Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kurotowa" data-source="post: 8012741" data-attributes="member: 27957">Let's start with another question. Is an owlbear a wild animal that's part of the natural ecosystem, an unnatural result of magical fleshcrafting that was set loose and is now invasive, or a monster that was spontaneously generated by negative magical accumulation? Because those three scenarios describe very different worlds, and the same question applies to other creatures. Is an orc a free willed humanoid with its own society and culture, an implacably hostile creation of an evil god with an unquenchable rage and bloodlust, or are you trying to somehow have it both ways at once?With some creatures it's easy to say that they're fundamentally different from the mortal races that your typical PC comes from. Fiends and celestials, sure, easy call. Fey are also easy to classify as inherently different in their thought process and life cycle. But the "monstrous humanoids" category has always been a murky one with a dark past. There's a lot of baaaad history to declaring that someone from a different race who looks like a person and acts like a person is a non-person.My go-to has been to cut out the middle ground. Monsters of all shapes and sizes are manifestations of dark magic, spontaneously generated out of thin air and driven to attack the mortal races. No baby monsters, no monster society or ecology, just "here's a monster for the brave heroes to defeat". Everything else is a natural part of the world; the magical animals act like animals that fear fire and don't attack on sight, and anyone that wears clothes and has a language is a member of the mortal races with free will and the assumption that they're a person just like you. Which might still mean they're an naughty word ready to stab you for your wallet, but they're not on the Kill On Sight list like monsters.</blockquote>

Verification