Should you stock your bestiary with a gazillion monsters? - RPG Talk featuring Forbidden Lands

[@DaveThaumavore]

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[@MollyGermek]

Dave being brave and asking the internet how a furry creature with tentacles could be beautiful

[@SamuraiMujuru]

For the goat example it could be The Thing kinda situation. Supremely beautiful goat exterior that is just a lure, then out come the tentacles. And unless something made it hyper-intelligent I'd totally let a Goblin or halfling (as far as FBL goes) make a test to trick the goat into thinking they're a child so they can leg it.

[@diegotartaglia]

Exactly what I imagined when he described it. Actually makes for a pretty interesting monster if you ask me.

[@swordsnstones]

ours is very tiny compared to the gazillion pages of others, but i make a huge note in our game guide that here is a smidge of critters that are the locals and you feel free to find more from whatever source you want to drop into the game. :) because we only use a small list of monsters you can then build scenarios around them or use them as randoms. cheers, keep em rollin.

[@ZIMMER1994]

Been really loving your focus on Forbidden Lands lately. It’s a game I’ve owned for years and always want to get to the table, but never am able to. Great to see it get more love!

[@dg7815]

I feel the need to add a couple of more cons to randomized monster traits. The monsters themselves don’t come with any lore and with extreme enough randomized encounters, you end up getting back to the same problem from a different direction. You’d normally worry about players getting bored with facing the same monsters. But now players get bored cause monsters are so different that there is no point in remembering one encounter to inform your next one. Maybe it’s just me (and I’m a very inexperienced gm so it could be) but I feel like having some familiarity or an identifiable type in monster encounters is enjoyable too. Just don’t go too far in either direction of randomness and base creatures. Love the video though.

[@claudiaborges8406]

I like random tables with intent behind them. I love to find monsters whose stat block is followed by a table specific to that monster, monsters with suggested variations that dont require you to read a whole new page, or sets of tables with an idea behind them (like build-a-dark-overlord)

[@AverageTESEnjoyer5783]

The Forbidden Lands Bestiary is sooo good...

[@pokenectionswithprofessorp2979]

This is great-I'm actually writing a setting about a mutant post-post apocalypse that's alchemical. I'll think about how this might work!

[@FrancisHerding]

If you take the random monster generator as a guide rather than literally you could generate ideas that you would not normally think of. - What if it was a beautiful humanoid goat? With an elegant human face, ibex horns, long ears and large mesmerizing golden eyes with black slit-type pupils? - What if the tentacles covered its body like a living slithering dress that lasher out to protect it from weapons? - What if children were responsible for it to be cursed with the tentacles?

[@Jescribano1]

Cool topic! Never thought about it before. Have a nice day!

[@samchafin4623]

Maybe even more than for monsters, I like random tables for providing unexpected details and features to an area or room, and to provide goals for factions, monsters, and NPCs. Also, how do you make a tentacle covered goat beautiful? Give it the face of a beautiful person - now it's not really beautful in an objective sense, but does follow the prompt, and is so much worse because of it.

[@Blerdy_Disposition]

Mechanically I could see myself getting this book if I need more tables for a genre specific fantasy rpg. I think these tables can definitely help for sure in my future games.

[@kendallpb1]

Things I learned today: #1 Dave makes very good videos (this is my first); #2 I'm intrigued by Forbidden Lands; #3 I'm tempted to buy FL just to get the random tables, for use in another system where a sprinkle randomness here and there (not completely random monsters) would fit perfectly with the world/setting I have in mind!

[@opscontaylor8195]

The other important thing about Forbidden Lands versus the D20 Framework games (D&D, Pathfinder) is that the math is VERY simple on the monsters. You can make new ones yourself pretty quick even WITHOUT random tables. If needed. The advantage to rules lighter systems. Quicker homebrew.

[@deProfundisAdAstra]

This is really great advice and, as I'm working on my own system, something I'm really going to try to keep front of mind. I think it's easy to get really narrowly focused on doing things as they're presented (as a GM / player) or providing inaccessibly large complicating factors (as a designer) in the hopes that the complexity itself will magically make the table experience better. That's obviously not the case, and being more aware of how much I /need/- rather than reflexively want- is something that I think will help streamline my games

[@BillPaine]

I love the random demons in Forbidden Lands and The One Ring. I tend to generate random things in the prep before the session - rather than randomizing everything. That way, I can incorporate other environmental elements and where the characters encounter them.

[@lottedowse7353]

Great video! I've certainly also just picked some cool moves from various premade creatures in a bestiary and slapped on a description that made it all work. And certainly with random tables I usually roll it faithfully and then jiggle the result a bit to make it more fun.

[@simontemplar3359]

This was a fantastic video! I think there's a point where you kind of just get it with how to use tables. It had a little bit of a curve for me at first. I thought I was going to be blazing through solo games like it was my job. Yeah, no. But once I realized the art (and I think it is more art than science) of using generative tables and avoiding over using them, there's all sorts of things that come into being, but you have to be careful not to create that goat you described! I can't remember who said it, but I love the idea that the rules serve the game and not the other way around.

[@pickpocketpressrpgvideos6655]

Oh yeah I love monster creation tables, very fun!

[@lucaspeixotorpg]

Nice video and great t-shirt!

[@Kanakadea]

excellent video! great points

[@MFKologlu]

I could imagine the goat. I thought of a dark scene where it comes around a corner, only revealing its beautiful face. Moaning a little, hesitant to move forward. A party member comes close to pet it. Only to be faced with a nightmare. So, I guess it depends on the imagination. You are still right of course. Randomness does not need to make sense all the time and to everybody.

[@user-pc5ww8fh6d]

A bestiary with several hundred monsters, where you only ever use 10% is largely a wasted effort. Humans are often the best adversaries. Then you usually want the baddies like orcs/goblins or wolf/hyena/feline/beast men wannabes. Simple clan like adversaries. You rarely need anything totally aberration. Swamp dwellers, dark forest dwellers, and dungeon dwellers. But rarely anything that any thinking creature can't coexist with. I'm liking that Forbidden Lands is at least not a cliche setting. The elves and the dwarves are not inherently welcoming any more than the orcs or wolfkin.

[@henrymalinowski5125]

At some point you pondered why one might need to have such variety of demons in a setting and I can think of an answer. In St. Thomas Aquinas' _Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars_ and _Little Treatise on Separate Substances_, the angelic Doctor posits that each individual angel (which the demons were prior to their fall) are each distinct species unto themselves. This following from the expositions on angels of St. Augustin of Hippo and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on the same. The Forbidden Lands author may be pulling from this same stream of thought.

[@kalleendo7577]

Awesome!

[@vitore.sanches7712]

6:15 Well, you could say that the demon goat is disgusting in it's true form but project itself as a attractive young farm maiden. It could be the culprit behind many children going missing lately in the village. "The old goat prays on what it fears and with lust and fake beauty it hide it's true appearence" the old saying goes.

[@mavfan21]

You love your serpent people!!!! Age of Snakes fan here....

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@mavfan21 nice!

[@chrischristiansen6204]

I think the best on the fly monster creation would be something that can shapeshift and you want to have that chaotic feel of the thing changing during the fight. Otherwise I agree that usually you want to do some curation if you are going to use the creature vs using it as a prompt to spark creativity or sudden shifts from your standard go to. The monster mash art challenge captures the intent well, where while you are working off of prompts sometimes you have to let the idea simmer or look at it differently to capture the idea. For example the beautiful goat mimic kind of idea that others had too as a first thought was mine as well where the goat is the lure. After the video though I had the thought that what if the tentacles are the beautiful part like a mesmerizing allure or supernatural ability and the rest of its body is vaguely goat like. Maybe the body type and aversion to children are for prey selection or protecting itself. It could be averse to children if it is motivated by targeting larger organisms for prey or infestation for example. My thoughts on the weapon things were lack of interaction due to a ghost like body, but maybe instead its difficult to hurt conventionally because the body is a puppet or shell extension of the thing that you would have to damage to hurt it. Like a weak point only sometimes being targetable on a videogame boss.

[@blamp666]

Forbidden Lands random monster lists does not make any attempt to fit in the setting?! When you have portals bringing demons of all shapes and sizes, don't you think it is exactly what the theme states?

[@opscontaylor8195]

"... Children are tough to produce in a fight... " Stupid 9 month production timers. Slows down feeding the orphan grinding machine. (I had a joke about not knowing the right women for that kind of production, but couldn't find a friendly punchline...)

[@janinecat1865]

Bro needs a dwarfy beard