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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nightcloak" data-source="post: 2414043" data-attributes="member: 23862">GM Notebook Essentials #9: Monsters - Part 1Part 1: Monster EncountersYou’ve taking the time to prepare your NPCs. You’ve also spent pages preparing  possible DNPCs (Disposable Non-Player Characters). Maybe you copied the NPC advancement chart or bought some of the wonderful third party products out there to fill in the gaps. Heck, you’ve even gone so far as to create lists of names for every encounter. But that is only part of the battle. And by battle, I mean what the PCs will be fighting. While NPCs are incredibly important and the most immediately useful to a GM, and thus detailed earlier in these posts, they are only one part of the picture and up to know we have glossed over a significant portion of the available encounters.NPCs are generally humanoids. But there are other types also, namely monsters. Be they aberrations or undead or animals or dragon types, they are categorized as monsters. Monsters are the stuff legends are made of, and the heart of a standard D&D game. Lets face it, the players will probably get bored quickly if the game had no monsters.  Further, most GMs have tons of monster books filling the shelves and probably at least several PDFs on the computer. Everyone loves a good monster book and nothing is quite as fun as surprising players with something new. Come on folks, lets see a show of hands, how many of you have more monster books than you will probably ever need. *Raises Hand* I know I do.   A quick count shows I have 11 monster manual type books (like MM1), 6 books with significant amounts of monster information or are about monsters (Draconomican), and one book of templates (Advanced Bestiary – very cool). I also have several PDFs on the computer. Wow, I’m horrified a little. This is the first time I’ve bothered to count them and I can think of many more that I want. Back to the point: If you are like me, and I have reason to believe so (based on years of reading these boards), then you have as many books if not even more. Obviously you’ll never get around to using all of those critters. At least you won’t unless you make an effort to do something about it now.You have two concerns to address. One: An in game concern, listed at the beginning of this post – the need for encounters that are not an NPC, usually on a moments notice. Two: An out of game concern – all those monster sitting on the shelves.It’s the Notebook to the rescue.You have two problems that are a marriage of mutual self-interest. Time to pull down those monster books and go through them. Go through each one, but look for things that you like (Hey! That’s cool) but never get around to placing in an adventure. The game is for you to have fun also, so pull out those beasts that you like and write them up. Jot down the stats and make a note of the CR and environment they can be found. A couple of descriptive words might be helpful also to jog your memory later. Write down whatever you may need in combat, but don’t over due it or you’ll be buried in work.Speaking of work. Do your self a favor and just download the SRD of monsters so you can print them up and save yourself the hassle. PDFs are also wonderful as you can just print the appropriate parts also. The moral of the story is:1.You need to have prepared monster encounters for the players. Just like the NPCs, you may need to have monster encounters on the fly. Get monster encounters into the notebook just like you did the NPCs. It will save you time and hassle later.2. You probably have tons of monsters you think are cool but never get around to using. Well, just start to use them. Write them into you list of prepared monster encounters. That way, the next time you need something on the fly, you’ll open your notebook and hopeful have an “Oh Yea!!!” moment as you pull out something cool and original. My advice is that you put each monster on its own page, and then sort the pages by challenge rating. That way, when you go to this part of your notebook, you can easily flip to the challenges of the level you need. Now, the next time your players go to that old tower that was flavor text, not only will you have a map of it (if you followed these article and prepared your maps ahead of time) but now you will have a monster to place in there as well. Thanks to a well-prepared notebook, you suddenly have several hours worth of adventure ready to roll at a moments notice. Your players will be amazed that you have prepared for so much adventure, or at least they would be amazed if they weren’t too busy having fun due to the non-stop action.</blockquote>

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