Ancient Art Style
On the off chance you aren’t familiar, you can witness the original owlbear in all his glory right at the top of the wiki entry. The accompanying tale of inspiration drawn from a bag of made-in-Hong-Kong “prehistoric animals” always cracks me up. Someone’s crappy rendition of an ancient whatsit gets passed through the telephone game of reinterpretation, and years later everybody wants to be one.
For me, this evolution is part of the appeal of collecting the old school books. Watching as art styles change and morph over time, eventually settling into a standardized form, remains an inspiration to me. Cracking a pack of random plastic critters once upon a time yielded the carrion crawler, umber hulk, rust monster and purple worm. And I begin to ask myself, “Why couldn’t I do the same?”
You see, when I sit down to design a monster these days, I sometimes find myself creatively stymied. There are so many requirements! You’ve got to force the stats to conform to standard, create a believable ecology and backstory, differentiate yourself from existing monsters, hit your target CR… It’s a lot of overhead to consider! And when you’re trying to play a game of imagination, that mess can block up your precious reservoirs of mad genius.
That’s why, for today’s discussion, I propose we return to the old ways. Look around your office or your bedroom. Find a toy, a figurine, or whatever poorly-manufactured dinosaurs you’ve got on hand. Then forget for one second about making a “good” monster. Instead, let your imagination shape that object into a weird, gonzo, and totally glorious original! If you can link to a pic of your critter so much the better. Good luck monster building, and I’ll see you down in the comments!
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If it starts talking about what things were like “back in my day”, then you’ll know for sure.
Old monster shakes fist a cloud.
The elder beasts seem to have eaten the rant and alt text
Text is relatively recent compared to pictures and oral tradition.
They had weird powers back in the day.
In D&D, Ancient = “Before biology existed”
In the beginning, there was a slime mold.
And the text template? The DM didn’t liked it because it was 3rd party? 😛
Gotta hate those picky bastards.
Oh no, the beast ate the post and the mouseover text! Or maybe it’s just so ancient those can’t be applied to it?
It is a linguavore!
In before Claire notices there is no discussion or leading question for today’s comic…
sadge
Ah, yes. Strigiursa Erolotus. A majestic specimen.
Oops. Misidentified. It’s Strigiursa Sutherlandi. That’s egg on my face.
Strigiursa egg no less!
“Good luck monster building, and I’ll see you down in the comments!”
BEGIN MONSTER
A mighty orb floats before you, bearing forbidden knowledge in pictorial form. A mere glance reveals hideous truths about the pervasiveness of evil itself. Across it, both from top to bottom and from side to side, run a pair of stripes, intersecting in a circle pointed at you. The sphere under the intersection turns and turns every which way with neither rhyme nor reason.
A lance of pure knowledge shoots out. Roll Will to reduce damage taken as the enormity of how insignificant you are crushes your desires.
END MONSTER
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It’s a globe, made eldritch.
And what would we call this creature? A knowglobe?
Ooh, I like that! Knowglobe it is!
Alt text is from “Suss Puss” 🙂
Yes, i rolled History (HBoH Alt Texts) 😀
Fixed.
Be extremely careful Uchichi!
It fights like five men, attacks like heavy foot and defends like light cavalry!
Also it looks silly! 😛
Swarm of chickens. Easily distracted and divided by offerings of food, heavens help you if they think you have some but you don’t. The last line of defense for hamlets brave enough to risk their chicken army turning on them.
Speaking of old versions of monsters, though, the Susurrus got way less cool as the editions marched on. I don’t even know if it was included after 3.5. But the 2e version was a giant bamboo monster, that got its name from the sound that it made when wind blew through its hollow bamboo pipes. And this sound would also hypnotize undead creatures, which the Susurrus preyed on.
Funky!
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sussurus
I’d actually never heard of these guys before!
NPC stats are super easy, barely an inconvenience in GURPS (another reason I prefer it).
Unless you are one of those ‘weird’ GMs that insist “everything has to have stats”. I mean geez, what with those guys anyway? But at most I (and many ohter GURPS GMs) put down a few numbers, like skill elvels, damage, armor, the basic things you might forget in the heat of a battle and would need to know, but anything beyond that? If you need it, “write it down when it comes up” is the wisdom that GURPS GMs pass on.
Also ‘CR’? “Level appropriate encounter”? Haha! GURPS laughs at those concepts. (GURPS is “notoriously deadly” if you don’t understand how to turn the deadliness off or what to adjust*.)
. * Yeah, I know GURPS has a deserved reputation for deadliness. Maybe someday if there is a 5e GURPS the “it’s a toolbox, here’s how to adjust the settings” will be better addressed in the Basic books themselves.
Not sure how to do picture links, but I find a neat half-gargoyle sort of thing on my mantlepiece, and here’s what it inspired:
Sea Gargoyle:
The creature’s head and upper torso are vaguely draconic, with a toothy muzzle, a small horn atop the head, and a raised fin down the back of the neck and torso. It has two long forelimbs ending in webbed hands, and its lower half is serpentine, ending in a fin. It is a fast swimmer, but obviously slow and clumsy on land. Underwater its primary weapon is a debilitating shriek (a cone breath weapon which deals sonic damage and leaves the target stunned for one round on a failed fortitude save, 1d4 rounds to recharge). This attack still functions on the surface, but is less effective. Sea gargoyles are themselves heavily resistant to sonic damage and have save bonuses against sonic attacks.
Sometimes, the more modifiers there are to the name, the more trouble the DM had coming up with something to challenge the party…
“Ancient Greater Undead Dire Tarrasque” springs to mind 😉