Monster Design

Having fun playing around with my tempo-based game touched on in the last post.

You really get a completely different feel for monsters depending on the system you use. A lot of people design monsters "in generic" - for "any system". Or, more or less equivalently, they design monsters for a standard combat system (d20-ish).

But if you have a different set-up, you can have very different monsters.

For example, take the humble zombie. Talking about "rrrrrhhhh..." slow zombies, not one of the scarier fast ones we see these days.

In a generic combat system, you'd design a zombie by saying something like "low speed, high health... takes half damage from bladed weapons... let's give it a chance to bite on a successful attack..."

In my tempo game, a zombie is more of a dangerous puzzle piece than a simple enemy. This makes sense, as that's the role slow zombies play in most non-tabletop-RPG settings. They're a horde you have to struggle with.

At tempos 1-4, the zombie cannot attack, only shamble, which increases the tempo as they close in. At tempo 5, the zombie can attack. Although their attacks aren't hugely powerful, zombies have a few advantages. First, if they attack someone who has already taken their turn, they get an extra die on their attack. Second, if the target has already been attacked by a zombie, they gain another die. Third, if they choose a zombie to go next, that zombie gains an extra +1 on their attack. This stacks.

So if there are 5 zombies and they all go in a row, the last zombie has +4 to attack and, if the players have taken their turns, perhaps two extra dice. This makes him very dangerous.

This means the players have to take a couple of precautions. Against small numbers of zombies, you want to try and keep the tempo low. The zombies will raise the tempo, but they can't actually attack except on tempo 5. So if there are five zombies and you pass them the baton at tempo 1, only the very last zombie will actually get to attack. The other four will have to spend their turns closing in. (In a cinematic shot, this would be the players jumping when they see a zombie, and backing into another zombie.)

The edge of the turn is also critical. Players will generally want to let the zombies go at the beginning of the turn, to avoid the die bonuses. This means wrangling to be ready to give them control at the beginning of the turn.

If there are a lot of zombies or the players don't want to maintain a low tempo, they'll need to be sure to break the zombie attack chain. This can be done in a variety of ways. A tempo trap can grab you a turn as the zombies reach a certain tempo, but since the danger is in them staying at tempo 5 very long, counters are a better option. Take your turn when they attack you, and even if you give the baton right back to them, their bonuses are lost.

Zombies don't have very high health in this game. It's not a prolonged assault by N zombies. Instead, it's a matter of killing them off fast enough to survive (often with a continuing flood of incoming zombies). So attacks which hit multiple enemies or allow you to take another attack after killing an enemy are great in this situation.

The whole point of the tempo system is not to lock the players into a specific role, and this is a good example of what I mean. In this situation, none of the players are required to play striker or healer or buffer or anything. Instead, the focus is on taking actions while not screwing up the tactical situation. All the players will want to contribute by keeping the tempo low, which limits their tactical options but doesn't write any of them out of the combat.

For example, a rogue wouldn't rush in and perform his close attacks, because those are high-tempo attacks. Instead, the rogue would hang back and use a pistol or maneuvering abilities, since those keep the tempo low. The rogue is still perfectly useful, he just has to focus on one side of his character rather than the other.

Zombies are just one example. Virtually every enemy can be made into an interesting tactical situation. Combining enemies into packs is also very interesting - and sometimes actually less dangerous.

Zombies act to raise tempo and cannot do anything at low tempos. But ghost-class enemies like banshees lower tempo and (in the case of a banshee) perform best at low tempos. So if you combine them into a pack of zombies-and-banshees, their tempo control conflicts and they trip over each other, tactically speaking.

This can even be done by including NPC ally effects, such as fire support from a nearby city, or a holy blessing that does nothing but spend its turn gently healing a small amount of health while lowering the tempo.

And all of it is a steady learning curve. You don't just jump in with summons and tempo traps and complexity. You jump in with zombies. You begin to understand as you play, instead of having to have someone around to go "wait, you need to take your half step like this so you get a +1 next round when I do this..."

You grow into that complexity.

That's sort of what I'm thinking.

Designer Monsters

I loooooove monsters.

So let's talk about designing effective monsters. The same fundamental rules apply whether you're designing for a book, an RPG, a TV series with no end, a horror movie... well, there are differences, but let's talk about the parts that are the same.

The first is that a monster has to embrace a part of the human condition.

That sounds pretty hoity-toity, but it simply means that the monster has to feel like it means something, like it ties in with the world and the people in the world.

For example, a werewolf is about rage, losing yourself to bestial instinct. It's fundamentally the same monster as The Hulk.

A vampire is about obsession with death, something most humans can understand pretty easily. These days there's incarnations that are more about obsession with hidden worlds, but classically it's about death. Incarnation, get it? HAHAHAHAHAHAAaaaaaa... sigh...

The daleks are about obsession with perfection, with purging imperfections. Actually, many old Dr Who monsters are like that, because at the time the reigning monster concept was based on Nazis and WWII. So they resonated very strongly with the times.

These monsters are powerful monsters, assuming the audience understands those parts of the human condition (from either side). These monsters can be used to tell stories about those parts of the human condition. Vampire stories about running from, defeating, and/or accepting death. Werewolf stories about the price of controlling or failing to control yourself. Dalek stories about being a machine... or fighting against one.

So, to be clear, a monster is a window on the human heart. A monster cannot just have more HP or a deadlier attack. If you make such a shallow monster, it'll never catch anyone's attention.

Some people say that a monster is like a funhouse mirror of the human heart, but I think that's more limiting than the idea of a window... because you can see through a window in both directions.

Anyway, if you want your monster to catch people's attention, there are a few additional things you may want to consider.

The first is what powers the monster has.

This is fairly obvious - monsters have powers. Jason lives through everything, the alien queen is both big and nasty and, if you leave her alone, will fill your planet with horrors. Werewolves regenerate and have the strength of a wild animal. Vampires can hypnotize you, disappear and reappear...

The powers of a monster should generally support their high concept. A werewolf with the ability to hypnotize makes little sense, because there's no connection between losing yourself to bloodlust and going "oooh, you're getting sleeeepy". Doesn't make any sense.

In general, powers are pretty flexible. It's not that the fundamental power has to perfectly match the concept... it's that it has to be able to match the concept when deployed. Both vampires and werewolves regenerate, but they regenerate in very different ways. Werewolves regenerate constantly, driven by a constant, frothing feral anger. Vampires classically regenerated with the fall of night, integrating them into the world's own concept of life and death.

Weaknesses are the same, but are usually tightly linked to the powers of the protagonist and the actual specific story you're trying to tell. Daleks can only be defeated by screwing up the cogs of the machine - trying to face them head-on is a nightmare. Werewolves can only be defeated by the metal that represents purity - silver. Fairies can only be defeated by humanity's greatest crime against the natural world - worked iron. Vampires can only be defeated by dealing with the organ that represents life, but has been perverted to fuel their undeath.

It really does depend on the story you want to tell. Sauron's weakness involves hiding behind rocks. The weeping angels have the weakness of being looked at. These are, when stated baldly, really silly weaknesses. But they match the powers of the characters in the story.

Thirdly, presentation does matter. Werewolves are unpopular because they're overdone. Weeping angels are popular because there's weeping angel statues everywhere and most youngsters aren't religious enough to have assigned them any other connotation. Hijack it and make it a monster!

Well, that's a kind of art I don't have much advice on. It really depends on your audience - what one audience finds scary, another will find campy or even cute.

Fourthly, consider whether your monsters can be expanded upon without diluting them. Can people tell other stories with these monsters? Or are you telling just about the only one?

Even if no other story is ever officially told, many audience members will happily daydream or have nightmares about other stories they make up for themselves. So it's best if a monster is somewhat flexible.

Let's use two Dr Who monsters as examples:

The daleks are a bit passe today because they are based on our parents' or even grandparents' experiences. But, fundamentally, they are a very flexible monster that can be used in a lot of different stories. While there have been good stories and bad stories, the concept of "dalek" comes out the other side pretty well, ready to be used again. Even though they look stupid!

On the other hand, the weeping angels were a devastatingly cool monster when first introduced... but the story that was told was basically the only story that could be told. So, to bring back the cool monster, they added in new powers, new needs, new ideas. And basically ruined the monster - it's a convoluted mess of powers that don't really embrace any one human element.

The angels were a bit of a limited monster in the first place, because their powers and weaknesses were designed to tell that one story. Within that framework, they were nightmares. They represented fear of the dark given perfect form: not just fear of night, but fear of every moment of darkness, even the moment in which you blink.

But their powers were extremely specific, and that means they can only tell very specific stories. Their powers weren't generic or varied, like vampires and werewolves and daleks and time lords: they had a few super-specific powers, and that was it.

The monster wasn't made with an eye towards expansion.

There's nothing wrong with that, if your idea is specifically to tell that one story. But if you're introducing a monster you want to be flexible enough to use in several very different kinds of arcs, you need to start right off the bat by considering whether it can be expanded without dilution. Can powers be gracefully added or ramped up? Can weaknesses be altered or shored up? Can all of this happen while the monster still represents some facet of the human heart?

Those are the considerations I put into monsters.

Here There Be Monsters

Monsters and monster stories suit the culture that creates them. You can see this pretty easily by looking at the ancient monsters that ancient cultures created.

In western Europe, "eat me" monsters dominated, and the vast majority of both monsters and monster tales involved being killed and eaten. Vampires do not spread their state by a bite, they simply squat on your chest, eating your breath, until you die. Werewolves, similarly, just kill and eat you. Only later were new attributes introduced that made these monsters into their now-familiar forms.

On the other hand, eastern European monsters and monster-tales tended to focus a bit more on disease and freezing, things closer to their ancient culture's heart. On the gripping hand, Japanese monsters and monster-tales tend to involve enforcement of cultural norms. As one of many examples, the kappa that loves to eat children can be defeated by bowing to it. It automatically bows back and, in the process, spills its life-giving head-water and freezes.

You can see monsters change as cultures change. Our current obsession is with contagion. Most of our most memorable modern monsters are about being changed against our will, being forced to become something else.

Vampires are no longer simple eaters. Now they spread, turning you into a vampire. Werewolves, too, are contagious. Zombies as well. Classic Alien-aliens embed themselves inside you and use you for a host rather than simply eating you. Cthulhu drives you insane with its mere presence. Frankenstein's monster is just a man trapped in a horrific body. Grays do experiments on you, pull things out from inside and put things in that weren't supposed to be there. And Godzilla was a normal lizard until he was forced to change...

Sure, these monsters can also eat you, but that's rarely the point of the story. The point of the story is that you (or the monster) are being changed, forced to do or be something you don't want to do or be. Which we encounter a lot more in our modern culture than being eaten or frozen, so that makes sense.

Classically, a monster's defeat often comes at the hands of what the tellers consider their culture's greatest triumphs - expensive silver, holy symbols, respect... this, too, changes over time. Most modern, western-culture monsters are defeated by feats of creativity, high technology, or determination, things we hold in very high regard.

This is sometimes reversed, with the monster having attributes we regard highly, and using them against us. The terminator was a high-technology, very determined monster that could only be defeated by, you guessed it, creativity and determination.

Distilling the fear a monster causes and the thing which defeats the monster down into simple statements can allow you to create extremely creepy monsters by simply imagining a way to push those things a little further, a little purer. Instead of jumping out and going "boo!", the best monsters first highlight our fears, then our prides.

So instead of re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reinventing vampires, why not invent a new monster that more purely preys on our cultural fears and is defeated by our cultural prides?

It's not as easy as it sounds, largely because our culture's emerging fears and prides often have no agreed-on terminology. For example, a lot of us fear the fact that the rest of us sell ourselves and our information into bondage in exchange for a new trinket. There's no real name for that fear. What would you call it? Eulageddan? iFear?

But I'd be interested in hearing anyone give it, or any other fear/pride, a shot.