Those of you who read more than one sub-forum may be aware that I've been watching a fair amount of Buffy recently.  As such one element leapt out at me, the idea that any vampire they encountered could be researched as an individual by the Watcher, that despite the rather flimsy nature of the buffy vampires (seriously, almost any bit of wood driven into roughly any part of the center of the chest is an instantly fatal heart punch!), vampires that had survived more than a few decades were well known monsters, with established histories.

At first it struck me for what it is, in that show, a cheap excuse to get a little Exposition in place of prolonged scenes of 'establishing character'.

However, a little thought trickled through my electrified grey matter, swelling until it was ripe and bursting forth, spewing its amniotic juices all over your interwebz...

While D&D certainly falls into a certain trend of 'set up the critter, kill it for XP, move on to another critter' play, it doesn't demand it, and certain creatures deserve to be singled out by the GM, and subsequently the players, for 'special attentions'.

Vampires are the biggest, but not necessarily the only.

Vampires have Names.

But what does that mean, I hear you asking in your squeeky little voices (I find it helps my megalomania to imagine all of you wearing pink tutu's and speaking in helium voices...).

There is a certain amount of power in giving a thing a name, or in fact denying it a name.  Vampires wear human faces, have human pasts, have human names.  It is this fact that elevates them above some mere predator who happens to feed on human beings.  A beast cannot be other than it is, a Monster however...

The decision to Name or not Name, a creature is largely one of personal choice, of course.  A Dragon may not be particularly improved as a 'big bad' for having a well established history and a colorful moniker.  

But when dealing with those Monsters which were human, and still wear human faces, I believe the choice is really no choice at all; like the choice between having an okay game and having a fucking legendary game. What idiot would honestly reject the fucking legendary for the merely okay?  So it is we come back to Vampires.

Though I find it but the weakest possible use of a 'Named' Vampire in a game, the campaign that finished up last year made use of this.  For the entire campaign we'd heard, distantly, rumors of the 'missing' King. When we made our way to the bottom of the Dungeon to fight the Lich, who did we discover was the Lich's newest undead henchman? The King. The fight was much more memorable for many reasons relating to this one established fact... not least of which was how the Vampire died: By his own hands (or, holy sword...) once we had appealed to his recently departed humanity and his kingly duties; but mostly  because we knew exactly who we were fighting.

As I said, however: This was among the weakest ways to use a Named monster.  Convienent, fairly easy to plan and implement and, of course, effective, if not precisely horrifying. Then too, we were dealing with a character who would have been still alive had he not been turned...

Ideally the Monster should be a character, of course. And with that in mind we must look at the motivations and drives that make such a character work.

I personally have grown to feel the 'need to feed' robs the Vampire of much of his horror.  The Vampire becomes little more than a slave to his own survival, far more sympathetic.  Yet, traditional depictions of Vampires often seem to have them taking their own sweet time selecting meals, killing for the love of slaughter or for greed rather than need.   This, to me, makes the monster worse.  They kill because they want to, because they enjoy it, not because they have to.  The model becomes the Serial Killer, and they all have Names as well.

Imagine then, your group of players encounter a nobleman or merchant who becomes something of a Patron.  After a few adventures they hear word of Vampire attacks locally, then upon researching they discover the Name and some of the history of the Vampire they are hunting, which in turn makes the Vampire take interest in them, attacking those near them, smearing their reputation and so on... until the end when they discover the Vampire has been their old Patron all along!

Okay, so that's sort of cheese.  I've got plenty of good wine, so its fine.

Food for thought. Note that much of what I just said applies to werewolves and other lycanthropes, and, if your game includes them, sort of in reverse to 'Frankenstein Monsters', who are frequently denied a Name of their own. Note that Flesh Golems, a la D&D don't really work for this without a bit more effort... though putting a familiar face on top of the Golem may serve to remind players that this particular creation is a bit more creepy than others.

I recall once hearing about a GM running Feng Shui. Every time he added a detail to an NPC, they got a power boost of some sort. So if the players asked lots of questions about this guy, he would eventually become unstoppable.

I don't know how the campaign went, but it does make for an amusing anecdote.

I gamed with a horrible GM (who is actually a good friend) for a while who would have "X" threat happening in his Champions campaign.  He'd have no real thought about what the actual threat was, just as the characters adventured and explored possible solutions or clues, he'd either use the clues against us (his NPCs being "one step ahead" you see) or create his endgame out of our previously-attempted failures to find a solution, IE "what you thought was the solution and thought you'd discovered to be wrong was in fact right!"

I give a lot of my monsters names, in order to make them memorable, even if they're here only for one session. Now sometimes the names and their personal behaviors make them worth remembering, and sometimes they aren't, however I like to mix it up and add details that are just that--details. Local color is important.

A great deal of games give mechanical significance to names, generally in the form of greater ability to sustain damage and succeed in their endeavors. See Savage Worlds, Feng Shui, Mutants and Masterminds, etc.

Of course, there are also Truenamers, but that's another matter entirely.

Strange. I could have sworn I was talking almost purely about presentation and yet virtually every response has turned around and referenced mechanics. Perhaps I'll re-read my OP tomorrow and discover I was, once again, high on life when I typed it and had no faaking clue what I was going on about.

I swear there is at least two of me on this forum. Maybe three.

And not a one of us can write worth a damn.

I think that, in general, the feel of monsters is generally reduced to a "ho-hum" sort of approach due to the nature of - at least in D&D - the MM. The majority of players are at least passingly familiar with a wide range of creatures, if they haven't just read through the whole thing and memorized the vast majority of things they'll encounter.

I know that, as a player, it sort of takes the wonder out of things when the DM gives a two-sentence description of a creature and I immediately recognize it and am aware of what it is capable of (this happened the other week, with a shield guardian). Yes, the character doesn't know what it is, but the player does, and differentiating character knowledge from player knowledge is hard enough - but getting back into the mindset of someone who has no idea what they're up against, that's nigh-impossible.

I think something that might help is to give creatures resistance or immunities to more things (I know I'm getting into mechanics, but bear with me), or weird weaknesses that are flavorfully appropriate. I also think that, while some of these resistances or weaknesses could be cookie-cutter (all vampires freak out when you strongly present a holy symbol, for instance), some of them should be general weaknesses that vary from instance to instance (ghosts freak out if you strongly present an item that they owned in life), while even others should be straight-up unique (Bob the Ghost died from lightning, so will freak out if you use lightning-based attacks).

Buffy is a special case of special cases... Every monster is researchable. It's a setting where "Nothing new can threaten us" but the old keeps coming back. It's a setting where every bad-guy's defeat is temporary setbacks for evil. Only vampires seem to be individually named as a matter of verisimilitude... Each was human, and each is unique. And each is defeated permanently once spiked. (Exceptions: Darla, Angel.) Their name is thus important, much like every slayer seems recorded somewhere.

The myriad of named demon types in Buffy is interesting. Some are historical (as in in historical use), some are made up, a few are literary in origin (Dracula), and some are descriptors. It reinforces the settings "No new enemies" feel. The new enemies are terefore all the more creepy, since they can't be clearly classified and dealt with by research.

It all culminates in a setting with a strong sense of past.

Joss Whedon is briliant. Deranged, too, to come up with the bizzare stuff the staffers blame him for (Once More with Feeling, Scream).

In any case, the same technique can and does work in any game system... but it creates a particular "no new threats" feel.

Angel season 1 felt far different specifically because it didn't have the constant "research conquers all" mode; Angel simply knows so damned much.

I like to name my monsters. In fact, I'd much rather give a name and/or a description than a name out of a monster book.
I took my lead on this from fantasy stories and Harryhousen movies, though, not Buffy. You don't fight a medusa but the medusa and there is a world of difference between the two. Basically anything with brains has a plan and name and all the stuff that goes with it.

Quote from: Aos;322121I like to name my monsters. In fact, I'd much rather give a name and/or a description than a name out of a monster book.
I took my lead on this from fantasy stories and Harryhousen movies, though, not Buffy. You don't fight a medusa but the medusa and there is a world of difference between the two. Basically anything with brains has a plan and name and all the stuff that goes with it.

I like that difference, a versus The. I'll remember that.

Spike, I tend to only name monsters and NPCs if they survive the first encounter with the PCs, or if I'm resonably certain that the mentioning of the thing and its death won't be in the same game.

There is a reverse problem, of everything having a name so that the players get bored keeping track of it. I roll all my dice in the open, so I can't really control what fights will turn out memorable and what ones will be a joke. Sometimes though, a surprise fight that turned into a big deal can be blown up by letting them learn more about the bad guy after the fact.

Quote from: Aos;322121You don't fight a medusa but the medusa and there is a world of difference between the two.

Exactly - in the world of Greek myth, there was one Medusa, and one Minotaur.

And that makes it a more magical place, not less, through having a small number of unique monstrous antagonists rather than a slew of anonymous XP sources.

Just to get a better understanding of your OP, are you kind of saying that any monster with a human face/aspect should have have a name to make them more memorable?  Whether knowing their name give you or them more power makes no difference, just the fact they were once human, means a past with a name.

One of the reasons I prefer historical and modern gaming is that there are no "monsters" per se. Aside from soldiers, lackeys, and the like, virtually every significant opponent the adventurers face is a whole person, with a name and a personality and a history.

One of the most interesting and challenging games I've run, from the behind-the-screen perspective at least, was a play-by-post about the French counter-insurgency in Algeria. What was interesting about it to me is that the insurgents weren't the primary antagonists: the game focused more on the relationship between the player characters and the other men in their section/platoon, and it was within their unit that they encountered allies and rivals, even villains as such.

As an aside, my favorite presentation of vampires to date is 30 Days of Night: savage and feral. Suave, angsty vampires blow hard.

Gnomeworks:  Again, part of it is presentation. Every PLAYER, regardless of familiarity with the Monster Manual, is well aware of the traditional weaknesses of Vampires, and their abilities. That doesn't prevent them from enjoying a good vampire horror story, does it?  Forget trying to make the nature of vampires mysterious, that's a lost cause regardless of game system.  In fact, I'm advocating the idea that even the person of the vampire himself isn't such a mystery... its that detailing, that personalizing the threat that makes it more horrific and memorable.

Aramis: only really in terms of television shows.  The idea that all these ancient horrors are researchable is hardly a unique element in history or fiction.

Cranewings: You missed my example, then. We only fought our former king one time, and mechanically the fight wasn't particularly challenging to us, being merely a resource expenditure prior to engaging the Lich.  What made it memorable was the idea we knew exactly WHO we were fighting, and why it was such a tragedy... and a necessity.

Venosha:  Essentially. We are talking about a technique for GMing, in making a fight more than just an 'encounter'. High powered characters have, in D&D's storied history taken down entire Pantheons of Gods.  Challenging 'fights' are a well established technique, but one with severe limits.   I'm talking about making fights more meaningful, mostly through non-mechanical means.

The Shaman: who said anything about suave and angsty? Remember, I even advocate taking away the 'excuse' of 'needing to feed' in favor of simply becoming something that kills because it can.  But then, it does sound like you've already got a handle on this sort of gaming, so who am I to teach you to suck eggs?