Quote from: jhkim on June 06, 2023, 04:38:28 PM

I do think something missed in games that standardize a lot is how in myth, individual creatures varied a lot. In Greek myth, the Hydra wasn't a species - it was a unique creature. In France, the Shaggy Beast of La Ferté-Bernard was a dragon with specific characteristics, not a species of hairy dragon. The variations especially for things like fae creatures or dragons go much further than small/medium/large or young/old.

For example, in original RuneQuest, monsters had die rolls for their stats -- and they even often had randomized abilities. Broos would roll for random mutations, for example. D&D has had less variation for its monster types, with dragons and a few others as the exceptions.

Everything the same is boring.  Everything is different is also boring, only in a slightly less obvious way.  In particular, every monster you meet is different removes a huge chunk of the fun of playing. 

What I do in a typical D&D-style game using a bestiary is go through it before the campaign starts.  I pick around 10-15 monsters that are "typical" as a baseline. Most people in the world have heard of them, and quite a few have seen them, if only a dead one that some adventurers killed.  Then I vary those monsters within a fairly narrow range of abilities.  Or sometimes a wider range across multiple clans/tribes/cultures/whatever.  This could be a simple as having different goblin tribes focus on different weapons and environments, though usually I'll have some with more serious changes.

Then I take 2 to 4 other monsters and deliberately put a spin on them.  Once the spin is applied, they function much like the preceding group.  Only players don't know the spin when the campaign starts, though they can ask learned people they meet and learn some of it by experience.

Then I mix in a few things that will get used sparingly--rare creatures, limited terrain, etc.  This maybe doubles the number of monsters so far.  All bets are off on these things.   They could be straight out of the manual.  They could be twisted all out of recognition.  They could just be using the stat block as an approximation, with folklore an different skin tacked on for something that appears and acts very different.

I may end up using other creatures from the books, but they'll either be one-offs or they'll be stat blocks robbed and reskinned into one of the more common options above.  Instead of kobolds and goblins and redcaps and boggarts, I'll have all those thrown into a pot and blended into one named thing with some variation.  I might use "goblin" for what those are called in the setting, but they probably don't exactly fit the bestiary version.

Now, I do this typically for a setting that is spun up for one campaign that will run 18 to 36 months, and perhaps have a sequel campaign.  If I have a sequel, I'll probably add a few creatures at that time.  The idea is that the players can explore the setting and learn about the creatures as they are in that setting--not just port assumptions wholesale from a completely different game.  In that environment, I don't need the novelty of a continuous stream of new creatures.  It also leaves me the option of having a classical unique monster that can be allowed to be killed.

Quote from: jhkim on June 06, 2023, 06:45:53 PM

In my current campaign, I have the standard dragon types and that's fine. But on my next campaign, I might have each dragon roll 1d10 on the Breath Weapon Type table. So individual dragons would be different from each other. Going further, I might have dragons roll on the Dragon Mobility table to see if they have wings and how many limbs they have, and roll on the Dragon Magic table to see if they have other special abilities.

I do something similar with my dragons.  Random breath weapon(s) and they get more as they age, so an ancient wyrm may have 3 different breath weapon types to use. 

Keeps the party on their toes as they can't prepare for a known dragon type.

Well D&D did do variations on Monsters due to culture in its TSR days, too. Variations on critters really depended on assumed setting assumptions, and that was a huge part of the romance I have with 1e & 2e settings. The standardization started more robustly under WotC, and was one of the reasons I bounced off of d20 Glut & 3e/3.5/PF repeatedly. It feels... homogenized.

Now, standards are useful in being approachable. Talislanta is a great example of just a little too alien to be relatable that it ends up high concept to a broad draft of players. Eventually all that flora and fauna trying to kill you start to get re-labeled by players into relatable analogs, just so they can stay in the game.

There's a happy balance one has to discover for one's table, for one's audience. But I do absolutely love thematic variations where setting comes first. Yet my goofy interests must be tempered with my players' capability and interest. 

I do a little bit of this - my "orcs" are actually a broad group of unusual creatures with their own sort of subtypes. Regardless of subtypes though, they're all sort of referenced in short by most NPCs as "orcs". Some people might know goblins are the small sort of orc, but that doesn't say a lot. Some of them are horrible pig men. Others are weird half bird half-stickbug creatures. You can sort of imagine the variety of weird and grotesque demons or gargoyles you see sketched in older books or manuscripts to think of the weird variety of monsters. So there are broad sub-categories like goblin, and variations within that, but there is also a sort of internal logic to how they organize. Basically certain environments lead to more predominant types of orcs spawning. Nevertheless you'll get a mixture of weird orc types in virtually any orc den. This allows a lot of variety in any space that contains these sorts of creatures. All "goblin" really tells a PC is that they're smaller, tend to gather in larger numbers, and tend to be fairly cowardly.

This provides a lot of variety in itself. I also will change creatures so they have a variety of levels. Some are elite-type characters who are akin to characters with class-style abilities. Beyond that, I also create lots of varieties of stat blocks to represent the different morphologies or societal roles or whatever (goblin shamans, pig men, stick bugs, whatever). They'll have their own attributes and abilities and stuff like HP. During prep or at the table during play though, all creatures of a certain kind have the same stats. If you're looking at 2 stick bug orcs then they have the same stat block. I want my hordes to be manageable first and foremost.

One other example are my variety of zombies. I have quite a lot of different types, but they don't represent different breeds or strains or anything like that. They represent a variety of reanimated dead that you'll stumble across. The different names and abilities and stats and stuff are mostly for my side of the screen and to provide novelty. They're all just "zombies", but some will shamble, some will run around, some will keep moving unless you remove the head, whatever seems cool. Certain styles of undead naturally begin to drift into their own category, so all "Zombie" communicates to a PC is that it's a reanimated corpse, with flesh on the bone, that's generally harder to kill than it was in life.

I find that even if a monster book describes a creature as part of a group, if it's only going to come up once in the campaign I may well treat it as unique. A high CR Kobold Press creature like the Stuhac (CR 13) comes to mind as a cool unique encounter.

I found this old school generator for chimeras: https://landofnod.blog/2011/07/06/chim-chimera-cheree/

I make custom monsters for practically every encounter because I find the act of brainstorming and designing enemies to be fun, and if you need enough encounters to warrant using stat-blocks in a book...chances are you're giving the players too many encounters.

I also tend towards Chimerism with monster design rather than giving them too close to the book. I am known to do crazy things like fuse dragons and displacer beasts.

I don't even understand the premise of this discussion.  It seems definitional or a categorizing issue to me.

At what point do individual monsters deviate from the norm?  Well, on one level, every monster is unique.  On another, every one of them is a monster.  How different are people?  On one hand, we all have a unique combination of genes (except monozygotic twins) and a unique expression of them (even monozygotic twins).  Yet every human being has 99.9% identical genes.  And there's only about a 4% difference between us and chimps.  So we're all unique... and mostly the same.

What matters is what matters.  In an adventure where the characters are heroes expected to carve through hordes of goblins, a DM would be foolish to create a 5 page backstory for every goblin.  But the dragon at the end of the adventure might deserve a long backstory, with history and motivations.  So the question isn't whether monsters should be standardized, but the extent to which any monsters' purpose will make variation an important part of play.  Rolling separate hit points for twenty kobolds is probably enough (and maybe not even that, depending on whether the characters average enough damage per swing to kill any kobold despite the variation).  Giving different breath weapons to the main bad guy dragon is possibly not even enough (spell selection, lair actions, minions, etc. all might be worth a look).

So this discussion is moot, without the context of the role the creature plays in the game.  In a nuclear hellscape, after the atomic apocalypse, it might be worth it to roll the individual powers or attributes of the mutants the players encounter, as it will also help establish the setting and its conceits.  But should every kobold have a different weapon, talent, and set of abilities?  Especially when they are expected to drop in one hit?

There is a utility to groups of similar monsters, just as there is a utility to unique monsters.  Some of the advantages of standardization are:

• Lowering DM prep time for a particular encounter (not all encounters are equal)
• Rewarding player knowledge (the first time a troll regenerates, it's a wild moment for the players.  Then they get rewarded for their engagement by being able to use fire effectively the next time.  Then they get thrown for a loop when the next regenerating monster heals faster due to fire...
• Setting a coherent background for the world (if orcs are about capturing slaves, kobolds are about gathering sacrifices for a dragon, and goblins are about bullying or stealing, you have created a cohesive picture for the players.  They can use this knowledge to interact with the world, increasing immersion)

Unique monsters have the advantages of:

• Surprising the players (and preventing the players from winning with preparation, which can lead to boredom)
• Adding the sense of importance to an encounter (if this kobold is twice the size, carries a battleaxe, and taunts you in fluent Common, then you know something special is happening)
• Differentiating locations and making the world seem larger (if this particular orc tribe all uses bows, it creates a sense of space or distance that just counting off miles may not)

These lists are neither comprehensive or exclusive.  But it does show that how detailed you make your monsters should usually be related to their purpose, and not just some generic principle.

In fact, this is usually related to the biggest failings of later D&D versions.  Honestly, no D&D bestiary comes close to the original Monster Manual and Fiend Folio when it comes to giving DMs tools to treat monsters as groups or as individuals.  I know some folks who deride the naturalistic tone of the MM, but it gives enough background to either make the monster a unique entity or to use them as larger groups of antagonists.  When you look at 3e (and Pathfinder), where orc is a "template" and your orc can have class templates applied as well, you get a prep nightmare (one reason I think Paizo's adventure paths became so popular).  5e's monsters (as in the MM) are not much more than bags of hit points.  So neither really hits the sweet spot where a monster can be quickly made unique (the expectation in 3.5 and PF is that the DM is bound by the same rules in making monsters as the players are in making characters) or can be run as mooks with little effort.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 06, 2023, 07:58:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 06, 2023, 06:45:53 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on June 06, 2023, 04:37:53 PM
I do feel the standardization loses much of the magic. We need more random generation tables to simulate the variability of myth and folklore. When designing, we need to think of monsters as archetypes and templates rather than highly specific species.

Thanks, BoxCrayonTales. I agree. Having random generation tables is even in line with a lot of old-school practice. Are there old-school games where some monsters have randomized abilities like RQ Broo?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 06, 2023, 05:07:08 PM
Now let's talk about IRL animals... There are about 10,000 species of birds, yet they all are birds, so what's the problem with green, red, bronze, etc Dragons?

Since Lions and Tigers can produce offspring (almost 100% of the time infertile) it seems reasonable to think that other species of Tiger can interbreed among themselves and maybe even produce fertile offspring. So, what's the problem with having Ogre, Ogre Mage and Marrow as the ecological diversity you seem to want?

It's not that I object to having dragons work exactly like real-life genetic science. That can be fun. It's that it's not the only way to do monsters.

In my current campaign, I have the standard dragon types and that's fine. But on my next campaign, I might have each dragon roll 1d10 on the Breath Weapon Type table. So individual dragons would be different from each other. Going further, I might have dragons roll on the Dragon Mobility table to see if they have wings and how many limbs they have, and roll on the Dragon Magic table to see if they have other special abilities.

For ogres, it's fine to have three subspecies as ogre types. But in a new world, I might decide that ogres are roughly as varied as humans. So I might have different stat blocks for Ogre Grunt, Ogre Shaman, Ogre Scout, Ogre Berserker, and Ogre Champion - to use as templates for typical ogre NPCs. But for specific ogres I might stat up differently, like an ogre chieftan Kagrak who has a combination of shaman-like abilities and barbarian-like abilities.

That's fine, having hundreds of grunts a few scouts a shaman or two a berserker and a champion ads spice to the battle.

There are at least 4 random generators for monsters that I know off:

The Elegant random monster generator
The Esoteric random monster generator
Life form generator (IIRC it's for SWN)
and the theratinomicom (or whatever the one by our friend Eric Diaz is called)
Plus there was one for Cthulhu like mythos/monsters/creatures.

Teratogenicon my friend! 

But my second favorite - not mentioned here - is certainly the Monster Alphabet (DCC). Awesome stuff!

(There is a Cthulhu Alphabet too, good but not only about monsters.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 06, 2023, 07:58:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 06, 2023, 06:45:53 PM
It's not that I object to having dragons work exactly like real-life genetic science. That can be fun. It's that it's not the only way to do monsters.

In my current campaign, I have the standard dragon types and that's fine. But on my next campaign, I might have each dragon roll 1d10 on the Breath Weapon Type table. So individual dragons would be different from each other. Going further, I might have dragons roll on the Dragon Mobility table to see if they have wings and how many limbs they have, and roll on the Dragon Magic table to see if they have other special abilities.

For ogres, it's fine to have three subspecies as ogre types. But in a new world, I might decide that ogres are roughly as varied as humans. So I might have different stat blocks for Ogre Grunt, Ogre Shaman, Ogre Scout, Ogre Berserker, and Ogre Champion - to use as templates for typical ogre NPCs. But for specific ogres I might stat up differently, like an ogre chieftan Kagrak who has a combination of shaman-like abilities and barbarian-like abilities.

That's fine, having hundreds of grunts a few scouts a shaman or two a berserker and a champion ads spice to the battle.

There are at least 4 random generators for monsters that I know off:

The Elegant random monster generator
The Esoteric random monster generator
Life form generator (IIRC it's for SWN)
and the theratinomicom (or whatever the one by our friend Eric Diaz is called)
Plus there was one for Cthulhu like mythos/monsters/creatures.

Thanks. Looking up the ones for fantasy, here are the links I got:

Elegant Fantasy Creature Generator
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263673/Elegant-Fantasy-Creature-Generator

Random Esoteric Creature Generator
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/58916/Random-Esoteric-Creature-Generator-for-Classic-Fantasy-RolePlaying-Games-and-their-Modern-Simulacra

Teratogenicon
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/317448/Teratogenicon


Completely random monsters is a third option a bit different from either of my examples. So I might break down some potential options:

(1) Have a completely random monster - either as a type (i.e. a random new species of monster) or a random unique individual.

(2) Have random abilities or features within a single stat block. I'm thinking of original RuneQuest which has random ability scores for monsters as well as random hit points. Plus some chaos creatures would roll on a table of random Chaos Features.

This was normal in RuneQuest, but isn't common in D&D. It seems not worth the bookkeeping for minor enemies, but potentially useful to vary up big enemies.

(3) Have multiple stat blocks for a monster even within the same species/subspecies. In D&D, this is done for dragons and a few humanoids. A small young blue dragon is different than a large ancient blue dragon; and drow assassin is different than drow mage. Most monster species don't get this treatment, though.

This depends on what the campaign focus is. If the PCs keep meeting different monster types with each encounter, then it doesn't make sense to have many stat blocks for one species. But if they have a series of adventures where they keep fighting ogres, then it makes sense to have more detailed ogres.

I feel like this sometimes the logic goes the other way, though. i.e. There are no series of adventures fighting ogres, because ogres aren't varied enough.

(4) Have a non-random specific stat block for an individual, like a unique NPC.

One issue regarding folklore and accounts of legendary creatures is that a lot of these people lived widely apart from each other (geographically and sometimes temporarily), with regional language differences, even when they belonged to the same culture (which wasn't even always the case), and limited ways of corroborating each other's stories, if at all. Add to that the nature of the types of beings being discussed--the fact that they probably don't even exist, or might dwell within a different plane of existence or frequency if they do, or arise out of a common type as hallucinogenic experience--and it becomes even trickier to pin down a fixed definition of what X or Y legendary creature even is. So there's bound to be a lot of inconsistences when it comes to this type of accounts, even if we assume that these creatures are real, which there's no way to verify that.

But when we're dealing with representing these types of creatures in play, we tend to rely on more consistent details on what X or Y creature is and what their basic capabilities are. And we tend to operate under the assumption that within the game world, these creatures definitely exist and belong to a specific class of being--even if they're all part of a broader category of "fey/fairies/jinn" or whatever, each individual specific type is a discrete class of being. And while culture/time period X may have used the word "Elf" to refer to a very different type of creature than culture/time period Y, that's not necessarily the case when we're invoking them in the game. So I lean towards standardization of specific types of legendary/mythological/whatever creatures.

That being said, even within that realm of "standardization" I always allow a lot of variability in terms of actual stat blocks, and apply that standardization only to determine common characteristics, such as general appearance, darkvision, resistance to certain types of effects, etc. But if we're dealing with an intelligent humanoid creature, for example, I always add class levels to them and treat the type of creature they are like a "race" for game purposes. I may also allow setting variations for what abilities each of these "races" have as well, and there might be "color coded" (for lack of a better term) variants of the same "race", like "Elves" of different environments (jungle, forest, desert, etc.) and the like.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 07, 2023, 08:15:59 AM
I make custom monsters for practically every encounter because I find the act of brainstorming and designing enemies to be fun, and if you need enough encounters to warrant using stat-blocks in a book...chances are you're giving the players too many encounters.

If you need unique creatures for every encounter, you aren't playing the individual creatures as well as you could ... chances are the number of encounters you have is not the problem.

Quote from: jhkim on June 07, 2023, 01:58:51 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on June 06, 2023, 07:58:34 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 06, 2023, 06:45:53 PM
It's not that I object to having dragons work exactly like real-life genetic science. That can be fun. It's that it's not the only way to do monsters.

In my current campaign, I have the standard dragon types and that's fine. But on my next campaign, I might have each dragon roll 1d10 on the Breath Weapon Type table. So individual dragons would be different from each other. Going further, I might have dragons roll on the Dragon Mobility table to see if they have wings and how many limbs they have, and roll on the Dragon Magic table to see if they have other special abilities.

For ogres, it's fine to have three subspecies as ogre types. But in a new world, I might decide that ogres are roughly as varied as humans. So I might have different stat blocks for Ogre Grunt, Ogre Shaman, Ogre Scout, Ogre Berserker, and Ogre Champion - to use as templates for typical ogre NPCs. But for specific ogres I might stat up differently, like an ogre chieftan Kagrak who has a combination of shaman-like abilities and barbarian-like abilities.

That's fine, having hundreds of grunts a few scouts a shaman or two a berserker and a champion ads spice to the battle.

There are at least 4 random generators for monsters that I know off:

The Elegant random monster generator
The Esoteric random monster generator
Life form generator (IIRC it's for SWN)
and the theratinomicom (or whatever the one by our friend Eric Diaz is called)
Plus there was one for Cthulhu like mythos/monsters/creatures.

Thanks. Looking up the ones for fantasy, here are the links I got:

Elegant Fantasy Creature Generator
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/263673/Elegant-Fantasy-Creature-Generator

Random Esoteric Creature Generator
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/58916/Random-Esoteric-Creature-Generator-for-Classic-Fantasy-RolePlaying-Games-and-their-Modern-Simulacra

Teratogenicon
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/317448/Teratogenicon


Completely random monsters is a third option a bit different from either of my examples. So I might break down some potential options:

(1) Have a completely random monster - either as a type (i.e. a random new species of monster) or a random unique individual.

(2) Have random abilities or features within a single stat block. I'm thinking of original RuneQuest which has random ability scores for monsters as well as random hit points. Plus some chaos creatures would roll on a table of random Chaos Features.

This was normal in RuneQuest, but isn't common in D&D. It seems not worth the bookkeeping for minor enemies, but potentially useful to vary up big enemies.

(3) Have multiple stat blocks for a monster even within the same species/subspecies. In D&D, this is done for dragons and a few humanoids. A small young blue dragon is different than a large ancient blue dragon; and drow assassin is different than drow mage. Most monster species don't get this treatment, though.

This depends on what the campaign focus is. If the PCs keep meeting different monster types with each encounter, then it doesn't make sense to have many stat blocks for one species. But if they have a series of adventures where they keep fighting ogres, then it makes sense to have more detailed ogres.

I feel like this sometimes the logic goes the other way, though. i.e. There are no series of adventures fighting ogres, because ogres aren't varied enough.

(4) Have a non-random specific stat block for an individual, like a unique NPC.

Re Creature X isn't varied enough:

Where? In the book RAW? I might be a weird bird but I've NEVER left the book limit me (well, this isn't 100% true, at the very begining yes we played RAW), IMHO what limits/should limit the variability of creature X is the rarity (if we're assuming sorta, kinda natural creatures (which IMHO includes some magical creatures that have magic but reproduce by natural means).

Then we have what should be properly named aberrations (no, not the misnomer from D&D), these should all be the BBG and also unique custom built by the GM for his world (Maybe include a few and the tools to build them in your book), think of Cthuloid creatures or those creatures from mythology that are just the one exemplar and not a god, or the last of it's type.

So, the more common a creature is the more alike each individual to each other with the variability we would expect from a real creature. The rarer the creature the less variability IF it reproduces by natural means, then creatures created exnihilo by some god, demon mad wizard to accomplish some goal that could each be totally different from each other as the GM decides and then the real aberrations that have to be each totally unique.

If you're going for something authentic to folklore and pan-folklore to boot, then you need to explain why there are so many different versions of the same monster even within a single culture (e.g. the manticore and griffin both have numerous variants in heraldry). Making a different stat block for every variant and treating it as a separate species with its own ecology is just bloat. Making one archetypal monster with random generation tables to explain the variants saves space.

To give a somewhat more pathetic reply...

Much of my content comes either directly from modules or through my own editing and additions to modules. As such, unless there's a good balance or story reason to vary things up, it's usually just whatever fits the scenario we're playing or what is given (if it clicks with the former). I do like to make the world feel alive and closer to reality if I can, and sometimes this translates into monsters having unique individual traits and personalities, or to there being more lore about a species and it's subtypes than is in the module proper. That said, I still have to work to stray from the module and not just present as printed. I'm still getting used to random generation where it's required or recommended for NPCs, and most of my homebrew either is trash or simply... isn't. Like it doesn't really exist at all.