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So, here you are, God of your fine new world. Youve got societies in
place with governments, laws, religions, and all the other little nuances of
real societies. You know how the various countries and cultures react.
You have national holidays planned, and the feminists are staging a
march at the capitol next week to petition for womens rights.
Well, great, but what is the adventure-minded individual supposed to
do? Run downtown and shout, "Get back in the kitchen???" in the
middle of the protest? Well, it might make for an interesting fight, but I
dont think you want to base an entire campaign on thwarting the plans
of the militant feminists. Your heroes need to go out into the woods and
find some honest-to-goodness monsters to fight!
If youre playing an established game rather than making up your own
system, the publisher has likely already thoughtfully provided you with
some monsters to use, perhaps even a full book of them. These monsters
will probably even serve you well for a while. However, in my experience,
there comes a time when the book stops providing you with appropriate
monsters. Youre sick of having the characters encounter orcs. There
arent enough desert-dwelling creatures. You need more monsters
appropriate for a party of 4th-level characters. Or maybe theres
somebody in your gaming group who has the Monster Manual
memorized and every time you throw an obscure monster at the party
they say "Oh, its just an *insert monster name here*." Whats a poor
GM to do?
Like it or not, its time to make your own monsters! Its an intimidating
process, but well worth it when you see the stumped expression on your
players face as you pit them against something theyve never seen
before! Some games make it easier than others, by providing helpful tips
on designing your own critters. Others make you do all the work. I will
try to make it as easy as possible for you with some cheap-and-dirty
tricks and shortcuts, then well cover expanded, complicated monster
creation for when you love your players and want to kill them off as
creatively as possible.
First, you can use the Cheap and Dirty trick employed by game masters
and game developers the world over... Rip somebody else off! (Please
note, the author only recommends ripping off ancient cultures whose
myth makers have been dead for many years. I will not be held
responsible if Nintendo sues you for making your characters fight a giant
Pikachu) Theres plenty of material out there. Dont just rely on Greco-
Roman mythology books. Check out some British faerie lore or Asian
mythology for some weird stuff. I guarantee your players will never
forget their first fight against a Nuckelavee.
Some Dos and Donts:
- DO your best to stick with the original mythological concept. If youre
going to rip off some long-dead Japanese guys idea, at least get it right.
You can of course take creative liberties where vague explanations are
given, but...
- DONT go around taking the names of a mythological creature and
slapping it onto something totally unalike its traditional description! If
you do this with faeries, I will personally come to your door with
weapons in hand and get ugly. The creators of the D&D Monster
Manual and Changeling: The Dreaming had better be glad that I havent
decided who I should beat up first.
- DONT be surprised if your players recognize the monsters as you
describe them.
And now, I shall unveil.... The Ultimate Cheap and Dirty Monster
Creation Trick!!!! Simply take the stats of an existing monster, and make a
new appearance for them. This can be as simple as using the stats for a
red dragon to make a purple dragon who breathes a cloud of purple
smoke that just happens to do the same amount of damage as fire breath,
or using the stats for orcs to make a totally different ugly humanoid race
that your characters can beat up with glee. This trick will not last
forever, but its excellent in a pinch when you need creatures tailor-made for a
certain climate but dont have time to come up with all-new stats. Ive
actually never used this trick, having just thought of it as I started this
column, but now Im really tempted to try it and see if anyone figures it
out!
Now, if you want to really put some work into your monsters, heres
some things to consider....
First and foremost, you need to decide what the monster looks like.
Sometimes this is the hardest part of all... You have to walk the fine line
between doing something different, and doing something ridiculous.
This was the hardest thing for me on the role playing world. Ive been
working on it for 6 years, because I said to myself that everything was
going to be brand new (except for the faeries and trolls and dragons, but
even those are a bit different). I soon discovered how difficult it is to
come up with enough brand-new monster concepts for an entire world... I
think I have about 3 to date. Monster creation is something you should
do when you have plenty of time to kick back, relax, and daydream about
weird creatures. If you rush yourself, your players end up fighting giant,
armored pink hamsters (go ahead, ask my friends, theyll remember!).
Next, you have to assign all the relevant stats, attacks, treasure and
more. How you do this and in what order depends on the system youre
using, but stats will just about always come first, since attacks (both
physical and magical) are usually based on them. Of course, it helps to
have already decided whether this is going to be a physically or
magically inclined creature. If youre making creatures for a low-level
party, youre going to want to keep the magic and strange effects to a
minimum. If youre working with a tough party, though, feel free to go all-
out and come up with some interesting effects.
In my experience, Earthdawn provides the best monster-creation system
out of any Ive tried. Not only does it give you a detailed walk-through
of every step, but once your monster is all finished, you look up things
like stat values and number of attacks on a table, and it tells you how
many legend (experience) points its worth. Once youve looked up the
legend point value of all the attributes, you total it up and then you know
exactly what your players get when they kill it.
Things are a little more difficult for D&D... There are some templates you
can use, but theyre mostly geared towards making a specific type of
creature, ie, half-demonic creatures, or creatures from the elemental plane
of water (this is just what I know from whats provided in the three core
rulebooks, the Psionics Handbook, and the Manual of the Planes. I know
a lot more 3rd ed books have come out this year, so some of them might
include monster creation rules, I dunno). Its not too hard to make a D&D
monster, just look at the entry for any monster in the Monster Manual
and itll give you an idea of what you need to come up with. The hard
part is deciding what the critters challenge rating is once youve
assigned all of its stats and attacks. There are two ways to go about
this... Flip through the manual until you find a monster thats comparable
to your new one and use that as a guideline for your challenge rating...
Or just say "I made this monster for a party of 5th level characters, it has
a challenge rating of 5." (In case you havent noticed, I am an advocate
of lazy GMing).
Then, of course, we have BESM, where creating a monster can be as
easy or as complicated as creating a character, depending on the type of
monster you want. The great thing is that since BESM is such an open-
ended system, its easy to make some really weird monsters with strange
methods of attack. Also, since whether or not to give experience and let
characters advance is totally a GM call, you dont have to assign any
experience points or challenge ratings.
If youre playing free-form or making monsters for your own system that
youre developing, then the skys the limit and you can of course come
up with your own rules for how monsters should be made and how you
decide what rewards (if any) the characters receive for defeating it. You
can also say "Pheh, this monster making stuff is too difficult, there are no
random encounters in my world and this will be a totally social-
interaction and politics game." In that case, you can skip the rest of this
article because youll be busy trying to come up with a combat-free game
that will please all of your players (good luck!).
Some things you need to consider once youve decided what your
monster looks like, what its stats are, and how many attacks it has per
round, is exactly how it attacks. If every monster in the game attacks only
with its obvious natural weapons (beak, claws, tail club, whatever), the
characters wont have much to fear. Youve got to keep them on their
toes! Poison is always one option, although a bit too cliche. Disease is
nice, as is turning someone to stone. But you dont have to stick with
traditional means of attack and defense, either. Have monsters who turn
people to gold, then watch the party chip the NPC that they never really
liked anyway into pieces to sell when they reach town. Have a monster
who dissolves bones or locks joints. And dont forget the monsters who
hit the players where it really hurts... in the loot! Just remember to keep
the truly nasty, deadly monsters to a minimum in each game, or the
players will think you have it in for them and wont enjoy the game so
much. I suggest saving the "bad nasties" for when the characters get too
cocky, or for when theyre so lucky that no lesser monster ever hits them.
Of course, then theyll just make their saving throws every time and
never discover just what nasty power that monster had *sighs*.
Theres also the question of loot. Dont feel like you have to give all of
your monsters treasure. And if you do give them treasure, they
shouldnt always be carrying it around. Make the characters follow their
tracks back to the lair. That way, if they breezed through the original
encounter, you can have twice as many monsters guarding the
treasure.... Bwuhahahaha! (really, Im not an evil GM, I just have all of
these wonderfully evil ideas to share).
Also, take a lesson from Earthdawn... Make monsters body parts worth
money to mages, alchemists, and tailors. Not all monsters might have
valuable body parts, but some will. Dont make it common knowledge
(except in some obvious cases... everyone might know, for example, that
dragon scales are worth money). A character who takes a few ranks in
the applicable knowledge (monster or magic lore, most likely) could make
the partys day by pointing out what cockatrice feathers are worth. In my
most recent game the characters have left behind some pretty valuable
body parts because the NPC with monster lore kept failing her rolls. Oh
well, what the players don't know cant hurt them, right?
One parting word of advice... Your monster needs to fit in with your
game concept. A flower-breathing dragon may be perfectly acceptable in
a humorous game, but terribly out of place in a serious campaign.
Likewise, keep the monsters that do horrific things to their victims, bad
enough to give the characters nightmares, for the serious games.
Nothing ruins a light-hearted campaign like pain and suffering (and
nothing drags a serious game through the mud like a really goofy
session, believe me).
Tune in next month when Ill talk about.... something.
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