The Monster Hunters

[Kaodi]

Assuming a more or less competent Dungeon Master, do you think you would enjoy a low magic game where the players profession was capturing or killing rare and powerful monsters?

I was thinking it would give a game more of a classicly mythical feel if instead of having a campaign where mystical creatures abound and are commonly fodder for random encounters, there is, say, only one "dire boar" , it has a name, a history, a territory, and once it is dead, there are no more dire boars and your fame goes up.

In 3e, this might have been accomplished with the Monster of Legend template. In 4e, it would probably be more a case of picking a monster and building a solo version of it. So, instances of level 1 legendary beats might be the Rat King (a solo dire rat) and the Claws of the Thunder Basin (solo stormclaw scorpion); level 2 might feature Sinister Laughter (a solo hyena) and the Lonely Boy (solo clay scout).

If this were a campaign, I might even tie level advancement directly to monster kills and captures, rather than to accumulated XP.

Any thoughts?

 

[King Nate]

lol, would I enjoy a game like this? I'm working on this exact idea for my next 4e campaign scheduled for June.

 

[Jhaelen]

Any thoughts?

Wasn't there a whole 3rd party campaign setting for 3e based on a similar premise?

I think it was one of the top ten settings originally submitted for the WotC competition won by Eberron.

 

[Gilladian]

As long as the campaign world was interesting, and there was plenty of room for ancillary adventuring (ie competitions with other monster hunters, long adventuresome journeys to find the isolated places where monsters reside, challenging NPC negotiations, intrigue, etc...) it would be a great campaign.

I think it will require a bit of structural world-work from the DM (ie what creates these unique creatures and such). Also, once "the dire rat" is dead, will he ever re-appear? Will some other low-level mythic creature someday take his place? or is the world safe from CR2 legendary monsters forevermore?

It might be really fascinating if the PCs realized, halfway through the campaign, that by slaying these creatures they were ending an era; the loss of these monsters removes the legendary element from the world forever, stripping it of magic and myth, leaving behind only a mundane existence. Would they continue? Should they? Can they reverse the effect?

 

[Guest 85555]

I would definitely enjoy a campaign like this. I think the key for the GM is to keep things from getting redundant. You want a lot of interesting NPCs and fresh takes on the concept.

 

[Barastrondo]

Depends on the players, I'd say. I've certainly been in the position before when there were big nasty beasts hanging around, and one player or another said "What? They're unintelligent animals; they're not evil or anything. I'd rather kill something that deserves it." On the other hand, I have some players who would probably quite enjoy a campaign that looked faintly like the Monster Hunter video game franchise, where your armor and weapons are fashioned from the parts of the great beasts you killed.

 

[Rhun]

I would definitely play in a game like this.

 

[avin]

I would love play a game like this, but not in (any incarnation of) D&D.