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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6612435">It seems to me, there are two distinctly "monstrous" types of campaigns.  I posted this in 5th because I want the discussion to remain focused on what this edition has to offer in order to play/run/create such a game.Firstly: Playing opposite the players, creating lairs, setting traps and generally luring unwitting adventurers to their doom in order to increase your treasure hoard.  Think DS9 v. Voyager, instead of going to the challenge, the challenge comes to you.Secondly: Destroy all humans.  Now this may sound a lot like a chaotic evil game, and you'd be right, but on that note I'm going to posit that chaotic evil games are actually monstrous games due to the inherently insane, violent and potentially NC-17 content of such a game.You can of course, certainly play a "monster campaign" that is essentially your normal adventure, but that is not expressly a monster campaign, it is simply a campaign whose "adventurers" happen to be monsters.  Instead of killing the Goblin King you help him build his army, instead of saving the village of stupid commoners, you raid them or possibly rescue a village of stupid monster NPCs.I've been tossing around a monster campaign for several years now but I have been attempting to stay away from the "destroy all humans" scenario, but realistically when expanding groups of humanoids of various types seek to rid the land of anything that might challenge their rule, monsters are target #1.  It's not an unreasonable stance to take for creatures facing hatred and extermination.  However, due to the potentially NC-17 content of such a game, I really just don't want to go there.  So I'm trying to figure out a way to do something distinctly monstrous whose end-game is perhaps to destroy all humans but in a more humorous and less psychopathic manner.  I like the idea of luring adventurers into lairs designed by the party, I want to keep some of the classic "adventure" in there but I am trying to really get a good grasp on how I can make "destroy all humans" less...murderous.Here's some thoughts:-Monsters are facing hate and extermination, so why not make more monsters?  Breeding may take a long time, but humans are certainly plentiful and malleable too magic.  Perhaps the party starts off with some sort of "monster elixir" and the purpose of luring humans to their dungeons is to get the adventurers to find the potion and take it home.  This has some limitations: what's the point in making a dangerous dungeon if you want the adventurers to find the magic potion?  Further, how do you distribute it widely among populated areas?-Not all races are equally inclined to massacre monsters.  Perhaps only a couple races or civilizations in the world hate monsters.  This would allow me to present a little more grey area in things as monster-hate could be a product of the specific circumstances of the rise of these kingdoms and we can avoid baby-killing monster players because humans aren't naturally inclined to hate monsters, they're raised that way.  This however means a lot of moralizing at the table and I know not everyone is interested in such things being a major game element.-Subversion: The characters are respectively members of low-population monster types (and arguably more powerful ones), this would resemble most closely a normal campaign in reverse, instead of raiding monster lairs and caves, you're raiding castles and military bases.  This would play well with the fact that the players would be higher CR monsters since castles and military bases would be more heavily fortified than your average goblin-infested ancient ruin.All of these are obviously good elements to include but I'm looking for additional input.  If you've run a monster game in 5th, let me know what you did, if you've run monster games in earlier editions, give me some ideas for what styles of play worked well, if you attempted to avoid wanton slaughter and what you did to do so, and how what you did then can be supported by the system now.Thanks!</blockquote>

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