Goodman Games

goodmangames wrote:Agree in theory, though in practice it's hard to keep that kind of information from players.

GnomeBoy wrote:Just pray for players like me who can't quite remember how spells work anyway.

mshensley wrote:I agree with you in theory, but it seems like it would be a royal PITA to dm a game where I had to look up the results of every, single spell by myself.

finarvyn wrote:

mshensley wrote:I agree with you in theory, but it seems like it would be a royal PITA to dm a game where I had to look up the results of every, single spell by myself.

Oh, I wasn't thinking of the spell charts as much as some of the other random things like monsters. My example was kind of poor, in retrospect, but it shows the idea if not a specific instance.

Sort of like a monster encounter where you read a description from a monster book ... "you encounter a huge, lumbering humanoid which looks like a warty creature with mottled flesh, elongated facial features and nasty claws" ... and everyone looks at each other and says "troll!"

You're trying to make it mysterious and full of flavor, but astute players who have read the book* know too much.



* The example is from the C&C Monsters & Treasure book, if you're curious.

goodmangames wrote:I've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but I can't remember for sure, so here is a brief commentary on monsters.

One of the refreshing elements of reading Appendix N books is that they have a knack for presenting creatures in a fresh manner. Most of the Appendix N books were published before the genre of "fantasy" existed. There was a time where "adventure" books sometimes took place in fantastic settings, but they all fell into the "adventure" category. Somewhere along the way, the "fantasy" category evolved. I don't have any real factual knowledge of how/when this happened but it seems obvious to me over the last 30 years or so: book stores now have dedicated fantasy sections and everybody knows what an "orc" is, but neither of those was the case in 1970. What that means is that fantasy books published in the "pre-genre" era have this wonderful naivete about the nature of the creatures they present. Nowadays fantasy books present archetypes and detailed descriptions, and clarify how "my version of a dwarf is different from this other one"; back in the 1970's and before, a monster was just some sort of creature and it was always presented in a fresh way.

In that vein, something I want to do with DCC RPG is bring back the novelty of monsters. Insofar as the published modules go, this means a moratorium on using existing monsters. The first four written DCC RPG modules do not include a single "existing" monster. Every combat encounter is with a new critter designed for that encounter. Because the monster stat system is really simple (REALLY simple), you can bang out a new monster in a very short amount of time, so it's easy to create creatures on the fly as you go. I just ran a game today where every single encounter was with a creature that doesn't have an "entry" in any monster book anywhere (including the DCC RPG core rulebook)...it's all creatures I made up for this adventure, and they all fit and make sense.

In games, players are constantly unsure of what they face. Is that weird cultist with no face more powerful than me, or not? The four-legged lizard with the gold horn and the hypnotic eyes...how powerful is it? The enormous devil-frog that's the size of a house...it's big, but how dangerous is it? (I love that one because EVERY group assumes it has a sticky-frog-tongue attack...which it doesn't...but it IS psionic...) You get the idea: no player has any idea of the nature of their opponents, beyond what is described, and many of the creatures are truly weird and unusual.

The DCC RPG also encourages judges to make minor changes to monsters in order to make them more interesting for players to encounter. Make your orcs blue instead of green, and watch what happens. "What are these blue humanoids? What powers do they have?" Well, they have the same stats as orcs but the players don't know that! For undead, give them perfectly preserved bodies and normal skin-and-bones. Why do they have to rot? A zombie or ghoul with pale white skin and a normal, if glassy-eyed, appearance is far more terrifying than rotting flesh, especially when they don't bleed when wounded and advance in a a lurching fashion.

I can go on and on (and I do so in DCC RPG ), but the point is that I don't want any one monster to get re-used that much. The DCC RPG core book will include rules for all the archetypal monsters, but I am on the fence about doing any monster books. Gamers love them but I don't want to end up in a rut where the creatures come from a predictable place. Every adventure needs to have specific foes that are thematically appropriate and maintain the sense of true fantasy and novelty.

So, that's a roundabout way of saying that I'm not sure how many monster books I'll publish. What do you guys think? Do people want a lot of monster books? Or, knowing that it's very simple to create new monsters, would you rather just create your own?

finarvyn wrote: ... and everyone looks at each other and says "troll!"