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Patreon backer Mairi brings you this special episode, all about my approach to monster creation. Obviously, we've only scratched the surface, and I'd really like to hear what you all do when you're designing a new monster for your game!

Thanks to Ray Otus for our thumbnail image. The intro music is a clip from "Solve the Damn Mystery" by Jesse Spillane, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License

Comments

Steve

GMing, for me, is about inventing in play, inventing for play. Finding that fruitful void (a Vincent Baker term, but related to mechanics http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/119), and exploiting it. In my ongoing Trail of Cthulhu game, the characters were exploring a strange city inside a pyramid so I thought I'd write it up with snippets of street scenes. The one piece which had the most resonance with the players, and with me, was this: A procession, bearers carry a great sagging extruded cloth bag. They hold it up with sticks. Greenish fruit falls from it. It crawls towards the crowd. Children rush out from the crowd to pick it up. Children of a certain age partake. Is this a parasite? Bunting on the buildings. People cheering, leaning out of windows. I paraphrased that in session 86, and with some meandering, it was finally wrapped up in session 123. That a purple worm's worth of play.

monsterman

One of the main villains of my old 5e campaign came about this way: I wanted some imposing names for high-ranking officers in the empire they were currently in, and offhand I named one of them the Immortal Buffalo General. It was basically a reference to M. Bison from Street Fighter, but it turned into a whole arc of the campaign. I remembered just after that post that the term came from Vincent!