Playing AS monsters?

[Shades of Eternity]

That's pretty much the default of the Hodgepocalyse: the monstrous in every day life. I tried to push the envelope of potential pc species. You can blame Rifts as an inspiration.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back when the Complete Book of Humanoids came out, I had a brief-lived campaign of goblinoids in what was essentially Mordor-with-the-serial-number-filed off. Kinda wish it had gotten more of a chance than it did.

 

[Seramus]

Has anyone ever run a game where the players are actual monsters? Like, a party of orcs, or drow or something? I know AD&D metiones this possibility in one of the core books, but I'm curious how often--if ever--people play this way?

Several times! I ran games where everyone was:

• Wyrmling dragons (and cute as heck) captured by a slaver.
• A goblin tribe (someone got to be a bugbear).
• Tucker's Kobolds, just a pack of ruthless trapping skirmishing little dudes.
• Pseudo-beholders, not full beholders but they had variable amounts of eyes and dreamed of being big beholders some day.
• Various Modrons that got split off from their Modron March.

I wouldn't say it was very often, but I've noticed I do it less these days since more fantasy races are allowable and fewer players of mine are playing the traditional Human/Elf/Dwarf trifecta. I see a lot more Owlfolk, Warforged, Harengon, Plasmoid, Reborn, etc these days.

 

[Li Shenron]

Has anyone ever run a game where the players are actual monsters? Like, a party of orcs, or drow or something? I know AD&D metiones this possibility in one of the core books, but I'm curious how often--if ever--people play this way?

Yes but it's been a very long time... I think last time was The City of the Spider Queen campaign in 3e, where all PCs were Drow.

However, I don't really consider that a "monsters campaign", in fact Drow became fully playable creatures in the 5e PHB.

It's a preference, but what I would call a "monsters campaign" is probably a game where players have Monster Manual creatures as PC, with or without class levels. I wrote down some small house rules (which I think I shared on EnWorld a few years ago) for adding a few class levels to monsters, but I never actually used them. I've never been in such a campaign in any edition.

A separate idea would be a "villains campaign" with evil PCs, whether based on playable races or not, but it's really a different matter. I played in such game a very long time ago, and generally I am not a fan, largely because I don't think players have the skills to pull it off in an interesting way, the vast majority end up either thinking they have to kill everyone in the world, kill each other within the party, or they forget about being evil and play the same way as any other campaign.

 

[Tonguez]

Several times! I ran games where everyone was:

• Wyrmling dragons (and cute as heck) captured by a slaver.
• A goblin tribe (someone got to be a bugbear).
• Tucker's Kobolds, just a pack of ruthless trapping skirmishing little dudes.
• Pseudo-beholders, not full beholders but they had variable amounts of eyes and dreamed of being big beholders some day.
• Various Modrons that got split off from their Modron March.

I wouldn't say it was very often, but I've noticed I do it less these days since more fantasy races are allowable and fewer players of mine are playing the traditional Human/Elf/Dwarf trifecta. I see a lot more Owlfolk, Warforged, Harengon, Plasmoid, Reborn, etc these days.

Yeah these days having an actual human in the party is becoming a novelty and even the poor dwarf is seeing less play than the more exotic types. At least elf still has drow as an option. But since warforged, tieflings and dragonborn, reborn, genasi and gnolls have been brought in is hard to justify not allowing a 'monster'

 

[GrimCo]

Played and ran quite a few.

First one was back in HS 3.5 days, our party was half dragon, half fiend, bugbear and werewolf. Played in all undead campaigns, all drow campaigns, all lycanthrope campaigns and some with monster mixes.

In PF1, i ran "We be goblins" and "We be goblins too", but expanded it to mini campaign. We had blast and guys fondly remember and bring it up even now, almost 10 years later.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah these days having an actual human in the party is becoming a novelty and even the poor dwarf is seeing less play than the more exotic types. At least elf still has drow as an option. But since warforged, tieflings and dragonborn, reborn, genasi and gnolls have been brought in is hard to justify not allowing a 'monster'

Tangent: in one campaign, the original party was composed of a human wizard who favored cold/ice spells and a bunch of dwarves. More than once it seemed like a bizarro version of Snow White & the Seven Dwarves.

But eventually, we had a couple new players join the group, and one guy played another human, and we got an elf, too.

 

[dbm]

I'm still waiting for the opportunity to play a dragon or doppelganger ...

One of the starting options in Savage Rifts is a dragon hatchling…

In general, this concept is only tricky in level-based systems where it wasn’t baked-in from the very beginning. Point based systems like GURPS or HERO handle this effortlessly. In one campaign we played using GURPS, one of the PCs was a fairy dragon who was obsessed with food (especially cream buns, no double entendre).

In another campaign, I played a wemic which was pretty cool, and another PC was a kobold archer who would often ride along with me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In general, this concept is only tricky in level-based systems where it wasn’t baked-in from the very beginning. Point based systems like GURPS or HERO handle this effortlessly. In one campaign we played using GURPS, one of the PCs was a fairy dragon who was obsessed with food (especially cream buns, no double entendre).

Tangent: while I enjoy the D&D ecosystem, HERO is my #1 RPG system. There’s no PC concept I’ve come up with I couldn’t model in it.

Because of that, the system has become kind of a Rosetta Stone for me. I use it both to transport PC ideas across systems AND to create setting bible info on major characters when writing fiction. Having a protagonists & antagonists thoroughly statted out means I have a reference guide to help ensure I don’t stray too far outside of their boundaries.

 

[GM Lent]

The Al-Qadim City of Delights box set for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1993 explicitly talked about how species viewed as "monstrous" in other settings could fit in just fine in the setting. It mentioned Goblins, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Lizard Men, Ogres, Half-Ogres, Orcs, and Half-Orcs, and even allowed most of them to be sha'irs, which were a wizard type found only in Al-Qadim.

So I had occasional ogres and goblins and whatnot in my groups back in the day.

And the Reverse Dungeon from 2000, also for AD&D 2nd Edition, had players take on the role of the monsters defending their dungeon from invading adventurers; I ran it a couple of times too.