Over the last few weeks I have been rethinking what I want to do for the Bestiary on the Middle Lands. Two basic thoughts have been churning in my head–redoing descriptions and random alterations.
OSR: Freedom!
My first thought has been to give the Bestiary more of an OSR feel. Now, OSR means many things to many people, so let me explain myself… In this instance, when I say "OSR," I mean me writing less, and letting each Referee write more.
In the past, I thought short, simple write-ups for creatures was because authors were just being lazy. I had to show how creative I was by giving beautiful, detailed descriptions of every creature–that was what everyone else needed!
But I have come to realize that is just not the case. The classic "OSR" way of doing things is to provide a framework, and then let the Referee and players make it their own–let them be creative.
It’s about creative freedom for everyone else.
That mental adjustment was a game changer for me. It came as part of a much larger change in how I saw games, rules and how they were played. I moved from a rules-heavy to a more rules-lite mindset.
The reason I embraced that change, going back to the days of roleplaying’ beginnings, is for freedom. Not my freedom–it’s not about me. It’s about creative freedom for everyone else. That is what is important!
Now, we can argue what "OSR" really means (Lord knows a lot of people are), but to me, in this one case, this is a perfect example of the OSR spirit: Put out some basic guidelines, and let the people playing the game make it their own. What could be more creative than that?
Random Beasts
At the same time, I was also bouncing in my head how to create a random creature generator. As many others have noted, players know the existing creatures in fantasy roleplaying by heart–there are no surprises.
To solve that problem, a few folks have put out supplements that give different methods for randomizing creatures, from changing the basic creature itself to generating complete new, random creatures.
I have wanted to do something like that for a while now, but life just seemed to get in the way. I bounced a few idea around in my head, but could not settle on anything specific–something actionable.
What I finally settled on was this: a random creature generator that is tied to each creature in the Bestiary. When you look at the write-up for a particular monster, you also get a link for a random version. Click that link and you go to one or more versions of that creature, with random changes. That makes the creature new, different–and surprising–but still, say, a wolf.
The nice thing is I can build the intelligence into the generator to have the results make sense, or at least not be nonsensical. A major problem with completely random creature generators is getting results that make no logical sense at all. Sometimes that is great, but that is not what I am going for here.
What I Plan To Do…
So what am I going to do? Well, first, I am going to relook at my write-ups for the creatures in the existing Bestiary on this site. C.R. Brandon’s descriptions of the monsters in Blades & Black Magic are great examples to follow–simple, descriptive, but not over the top.
I am going to give the basic descriptions in the same manner. I am then going to add in some information about how the creatures can be found in the Middle Lands setting. I still have to find my way between telling you nothing and dictating everything, but I think I can find that middle ground.
Next, I am going to work on the random creature generator. It should be very similar to the NPC Library, so the actual coding should not take too long. The part that will take the longest is tailoring the options to each creature. (The good news is that I can incrementally add creatures to the list as I add their parameters).
Which may not mean anything to anyone at all… but to me, at least, it means a lot. Providing creatures for everyone to use–and make their own–is what I started the Bestiary for, anyway. And having random creature modifications Referees can use to surprise their players is another great thing.
So those are my plans for the Bestiary! What do you think? Do you think I’m off base with the changes I want to make? Let me know in the comments below!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on middle-lands.com, on 8/16/2019.)
