...or wherever else you get your ideas.

How do ya dream up your new creatures?  Surely everyone here comes up with new monsters and critters that aren't in the game books.

Once I created a winged myconid-thing that spewed toxic spores; it was actually influenced by a winged, batrachian-looking fugly I saw on the cover of a Palladium book, fused with the campaign's theme of an invasion of mold-people (the world was, literally, old and disused).  

Today, I wrote up M20 stats for Froglins, which are nothing less than a FRPG analog of this little fucktard right here:


They have a magical attack (that godawful annoying damn sound) which stuns targets for 1d4 rounds.  They have shortswords, too, just in case.  I'm having a little bit of fun today writing up an adventure centered on running them out of the local hex, so to speak.

Damn froglins.

Whatever you are smoking - I want a hit of it in my coffee.
 Thats both silly and creative  - what you came up with there .

- E.W.C

That old "make up a monster" appendix from the AD&D DMG 1st Ed was a lot of fun. Ditto Traveller book two fauna generation. Rolling on tables has a bad rep, these days!

I had a notebook (hard-cover, swiped from my brother) FULL of monsters made up using the appendix form the DMG. Who knows where it is now? *sigh*

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyThat old "make up a monster" appendix from the AD&D DMG 1st Ed was a lot of fun. Ditto Traveller book two fauna generation. Rolling on tables has a bad rep, these days!


Ned

Not where i come from mate!

I remember making up a flying shark when i was a kid and thinking that it was very original.

I made up shed loads for an ad&d adventure in jungle/wetlands, complete with about 15 different types of poisonous spiders/scorpions and stuff.

I'll see if i can dig it out sometime.

Quote from: KoltarWhatever you are smoking - I want a hit of it in my coffee.
 Thats both silly and creative  - what you came up with there .

That's what I first thought when I read the good doctor's posts. But apparently he comes up with this stuff dead sobber. :cool: :win:

Dr Rotwang! does, indeed, NOT use ANY drugs.  Okay, okay, there's Lisonopril but that's for blood pressure.  Dr Rotwang! used to resent suggestions, even made in jest, that he uses drugs and that they contribute to his creativity and personality, and used to get quite angry about it; but life is only so short and it's not worth wasting n getting worked up over that sort of thing when he could simply write in third person instead.

He's kind of a dork that way.

No aspersions meant  in regards to your non-use of drugs.

 Okay ...then what keeps you perky and creative like that ?
I need to get that part of me back.

- E.W.C.

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!Today, I wrote up M20 stats for Froglins, which are nothing less than a FRPG analog of this little fucktard right here:

If any GM expected me to let him get away with an irritation (that's the collective noun for those little fucktards) of Crazy Frogs in his game, he'd have to let me punch him in the stomach, at least once, as hard as I could.

It would only be fair.

- Q

Quote from: DocHow do ya dream up your new creatures? Surely everyone here comes up with new monsters and critters that aren't in the game books.

For me it often starts with imagining visuals.  What kind of creep would I want to see coming after Conan or Thor on the cover of a comic book?

Or I dice up something and then build a monster around the result.

First I identify the need

Then the idea springs into my head, at least partly formed

Then I break the idea down back into it's component parts and track each part back to it's support material.  Firstly, this allows me to check how much I've ripped someone else off and if I can successfully conceal my sources.  Secondly, this process usually helps me to have some sub-ideas that finishes off the concept

Take this creature I'm currently designing for GRIM.  I was given the name "The Auditor of Order", a picture and a free hand

I immediately thought of this thing like a human-sized white Oscar statuette, drifting through the corridors of a grotty block of flats, with the walls and floor of the corridor becoming clean, repaired, and generally Ordered and Perfect just by it's very presence

I broke it down.  The drifting and the reality-warping are from "Dark City", the whole concepts of Order vs. Chaos that surrounding this image as I think of it are from Moorcock via Gaiman and the "Auditor" thing is very Pratchett so I need to avoid hooded cloaks and any of the stuff from "Thief of Time".  Quick email to GRIM to confirm that this is what he has in mind.  Spot on.

The picture has chains, so I could give it a special attack where chains fly out from "nowhere" to grapple people.  Very Hellraiser, but we already have an "Angel of Pain" that is a shameless rip-off, sorry, I meant loving tribute, of those movies.  So why are there chains in the picture, why is the person seeing chains?

Because they're not really seeing chains, their mind is projecting chains (and other images of order and restriction) onto what they are seeing because it can't cope with the reality.  Very Cuthulu Mythos

So we have this creature that is so alien and incomprehensible that you can't cope with it, it warps reality into a more Ordered form just by it's very presence and, oh yeah, it can make you Perfect, even if it means killing you

Now all I need are some stats

Quote from: KoltarNo aspersions meant  in regards to your non-use of drugs.

You're cool, I'm cool, we're cool, it's cool.

QuoteOkay ...then what keeps you perky and creative like that ?
I need to get that part of me back.

- E.W.C.

Simply: I allow myself to have bad ideas.

Bad ideas, no matter how dumb or lifeless or disappointing, can serve a higher purpose -- to inspire good ideas.  Brainstorming is a frighteningly powerful creative tool, as it turns out; simply making lists of ideas that occur to you as you are thinking about a specific topic or notion.  Some dumbass somewhere came up with an idea called The Adventure Funnel and that's the only good thing he ever thought up, so I use it.  Through the process of brainstorming, using a structure like the one that idiot uses, even bad ideas can be sharpened, polished, turned, honed and otherwise mangled into better ideas.

The trick: allow yourself, and don't try so goldanged hard.

Look, you can reach for that brass ring of perfection all you want, but you're likely to strain your arm and hurt yourself.  Then you got no arm.  Instead, sneak up on the damn thing and you just might catch it.

This "Froglins" idea spun off a full-fledged adventure, and I used the Funnel to do it.  I wrote down dumb ideas ("The froglins bring in a ringer -- they hire a mercenary to protect them!") and then looked them over and re-thought them ("The froglins share a lair with a more powerful creature which won't like to have PCs nosing around, and will attack them").  Strip stuff down, twist it, fumble with it.

Every idea can be useful.  Dumb ones are like the sketches that lead to, you know, Elmore paintings of hawt chicks and stuff.