creatures Archives - Neitherworld Stories

January 27, 2010

Orcjournal.com

Orcs have lousy memories. No. That’s not right. Orcs have superb memories that retain far more detail than that of the average human. If you ask an orc about his breakfast, he’s likely to be able to tell you how many bites it took him to eat it. That’s assuming he didn’t take a nap in the meantime. For orcs,...

February 13, 2009

Stranger than fiction

Want some inspiration for monsters? How about a graceful, translucent angel-looking-amorphous-thing that shoots tentacles out from the top of its head to catch prey. Want something more “traditional” than that? How about a 600 pound duck (realizing that a swan can break a person’s limb with a wing buffet)? Both of these (and more) are real creatures that Angela has...

January 12, 2009

Boredom and Undeath

Yesterday, Angela and I went out for brunch and had a chat about the undead. In her game, a minor theme that’s continually crept up has been that undeath is boring. A necromancer had a recreation room for his ghouls (kept in a portable hole, which we stole… filled with ghouls. Yes… the same portable hole that now has an...

January 6, 2009

Evolution and creationism in fantasy

Where do monsters come from? Many people won’t care. Monsters are. Perhaps they should not be (and the PCs are dedicated to fixing the situation). If you are running a particular sort of game – or designing your own setting – asking where the diversity of monsters comes from can be useful. Popular debates in our own world give us...

December 31, 2008

Transformative Character Classes

A post contributed to the Transitions and Transformations Blog Carnival. I was introduced to transformative character classes by 3rd edition D&D. You know what I mean here – a 20th level monk becomes an Outsider… a 10th level Dragon Disciple becomes a Half-Dragon… that sort of thing. Transformative classes might have existed before then. I suppose you could say that...

December 11, 2008

Playing with ecological niches to come up with alien animals

My post on prehistoric rhinos last week got me thinking, and I came up with a way of generating new ideas for creatures that seems kind of nifty to me. This tends not to get you monsters, per se, but more like natural creatures that don’t feel quite right. Some of them can be combatants – others are just color....

December 3, 2008

Giddyap Rhino

Over the weekend, while visiting my parents in Maryland for Thanksgiving, Angela and I were able to skip down to DC for a bit. We poked our head in to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where we spent most of our time in the prehistoric mammals exhibit. Prehistoric mammals are pretty darn cool. One thing that struck me was...

October 20, 2008

d20 Patch: 4e-style monsters

It has been pointed out that players prefer 3.5 and GMs prefer 4e. Whether this is true or not, it has enough of an element of truth to gain some traction. Why? GMs really like the ease of preparation in 4e. In 3.5, statting up a monster for a combat that might last a couple of rounds was a headache....

September 21, 2008

New classic monster?

We were in Michael’s the other day looking at art supplies and decided to check out their Halloween selection. Among other things, they had some monster busts. They had the classics – skeleton-guy, vampire-guy, Medusa, and… hey! Who is that at the bottom?Let’s take a closer look: Vincent Price?

August 22, 2008

The Hydra: an alternate view

Here’s a slightly odd take on a solution to the hydra problem for 4e. A standard level 12 encounter for 4 PCs would feature (1) Hydra, (1) Skulking Hydra Head, and (4) minion Hydra Heads for a 6-headed hydra. I had to create a new mechanic for multiple monsters sharing a single body. It should, I hope, be self-explanatory. Hydra...

Tag: creatures