Snippitts of Illusions

Franks Geekdom Saturday: Monsters!

We're all living in a geeky submarine, a geeky submarine, a geeky submarine.
We're all living in a geeky submarine....

Hello and good day. I'm back this week, after a geeky hiatus last week, with another geekdom.
What will I write about today?
The history of CCG's?
Nahh... that's a topic for another day.
Will it be the history of fantasy art?
No, I have more research to do on that topic before I can post.
Well what then?
MONsters!
monsters
Yep, that's right monsters.

The staple of roleplaying, aside from pretending to be somebody else which is alot like theatre, are the monsters. In fact unlike theatre, your "character" actually gets to fight monsters in roleplaying game. Monsters just don't jive with Williams or Ionesco. That's the attraction of the games for most boys hitting puberty that are cursed with geekiness (or not), to be able to fight monsters.
Monsters are of course split up into many different kinds.
There's goblinoids, abberations, and undead of Dungeons and Dragons.
There's the Eldergods and their minions from Call of Cthulu.
There's the Splugorth and the Xiticix of Rifts.
Every game setting and system has it's own set of baddies, full of the sort of mettle it takes to make a group of adventurers have a bad day.
Lets take a look of some of the more common and popular ones.

Dragons:
They are a staple of most any fantasy game system, and they are usually some of the most powerful baddies you can come across. Dragons are big, usually powerful with a breath weapon and some sort of magic, and typically vain. What sort of ragon and the amount of dragons in a setting are fully dependent on the GM. Of course. There are settings where dragons are abundunt, or relatively few and far between. To have a high fantasy setting (i.e. alot of magic) Dragons should be abundant, not frequent but well known about. To have a more traditional fantasy feel or low magic feel to the game; dragons should be rare, something that only great heros can take on.
Here are a few things that dragons should be: First and formost a challenge. There's a reason why dragons are feared, it's because they like to eat things, still treasure and dominate a region.
Second they should be big. A little dragon, even if super challenging, usually isn't intimading or fear generating. Third, they should be legendary, i.e. there should be alot of stories, myths and rumors behind any dragon in a campaign. Why? Simple it adds to the drama of the story telling. This is important if dragons are a rare beast in the world. It helps cast some doubt on the believablity of the stories, while making an initial encounter something to be remembered. It is even more important in campaigns where dragons are a little more common. I know this seems counterintuitive, but each dragon that an adventure party might encounter needs to be rememberable, after all what's the point of putting one in if they aren't?

Undead:
Undead have become sort of a cliche in gaming. Zombies and skeletons are not what they used to be. I'm proposing taking them back. All undead back in fact. There used to be major elements of horror when it came to undead, not so much any more. Vampires can still be scary, as can Liches and Mummies, but at the same time they have become common place. Rotting flesh, walking bones, undead wizards without faces. This stuff is scary, but too often it isn't treated as such. Why? Over use.
Undead should be used, as anything else, only if there is a reason for it. Zombies and skeletons are terriffying to low level adventurers. I'm personally an advocate for implementing a terror check for all undead, not just the heavy hitters like vampires and liches.
Quick run down on what sort of undead is out there.

Zombies and skeletons: Pretty self explanatory really, the walking dead, animated skeletons. Typically weak creatures, can be taken out with a severe beating. There's is no setting that I can think of that has uber strong zombies and skeletons... unless of course they happen to be animated creatures: the bones or corpses of giants, or dragons and other such beasties.

Ghosts:
Well ghosts, more powerful usually than zombies or skeletons, but certainly not anything like a vampire or a lich. Ghosts should be used as plot device, not simply a challenge to be over come, but a creature to help, give information, or simply add flavor to a setting.

Ghouls:
Pretty much foder for the characters to beat up on. More powerful than zombies or skeletons, these things eat rotting corpses in most campaign setting, and if bitten you have the unfortunant opportunity to become one. More akin in someways to the classic zombies of horror films, more mobile like the zombies from the recent remake of "Dawn of the Dead". These things should prove frightening, even for seasoned adventurers.

Vampires:
Depending on the campaign Vampires can be slightly more powerful than ghouls, to lengths of incredible power. Depending on the campaign they should be used as slightly more powerful minions, to indivuals of importance, beings behind the plot. Of course there are certain campaign settings that make the Vampires the characters. Instead of players hunting the beasts, the players are hunted by the hunters (Vampire the Masquerade or Requiem anybody).

Liches.
I don't recall ever seeing liches in another game system outside DnD, that said, they are quintesential to the settings. Liches are the sort of creatures that can make vampires tremble. Powerful spell casters and nearly immortal. If there is anybody behind a plot, then it should probably be a lich. First rule of thumb, make these beasties rare. Even in a high magic campaign world there should be more than one or two liches known to the characters at anyone time. Liches are evil, they are powerful, and it's a delight to throw one at a group of adventures, especcially if you are able to reveal to them that this beast has been behind all the evil workings and machinations that the adventurers have encountered.

Undead, like dragons should be used to flavor a campaign and give a distinct stamp on the adventures.

Well that's all for now, more next week where I'll continue this discussion moving into Demons, and "monsters" aka abberations.

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 10:48 AM