I’ve been on a personal crusade to educate myself on monster creation.
Some Game Masters get by on just a core book or Basic D&D Player’s Handbook. These GMs make up all their own monsters from scratch tailored to their campaign. I admire that level of creativity.
I’ve been pushing my creativity and personal boundaries when it comes to making monsters lately. I have some ambitions about creating my own monster book for Shadowdark RPG sometime in the near future using the outline from BareBones Fantasy that I made several years ago. (Okay, ten years ago. Yikes!) BareBones did not have a monster book when it came out. I don’t know if the online community ever got one published, but we were working on one.
Creating creatures from scratch is not as easy as it looks.
I dunno why, but Siren Head freaks me out. I’m not scared of much of anything, but Siren Head hits on a nerve in my brain. I think it’s the sounds of the Emergency Broadcast System that usually accompanies the monster along with the tornado warning sirens on his head that get me. I grew up in small town Iowa where that was kind of a big deal if you heard those sounds.
I intend to come up with monsters that evoke that sort of creepiness for players. I want GMs to read some of these monsters and shudder, maybe even cringe a little. No, not everything will have tentacles, but there will definitely be some of that, too. Trying to evoke specific emotions, especially fear or uneasiness, is pretty tough in a TTRPG.
Jump scares get me. I’m fine with walking into paranormal situations, haunted houses, CE5 experiences, and so on. Rational horror doesn’t get to me. I can watch horror movies all night. Jump scares make me panic temporarily. I’m not really a fan. I don’t necessarily think my players are either. Most of your players probably aren’t either if I had to guess.
I want to go beyond basic. I want to come out with a supplement that would make the 1st Ed AD&D Monster Manual 2 proud. I want to make the Fiend Folio for Shadowdark RPG. (Hopefully without duplicating anything.) That brings me to the next concern.
They say there are no new ideas.
There are going to be some concepts that minimally overlap amongst almost every monster book ever written. Most, if not all of us take our inspiration from the Basic D&D’s monster listings which in turn took inspiration from real world mythology. So, all things being said and done, even the concept of “monster” goes back to the earliest roots of real world human traditions.
Much like religion explains what humans didn’t understand at the time, the term “monster” represents whatever is out lurking in the mysterious dark that presents a threat. Monsters are that which can strike brutally, without remorse, without morning. Sometimes monsters are there in the light, huge, slobbering rabid beasts such as bears and lions. Other times they’re harmless herbivores that no one in the area has ever seen before like a giraffe in the middle of Iowa.
So, the trick to creating mythical beasts both fantastic and mundane revolves around creating new habitats, stories, conditions, and lairs. I want to go back to a time when children were told to stay in their beds during the dark hours because the adults weren’t even sure what lurked nearby. In a fantasy realm with magic, where the dark is truly menacing as it is in Shadowdark, who only knows what’s lurking around the corner? Let alone what’s lurking around the corner underground, where there could be anything guarding that ancient loot?
Obviously, a good monster needs that one thing I ain’t got.
I can write cool descriptions of the creatures I see in my head. I can communicate to my players what they see coming around the corner, or more importantly what they didn’t see grab their buddy around the corner. What I can’t do- I can’t draw, paint, or digitally image all these things that dwell in between my ears and on my keyboard.
Yeah, I can find clip art of Orks and a Jabberwocky. I can manipulate stuff that already exists- edit, crop, and overlay photos. But I can’t find preexisting art for something that didn’t exist before it came across in my mind. I could do the unthinkable and try to describe everything to an AI, but it would have no frame of reference it could draw from even if it was ethical to use it. Someday, when I have a budget for art, I’m sitting down with a hand picked artist and explaining all these cool ideas and maybe see them come to life.
I love monsters, and there is room for so much more.
There is plenty of room for everyone to grow in the TTRPG industry. We’re not competition for one another unless we simply want a benchmark to compete with. I can’t guarantee my monsters will be the coolest thing ever or the most original. I don’t know that for certain. But what I will say is my monsters will be cool, exciting, and hopefully a fresh take on old tropes. Also, no Owlbears and a complete shift away from certain other iconic monsters.
Thank you for stopping by. My fascination with monsters goes on as I hope yours does as well. I appreciate you so very much. Please embrace that which brings you joy today.
Jeff's Game Box 