Monster Consistency & More Unusual Sources.

One of the things I used to worry about a lot was having consistent monsters. In a game like OD&D where your players are supposed to logic and reasoning for game play, I felt it was very important to make sure that monsters were stated with due respect to each other. In other words, if you come across a 10 foot giant silver ram, you probably expect it to be weaker than a 40 foot ancient dragon, right?

I already wrote about an easy way to handle this: make a reference chart with monsters of each level/AC/HD/Attack, etc. to let you to stat monsters accordingly. This is excellent, but I want to point out that it's not THAT important. Yeah, you should avoid drastic nonsense, like having a full grown bear be weaker than a small wolf, but don't sweat it too much. Why not have a level 2 kobold? He's a little tougher, and he's a nice surprise. Maybe have him wearing a nice gold necklace, or wielding a polished sword, as a bit of fair warning.

Basically I used to worry a lot about "properly converting" material from other games. Now, I don't think I care so much. Maybe I'll use the 1E Gnoll this session, and toss a 3E Gnoll in next session. That 3E was just a sergeant.  I want to start using more monsters from a variety of sources without thinking about it too much. Of course, using the suggested monster creation reference chart, would make it way easier to just take monster concepts, and create them for my games. Either way works I think. Using something like 1E or 2E as a base system, would also kind of stick the game mathematically in the middle of OD&D/Basic and 3E/4E/Pathfinder in terms of character strength relative to monster strength.

In any case, as always I suggest checking out every source you can for material, and not just monsters, but anything. The usual suggestions everyone goes to is Fantasy literature, comics, and movies. Check out video games too, if that's not apparent to you. I like to use music as inspiration too, heavy metal being the best source I've found (especially for campaign ideas). Obviously more adventurous DM's will plunder non D&D game sources like Palladium, Runequest, etc. Don't forget board games, like my buddy picked up a game called Mystic Vale that has some cool stuff in it, like a Moon Wolf (IIRC). Yugioh, and Pokemon honestly have some cool stuff, and I'm personally gonna check out "Boss Monsters", even if it comes off as silly.

I'm going to try and start making more posts with cool material sources, and hopefully some in depth looks, with actual suggestions. Here's some stuff I'm currently looking at that I hope to investigate and write about more:

• Roguelikes: Ultima, Wizardry, and Nethack (video games)
• Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight (video game)
• Mystic Vale, and Boss Monster (both tabletop card games)
• The Golden Key, by George MacDonald (short story)
• Dark Souls, and Witcher (more video games)

Stay Zen guys.