)

To me, it appears the variety means more options to choose from, not an obligation to use each one. Each DM gets to hand select what exists in his or her world.

In general, I think that this is the best way to look at Monster Manuals.

 

[Celebrim]

Now, the fact that every new species the explorers discover has more hitpoints than the last and is exactly strong enough to be a legitimate but surmountable threat is just going to be something you willingly suspend your disbelief for.

No, you just have to set up your world to be non-linear and accept that not having every threat be either legitimate or surmountable is a feature rather than a bug.

Insignificant threats are nice at the very least because they allow players to feel like they are in fact progressing in power. When a player gets to revisit monsters a few levels later, and they dispatch them without any trouble at all it feels empowering. You want players to be able to savor the occasional easy victory where they really get to just kick butt and chew the bubblegum. Having a world where the challenges are more evenly dispersed also helps make the world feel more real.

Insurmountable threats are nice because occasionally you want players to experience the sheer terror of being in over their heads and knowing it. That moment when you wake Cthulhu and know you have no other choice but run for the hills before he really takes notice of you is important. And likewise, being able to come back eventually and punch out Cthulhu is also fun.

In my current campaign, I put all the threats on the map prior to starting the game. In the country there is everything from rats in the sewers to lurking low epic monstrousities. The main difference is the rats are placed in places ordinary people might occasionally encounter them, whereas the lurking low epic disasters are placed in places you really have to work to find and get into. It is quite possible to explore and discover things right out of your depth. In fact, the PC's at 5th level just finished a foray into a dungeon where some areas - areas that they didn't find or enter - have CR 20+ challenges. (In fact, they just finished exploring the foyer area of what is in my game, Acererak the Enternal's Grandfather.) Some areas that they did enter had CR's between 9 and 12, and they really had no choice but flee and hope what was there couldn't really or didn't want to chase them. Exploring the greater catacombs was an excercise intended to teach the players to stay focused on the mission at hand and not just go eagerly opening up random tombs the way a kid opens up presents. So long as the DM is careful not to have these threats not easily awakened and not necessarily willing to actively chase the players around, there is nothing wrong with that.

And while there is a gamist explanation for not having low epic threats active at low levels, there is a strong simulationist explanation as well - if those threats were active then chances are they would have been already active, in which case the locality and its recent history would have been very very different. This wouldn't be a populated center of civilization. You don't just stumble accidently in to danger that is of much much higher CR than the average NPC is capable of handling, because an exclusion zone quickly develops around it with various warning signs to the effect of, "Beware the life destroying monstrousity." And, in the event say an great wrym dragon attacks a city you live in while you are merely 1st level, chances are the dragon doesn't consider you any more special than an ant. It's entirely reasonable that the dragon is busy gobbling up the maidens at the temple of the vestal virgin or the horses at the duke's stables and casually incinerating the few knights giving it trouble. Why would it be chasing down random mercenaries of no special reputation?

 

[Samloyal23]

1) Return monsters to their roots: One thing you'll notice about D&D is that it tends to take something like The Minotaur or Medusa, and transform them from being the monsterous results of some sort of curse and the central character in what might be considered a sort of horror story, and turns them into mundane species - minotaurs, medusas, etc.

2) Focus on your favorites: I would strongly suggest if you were worldbuilding to pick out your favorite kinds of monsters and use them as your primary pallette. There is no need to assume that everything in a monster manual or all monster manuals reflects the diversity in your world, or even that what the MM's says about the stock D&D setting is true of your world. Figure out what you will use and assume that anything not in that list represents basically unique monsters or at most a small band found in only one place in the world as the result of some unique circumstance.

3) Stay out of the food chain: One way to justify a large variaty of monsters is make the focus of your monster variaty those sorts of monsters that aren't part of the ecology. Undead, outsiders, constructs, elementals, and fey don't necessarily have normal caloric needs. Many of them are spirits that can live in parallel to a normal ecology, coming out only at night, or at certain times of the year, or 'when the stars are right' and the rest of the time being quiescent.

4) Make a new food chain: One possibility is to get rid of the lions, tigers, and bears and assume that the fantastic beasts of the monster manual are the normal ecology of your world. This creates a really nice alien feel, but is a bit more work to build, maintain and describe since both you and your players loose all references to normality.

5) Star Wars Cantina: Another possibility is to go ahead and make the diversity a trope of your setting, by providing some sort of explanation for it. Maybe your world is a crossroads of the multiverse, and is home to visitors and immigrants from many worlds (this was explicitly the case in the Tekumal setting). Maybe you are running a Planescape like setting.

These are excellent points. I especially like the idea of having some monsters just be unique, the way they were in myths. SOME ONE GIVE THIS MAN AN EXPERIENCE POINT!

I have less of a problem with the logic of magical beasts than sentient monsters, especially the over abundance of humanoid races. Undead and planar creatures too are easy to gloss over in building an ecology. But these design principles go a long way to making a world that is at least somewhat believable...

 

[S'mon]

I have not seen any issue with D&D wilderness; IMO the frequency of top-level predators is not significantly different from what you'd see IRL sans humans killing them, although D&D's "attack by default" is not very realistic. Dungeon ecology is a different matter, of course.