Saturday 23 March 2019

Gelatinous Cubes, Rust Monsters, and Purposive Constraint

A long-running theme on this blog has been the creativity that comes from constraint. Yesterday's post is clearly on an adjacent topic: something I'm going to call "purposive constraint".

It is hard to think of an interesting new monster in the abstract. That's what makes the Beholder (and probably mind flayers) so special. It's easy to think up "this with a this" monsters (a budgie with a crocodile's head; a crocodile with budgie wings) and it is easy to think up twists of folkloric ones (a vampire but it turns into a shark rather than a bat and lives at sea; a were-secretary bird) but it's difficult to come up with something new.

Unless you are creating a monster for a specific purpose - like, for example, causing problems for PCs exploring a dungeon. Then it becomes more straightforward: what are players really going to be scared of? A monster which can dissolve their armour and precious items - hence, the rust monster. A big blob that comes down the corridor and which you can't bypass or escape from - hence, the gelatinous cube. Something which can disguise itself as a treasure chest and then "get" you - hence, the mimic. Something which can conceal itself on a ceiling and then drop onto you from above - hence, the piercer.

There are a whole host of monsters like this - created for the specific purpose of causing difficulties for dungeoneers. You will be able to think of others (there are also lurkers, cloakers and ropers, off the top of my head).

Which is all to say, purpose can also be a constraint resulting in creative solutions.

Clearly, the game being called "Dungeons & Dragons", most "purposive constraint" relates to the purpose of making dungeon exploration difficult, but there's no reason why this should be the case. For a more social, diplomatic, cloak and dagger sort of game, purposive constraint might conspire to produce altogether different monsters - maybe a monster which eats lies, or one which causes the inability to remember faces, or which only hunts invisible things. For one involving a lot of wilderness travel, it might be a monster which causes debilitating slowness, or which warps the landscape so you end up trapped in a cyclical pattern, or which causes you to fear daylight. You get the picture.

One way of thinking up new monsters, by extension, is to begin with a purpose. What specifically do you want to make it difficult for the PCs to achieve, given what you expect in a particular campaign, or particular session? The rest may simply follow.

8 comments:

  1. Wilderness travel? In the Ultima computer games, gremlins were monsters which would eat up your food stores, and bring you from "well stocked" right to starvation level (where you would start taking damage with each few steps). They would go well with a D&D hex-crawl too.

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    1. They were in a lot of the *band roguelike games too. I don't know if it originated in Ultima or vice versa.

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  2. I know it's trite, but they say necessity is the mother of invention for a good reason. It's often not only the best inspiration, but also motivation, to create something. I can't imagine Gary and crew would have created half of those "annoying" monsters if their parties weren't easily blasting their way through all their painstakingly made dungeons, and gathering mountains of magic items whose quantities and power may not have been well balanced during the design phase.

    It's interesting to look at why monsters were created throughout our own history, as well. Generally it's for two reasons: to give an explanation to an unknown phenomenon (odd weather, madness, missing household items) or, more in line with this blog post, to enforce some kind of behavior (generally making sure children behave/do their chores/stay away from dangerous terrain).

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    1. Yes, you're undoubtedly right. There's also just avoiding boredom I guess. There are only so many times encountering orcs or goblins is interesting.

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  3. Monster which only hunts invisible things... The Invisible Stalker... using invisibility now has a 1 in 6 chance of attracting an invisible stalker, which arrives in 1-5 days, on a 6, roll again & it arrives in that many turns...

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  4. The thing being, I never liked these monsters. Outside of a mad wizard stocking his labyrinth, I just never could figure out how they could seem natural. While this might not matter to players in actual real play, it always bothered me, so I shied away from them.

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  5. That reminds me of this excellent post of Telecanter's: http://recedingrules.blogspot.com/2012/03/engineering-monsters.html?m=1

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