(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

Every Day Is Great.

There's that - worth noting, mentioning here. I have to remember to do that actually. Do you have this crisis? This time of year? Do you look at your house and feel like it's way too dirty & that you're rubbish and that you don't do enough laundry? I mean - it comes up, for all of us no? Maybe you're really together and your environment is immaculate all the time. Personally? I think it's worth it to pay someone to clean up my house for me. It's worth it. Now, finding a person to do it - that's a different matter. But that feeling, that bad feeling about your life that comes from disarray - I'm pushing it down pretty hard by realizing things. Good things - I mean, man, I do what I want - that's what I get to do. I guess it's worth considering, remembering - thinking on/of - but yeah, I do what I want to do - and that's a good life.

Right now I'm stuck, thinking about monsters. I'm writing a book now about how to be the Dungeon Master. These are the facts about this: First - I'm an above average dungeon master. I don't know from top percentiles or shit like that- competitive ability? Couldn't tell you - but I can say there are good and bad and that I'm pretty good. Second I've put in the time - experience. True facts - if you were to ask my best skill - that's probably it. I've seen that people do make a living at it - I bet I could, well, make a few bucks anyhow. I definitely made out on free beer and food. It's not the greatest running for the general public - that I've done and it's tricky - cause the public attendees, there's two stripes - people who like but aren't invested in the hobby - they're cool, businessmen & stuff who just wanna roll the dice a couple nights a month. There's another breed too - people who are way into the hobby but who are socially repellent. Creeps dig? Now - I'm down with creeps, or anyhow, I'm not instantly hateful - my move is to try and bring you up - it's not hard being cool babies, it's easy being lovable. I'll show you what I know. A lot of creeps though - they don't wanna learn a new way - they're creeps all the way down. Third thing is - I make the effort, put in the work & initiative. Dig, I'm willing to write the book - which is kind of half the war right there.

Anyhow - I got to thinking about monsters. They come up in all the books - but I find that I'm dissatisfied with the treatment a lot of the times. My thing is that the problem of monsters in contemporary systems is that they aren't ever really differentiated as monsters- they're made to be like, a different humanoid ethnicity that's defacto evil & thus deserving of culling. To use the parlance of our times - this is problematic. Ethnic cleansing simulations are kind of the grognard staple. A place full of orcs, let's kill the orcs and take their stuff - y'know, before they do it to us. I wouldn't rule these things out altogether, understand - but include them in a more measured way. Some of the monsters are monsters of evolution - there are Lions - Lions will kill and eat you - they are horrible. I was looking at this even & did you know the peculiar facts about how the word for bear is kind of lost to history? It's interesting - the names we use are like diminutive joke names because in the past they were thought of as so horrible that people couldn't be brought to say the real name - lest they give the things power. Even in Greek I think Arctos or whatever supposedly means "Destroyer" and that's just the epithet for bears that the greeks had. So evolution makes monsters - sure. But this is a game about imaginations - so there are Monsters that are non-biological, nevermind that that's the treatment they're given in all the relevant books. The Owlbear is an animal that is a cross between bear & owl. The Illithid & the Beholder- they're straight up horrifying & treated as what amounts to kinds of people with weird compulsions & ideas - they're only superficially monstrous. So I'm thinking beyond ecological monsters that are just other types of people - I want to have more Folkloric monsters - which correspond to folklore. They'll have the weirdness & unintentional hilarity & wholly intentional horror that real folklore creatures have - Hopping Vampire & Tanuki I'm looking at you guys. Weird & puzzling & devoid of ecological sense - I want those. This stuff's been overthought for a generation & now we're stuck with stuff like Skyrim where a dragon is less scary or intense to face than a Bear. Just saying.

Past that there's all the monsters that are purely legendary - like, I dunno - maybe if they just have a name, a known identity. Dracula? King-Kong? Godzilla? I guess these are the monsters of legend - may or may not be true but shit if they are, that changes the world. A lot.

What about you? Do you type or consider monsters? Don't you think it's about time that you did?

EDIT Themes.

In this example I think Kanye is a folkloric monster - a kind unbelievable combination of slapstick & deadly seriousness. Rick Ross is the ecological monster- purely an atavistic representation of the world's viciousness & Nicki Minaj is a Legendary Boss-Monster-Goddess. Jay Z is probably a villainous NPC.

Comments

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of a scenario in an old computer game. Your party comes to the edge of a village of kobolds (maybe? some sort of small humanoid that attacks in droves but not very well) and they literally all rush the party and must be slaughtered. And then the village elder steps out and says, "why did you kill us all?" and summons an additional nasty to attack you.

And there is no point where they in any way attempted to get you not to kill them. They attacked first. If they had come up and tried to engage in trade, I would have traded with them.

Similar game, only slightly different scenario: There are kobolds or something that live in the sewers. When you go down to fight the sewer monster, they attack you. Then they are shocked that you kill them. Again, if they had said, "hey, what are you doing down here?" and maybe "oh, here to kill the evil necromancer who also lives in the sewers? go straight this way until you hit the t-intersection... nasty bit o' work that one", I would have not engaged them in combat.

It's one of those thoughts I have, that this is often the problem of portrayal of the orcs or the kobolds or whatever. Even when the intention is to make them less blatantly just "evil humanoids", it seems to turn out that they are "extra stupid malicious humanoids."

Similarly, I realize that there are rules in place that are meant to simulate how terrifying something like a dragon should be, but it's really hard to enforce with rules. Bears are scary, sure, but they are sort of comprehensible. Like, you can try to think like a bear and that might work. Whereas a dragon? Sure, it's a Will save or suchlike not to flee in terror, but there's a reason for that and even making the save should leave the PCs wondering if maybe fleeing in terror isn't the smart move. "We could try to fight it, or we could see if we can back away slowly and not wake it up."

Also, said at dojo dinner last night: "How often do you use the word 'barghest'?" Me: "I will remind you that I've played a lot of D&D."

So, yeah, I do think about monsters. I need an excuse to think about barghests.

[kingtycoon.livejournal.com]

"Guys! Guys! I killed the BarGararast!" Antonio playing the nerdy-plump teen wizard after killing the Barghest.

[mordicai.livejournal.com]

So, one of Olivia's favorite things to do is to look at monster manuals & ask questions. It's led to her becoming the playground religion debunker-- "Angels? People that fly? That's not real, that's pretend."-- without any prompting, but that's getting aside. The point is, she has a range of categories for her understanding of monsters.

Real, includes bears.
Real but all dead, including dinosaurs.
Pretend but 'real', including dragons-- meaning, "known" monsters.
Pretend, meaning original D&D monsters.

Just an overlapping thought.