Monsters in RPGs... misused?

[Jim LotFP]

'allo...

The Monster. Such a staple of fantasy RPGs that books and books have been published detailing all of the mean and nasty creatures that characters can run into and then kill.

It turns into a shopping list of adversaries, and instead of each creature being important, or the potential for being the focus of an entire story, instead they become a random encounter in the woods, or the monster in the cavern room 25b, destroying the wonder and danger of creatures that can not exist in the real world, reducing them to a series of combat stats and meaningless flavor text.

Take a zombie. Usually a low grade threat to any experienced adventurer. Dead guy walking? No problem! But let's re-think this one. Watch some classic zombie movies like Dawn of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead. Zombies inconsequential? This is a creature that feels no pain, requires no proper biological functions to work in order to move, and to kill. The dead are walking! This is no everyday thing! This is no easily vanquished enemy! Cut them, they don't care. Break a bone, they will continue on. Does destroying the brain work? Or do you totally have to destroy the body to the point that it can't move anymore? If it's a rotting body you're fighting, wouldn't wounds you receive be quite nasty beyond the physical damage done? And where did it come from? Are there more? Will the dead stop rising? The very appearance of the walking dead should be cause for extreme alarm in a campaign, not a moment's menace.

The worst offender of this has to be D&D's Kobold. A 'monster' of no special abilities, weak enough that a child can defeat one. They're just weaker versions of goblins which are weaker versions of orcs which are weaker versions of ogres... Seems that anyone who needs that many different creatures can't come up with decent scenarios so instead they dazzle the player with effectively interchangeable evil bad guys, and then litter the world with increasingly strange creatures for no reason other than they would be neat to fight the players.

No thought, just window dressing, and players take it all in as absolutely normal very quickly, destroying the impact that any of these creatures could have on a game.

Comments?

 

[numbskull]

Well, I remember my first character (4 HP) being killed by a giant rat.

The problem with D&D is that people do not play by the rules - they shorthand stuff to make things easier and quicker - at least that's how it was in AD&D - which is the only version I knew somewhat well. They may have changed the things dramatically in the past few incarnations, but man, if you stuck by the rules - didn't cheat on your stats and other stuff - giant rats were fuckin' scary at first level. And wearing plate mail? Forget it! You had to rest like every 20 minutes.

I doubt that addresses your issue, but many problems arise when people take the "Guideline" tact with the rulebooks and start fudging things to make the numbers add up quicker.

And that's a critical dilemma for games. The problem with rpgs in general is how difficult it is for the GM to captivate an audience and keep them interested. Few GMs have the creativity to make a single zombie encounter interesting and fun (which is why so many games turn into Monty Haul escapades) - although it certainly could be an exciting encounter in the hands of the right person. Therein lies the rub with RPGs, as even the most well written module could be rendered into dust by a lame GM. At the same time, poor adventures can be enhanced tremendously by a good GM. Someboy needs to write a book on how to be a great GM (if they haven't already).

I just remembered a game I hated - Joruune (or something like that). That game tried to be exotic and stingy with treasure/magic, but it just wasn't interesting because the players were cast in roles that basically made them helpless most of the time (at least that's the way the GM ran the campaign I was in).

 

[Jim LotFP]

And that's a critical dilemma for games. The problem with rpgs in general is how difficult it is for the GM to captivate an audience and keep them interested.

I can have this problem with published adventures, because they aren't paced the way I like to GM. Players often have problems with my GMing style the first or second time, but if they come back for a third adventure, they're minemineminemine. I like making adventures around themes and atmosphere and making that a bit more important than the list of bad guys and the goal at the end. They also know I'll deliver their RPG cliches to them a lot less often, but in a lot more memorable ways, then most... I just can't stand plain treasure hunts and bug hunts. boooorriinngg

Either that or they all nodded their heads during the game and then talked about how shitty a GM I was on their way home.

Someboy needs to write a book on how to be a great GM (if they haven't already)

It's almost impossible to do that because the dynamics between the GM and players are impossible to predict... but I'd be glad to take on the task of How to Write An Adventure sometime in the future, when everyone in the world thinks I'm a genius designer and wants to know how I do it. hah!

I just remembered a game I hated - Joruune (or something like that). That game tried to be exotic and stingy with treasure/magic, but it just wasn't interesting because the players were cast in roles that basically made them helpless most of the time (at least that's the way the GM ran the campaign I was in).

Skyrealms! woooo! I remember paging through that and going, "Well, this'll confuse everyone so much nobody will have the chance to get into character."


edit: Damn, I sound a bit big headed there... just riding on the memories of games gone by where I was always told how different my games were than what players were used to... heh.

 

[Carbonized]

I once played with a GM in AD&D who was a masochist. I think i had a Dwarven Warrior about 4th lvl. Anyway i came across an "oddly shaped hand/throwing axe" well i nor anyone in the party could identify the thing so i said, what the hell i'll use it anyway. So we get into a skirmish and i decide to toss the thing at a goblin or what have you. Swooooooooooooosh... THUD... it hits.. so i'm like yeaaaaaaaaa... then all of a sudden the thing whips around and comes right back at me. As you well know Dwarves aren't all that graceful with their agility and i make saving throw roll to try to catch like an idiot instead of just dodging. Well it comes back smacks my ass and i think i died! Don't remember since it was a while ago but i think that was the result. I wasn't happy naturally but ya know it was still fun. Hack n slash adventures become tedious and boring.

 

[The King In Yellow]

I'd have to agree with the premise.
Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Kobolds.....with they way they are currently written in most games these days, what's the difference AND the point? The endless monster hordes that gain you XP.
Honestly, if I wanted that, I'd go play Everquest online, ok? I used to MUD and that's all such dreck is.
It's my particular opinion that people have forgotten the basic enemy of all mankind - himself. If you want to go kill things, fine. But instead of making up pointless monsters, why not the next barbarian tribe beyond the borders of the civilized world? Armies of an ancient sorcerer, the skulking assassins of a thieves' guild.....man makes the greatest and most equalized adversary for any RPG player.
Granted, I'm more fond of political-based RPGs and intrigue than going for a standard dungeon crawl. Even dungeon crawls, however, can be made better by introducing man into the element. It's the dungeon of the dread necromancer Aseralak, stacked with his most devious traps and willing guardsmen and at its center the source of his power.....
Call of Cthulhu always had a good idea in how they treated monsters - even the ones that didn't cost sanity were hell to kill [but not too much hell] simply because they were monsters.
The White Wolf games in general also had decently balanced adversaries.
At any rate, in general, there is a lot of improvement for use of monsters in fantasy.
Mainly in giving them things like <i>culture</i>. And <i>history</i>.

 

[Jim LotFP]

Mainly in giving them things like <i>culture</i>. And <i>history</i>.

Well the main rules of the game itself, including the monsters book, don't include any humanoid monsters (unless they are VERY unusual like the medusa...). They're just built on the same rules as humans.

If/when the campaign world book comes out, there will be dwarves and elves (not that players will be happy with what I do with them and they certainly won't be friendly with humans... I hope my ideas are very different from what people are used to while still keeping the dwarves=miners, elves=forestfolk characteristics), but the dominant humanoid race on the continent will be "goblins"... conceptually something like the mongols, roaming the interior plains. And that's going to be IT as far as 'two arms, two legs, and a head' races go.

 

[The King In Yellow]

Well the main rules of the game itself, including the monsters book, don't include any humanoid monsters (unless they are VERY unusual like the medusa...). They're just built on the same rules as humans.

If/when the campaign world book comes out, there will be dwarves and elves (not that players will be happy with what I do with them and they certainly won't be friendly with humans... I hope my ideas are very different from what people are used to while still keeping the dwarves=miners, elves=forestfolk characteristics), but the dominant humanoid race on the continent will be "goblins"... conceptually something like the mongols, roaming the interior plains. And that's going to be IT as far as 'two arms, two legs, and a head' races go.

Yo. I've always thought goblin hordes were rather underrated.
I've had similar concepts about goblins in my own campaign ideas, so I'll be interested in seeing them used like that.

 

[Yippee38]

Have you ever read or played the AD&D module called Dragon Mountain. I think it was a 2nd edition thing that came in a big box. It was unique (AFAIK) in that the main adversary you faced trying to get to the dragon was kobolds. This is for higher level characters keep in mind.

The WAY the kobolds were portrayed made them very dangerous. First, they had numbers. Second, the were cunning. Rather than run headlong at the party, they would ambush them at one of the many traps, or attack when the party is trying to rest and heal. Their archers would hold their arrows until the casters start casting to disrupt their spells. I never got a chance to play it, but I thought it was one of the best written adventures I'd ever read.

 

[Jim LotFP]

Have you ever read or played the AD&D module called Dragon Mountain. I think it was a 2nd edition thing that came in a big box. It was unique (AFAIK) in that the main adversary you faced trying to get to the dragon was kobolds. This is for higher level characters keep in mind.

The WAY the kobolds were portrayed made them very dangerous. First, they had numbers. Second, the were cunning. Rather than run headlong at the party, they would ambush them at one of the many traps, or attack when the party is trying to rest and heal. Their archers would hold their arrows until the casters start casting to disrupt their spells. I never got a chance to play it, but I thought it was one of the best written adventures I'd ever read.

I had that, yeah. I really liked that because it fucked with people. In the mid-80s there was an ongoing discussion in the letters pages of Dragon magazine on how to make kobolds and goblins a dire threat to higher level characters. I liked how the mountain itself was 'open ended' in that the monsters weren't assigned specific rooms as well. Good use of monsters there instead of having 3294823794 creatures in 34892342 rooms to make the individual 'encounters' different from each other.