Monster Lore
Option 1: You enter a room and see three orcs clustered around a table.
Option 2: You enter a room and see three barbaric humanoids clustered around a table. They bear ragged equipment and armor in sullen colors. They’ve got coarse body hair and a stooped posture like some primitive man but with a grayish-green skin tone and bestial facial features beneath black hoods. Burning red eyes peer below low, sloping brows, just above flattened noses, and prominent tusk-like teeth.
Does that second description sound familiar? If you’re a Pathfinder guy it probably should. It’s cribbed straight from the top of Paizo’s Orc, Common entry. Now I’m not saying that you should read that stuff off verbatim every time the party hits a new encounter, but those bits of italic text at the top of the page offer some stellar examples of the ways you ought to describe your monsters. After all, uncertainty is an important element if you’re trying to create an immersive secondary world, and evocative description goes a lot further than simply revealing your monster’s identity.
As a further experiment, take a minute to get into the adventurer mindset. Sword at your side, magic at your fingertips, delving the deep places of the earth in search of filthy lucre. Are you there? Good. So you’re in uncharted territory, winding your way through the passageways of a shadowy torchlit dungeon. Suddenly some quadrupedal thing lunges from the darkness. Now in that moment, would you honestly be able to tell the difference between a dire wolf and some other kind of canine horror? Because the moment your players hear, “You walk into the room and see a yeth hound,” all the tension goes out of the situation. A yeth hound is a danger with a name, and your players can deal with that. But when you describe the unknown thing slinking towards them, the glint of torchlight burning red in its eyes, the keening whine in its throat, you’ve got them set up for the big reveal. Now it leaps forward, teeth bared, but at the last moment swoops up towards the ceiling. It glares down at the PCs before tilting its head back and letting out a terrifying, unearthly howl. Clearly, this is more than some mundane mongrel.
Not only does this sort of thing make for a more immersive gaming experience, but a more tactically interesting one as well. Knowledge skills suddenly become points well spent, and player behavior changes accordingly. Maybe the party chooses to buff and fight defensively until the wizard can identify the threat. Maybe they’re ever so slightly surprised when the plant monster turns out to be an undead plant monster, and they’ve actually got to stop and reevaluate their spell selection. Keep them on their toes. Make them roll their Knowledge checks. Cows notwithstanding, it should make the game more interesting.
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It can also help stop experienced players metagaming. There’s two very experienced players in our group who are able remember an insane amount of lore behind almost everything we’ve encountered so far. They’re usually pretty good at asking if they should roll to see if the character knows something they’ve said, but every now and again they need a little nudge.
Lore master players are the reason I’m a fan of reskinning monsters. It doesn’t take much effort to make a shambling mound into a necromantic pile of body parts. Same stats, different creature type. And now, rather than naming the familiar monster, the knowledge roll reveals that “from the blue glow that seems to come from the center of the mass, you think it’s powered by some form of galvanism.” Give them useful intel, but keep a little bit of mystery.
Unless they’re so experienced they recognize most core monsters (and many of the cooler splatbook ones) from their descriptions.
I clearly remember the time our party was facing off against “some sort of oversized bug-thing”and we only figured out it was a Rust Monster after it melted our tank’s armor.
Knowledge skills won’t always lives, but they’ll definitely save some gp.
The dread gazebo rears up on its hind legs and lets out a blood curdling sound like splintering wood…
I run away.
I cast ‘Create Bonfire’ in the center of the Gazebo!
It’s too late. You’ve awakened the gazebo.
It catches you and eats you.
Insert bear meme here.