Solutions to MM-itus?

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's not exactly answering my question, K. Like, going through the monster manuals would you tell us five monsters that you thought were cool?

[hogarth]

Well, I think part of the problem is that D&D doesn't go far enough in plundering the depths of mythology. Oriental Adventures for example. If D&D decided to steal examples from South American and Indian mythology, too, we'd have a lot more material. But we arbitrarily restrict ourselves to European and Middle East mythology for some reason.

Pathfinder does more non-European culture mining in their Bestiaries, I gather.

Chupacabra?

There's one example.

Also, there's the blood war. It needs to be fed a constant stream of demons and devils in all ways and forms. And then there are various kinds of yugoloths and slaadi...but yes, a niche. Sadly.

More random outsiders is the kind of stuff I don't like in "Monster Manual XVIII"-type books. I'd probably rather go the Michael Moorcock route of saying every demon you see is a weird, unique individual and you'll never see anything like it again, rather than ending up with 30 different races of demon and trying to find interesting niches for them all.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Quoting myself from the DrD+ thread, because I just realized this point while rereading this.

IAW my design for a new monster manual, I also propose that the art director insists on making pictures of monsters as dynamic as possible.


That's a bit too much of a glittering generality I realize, so let me make it more concrete.

For example, in the bad old days we generally do monster manual pictures like this: Monsters are arranged in alphabetical order. You get a shot of one monster, maybe doing something vaguely action-y like waving their club menacingly.

Nuh uh. Fuck that. Here's how this should go:

First of all, I agree with pixels in that Monster Manuals should be arranged by CR, not alphabetically. However, I also agree that that Monster Manuals should be arranged by THEME as well. What do I mean? Okay, you got a team of level 5 PCs and you're coming up with a good encounter for them. You flip to the CR 6 chapter. Here's what you see:

• The 'Upper Tier' of Young Adult Chromatic Dragons. Red Dragons, Black Dragons, and Brown Dragons. Their dynamic shot would be a group of six of them, two of each type, carrying wagon/carriageloads of gold out of the rich sector of the city and burninating the terrified guards who are trying to flee.
• Hill Giants. The picture of the Hill Giant, one of each sex, should be of a couple of them of them ripping open a guard shack to get at some terrified elves. One of their pets, a ginormous slavering dire wolf, tears its head through a door. A piece of an elf corpse is in the mouths of one of the Giants as they raise his or her club. There will be stats for a Hill Giant, a Hill Giant Shaman, and a Hill Giant Tribal chief. There are also stats for Dire Wolves and Dire Jaguars.
• Ogre Mage, Ogre Berserker, and Ogre Sentinel versus two Stone Golems. For some ungodly reason they're grappling in deadly combat on a stone bridge overlooking the valley. The Ogre Mage is hanging on for dear life while he charges a spell in his free hand. The Stone Golem are carved to look like ginormous Venus de Milo statues, back when the statue still had its arms.
• Vampires. You have stats for a Vargouile (sp?), some freshly created Vampire Spawn, some revenants, a Vampire Wizard, and a Vampire Warlord.
  The group shot is of them enjoying a meal atop of a pile of corpses while a hamlet burns in the background. The Vampire Wizard calmly sucks on the neck of a beautiful maiden while he gazes upon his less refined followers taking down some horses and oxen.
• Throwdown of a group of Werebears versus Werewolves in some swamp. Even though the werewolves outnumber the werebears, the match looks relatively even. There are plenty of stakes with werebear heads mounted on them. Moonlight shines through the canopy of the forest.

Something like that. I dunno. I'm not a good imagination guy, but I hope that you get the idea.

Watching that wrasslin bear tear the musclemand serial killer guy a new one has reminded me that a picture is worth a thousand words.

New or questionable monsters should seriously have the best artwork in the edition reserved for them. You don't need to try too hard for an orc or a titan, we're pretty much already sold on them. A good monster picture will instantly cement a newcomer pretty hardcore. Would anyone have given the Sloth or Moonrats or Worm That Walks another look if it weren't for their badass pictures?

[Gx1080]

Why people dislike Orks again? They are just green, British hooligans.

I mean, I don't care about them, but I don't see a reason to hate them. Though the guys who scream "WAAAAGH" on a match are annoying.

To the point, a way to stretch a little the MM is to put "corrupted" versions of regular monsters. Zombie Dragon, Fiend Dragon, etc. Of course, it shouldn't be abused too much else players are going to call bullshit.

Plant-men, oozes, animal hybrids...are they coping Final Fantasy monsters?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anyway, I'm bumping this thread again because... K, what do you consider what makes a monster cool? From a non-fan standpoint, a lot of the iconic D&D monsters are actually kind of weird or lame. Granted, D&D is just so entrenched in nerd culture that they have some sort of universal memetic power that transcends the lameness, but viewing it from a deconstructionist standpoint... what makes the monsters cool? Not the monsters that exist outside of the D&D bubble like dragons and ghouls and giants, but D&D-specific critters like the Tarrasque and Moonrats and the Beholder?

If you ask me, I think that the biggest difference between a 'cool' monster and a 'lame' monster is exposure. Granted, there's a limit to this; animated armor will always be sweet but there's no way to make a ragamuffin exciting. The Beholder is a classic monster not because of some superior design concept, but because it's so familiar to us.

That said, if you want to make a monster less lame, you can't just throw it into the monster manual, get a good picture of it and call it a day. You honestly are going to need some help from the setting and adventure writers. K mentioned in another thread that one of the things that made Dark Sun interesting was that they incorporated wild and woolly monsters into the setting. And I agree. The next campaign setting D&D or anyone does needs to incorporate some of the weirder critters into it across the board, making them more familiar to us and thus cooler.

This means that you need to plan the monsters for the Monster Manual II or whatever well in advance of when you release your campaign settings and adventures, since for the first Monster Manual you're sticking to monsters that are already entrenched into your audiences' brains. And since campaign setting books are seriously the first books you'll want to release after the core rulebooks this might create some weirdness by referring to monsters that don't have writeups yet. How would you resolve this?

[Desdan_Mervolam]

What do you consider a cool monster then, K?

1. It has to not feel stupid when I give people the one-line description.
"It's a brownish ooze that makes geometric shapes.... ummm, yeh."

2. Has to not confuse people with another monster immediately.
"So it's a lizardman..... with weird powers?"

3. As a DM, I have to want to tell stories with it.
"So the batpeople have decided.....aaaa, forget it.... I can't do this any more.

2 is a fair point. 1 and 3 are very related and might be a fair point, but stupid is in the eye of the beholder. Semi-deific beings that manifest as spinning rings of eyes and oozes that move from one geometric shape to another are stuff I could really get behind myself.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes, I'm aware that K answered the question, but he answered it in such a broad and meaningless way that he may as well have not answered it. That response would've been just as well suited as to me asking him what he looks for in a Magic Item System or a Class System.

Here's just a quick list of what I look for:

1) It has to fit into the game world ecology in some way. If the monster only exists in Schrodinger's Landscape where no one would even question its existence and the plot would still make sense, it's a sucky monster.

2) The monster should ideally not be reduced to one line of description without missing important lines of information, unless it's a classic monster where the memetic power is understood anyway. Moonrats are a good monster. Sloths are not.

3) The monster, if possible, needs to have some sort of mythological basis to it. Not ripped wholesale from mythology but you should be able to point to a story and go 'oh yeah, it kind of reminds me of that'. Keep in mind caveat 2 however.

4) If the monster is intelligent then its society has to make some kind of sense. Yakmen and Sahugin work for me, Aboleths do not.

5) Most monsters should have some kind of motivation to them that don't fall into the classic needs of Fighting/Feeding/Fucking. The only thing that saves the Grey Render from being a complete waste of space is the sentence that says that it kindly adopts a community and protects people for reasons only known to itself. This kind of thing is invaluable.

6) It has to look intimidating. Some combination of badass, visceral, primal, mechanical, or warped. But it also can't look too busy either.

7) The monster needs some kind of pinch-hitter tactic that will make fighting it more complex than 'it runs up to you and attacks'. Umber Hulks are good examples for this.

There's more but I think that's a cool start.

[K]

Monsters have to do several cool things because all the flavor text can only make a cool monster cooler, not take shit and make things that don't taste like shit.

So take beholders. They have a lot of powers, most of which are actual plot hooks on top of being combat powers. They also have a cool and iconic power.

You'll notice that they barely have any flavor at all. That's because its a cool monster that gets cooler when you write the flavor to set the monster up for a place in your campaign's mythology, setting, ecology, etc. See Spelljammer for an example with this monster.

At the end of the day, cool flavor that fits into a setting can be written by almost anyone. Making cool mechanics that are fun in play is hard.

[Swordslinger]

At the end of the day, cool flavor that fits into a setting can be written by almost anyone. Making cool mechanics that are fun in play is hard.

Yes, people tend to remember monsters with unique and interesting mechanics.

[hogarth]

Monsters have to do several cool things because all the flavor text can only make a cool monster cooler, not take shit and make things that don't taste like shit.

So take beholders. They have a lot of powers, most of which are actual plot hooks on top of being combat powers. They also have a cool and iconic power.

You'll notice that they barely have any flavor at all. That's because its a cool monster that gets cooler when you write the flavor to set the monster up for a place in your campaign's mythology, setting, ecology, etc. See Spelljammer for an example with this monster.

Huh. To me, the beholder is the opposite of your maxim "As a DM, I have to want to tell stories with it" -- it's just a bunch of random shit thrown together that doesn't make much sense. I guess I could spend hours fanwanking what beholder society looks like and how they evolved, etc., etc. But I can think of better things to do with my time.

[K]

Monsters have to do several cool things because all the flavor text can only make a cool monster cooler, not take shit and make things that don't taste like shit.

So take beholders. They have a lot of powers, most of which are actual plot hooks on top of being combat powers. They also have a cool and iconic power.

You'll notice that they barely have any flavor at all. That's because its a cool monster that gets cooler when you write the flavor to set the monster up for a place in your campaign's mythology, setting, ecology, etc. See Spelljammer for an example with this monster.

Huh. To me, the beholder is the opposite of your maxim "As om shit thrown together that doesn't make much sense. I guess I could spend hours fanwanking what beholder society looks like and how they evolved, etc., etc. But I can think of better things to do with my time.

Sadly, the fanwanking is the thing that makes people want to tell stories. That's the hook for a lot of people, and I saw that lesson when Frank and I started writing this kind of thing for uncommonly used monsters. The problem is that making that kind of hook can literally be done for anything, and yet some monsters survive as classics and most don't.

That being said, the core mechanics at work on a beholder are plot hooks themselves. People really do look at the disintegrate eye and ask the question "why don't the beholders destroy the world one 10' cube at a time?" Figuring out the answer to that question is a whole adventure.

The other powers all lend themselves to similar questions. Two Charm eyes lend themselves to all kinds of mind-control plots and proxy enemies. The flesh to stone eye makes one think that they capture and jail enemies. The antimagic eye means that conflicts with spellcasters are built into the race. Even the disintegrate eye lends itself to questions about them tunneling through solid stone and building and sieging and destroying things.

Tossing in flavor text just makes that better. Spelljammer posited whole cultures of beholders and elaborate social structures and art, but at the end of the day the core mechanics are the thing that draws people back.

It's the same with mind-flayers. Strip them of their iconic powers and they suddenly become a lot less interesting. Even Final Fantasy XI who renamed them "soulflayers" and made them demons and changed a pile of powers still kept the iconic Mind Blast.

[hogarth]

That being said, the core mechanics at work on a beholder are plot hooks themselves. People really do look at the disintegrate eye and ask the question "why don't the beholders destroy the world one 10' cube at a time?" Figuring out the answer to that question is a whole adventure.

The other powers all lend themselves to similar questions. Two Charm eyes lend themselves to all kinds of mind-control plots and proxy enemies. The flesh to stone eye makes one think that they capture and jail enemies. The antimagic eye means that conflicts with spellcasters are built into the race. Even the disintegrate eye lends itself to questions about them tunneling through solid stone and building and sieging and destroying things.

The only reason I wonder those things is because beholders are a traditional part of the D&D universe. But when someone comes out with a new monster that took the same "throw a dart at a list of spells" approach to abilities, I usually just think it's retarded. YMMV, I guess.

Case in point.

[Leress]

Well one, it's an epic creature so it wouldn't get a much exposure since most don't play that high. Two, it's name is just plain terrible. Three its abilities are just spells and no real iconic ability.

[K]

That being said, the core mechanics at work on a beholder are plot hooks themselves. People really do look at the disintegrate eye and ask the question "why don't the beholders destroy the world one 10' cube at a time?" Figuring out the answer to that question is a whole adventure.

The other powers all lend themselves to similar questions. Two Charm eyes lend themselves to all kinds of mind-control plots and proxy enemies. The flesh to stone eye makes one think that they capture and jail enemies. The antimagic eye means that conflicts with spellcasters are built into the race. Even the disintegrate eye lends itself to questions about them tunneling through solid stone and building and sieging and destroying things.

The only reason I wonder those things is because beholders are a traditional part of the D&D universe. But when someone comes out with a new monster that took the same "throw a dart at a list of spells" approach to abilities, I usually just think it's retarded. YMMV, I guess.

Case in point.

Well, let's look at that list of powers. It's got a hodge-podge of pure combat powers and one that qualifies as a plot power(dominate person 3/day, which just barely qualifies).

That just sucks, even by the standards of the Epic Level Handbook, a book so bad that I once bet Frank that I could come up with ten better epic-level dragon concepts in two minutes. I lost that bet, but only because it took me two and a half minutes.

[hyzmarca]

The solution to MM-itis is simple. Don't have monster manuals.

Stupid monsters get included in Monster Manuals for one reason: pagecount. Making a unique iconic monster is difficult, but doable. Making enough unique iconic monsters to fill up an entire book is substantially more difficult. When you keep throwing more and more books onto that pile, the number of filler monsters is going to increase dramatically.

So you don't have filler monsters. You need to limit your monster manual (or most likely the monster section of your DMG, since you're going to be cutting down the pagecount something fierce) to iconic monsters. These should be monsters who are important to the game, not just random giant space slugs. There should be no filler at all.

And then there should be rules for creating new monsters to serve all of your filler needs. These rules should include charts and be very easy to use, just grab a stat block and toss some flavor on it.

Really, you don't need a giant list of monsters to have a good game. Most people aren't ever going to use a filler monster, not when the icons are easier to use and more recognizable.

[Swordslinger]

Really, you don't need a giant list of monsters to have a good game. Most people aren't ever going to use a filler monster, not when the icons are easier to use and more recognizable.

Well sometimes people get bored of the iconics and want something different. Honestly I hope I never had to slay another orc, kobold, goblin or ogre again. It's just been done to death.

[hogarth]

Well one, it's an epic creature so it wouldn't get a much exposure since most don't play that high. Two, it's name is just plain terrible. Three its abilities are just spells and no real iconic ability.

Whatever -- a Wisdom-draining head spike is about as "iconic" as an anti-magic eye in my book.

I suspect that if Gary Gygax had stuffed his dungeons with obligatory uvuudams in Ye Olde Days, I'd probably have more sympathy with them today and I'd think beholders were stupid and pointless.

Well, let's look at that list of powers. It's got a hodge-podge of pure combat powers and one that qualifies as a plot power(dominate person 3/day, which just barely qualifies).

Uh, dude; it's got more non-combat powers than a beholder does (disintegrate, dimension door, wall of force, plane shift, time duplicate).

[K]

Well, let's look at that list of powers. It's got a hodge-podge of pure combat powers and one that qualifies as a plot power(dominate person 3/day, which just barely qualifies).

Uh, dude; it's got more non-combat powers than a beholder does (disintegrate, dimension door, wall of force, plane shift, time duplicate).

A plot power is not the same as non-combat power. Plot powers can be used to tell stories while non-combats are simply powers that are also sometimes useful outside of combat.

So from that list, none qualify as plot powers. They have crappy per day limits and/or don't lend themselves to a different kind of story. (For example, there are stories you can tell with an at-will disintegrate that you can't tell with a 3/day disintegrate.... I'd be hard pressed to come up with a 3/day story). It's various transportation powers don't actually lend themselves to different stories or affect the plot much (though they might in the hands of PCs).

Hell, time duplicate doesn't even have out of combat applications other than the possibility of letting you burn scrolls and other one-shots without using them up, so I don't even know what you are thinking of there.

It's one plot power is dominate person 3/day because you could actually tell a mind-control story with that power and alter the plot of a story directly with it.

As for iconic powers, the criteria is that the power must be unique to that monster. By that metric, the monster has no iconic powers since the Wisdom Drain and confusion effect are shared by other dissimilar monsters and it's spell-likes are by definition shared.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Monsters have to do several cool things because all the flavor text can only make a cool monster cooler, not take shit and make things that don't taste like shit.

So take beholders. They have a lot of powers, most of which are actual plot hooks on top of being combat powers. They also have a cool and iconic power.

Strange as it sounds but I think that beholders are actually a bad monster. Not in of themselves, beholders are wicked sweet, but they're bad for the game, much like even though Captain Kirk is a great character he's bad for the series in a way that not even Neelix or T'Pol is.

It's all well and good to claim that each monster needs to have a unique palette of abilities, but as X-Men and superhero comics in general have shown us there's a conceptual limit as to how many powers you can have in the game. You can mix and match them up a little bit too (regeneration, animal senses, AND wicked sweet shredder claws) but even so there's a limit to how much you can do this. Can anyone really tell me the difference between Martial Manhunter and Superman?

I'd say that probably the hardest part of writing original monsters would be coming up with a list of cool abilities you want to distribute to all of them. And while you can have lopsided monsters every now and then like the beholder for the most part monsters will end up being like the Shadow or Troll. Now the other thing to keep in mind is that a lot of monsters with a literary/mythological pedigree aren't as well-designed for a TTRPG as they would be for a story. So if they come first they're going to crowd out the newcomers by squatter's rights.

So how would I do it? First I'd pack the monster manuals with monsters that were established in other media but are still mostly vanilla. Like minotaurs, orcs, golems, oozes, giants, all that. Then I'd start releasing weirder original monsters like the needlefang drake swarms and aboleths and worms that walk and all that. Then I'd start releasing monsters established in earlier media that overlap somewhat with the weirder original monsters like the Grendels and Yuki-Onos and Elephant Demons.

[Username17]

Can anyone really tell me the difference between Martian Manhunter and Superman?

Yes. Martian Manhunter is a telepathic shapeshifter who can become incorporeal, and Superman is Superman. It's not even hard.

The tough ones are things like Wonder Woman (high powered version) and Powergirl (mid power version). The author may or may not be giving Powergirl her eyebeams, and Wonder Woman may or may not be using a magic rope that forces you to tell the truth. If it's ixnay on both of those things, then basically Powergirl is blond and Wonder Woman has black hair. That's not much to hang your hat on.

On to your main point:

Strange as it sounds but I think that beholders are actually a bad monster. Not in of themselves, beholders are wicked sweet, but they're bad for the game, much like even though Captain Kirk is a great character he's bad for the series in a way that not even Neelix or T'Pol is.

I don't agree with you on Kirk and I don't agree with you about Beholders.

Every monster needs to have a reason why you care. Some of those monsters get a free pass on that because they are historical/mythical and have name recognition. Minotaurs don't really need to do anything special, because people know what they are. Anything else you put in the book needs a catchy name, a built-in plot, and iconic abilities and tactics. Beholders have all of those things, in a way that Yrthraks (or however that is spelled) don't.

-Username17

[fectin]

What's the difference between Hector and Odysseus?

Why should I care if there isn't a difference?

[Username17]

What's the difference between Hector and Odysseus?

Why should I care if there isn't a difference?

Hector is diplomatic and reasonable. Odysseus is tricky and kind of an ass.
The both have about the same number of levels of "Warrior Philosopher" though. The main difference is basically just that Odysseus invested in more of the deception tree and Hector has more political power because he invested more in the governance tree.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anything else you put in the book needs a catchy name, a built-in plot, and iconic abilities and tactics. Beholders have all of those things, in a way that Yrthraks (or however that is spelled) don't.

-Username17

The problem is that once you have a Beholder you can't have a monster whose trick is at-will disintegration or anti-magic cones; otherwise it'll just be a pale wannabe imitation. In order to overcome the Dinosaur/Dragon problem you'll need to cobble together a bunch of abilities at the same time. But just as though there are only so many superpowers that people will care about there's only so many permutations you can do with the superpowers before the monsters just become a weird, undifferentiated kludge and/or they have abilities you blatantly do not care about like a Mind Flayer having the ability to cast Produce Flame.

It's not a problem you'll have when writing two or three monster manuals but it will be a problem if you want to write six. So you can either ration powers ahead of time and have reduced monster coolness (but sell more books) or make every monster as dazzling and imagination capturing as an Aboleth and not having more than three Monster Manuals' worth of monsters over the span of an eight-year edition. But 3E D&D doing that half-and-half crap does not work.

[fectin]

So like you said they're both basically the same class and have the ability set, "talks good and stabs people with spears". They're not even pallette-swapped. I am totally okay with that, and given that at least three pieces of literature mentioning both of them have survived for 2.5 millennia, it's entirely possible to still tell a compelling story ('Piloctetes' is the one you're forgetting).

[shadzar]

Is the conceptual space really so small that making good monsters is just going to be doomed to failure?

most monsters are half-assed: centaurs, lamia, medusae...

but it comes a time when you run out of materials to design with and end upo jsut copying yourself. Dragons are a good example.

undead...well there could be an undead form of anything, but if they are treated jsut like any other skeleton or something..there isnt a point of writing each one up.

then you end up with things like a flumpf.

the key to looking as "monsters" is to NOT look at them like monsters, but jsut creatures.

4th edition takes and says ok, you are good fighting evil, so no "good" "monsters". that is a bit strange, because it forces a railroad of a story to begin with.

also most things are created from previous literary works. the things people are most familiar with are more easily acceptable. Monte speaks of this in a sense in last weeks L&L.

you have to know how mosnter works, and be able to make it work in society, nature, etc...so most will be based off existing animals, or humanoid variants.

James Cameron thought he had a new idea when he made cat-people called the Na'vi...yeah...

with as many stories out there with different types of creatures, it is coming to the problem of creating a new one without stepping on copyrights. Ben 10 has over a million races....how many have been shown so far?

the problem is, that most things have already been created for species and such in the past century or so because of the growth of entertainment and how available it has been for people to create things and expose others to them.

what originality is left for "monsters"?

and last time i counted, and under 2e, there were about as many different monster write-ups (including variants) to equal the number of individually named MtG cards.