What's Your Monster Palette?

[Aeolius]

...Not many people are into Polynesian. I had a friend who tried to get a Polynesian mythology survey published in Dragon (along with a few new monsters) and was rejected on the grounds that 'no one would be interested in such an esoteric topic'...

While my campaign is set beneath the surface of the sea and borrows from all of the “palettes” mentioned above, it still has elements which occur above the waves. The humans which resides upon the 200 or so pinnacles were loosely based upon the Polynesian culture.

btw, I didn’t see an “overrun by hags” palette, listed above.

 

[redwing]

What would monster pallates be for cultures such as Egyptian, South American (aztec, mayan, incan), oriental, and celtic?

If you have multiple cultures in your world and use different pallates what keeps creatures from one palate moving to another location? How well do different palates go together (an interesting combination in my view would be those listed under fairy tales and lovecraft--cute little talking animals and gnomes being horribly tortured and ripped apart by hideous creatures with many tentacles........)?

 

[Sanackranib]

monster. . .

I'm partial to the green races, humans and undead, but my players have had to deal with:
inclement weather
dangerous plantlife
hostile animals
goblins
animated weapons
undead/ controled by necromancers
himans (army/town guards)
and an ogre

tommorow will prove to have a good variety as well (it will only be the 3rd session)

 

[LostSoul]

btw, I didn’t see an “overrun by hags” palette, listed above.

Isn't that kind of sexist? Although I think it would work really well in a female-run world.

 

[Sanackranib]

hags . . . .

Isn't that kind of sexist? Although I think it would work really well in a female-run world.

oooooohhh ! gotta love a coven!

 

[Tolen Mar]

Hmmm....

Around here, we used to play mostly low-level games (In part because we couldnt keep a group together long enough to hit 5th level).

In my capaign world, Orcs were developed to be more than just cannon fodder, and were the staple bad guy (outside of PC races manipulating politics, that is). My caves and underground areas though, would have the broadest mix, anything could show up there.

However, we are now in an epic game, and the big baddy is a wizard working on a way to put intelligence and consciousness into Golems. Therefore, we use a lot of different constructs and golems now.

Now, I have in the past used all kinds of undead, dragons, sea serpents and so on, but they were usually one-shot monsters.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My most common "monsters"

Humans.

Next most common: goblins/hobgoblins/bugbears/gnolls

Then fiendish outsiders and alienist creatures including mind flayers.

Cheers

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Norse. Frost Giants, Fire Giants, Dwarves.

In other, rarely visited parts of the campaign world, we have the Desert palette (manscorpions, sphinxes, dune stalkers, djinn and efreet), the Lovecraft palette, and the Underdark palette (Mind Flayers, Kuo-toans, Drow, Svirfneblin).

I once had a campaign with a Slaad palette. Almost literally a palette: we had the standard reds, blues, and greens plus prismatics, stripeds, purple, and orange.

 

[Grim]

So far my campain has included:

Evil Elven Despots
Standard Human Bandits
Vampiric Goblins Lead by a Vampiric Imp who sired them (in either sense (him and the goblin cleric leader lady... dont ask))
A rogue Modron
And some of the classic 2e dungeon monsters:
Carrion Crawlers
Minotaurs
Darkmantles

But thats about it. But thats OK, since its my first time DMing, and we've only run about four sessions

 

[Storminator]

In my PBeM (my main campaign), I have a few strongly themed palettes. In the capitol city it's all humans (no other races) and vermin. The cities water supply is a magic fountain that encourages giant vermin in the tangled undercity.

The countryside is fairly safe, but it's just been invaded by orcs and goblins. All the humanoids are the result of breeding programs by the evil wizards and priests on the far side of the world. Each of the races has its own place in the pecking order, based on how useful they are.

In addition, the dead must be properly disposed of, or they may Animate. So there's a lot of undead everywhere too.

My players have just introduced a couple of fiends into the city as well, and those fiends will be causing a ruckus with imported fey.

PS