One thing that faces every Referee is making creature encounters interesting. One good way to do that is to have some kind of background or history for each monster. Here’s a way to do just that.
Individualize Each Monster
The first thing to do to make monsters more memorable is to make them individual. I’m not the first to say this–better people than me have been saying this for years. Treating each monster as the monster not only makes the monster more memorable, but also improves roleplaying opportunities for players and Referees alike.
Besides–real monsters should be uncommon anyway! If monsters were as common as natural creatures, like bears or deer, how would they be fantastic? Now don’t get me wrong–natural beasts can be very deadly and don’t need to be fantastical to be fearsome and scary themselves. Still… a troll is not something that common folk should be used to. It will be fearsome–and memorable.
So how do you individualize each monster? A great place to start is to vary the creatures stats. Having a weak ogre (maybe injured?) or even a fast-running bear is something that people would talk about for a long time. Even the players would key onto standard monsters that were not so standard.
Another way is to just give them names. You can use the Dungeon Crawl Classics method of having the locals call the monster "the dragon," not just "a dragon." Better still, if the creature is intelligent, give it a name! If it has interacted with the villagers in the area, they will know it’s name, guaranteed!
Give Each Creature A Background
An even better way to individualize a monster is to give them a background. It does not have to be some involved history (although that could be fun). It just needs to have a few bits of information to help bring it to life.
For example, in the Ealdun setting, monsters may have come from the Cha’lon (the mystical land of monsters), or have been born in the Mortal Lands, just like everyone else. A creature from the Cha’lon will have more magic about it and have a different story than one from the Mortal Lands. Both creatures will have completely different histories, which will shape how they are played by the Referee.
Likewise, creatures in the Middle Lands setting do not have the dimensions like the Cha’lon or Chia’ad to come from, but had to contend with the Great Death. Natural creatures will be common, but fantastical creatures will be downright rare–too many died in that magical plague. That history will definitely shape those fantastical creatures and how they are played.
Beyond where they come from, you can give the creatures a way that they got where they are now… In other words, why are they in the forest they are haunting now? Did they migrate there after being run off by other adventurers in another area across the hills? Did that cause them to have a fear or hatred of adventurers? Was the hunting bad, and they are starving? Think of creative ways to explain why they are in their current location today.
Finally, another way to personalize monsters is to think about their motivation, and tweak it. Most beasts are just simply hungry, but they also need to breed. More evil monsters really want to kill and feed on prey–that could be driving them in some way.
For intelligent monsters, any number of options open up. For example, that vampire might want to establish his own domain or realm. An ogre might just want to have a home in the swamp, and just be left alone. A dragon may be looking to avenge himself on the local knight who slew his mate. If you treat a monster like an NPC, you can come up with a number of different motivations for why they are acting the way they are–and that makes them memorable.
Monster Background Generator
This is fun and all, but can be time consuming. One thing I want to do for myself is make a tool that rolls some dice and helps generate ideas like those above. I already do something similar with the history event generator, so this should not be a problem technically.
The most time consuming part will be in the random ideas themselves. I had thought of making the ideas be hashtags, similar to the history event generator, but we need to see how this turns out. If I come up with sentences for ideas, as opposed to simple words, a hashtag may not be the best way to present it.
Also, I need to think through how to accommodate both the Ealdun and the Middle Lands settings. Like I mentioned above, the sources and histories for monsters will lead to different sets of ideas. That is not hard programmatically, but I do need to consider that in whatever options I generate.
Anyway–all of this is intended to help Referees quickly generate background ideas for their monsters, either on the fly or as part of a tailored effort to make any monster that much more memorable. If you have any ideas on how to do this, or to include in any background options, let me know in the comments!
Marko ∞
