Movie Monsters In-Game

We try to avoid actually mentioning content that isn’t our own this directly, but any pretending to dance around it would be silly.  So:  We love the idea of the predators, the yautja.  Mandibles, plasma cannons, spears and claws - love them all.  But how do we bring them into a fantasy game?

Let me introduce you to the Legend Quest version of the formorians:  We tried to return to the original source material for most of the LQ monsters, but one thing you’ll learn about Irish myths (or have learned) is that they aren’t exactly consistent.  So trying to tie together things we thought we knew, we made the kobolds, formorians and firbolgs all a subset race of the Fairie (which obviously includes the elves).  Here is the write up on them from the Omnibus book:

The formorians are a race of giants.  They are cunning, but cruel.  They accept only victory, and any that fail are dishonored and considered worthless in the future.  It is this constant testing and disposal of those less than perfect that keeps those formorians that survive at the peak of their abilities.  The formorians are the eternal enemies of the firbolgs, who they regularly defeat in battles.  The formorians are much more intelligent than the firbolgs, and they use this cunning to plan ambushes that often give them victory over their firbolg cousins.

The best known myth about the formorians is when a champion (sometimes human or orc or elf) gave the formorian chief a beautifully crafted sword and said he deserved it because he was the most powerful warrior.  Well, the other formorians in the war party took objection to this and felt they deserved the sword.  Next thing you know the arrogant formorians had killed each other in a series of duels and assassinations, leaving one heavily wounded giant behind, who was no match for the hero.

Maybe you don’t see it yet, because we’ve never treated them like predators.  I have never dove down deep into their warrior culture and how or why they compete in this way.  Sure, their god is highly competitive and brings it out in them, but that’s a bit too easy.

So, ignoring the fact that now I feel like I need to figure out their culture, I am looking at formorians in a new light.  They have always been great to use as giants - huge hulking monsters who can dish out damage like nobody’s business, and they are somewhat intelligent (human level).  But now I’m seeing them as more than raiders and ravagers.  Now I see them as hunters, seeking out different types of prey to test themselves.  They will go after firbolgs to show they can best strength with strength.  They will go after dragons to prove they can withstand fire and wings.  And they will go after human champions to prove they can beat clever and resourceful humans despite their magic and other gadgets.

Just starting on the culture - They keep their numbers (at least the numbers of their men) small, typically a “father” and two or three “sons” or apprentices.  This way they can be actively hunting without the adult worried that he is in constant danger of being challenged for his supremacy.  These bands of killers can hunt for glory and plunder, bringing home the spoils of these hunts for the women folk.  And don’t forget - bringing home the trophies too!

Are you thinking, how can these giants possibly be predators?  They bring home trophies.  Those trophies can be slaves, like slave weapon smiths, armorers, enchanters, or alchemists.  These giants are cruel taskmasters.  They are exactly the kind of beings that would promise to torture and kill your wife and children if you didn’t do what they asked.  In fact, they might even let their women folk keep your women folk.  Professional killers or not (and it should be not), the formorian females can crush a human woman easily.  Now all of a sudden, these small formorian families have access to magic, like camouflage armor, possibly invisibility potions, poisons, and some really cool enchanted missiles.

If you’re looking for something smaller but possibly more dangerous (because they are smarter), check out our hearrsmon.  They have a whole culture based on this type of slavery.  Only they call it being the lord of the castle and feudalism instead of slavery.

This post was written as part of the recently released Carnage Amongst the Depraved aka All About Big Stupid Monsters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with those monsters that are typically huge, super strong, but also not so bright, and how this will affect their actions and tactics, as well as other game mastering tricks, but within a fully defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.

 

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 59 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

So, What Exactly is Cannibalism?

So, what exactly is cannibalism?  Hoping we don’t wind up in a, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it” style of answer.

Sure, some of you are thinking we’re crazy for even asking the question.  I mean, cannibalism - eating people, right?  Is that what it is?  Is cannibalism eating your own?  Is it eating people?  Is it eating sentients?  What exactly is cannibalism?

I was tempted to go and look up the definition in some dictionary, but what’s the use of that?  Webster doesn’t have to worry about dwarves, elves, and the others.  We talked about this kind of stuff in Ballogfar because the Calentrocs tend to eat their prey.  Does that make them cannibals?  If an ogre eats a human, is that cannibalism?

Why does any of this matter?  It matters because we have modern humans pretending to be hired killers.  Far too often, whether you play with alignments or not, moral questions arise.  Is it OK to kill a person in cold blood?  You would have killed them in a fair fight, but is it OK to kill them while they sleep?  Is it OK to kill them from a sniper’s perch when they have no warning?  Is it OK to eat them when they are dead?

Maybe this is incredibly disgusting to you.  That’s probably good.  Probably shows you have some morals, ethics, or at least common sense.  But let’s change it around just a little bit:  What if it’s a dragon?  Going to be honest - In Fletnern, people eat dragons.  Some of those dragons are intelligent.  They speak, they cast spells, they plan.  They are not “dumb animals”, and yet they are eaten.

Maybe it’s fair; dragons eat humans.  But that is the question - what is allowed?  Trust me, the last thing you want at your gaming table is a bunch of players arguing over morals.  If one player or group of players is having a serious argument with another or another group, no matter how much effort you put into writing tonight’s game, it is not going to be remembered as being fun.

The best way to avoid these “ethical” problems is to establish what is and isn’t ethical.  If you as the GM can step in and say, “In the Velesan culture, snipers killing enemies from afar is considered perfectly ethical.”  or “In the Latvich culture, they kill in cold blood all the time, but only if they are combatants.  Killing civilians in cold blood is a whole different thing.”  Stuff like this allows you to circumvent these arguments.  You step in and stop it.  Yes, it is quite likely that one side or the other is going to tell you how wrong you are or they don’t feel that way, but the answer is:  The culture is established, and this is the way of the world.  You don’t have to agree with it, but 90%+ of the people around you will.

There is nothing worse than players telling you how you don’t understand your own world, but this is still a far better (and shorter) resolution than the players all arguing with each other.

But back to the original question:  What is cannibalism?  That is something you have to decide for yourself, but we will give you what we think the answer is for most races.  If you eat someone who is generally the same shape as you, you are committing cannibalism.  The closer you are to each other, the more likely it is cannibalism.  Humans, ogres, dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins - they are all the same.  If they eat each other = cannibalism.  If one of these races were to eat a centaur or minotaur - probably still cannibalism.  But if one of these humanoid races were to eat an intelligent dragon, bull, or whale, that probably would not be cannibalism.  Doesn’t matter if this intelligent animal speaks or thinks or loves its family.  With all the races in the world, few people would think of an “animal” as the same as them.

Unless, they’re a vegetarian.  Well, those cultures obviously have an issue eating any form of meat.  It won’t matter to them whether or not the animal is intelligent.  But this is high fantasy (or possibly highest fantasy).  What happens if you have an intelligent plant?  Are there any treants or ents who have apples or maybe hickory nuts?  Would there be an issue here?  Well, assumedly there would be a problem for the ents.  They might see it as humanoids eating their babies.  But as for the humanoids?  Seems a huge stretch to assume that eating a treant’s apples or other seeds is cannibalism, and most wouldn’t see it that way.

Maybe this is simplistic, but we don’t really see it that way.  After all, would eating a mermaid’s tail just seem like fish?  (Don’t read anything dirty in there!!)  But honestly, trying to establish how the various cultures felt about things like genocide, torture, executions, and similar issues was one of the first things we used to start setting up the differences between the cultures of Fletnern.  This is one of those times when knowing is half the battle.

This post was written as part of the recently released Carnage Amongst the Depraved aka All About Big Stupid Monsters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with those monsters that are typically huge, super strong, but also not so bright, and how this will affect their actions and tactics, as well as other game mastering tricks, but within a fully defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.

 

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 59 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

Ogres and Giants and Trolls ... Oh My!

Pretty much every FRPG treats their ogres, giants and trolls differently.  In some cases, the giants turn into 20’ tall beings.  In some they are 40’ tall.  And there are even some where the giants can be over 100’ tall.  While I find it funny in a cute cartoon when the giant rolls into town eating an entire wagonload of pumpkins and using a cottage as a stool, I don’t think that is useful in a FRPG.  Why?  Because if the giant is twenty times bigger than the PCs, then a sword turns into bee sting, and unless you’re allergic, you cannot die from bee stings.

In Legend Quest, we do things differently than in other games, but as we’ve just suggested, we think that’s actually pretty normal.  While we do include orcs, a thoroughly Tolkien race, for most other races, we try to adhere more closely to what we consider to be the original myths and tales.  Often that means we are trying to follow Norse mythology.  Why?  Mainly because it’s one that we know reasonably well.  Hey, play to your strengths!

What do we mean?  Well, dwarves and trolls are related.  Dwarves are considered the “normal” sized ones, and the trolls are giant dwarves.  Every racial group has different sized folk.  Among the Race of Men, halflings are the small fries, humans are “normal” (completely subjective, we know), and giants are the giant sized ones.  You don’t have to agree with us, at least not yet, but this should be pretty easy to understand.  Among the goblins, goblins are little, orcs normal, and ogres giant.  The firbolgs and formorians are the giant elves (actually giant kobolds, but they are all related, so let’s not open that can of worms right now).

But what does “giant” mean?  Well the giants are 8’-10’ tall and weigh up to 600ish lbs.  Ogres are a little shorter at 7’6”-9’ and weighing in around 400-500lbs.  Trolls are right on par with the giants, despite their stockier appearance.  The giants really are the physically superior race, though even they cannot compete with the titans who are 10’-12’ tall, can weigh up to 1,200lbs and are not only physically vastly stronger than any of the others, but also mentally better.

OK, but what’s the big deal?  By making the giants only a couple of feet taller than the humans, they can be a serious threat without being impossible to kill, or at least impossible in reality but not in the game rules.  Even the titans at twice the height of a human would still see a long sword as a threat.  That cannot be said for a giant that would be in excess of 40’ tall.

So for once, we’re not criticizing that original die-20 game!  That’s unusual!  But let’s look at their portrayal of these guys for a moment.  They have many races of giants, which to most inspections appear to follow the Norse myths.  Why do we have such a different opinion?  Because to the writers of Legend Quest and Fletnern, the fire giants and frost giants weren’t mortal creatures.  They were the inhabitants of other worlds, worlds that we see as primarily “hells”.  So while we do have “giants” that are mortal and dwell alongside humans, the “fire giants, frost giants, and storm giants” are more like angels, or demons.  Point of fact, they often find their way into Fletnern campaigns not as “giants” but instead as elementals - elemental spirits who take on the form of giant-sized humans in order to make themselves known to the mortals.  (This also makes them quite magical, literally.)

We can admit that elves, dwarves, and a whole bunch of other creatures in myth and legend are also immortal or in some manner other worldly, so we seem to be a bit hypocritical.  We’re not trying to argue both sides of the argument, just saying what worked for us.

In so many games, the trolls have now become rubbery skinned, regenerating monsters.  I forget which author wrote his trolls that way, but it certainly wasn’t Tolkien.  His turned to stone in the sunlight.  Without any malice towards other games, we have our trolls as giant dwarves.  It helps the history.

Their ogres are sized more closely to our giants but weigh quite a bit more.  Our problem with them is that they are just so stupid.  Stupid doesn’t survive in the world, no matter how big it might be.  OK, it can survive if it can breed to huge numbers, but it doesn’t survive as a predator.  The way they are treated (and hill giants too), they really don’t have a right to exist.  Why didn’t some crusade wipe them out centuries ago?  After all, a well-organized army with archers and siege weapons (not to mention magic) should be able to destroy all the ogres that exist.  It’s not like an intelligent ogre general is going to rise from those ranks and lead them as a united force.  They are too stupid and evil to band together, even in the face of annihilation.

How much of this matters?  Well, if you have giants that are 50’+ tall - how do they function in the world?  How do they gather enough food to survive?  They almost have to be loners.  They cannot effectively be killed by humans, and that type of immortality should put them beyond the ability of all but the best adventuring parties.  The idea of a giant king, even less three of them, with many followers doesn’t work.  OK, so we’re being too practical again, but that is our style.

One of the other major differences is that we don’t have our giants being that stupid.  Admittedly, the “average” one of these creatures would be on the border of “moron” when we used that word, but their reasonably intelligent folks are probably on par with an average human.  As you will soon see in The Lost City of Ballogfar, while most of the ogres of Fletnern live primitively now, they once ruled a mighty empire.  They were able to manage the administration as well as develop lines of necromancy that have not yet been matched.

The giants wanted to live peacefully and those few that are left live as farmers and shepherds.  When they were more numerous, they crafted beautiful artworks in their cities, massive stone sculptures that took generations to complete.  This isn’t to say you would want to meet one on the battlefield, but they did enough of that when slaves of the titans, and they knew enough to crave peace.

The trolls are smart enough to know that they aren’t smart.  While most of them live as predators, hunting and raiding, some of them are looking to gain the knowledge of those things that have been keeping them from success all these generations - things like magic and the smelting of steel.  Knowing you aren’t the brightest bulb on the block but looking for a means to fix that shows some manner of intelligence after all.

Is there a point?  Yes - however you decide to depict the giant races, we think you need to put enough thought into it that you allow the players a willful suspension of disbelief.  That giant that eats a wagon load of pumpkins and uses a house for a stool - where exactly is he getting wagonloads of pumpkins all the time?  Anywhere he can get that much food, he would have a bounty on his head, though the giant slayers coming after him would probably be a bit better than the one we saw in that particular cartoon.

We’ll give you one cheat that we use for a lot of our giant towns.  How can you feed these folks?  Send them after the biggest prey there is - whales.  Whaling giants gives you that suspension of disbelief.  How do you explain your giants?

This post was written as part of the recently released Carnage Amongst the Depraved aka All About Big Stupid Monsters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with those monsters that are typically huge, super strong, but also not so bright, and how this will affect their actions and tactics, as well as other game mastering tricks, but within a fully defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 59 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

 

Looting

I think every adventurer expects looting.  Looting is how adventurers make their money.  And yet in modern times, looting is considered dishonorable.  So I’m always torn.  Is looting moral or immoral?

First, I will insist that it depends on the culture.  So everything said here is perception - there is no reality!  Having given my disclaimer, I know several men, each of whom I respect wholeheartedly, who happened to come home from WWII with things that he didn’t exactly have issued to him.  There may be a katana (modern infantry officer’s weapon, not some ancient work of art) I know of, and a gorgeous SS Officer’s luger.  (Of course, these were from different men.)  So were these guys in the wrong?  Definitely if you read the modern codes of conduct.  It may be decades of playing FRPGs, but I think there is a line of morality.  Taking something off a dead foe is one thing; taking something from a scared civilian family is another.  Further - trading with a conquered foe is really OK, even if he’s selling his equipment in order to buy food.

Was it always morally questionable?  Absolutely not!  Caesar intentionally hit targets rich in loot in order to keep his troops happy (and prosperous).  Not only did they loot the valuables that they came upon, they tied up the people and sold them to the slavers.  The taking of slaves is one of the biggest forms of loot, and yet something I haven’t seen anyone do in any style of modern game.  I guess it’s just too politically incorrect to even think of enslaving someone for profit - but again, I think you need to consider the culture.

One of the biggest questions I have, and I don’t really know the answer, is what you do to make sure the officers or nobles get their cut.  I think they just get to wander the camp and anything big enough to catch their attention becomes theirs.  There are probably noble houses or palaces that are off limits to the rank and file and only get to be looted by the bosses, who then give the things they don’t want to the soldiers who helped them loot the really good stuff.  After all, if the noble officer takes a marble statue and a golden statuette, he would probably be willing to give his brute squad the solid silverware, which is probably much better than the rank and file got.

Does it matter?  I think as a world builder, you need to establish what is considered acceptable behavior.  Is it OK to loot civilians?  Is it OK to capture and sell slaves?  Is it OK to loot temples?  That one got a lot of folks in trouble in the ancient world.  Once you determine what is allowed, you have to establish the buyers for this stuff.  If looting is not allowed, then there would still be a black market.  This won’t get the looters anywhere near as much as they could have gotten, but it’s still probably worthwhile.  You also have to think it through.  If looting of enemies is not allowed - what happens to all their stuff?  Are they buried in it?  Does the “army” take it?  and if so, what do they do with it?  Leave it in the field, and there will be looters, maybe the dregs of society, but someone is going to be willing to try and make a buck off of it.  Ah, the unintended consequences of laws trying to mandate morality!

 

This post was written as part of An Adventurers’ Guide to Equipment aka All About Gear, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing the gear adventurers would want with them on missions.  Not just the boring stuff, but some of the “normal” stuff with some variation and some style.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 42 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.