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How many monsters do you need?


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How many monsters should a TTFRPG have?

 

I like 'Bestiaries': I have vols. 1 thru 5 for PF 1e. They're lots of fun and I get a lot of inspiration from them, but I don't think having hundreds, or thousands, of monsters is necessary for a great campaign.

 

How much really comes down to just a few numbers in the stat-block?

 

There is the old bit of 'DM' advice about 'The Bear'. X Hit points, X Armor Points, a Bite and a Claw attack doing X damage. Change up the description It's an a savage denizen of the deep woods. Its an emaciated, shambling undead. It's a scaled, reptilian survivor of a lost world. Its a Bite and Claw attack. Multiple monsters from the same stat-block.

 

The same monster can yield up a wildly different 'feel' depending on the encounter context.

Run into a party of broo/orcs in the wilderness. Fight them before the gates of a beleaguered village, or face them in their subterranean lair. Same monsters, different encounters requiring different Player Character tactics.

 

In a setting where 'Nightvision' isn't ubiquitous environmental conditions can radically change an encounter. Can you even see what's creeping beyond the circle of torch-light.? So the terrain and other conditions can and should bring variety to encounters.

 

Monsters can be categorized by their combat roles: mooks, 'snipers' with ranged attacks, perhaps magical ones; creatures which do brutal damage; creatures which can only be harmed by select attacks; and creatures which can target character abilities and equipment. Monsters in different combinations of these roles can lead to a lot of varied play.

 

A troll with a pack of zombie servitors at night in a humid swamp.

 

A giant and his wolves in an alpine pass while a blizzard rages.

 

An encounter with a monster should be more than just putting a miniature on the table.

 

Finally, for the 'grim-dark' style I prefer; having ten different types of humanoids for each terrain type is just silly.

 

I think generally my games probably break down as follows:

 

40% Human. Peasants, traders, nobles and their entourages, bandits, raiders, and cultists.

 

25% Non-humans. What-ever intelligent non-humans are present in the setting.

 

10% Animals. Could include mega-fauna, dinosaurs, or 'giant' variants.

 

15% Mythic/Magical. Your dragons, basilisks, giant's etc.

 

8% Sorcery-spawned. Undead, demons, constructs, and the like.

 

1%. Unique. Legendary creatures, fallen gods, vortices of sentient magic, planar travelers.

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I was going to answer "none" because a fantasy world can rely solely on humans and natural animals, but I realised that's not what you mean when you write "monster". 🙂

Combat-wise, I like the categories from D&D 4th edition, with 6 standard roles (artillery, brute, lurker, skirmisher, soldier, controler) and 4 levels (minions, standard, elite and solo). 

Minions are cannon fodder, with only 1 hit point. Not suited for all kind off games. 

Solo are the "boss encounter" type of antagonist, with as many hit points as 4 standard enemies. 

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The overall number doesn't matter to me.  For the sake of orderly progression I prefer to arrange my dungeons alphabetically, room-by-room, with a different monster in each one.  For D&D, beginning with Aboleth, concluding with Zombie.  If they weren't intended to be encountered in that order, they would not have been organised in the book thusly.

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Quality over Quantity. If a GM makes the "monsters", whatever that happens to mean for their campaign, memorable then they don't need lots of different monsters to have a good game. I once ran a campaign based on Irish myths where the PCs were (mostly) Irish fighting against Formorians. The Formorii were literately the only "monster" that showed up in the  campaign, but everything worked out fine because the game was all about freeing themselves from their oppressors.

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1 hour ago, Ian Absentia said:

The overall number doesn't matter to me.  For the sake of orderly progression I prefer to arrange my dungeons alphabetically, room-by-room, with a different monster in each one.  For D&D, beginning with Aboleth, concluding with Zombie.  If they weren't intended to be encountered in that order, they would not have been organised in the book thusly.

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5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Quality over Quantity. If a GM makes the "monsters", whatever that happens to mean for their campaign, memorable then they don't need lots of different monsters to have a good game. I once ran a campaign based on Irish myths where the PCs were (mostly) Irish fighting against Formorians. The Formorii were literately the only "monster" that showed up in the  campaign, but everything worked out fine because the game was all about freeing themselves from their oppressors.

Have you read the second series of Corum books by Michael Moorcock ?

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23 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Have you read the second series of Corum books by Michael Moorcock ?

Yup. Although I was pulling more from Kenneth C. Flint  than Michael Moorcock for this. The PCs were humans (Milesians) with the Tuatha De Danann being hidden folk who (mostly) resided in the Otherworld. Everything got customized too, it wasn't exactly Ireland, and the baddies weren't called Formorians (I think they were called Morinth or some such, I don't remember exactly) and they used troll stats, with either chaotic features or the Hawkmoon mutation table (again, I forgot exactly how I did it).

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On 2/25/2023 at 3:10 PM, Agentorange said:

I've not read the Flint books - any good ?

Yeah, they are. Kinda like if Goerge Lucas took a crack at Celtic Mythology., although that could be the whole "Hero's Journey" thing with those kind of stories.Flint takes mythical characters and makes them into them into relatable human beings with personalities. I liked them. Now admittedly I read them some time ago so they might not be all that I remember them to be, but I recommend giving one of his books a shot. 

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3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, they are. Kinda like if Goerge Lucas took a crack at Celtic Mythology., although that could be the whole "Hero's Journey" thing with those kind of stories.Flint takes mythical characters and makes them into them into relatable human beings with personalities. I liked them. Now admittedly I read them some time ago so they might not be all that I remember them to be, but I recommend giving one of his books a shot. 

They seem to be going fairly cheap second hand, i'll give the first one a go and see what happens.

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17 hours ago, Agentorange said:

They seem to be going fairly cheap second hand, i'll give the first one a go and see what happens.

He also wrote under the  pen name Casey Flynn. I think he was concerned at first about how it would affect his teaching career. 

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Returning to the topic.....for me the correct number of monsters is the number i can believe in. The whole  adifferent  monster in every room of a dungeon thing isn't believable  - not unless there's some mega magic  hand wavium reason for it. But I am happy to believe in lots of different herd animals and their predators on a vast veldt or savannah.....

Likewise millions of zombies  living in the sewers of a city goes beyond the willing suspension of disbelief....but 30 different kinds of undead in a long buried necropolis dedicated to the worship of a chaotic undead deity I can believe in.

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4 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Returning to the topic.....for me the correct number of minsters is the number i can believe in. The whole  adifferent  monster in every room of a dungeon thing isn't believable  - not unless there's some mega magic  hand wavium reason for it. But I am happy to believe in lots of different herd animals and their predators on a vast veldt or savannah.....

That has a lot to do with it.Believable adventures vs. old style dungeon crawls.Keep in mind though that the real reason why D&D. had so many monsters was that originally there wasn't no customization of individual monsters. An Orc was a 1 hit die monster, a Kobold was a 1/2 hit die monster, and so on. So for a GM to make a given adventure or encounter unique generally mean't adding a new type of monster. 

RQ/BRP never had this problem as monster were written up the same way characters were and could be improved and customized the same way. D&D didn't get like that until 3E, and by then most of the heavy lifting as far an introducing monsters goes, had already been done, and they had this huge backlog of monsters. The, with OGL there were even more creators each with some incentive to make their own supplements stand out, so more new monsters.

4 hours ago, Agentorange said:



Likewise millions of zombies 

Living Zombies? 

4 hours ago, Agentorange said:

living in the sewers of a city goes beyond the willing suspension of disbelief...

New York, New York.

Seriously this actually touches upon a lot of the flaws of old D&D. Stuff like 60 foot dragons in 10  foot  by 10  foot by 10 foot rooms, the fact that no peasant could survive going out in the wilderness long enough to plane crops or hunt game,  or that a given ecosystem couldn't support that many monster. Manticore have to eat, yknow.

4 hours ago, Agentorange said:

.but 30 different kinds of undead in a long buried necropolis dedicated to the worship of a chaotic undead deity I can believe in.

Why 30 different kinds? Was the necromancer Baskin Robbins and got killed before they reached 31? I mean why would someone make zombies, and mummies, and vampires, and skeletons, etc, etc. Whats the reason for all the varieties, other than a Gamemaster trying to spice up their adventure?. That's thing thing with most of the monster heavy, tons of variety stuff. I sounds cool to a gamer, but doesn't usually make much sense in the game world. It also makes it tougher to adapt a specfic culture or setting. 

I think that it is a stylistic thing. Those who want a realistic game, even if it is a game with fatastic elements, need to crat a world with some sort of internal logic that holds up. Those who want lots of flash and bling just toss out whatever seems good, and don't worry about how well it hold sup to inspection. That's not the kind of game they want to play. And that probably also playing into why D&D (and game like it) Have so many monsters compared to RuneQuest/BRP. Two different styles of play.

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5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

 

 

Why 30 different kinds? Was the necromancer Baskin Robbins and got killed before they reached 31? I mean why would someone make zombies, and mummies, and vampires, and skeletons, etc, etc.

 

because they got bored 😁 or the chaotic undead generator machine was set to random and nobody knew how to fix it. Skeletons are more like constructs anyway - the mummies and vampires having intelligence etc are more like undead in my book. My point is though that in a temple dedicated to a god of the Undead you'd expect to find a fair few undead it's believable , whereas milions of zombies living....er....existing under a fully functioning city just isn't.

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9 hours ago, Agentorange said:

because they got bored 😁 or the chaotic undead generator machine was set to random and nobody knew how to fix it. Skeletons are more like constructs anyway - the mummies and vampires having intelligence etc are more like undead in my book. My point is though that in a temple dedicated to a god of the Undead you'd expect to find a fair few undead it's believable , whereas milions of zombies living....er....existing under a fully functioning city just isn't.

Oh, I get your point> i was (mostly) teasing. Still it comes down to why are there tons of undead someplace, and why a variety -if there is one. On a tangential note I had a "city of the dead" that wasn't inhabited by dead people. In T&T there is a race of living skeletons that are basically normal people with transparent organs, bodily fluids and skin, which doesn't exactly go over well in a medieval fantasy setting, and they are generally assumed to be monsters. I had some living in their own city away from everything, which had a reputation as a city of the dead. The PCs were travelling by it and saw a little girl skeleton playing, who stopped and waved at them. Really freaked them out. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

... Why 30 different kinds? Was the necromancer Baskin Robbins and got killed before they reached 31? I mean why would someone make zombies, and mummies, and vampires, and skeletons, etc, etc. Whats the reason for all the varieties, other than a Gamemaster trying to spice up their adventure? ...

9 hours ago, Agentorange said:

because they got bored 😁 or the chaotic undead generator machine was set to random and nobody knew how to fix it... My point is though that in a temple dedicated to a god of the Undead you'd expect to find a fair few undead it's believable ...

As Agentorange says, a "god of the Undead" would presumably have all sorts of undead at his/her/their Ancient Temple of Necromancy; any lack shows a lack of piety!

Alternatively, a Boss-level undead (a caster type) might be exploring their undead-creation abilities, or exploring the state of "undeath" itself, in different variations; or trying to achieve different goals with different undead-types.  Boss-monsters have goals, too!

Also, it may be a matter of the "raw materials" to hand.  If you have a week-old corpse, "zombie" is the obvious go-to, but if it's a century old you're animating a skeleton, and if you only have a keepsake of the long-deceased owner you may only be able to summon a ghost.  An undead rising from a grave after their culture mummified them comes back as a mummy, obviously.  So too for the many other types of undead -- perhaps there is often a "function follows form" effect.

Maybe there's some curse on a place, and the dead just keep rising, with no (detectable to the PCs) rhyme or reason.

It's also worth noting that many sorts of undead solve the logistical problem of supplies -- they don't need clean food, fresh water, or "living space."  They also don't die of old age:  at the paltry rate of 1 per week, a necromancer can amass 52 zombies & skeletons in a year; give them centuries and they get an army!


In the end, the "big ol' temple/etc with all manner of undead" is kind of a staple fixture... if you need it justified, it can be.

 

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

...  touches upon a lot of the flaws of old D&D. Stuff like 60 foot dragons in 10  foot  by 10  foot by 10 foot rooms, the fact that no peasant could survive going out in the wilderness long enough to plane crops or hunt game,  or that a given ecosystem couldn't support that many monster. Manticore have to eat, yknow...

Whereas I've never been able to understand or justify this.  Particularly in "dungeons," the number of apex-predator megafauna was entirely out of whack, given the absence of meaninful populations of prey in those dungeons.

Of course, the biophysics of flying, fire-breathing dragons may be an even worse issue, so...

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11 hours ago, g33k said:

Whereas I've never been able to understand or justify this.  Particularly in "dungeons," the number of apex-predator megafauna was entirely out of whack, given the absence of meaninful populations of prey in those dungeons.

The "justification" such as it is, it out of game - namely that some people believe "the more the merrier" and claim that it makes think games more fun.. Part of the reason why some like it and so do not might have to do with how much people know about ecology, biology, physics etc,. and how much they care about such stuff. Many don't care about that stuff and "just want to have fun" while those who know a little about such things will have a harder time trying to figure it out.

For example I once played in a game where the group came to a river, and we asked which was the river was flowing. The GM said from the ocean to the mountains, and most of the group just nodded and took it in stride. Two of use were wondering why a river was running uphill. Was there some sort of backwash? Magical influence? Nope, the GM just picked randomly and failed to grasp the implications.  The GM eventually had to admit this as we kinda got sidetracked by the river, believing it was a clue towards the magical quest we were on. 

 

But' that's the thing. If you know a little about how something works, then you probably can't help but wonder when things don't make sense - or at least get a good laugh from it.. Like when, in some RPGs , characters tote  tens of thousands of gold coins (or more) around, despite their weighing hundreds of pounds. The logistics of running a magic shop in D&D are mind boggling. One mid level party stopping buy to shop requires a silver train.

 

11 hours ago, g33k said:

Of course, the biophysics of flying, fire-breathing dragons may be an even worse issue, so...

Possibly, possibly not. I once saw a video on the possibly of dragons being real and depending on exactly their size, mass, and how their biology worked, they might not be completely impossible. They wouldn't be the monsters of legend, but they could certainly be the source of those legends. A fifteen foot dragon that's trying to eat you  probably looks like a fifty foot dragon!

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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it's also worth considering that some monsters however fierce they may be  may only have a regional presence. there's real world examples of this. The Komodo dragon is a nasty predator - you certainly wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of one, yet they only exist a couple of islands.

The now extinct  ( as far as anybody knows ) Thylacine existed only regionally in Australia and New Guinea. since the focus of RQG has so far been the Dragon Pass area who knows what else is lurking in other parts of Genertela and wider Glorantha ?

 

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On 2/28/2023 at 11:19 AM, Atgxtg said:

In T&T there is a race of living skeletons that are basically normal people with transparent organs, bodily fluids and skin, which doesn't exactly go over well in a medieval fantasy setting, and they are generally assumed to be monsters.

They sound like they were inspired by the ghouls in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales.

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1 hour ago, Bren said:

They sound like they were inspired by the ghouls in Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales.

They probably were. RPGs from the 70s and early 80s drew inspiration from everywhere. Tolkien, Moorcock and Lieber were some of the most influential writers as far as RPGs go. 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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