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The Monster: Mythic or Game Version?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5631727" data-attributes="member: 54707"><p><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">I've been thinking lately of using more folk-legends and fairy tales as well in my monster use. Especially after having been reading the Last Apprentice series and how the author uses witches and Spooks in a very brilliant way I think.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px"></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px"></span></span></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">I completely concur.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">I'm with ya there. I use colored dragons (as camouflage) but color is not associated with their abilities in any way (and dragons are rare in my setting), but I also have rarely felt that Elves are rightly portrayed in most fantasy games. To me they should be very, very dangeorus and even mysterious and inhuman creatures.</span></span></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">Yeah, that's about how it goes. The vast majority of opponents are other humans; pirates, mercenaries, other adventurers and classes, other nationalities (Goths, Persians, barbarians, etc.), and so forth. </span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">That accounts for the "opponents in number." </span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">The mythical monsters tend to be singular opponents of very great power. Sometimes the players (if they know anything about the myth surrounding the monster, and many times they do) know basically how the monster might behave and sometimes they have a good idea of how to kill it.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">But monsters in my setting, being mythical, with long histories of survival and often with pedigrees relating them to gods or other beings or powers will rarely submit to a fight on the player's terms and often flee if really endangered, rather than fight to the death. So a fight with a single "mythical monster" is rarely a fight, so much as a series of running battles, sometimes over months or years of game time, until the players figure out how to exhaust it, discover a mortal weakness, or are themselves killed in combat by the monster. So a conflict with a monster is often a war on a small scale, rather than a single fight/encounter. And it's a good point about mythic monster-scale. My players have learned that it's not just the monster that should disengage or run or even avoid fights, it's them. Because sometimes the best thing they can possibly hope to achieve with some monsters at lower levels is to distract it or slow it down or misdirect it. They have no chance in a stand-up fight, so they've learned other methods, like sabotage and misdirection and what we call, "the long war." (Of course we didn't invent that phrase, just use it to describe an ongoing monster war.)</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">So the human adversaries are usually the "numbers danger" (though sometimes they are also a political, military, and ambush danger) and the monsters are usually the "long-term, not sure of how to destroy this creature before it kills us" danger.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">So the human enemies are often the tactical, immediate threat (unless the party is at war with another group of people) and the monsters are the strategic, long-term threat. (To the players at least, in the wider world I think humans are a much greater long term threat as an enemy, and much more dangerous than most any monster.)</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">They usually know how to kill other humans, the trouble is bringing enough force to the fight and avoiding being outnumbered and out-gunned and out-maneuvered by their human opponents. The monster is usually a fundamentally different type of threat, who while being hunted by the party is also studying the party so that he may learn from every encounter how better to kill the party. Though in my setting good enemy NPCs and military and rival party leaders often do the same thing.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">And returning to the monsters, the monsters will sometimes cut deals with the party rather than fight them. That can be advantageous to the monsters and sometimes monsters can become allies if they are not outright and overtly evil and destructive. In the same way a Goth military commander might cut a deal with the party so that both can fight the Huns.</span></span></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New'"><span style="font-size: 12px">But if any others use mythical monsters in this way, or in a similar or even a different fashion I'd be interested in hearing how you do it exactly. </span></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jack7, post: 5631727, member: 54707"] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]I've been thinking lately of using more folk-legends and fairy tales as well in my monster use. Especially after having been reading the Last Apprentice series and how the author uses witches and Spooks in a very brilliant way I think. [/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]I completely concur.[/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]I'm with ya there. I use colored dragons (as camouflage) but color is not associated with their abilities in any way (and dragons are rare in my setting), but I also have rarely felt that Elves are rightly portrayed in most fantasy games. To me they should be very, very dangeorus and even mysterious and inhuman creatures.[/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]Yeah, that's about how it goes. The vast majority of opponents are other humans; pirates, mercenaries, other adventurers and classes, other nationalities (Goths, Persians, barbarians, etc.), and so forth. [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]That accounts for the "opponents in number." [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]The mythical monsters tend to be singular opponents of very great power. Sometimes the players (if they know anything about the myth surrounding the monster, and many times they do) know basically how the monster might behave and sometimes they have a good idea of how to kill it.[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]But monsters in my setting, being mythical, with long histories of survival and often with pedigrees relating them to gods or other beings or powers will rarely submit to a fight on the player's terms and often flee if really endangered, rather than fight to the death. So a fight with a single "mythical monster" is rarely a fight, so much as a series of running battles, sometimes over months or years of game time, until the players figure out how to exhaust it, discover a mortal weakness, or are themselves killed in combat by the monster. So a conflict with a monster is often a war on a small scale, rather than a single fight/encounter. And it's a good point about mythic monster-scale. My players have learned that it's not just the monster that should disengage or run or even avoid fights, it's them. Because sometimes the best thing they can possibly hope to achieve with some monsters at lower levels is to distract it or slow it down or misdirect it. They have no chance in a stand-up fight, so they've learned other methods, like sabotage and misdirection and what we call, "the long war." (Of course we didn't invent that phrase, just use it to describe an ongoing monster war.)[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]So the human adversaries are usually the "numbers danger" (though sometimes they are also a political, military, and ambush danger) and the monsters are usually the "long-term, not sure of how to destroy this creature before it kills us" danger.[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]So the human enemies are often the tactical, immediate threat (unless the party is at war with another group of people) and the monsters are the strategic, long-term threat. (To the players at least, in the wider world I think humans are a much greater long term threat as an enemy, and much more dangerous than most any monster.)[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]They usually know how to kill other humans, the trouble is bringing enough force to the fight and avoiding being outnumbered and out-gunned and out-maneuvered by their human opponents. The monster is usually a fundamentally different type of threat, who while being hunted by the party is also studying the party so that he may learn from every encounter how better to kill the party. Though in my setting good enemy NPCs and military and rival party leaders often do the same thing.[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]And returning to the monsters, the monsters will sometimes cut deals with the party rather than fight them. That can be advantageous to the monsters and sometimes monsters can become allies if they are not outright and overtly evil and destructive. In the same way a Goth military commander might cut a deal with the party so that both can fight the Huns.[/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [FONT=Courier New][SIZE=3]But if any others use mythical monsters in this way, or in a similar or even a different fashion I'd be interested in hearing how you do it exactly. [/SIZE][/FONT] [SIZE=3] [/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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