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Why A GM Can Never Have Too Many Bestiaries
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7690715" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Well, there aren't any obvious common examples, as most people IME don't use monsters like that. The Tarasque would be an example of something that isn't particularly big or flashy IMO and which is supposed to be flashy but is poorly designed for the purpose, and the elder wyrm dragons are only slightly flashy and that's easily hand-waved away with something like 'torpor or hibernation'. I'm thinking more along the lines of Godzilla, or a monster that's shtick is defecating mountains (actual mountains) of rotting flesh, or is in the habit of building palaces out of the bodies of children, and things such as that. Or well, that are literally terrain (whole swamps, whole mountains), or monsters big enough other monsters can use them as habitat. That is monsters with really big presence, either because they are trans-colossal or do things that are unavoidably impacting on a world level. Monsters where, if they exist, any civilization that also exists is adapted to coexistence with them in some way. WotC mostly limited this sort of thing to the Epic handbook, but even then one obvious complaint would be how to have a world with both 1st level characters and epic monsters.</p><p></p><p>But there are less obvious but usually unacknowledged examples of things that are flashy and campaign altering, such as werewolves or vampires. Creatures that can self-replicate as fast as they kill are 'flashy', because they threaten dystopia. Most peoples campaigns can handle werewolves or vampires though for several important but related reasons. First, because they have a mythic resonance so players are likely to accept that things just are that way without having a lot of fridge logic. Second, because both monsters have well known 'folk-lore' remedies and weaknesses that presumably allow ordinary society to resist them with only the occasional help of heroes. And thirdly, because there is a huge block of accepted stories that integrate werewolves and vampires and give story reasons why they don't replicate to the point of vampire apocalypse, and players will likely accept these story reasons (ei, they don't 'want' to replicate like that).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I would answer that by saying in a typical fantasy setting, outer space per se doesn't exist. 'Earth' or its analog is the only world and the Sun is not a Sun, and the planets are not worlds nor are the myriad stars themselves suns. There may be an aether above the atmosphere in which the heavenly bodies travel, but there aren't ecologies up there or natives except perhaps the celestials (heavenly creatures) that guard the clockwork and the spheres. As soon as you assume that the stars are all individual suns, around which planets whirl and each planet is a world, then you've already moved strongly from the world of fantasy to the world of science fiction.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7690715, member: 4937"] Well, there aren't any obvious common examples, as most people IME don't use monsters like that. The Tarasque would be an example of something that isn't particularly big or flashy IMO and which is supposed to be flashy but is poorly designed for the purpose, and the elder wyrm dragons are only slightly flashy and that's easily hand-waved away with something like 'torpor or hibernation'. I'm thinking more along the lines of Godzilla, or a monster that's shtick is defecating mountains (actual mountains) of rotting flesh, or is in the habit of building palaces out of the bodies of children, and things such as that. Or well, that are literally terrain (whole swamps, whole mountains), or monsters big enough other monsters can use them as habitat. That is monsters with really big presence, either because they are trans-colossal or do things that are unavoidably impacting on a world level. Monsters where, if they exist, any civilization that also exists is adapted to coexistence with them in some way. WotC mostly limited this sort of thing to the Epic handbook, but even then one obvious complaint would be how to have a world with both 1st level characters and epic monsters. But there are less obvious but usually unacknowledged examples of things that are flashy and campaign altering, such as werewolves or vampires. Creatures that can self-replicate as fast as they kill are 'flashy', because they threaten dystopia. Most peoples campaigns can handle werewolves or vampires though for several important but related reasons. First, because they have a mythic resonance so players are likely to accept that things just are that way without having a lot of fridge logic. Second, because both monsters have well known 'folk-lore' remedies and weaknesses that presumably allow ordinary society to resist them with only the occasional help of heroes. And thirdly, because there is a huge block of accepted stories that integrate werewolves and vampires and give story reasons why they don't replicate to the point of vampire apocalypse, and players will likely accept these story reasons (ei, they don't 'want' to replicate like that). I would answer that by saying in a typical fantasy setting, outer space per se doesn't exist. 'Earth' or its analog is the only world and the Sun is not a Sun, and the planets are not worlds nor are the myriad stars themselves suns. There may be an aether above the atmosphere in which the heavenly bodies travel, but there aren't ecologies up there or natives except perhaps the celestials (heavenly creatures) that guard the clockwork and the spheres. As soon as you assume that the stars are all individual suns, around which planets whirl and each planet is a world, then you've already moved strongly from the world of fantasy to the world of science fiction. [/QUOTE]
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