BUILD YOUR WORLD THROUGH YOUR MONSTERS

 

Over the decades, D&D and other fantasy games have seen the creation of countless monsters for use in games. While there are many monster that are made with specific worlds or settings in mind, most of these are designed with very broad strokes and generally fill the need for an everflowing wellspring of opponents for DMs to throw at their players. Such a generalized approach to monster design certainly succeeds in keeping players on their toes and indulging GMs in their desire to constantly surprise and vex their players, however, this also leads to many game worlds lacking definition and identity. 

I have often heard that players grow tired of fighting the same monsters over and over again but I often wonder if this is a projection of GMs put upon their players based on perceived or even wholly imagined concerns. Many classic fantasy worlds are carefully curated with monsters and other foes becoming integral parts of those settings and providing a ready shorthand for the themes and character of those worlds. Tolkien's world is distinct from C.S. Lewis' and much of this has to do with the monsters that populate them. While Tolkien's world has some familiar denizens such as dragons and giants, many of them are very much unique or at least different rom others. Lewis, instead, chooses to populate his world almost exclusively and quite purposefully with classic creatures of myth and legend (including Santa Claus) and this makes both these classic fantasy realms feel distinct from one another even though they are both recognizeable as defined fantasy worlds. 

It would be easy to argue that these worlds are the products of authors crafting stories and that they are thus very different from gaming worlds. Game worlds are, afterall, made for gaming in and it makes sense that there be a desire, perhaps even a need for a steady supply of new monsters to populate adventures. True as this may be, it is also possible to regulate the flow of new monsters while maintaining a consistent caste of creature that sets the tone and feel of your world. Maintaining a steady but restrained pace when introducing new monsters will go far in establishing the character of your game world and will aid in your storytelling. 

Once you have established the "normal" monsters for your world, you can focus your GMing work on how to use them and build stories including and focused around them. What's more, your players will be able to use this consistency to help engage with the world. When you send your players to a swampy region and it is established, through lore and previous encounters, that swamps are places where lizardmen can be found, the wheels will begin to turn when your players are required to go there. This doesn't mean that you should add in other swamp dwellers or that every visit to the swamps means lizardmen, but it does mean there should be an expectation that such an encounter is very likely.

Setting expectations and maintaining them as a matter of course does not mean creating a boring fantasy world. It means creating a world that lives and breathes and plays by rules and a degree of verisimilitude which you can then use to truly hightlight those things that stand out. If swamps are places where lizardment are found (to use the previous example) and the players start to find swamps devoid of lizardmen, having established the lizardmen's ubiquity should make their absence obvious to your players without you having to specifically highlight that absence. Furthermore, the lizardmen allow you a foundation to build on to the lore of your swamps and they become a vehicle for you to introduce new, but thematic enemies. When the lizardmen go to war with their neighbors, what monsters do they bring with them? Do they ride giant lizards and besiege settlements atop massive war turtles? Are they led to this conflict by a swamp hag who has it in for a local baron who has vexed her? 

The use and resuse of monsters is important to creating a world and while the constant flow of new monsters may be tempting, their inclusions should be done purposefully and with restraint so as not to erode the work you have done in crafting a world that players feel their characters truly live in.

GETTING A LITTLE SPACEY - PAINTED ALTERNATIVE ARMIES 28MM SCIFI MINIS

 

A while back, I was gifted these three cool scifi minis from the Alternative Armies "Alternate Stars" range. From left to right they are AS008 Fomor Space Raider with Laser Rifle, AS003 CPU4016 Cyborg Enslaver, and AS011 Uhul Warrior with Laser Cannon (40mm Tall). I am mparticularly fond of AS011 as it is inspired by some of my very first miniatures sculpts, a fantasy race of owl men called the Uhul. Gavin told me that he had to have one in this range which is quite the honor for me to have created such a memorable race of imaginary creatures. the entire Alternate Stars range is a wonderful collection of scifi characters that all have the perfect balance of detail and simplicity that make for great game pieces. 

I have painted them using a combination of speed paints and regular acrylic miniatures paint with simple color schemes and not too much work. I tend to paint to a tabletop standard. For the Fomor Space Raider, I went with a red so as to break away from a more gobliny look. The Uhul is purple because I felt like doing something different than a regular owl color scheme.

 

INTO THE CELLAR AND OTHER TIRED OLD 1ST-LEVEL ADVENTURES

Considering other ways to give low-level adventurers interesting adventures 

The stereotypical, almost memish next step after "you meet in an inn," seems to be the ubiquitous kills some giant rats in a cellar adventure. While there are many other first, "training" adventures out there, this is the (in)famous one. What I would like to do here is to present some alternatives to this. These can be added to DMs' collections of ready to go campaign starters or peppered in as filler on a slow night.

The important thing to remember when trying to come up with these first steps adventures is scale and completability. These sorts of adventures are designed to be simple, to the point and able to be completed by beginning adventures but that is not to say they cannot be interesting and challenging. One of the best ways to achieve these goals is to think of what non-combat aspects can be added to the adventure. Consider role-playing encounters, puzzles, tricks and traps that can be figured out by the players as well as their characters. These will ad texture and complexity to the adventure that does not necessarily put the characters in harms way.

If you are going to include traps or hazards, make sure they are not too lethal or perhaps not harmful but only add obstacles to the scenario. A hzard with a rickety ceiling, precariously balanced on some worm-eaten supports needn't fall and hurt characters but could demonstrate the potential for harm while blocking one route to an objective, necessitating the need to come up with a Plan B. Obstacles which can be circumvented through creative means are also a great way to add interesting elements. How do the characters get through that iron grate that keeps them from the room they ned to get to? Is there a way around or oever that bubbling pool of filthy muck?

So what might a few such adventure ideas look like?

THE MERCHANT'S GOLD

The party is approached by a merchant who has need of their aid. He explains that, fearful that he was being followed by robbers, her snuck out to a nearby wood, where he his a chest of coins. Worried that the robbers may still be watching him, he is looking to hire some relative uknowns to fetsh the chest for him, hoping that if he leaves the village on his own, the robbers will follow him and ignore the adventurers as they fetch his chest.

The party (and DM) will need to decide if the merchant is being honest and if they trust him enough to do the job. Of course the merchant may have a contingency. In this adventure, the party mayface a few bandits or perhaps the bandits are fooled and the DM decides that the encounter in this adventure might be another monster who has found the treasure chest. If the DM wanted to make a bit more of a mystery and substantial adventure of it, they could decide to have the treasure be gone when the party arrives, having been taken by some other party. Perhaps a local band of goblins has taken it? Maybe, a local farmer found the gold and, thinking it a stroke of good fortune has taken it home. Now the adventure expands to locating the gold and recovering it from whoever has it.

HERBAL REMEDIES

The party is called upon to venture into the wilderness to recover a supply of a medicinal herb. This can be done in the face of an actual illness or perhaps just to resupply a tapped out herbalist. In either case ,the adventure sets the party into the nearby wilderness in search of the needed medicine. They may be given its location or perhaps are left to locate it as well as recover it. This adventure could be set at different times of the years ot adjust the theming and inherent danger, though as it is an herbal harvest, it would have to be an herb that i available at that season. 

Along the way, the party may encounter various wilderness dangers such as environmental hazards/obstacles or animal encounters. The location of the herb should also be a challenge itself, whether through some of "guardian" or simply being dangerous to get to.

OLD BONES 

Approached by a strange person dressed in robes and a cowl, the party is recruited to go to a local burial site (tomb, graveyard, barrow, etc.) to fetsh a particular set of bones. The DM can decide whether or not the quest-giver is upfront with their motives or not but the goal is just the same. The party may be given specific instructions or they may be more vague depending on how much complexity the DM wishes to insert into the adventure. the chosen location will also determine a portion of the complexity with a graveyard being inherently less complex than a barrow or a tomb. If a very simple location is needed, it could be an isolated burial site, perhaps under an old tree or some such. 

This adventure is best used to introduce players to undead as the site of the bones is perfectly suited for it. Keeping with the goal of making this a low-level experience, the undead should be things like skeletons, a single zombie, maybe even a single ghoul or, if the DM is seeking a more challenging encounter, then select one of the many low-power, less lethal incorporeal undead types. There is still room along the way to place encounters with other creatures but, much like the rats in the cellar, you do not want to have too many additional monster encounters as this will clutter what is meant to be a sort of test-drive adventure. 

For DMs looking to add more complexity to this, consider a barrow or tomb or placing the burial site beyond some hazards/obstacles. These could bae as simple as a stream that must be cross, a swamp that must be navigated or perhaps even being partially up or down a cliff or something as basic as under a rock.

ARE WE DONE WITH VIETNAM AND WW2 YET? - THE MODERNIZATION OF MINIATURES WARGAMING RANGES

Growing up, my childhood was full of men and women with still strong and in some cases very recent memories of their experiences with WW2 and The Vietnam War. Many of the men in my life bore the physical, mental, and spiritual scars of what they experienced in both those wars. Even those who didn't go to war themselves shared in that grief, loss, and shared nightmare. Sure, they dealt with it is their own ways, some healthier than others, but it was in the collective psyche of those generations and carried over into mine. 

As I started to get into wargames, I realized that the interest in these periods was pervasive in nearly everything, along with Cold War themes of "the other", global anihilation, invasion (both overt and secret) and even the growing depersonalization of the world. My early experiences in miniatures were limited to science fiction and fantasy where these themes were often buried deeply under the popular IPs of the time - Lord of the Rings, D&D and Star Wars. Sure, we saw the holdovers from earlier days of scifi and fantasy with a lot of Frazetta fueled fantasy as well and Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and John Carter throwbacks. 

It wasn't until I was a bit older and started to look at the wider world of miniatures games out there, both ahistorical and historical alike that I started to realize that the science fiction of the era was still firmly entrenched in the WW2 and Vietnam experiences. This was often spurred on by many of the authors of the time writing science fiction based on their own war experiences and making none-too-subtle analogies to them in their work which then translated over to what wargames players wanted to put on their tables. This led to nearly every science fiction army being a laser, hovertank, power armor version of real world forces from now ten, twenty, even forty years prior. I even saw this in the historical ranges where "modern" ranges were still producing 1970s-80s hardware and barely advancing into what was coming out in the 90s, even though we were seeing this hardware getting used more and more.

 

Flash forward to when I was an aspiring miniatures producer, myself. Now that I was in the driver's seat, I set out to try to break the mold of these old ways of thinking but despite my intentions, I ran smack into the wall of those same ways of thinking. Time and again I was confronted by customer feedback asking me where unit X or vehicle option Y was. Why didn't my advanced space dinosaurs who fought a fast-moving attack style warfare have mortars, rocket launcher, and heavy wepon emplacements? Nevermind that the army as envisioned had evrything it need to fight its style of warfare. Rocket launchers weren't needed when space dinos had portable plasma launchers that did the job just fine. Why mortars when you have drones that can rain down fire on entrenched enemies? I saw this sort of thinking over and over and it absolutely reduced my pool of customers. 

So, here we are, the year 2025. We live in a world beyond the speculative timelines of most hard scifi with little to show for it but we have seen changes in warfare. Sure a lot of the familiar players are there. We still have tanks and mortars, silles and rockets. But we're starting to see a lot of info fighting and drone tech. Robots on are on the horizon and materials technology seems to be pushingthe envelop one again. We've seen small changes in military structure and use and the sorts of fights we have compared to what we've had before. Yes, much has stayed the same, but a lot has changed and I think we are starting to see it in the games and miniatures ranges that companies are putting out. 

It is my hope that designers and customers will start to appreciate the possibility of thinking creatively and once again dreaming of what warfare might look like in a future we have yet to see. Maybe it really comes down to the potential customer base. Companies will only continue to make it, if customers buy it. Maybe we've rounded the bend. Maybe it's time to let new wars inspire the imagination fo wargamers. 

20 LEAGUES UNDER MY BELT - REPEAER BONES DEEP ONES

 

Not exactly a league's worth of minis but they could be if you built them on the tougher side of how Deep Ones are portrayed in literature and RPGs. These are the Deep One minis from one of the Early Reaper Bones runs. they are still done in the original soft white stuff and will really mess up your paints if you don't wash them properly - a mistake I made. 

I based coated these in black over which I did a drybrush of white. Over this I worked with Speed Paints and let them do their thing. To this I added a Strong Tone wash. This wash ended up making their bellies a bit too dark so I went in with a white and stiples it in, leaving a good amount of the wash still visible to give them that mottled, dirty but pale look. The eyes were finished with white paint to give them eerie, mily eyes inspired by Golem from the Rankin and Bass Hobbit animations.

For the basing I used a custom ground text paste, made from a combination of Mod Podge, brown paint, tea leaves and grout mix. Over this I applied some static grass - loose and not with an applicator, and a few tufts with a sprinking of tea leaves. This was seled with PVA and isopropyl alcohol. This left a pretyt natural looking, mucky, marshy ground effect. 

I really like these figures and even though there are only three poses of them in the range they are suitable generic enough in their poses to allow for them to be bought in multiples. Add to this the inconsistent way in which Deep Ones and their hybrids are supposed to appear and you could easily mix in models from other manufacturers without much issue. 

I also have a Deep One Priest from the same range, all painted up in a matching style but with Dep One gold.

WANT YOUR 5E CAMPAIGNS TO MOVE SLOWER?

One of the main complaints about modern D&D is that character zip through levels too fast. This often creates a game where the players never really have a chance to get to know their characters and their abilities or, in some extreme cases, even get to use a new ability before another is piled on, thus resetting the process. There are all manner of fixes and tricks and tips that have been suggested and created to address this but it seems to me that one of the easiest ways to do so is to take a note from another RPG, Call of Cthulhu. 

To begin with, I am not suggesting the adoption of sanity rules or even Lovecraftian horror to fix your games. Neither of these is really a fit for all campaigns and so does not really work well as a generic solution that can be applied to any campaign. Instead, what I am suggesting is that the game shift from slaughtering hordes of lesser monsters while delving endless dungeons to something more akin to the investigative style of the Call of Cthulhu RPG and increasing the threat of individual enemies so that they each become meaningful and pit your players against opponents that require more nuance and forethought to confront. For a more direct fantasy example, think The Witcher.

Because 5E, as written, only provides for X.P. for the slaying of monsters, simply reducing the number of monsters the party encounters will naturally slow their characters progression through the levels. This, however, is an overly simplistic way to approach this and must be considered only a piece of the puzzle and not the complete answer. Once we reduced the number of monstrous encounters we then need to consider the power level and complexity of the monsters the party will encounter. Of course, more potent monsters will come with greater experience rewards, but since they will also pose a greater threat to the party at any given level, the players will hopefully be encouraged to spend time role-playing and seeking out help or lore that will aid them in defeating these more potent threats. 

The goal here should never be to punish the players by denying them chances to fight for their X.P. but to make each fight become central to a plot and amount to something more than an a never-ending spree of slain humanoids, wild animals and bandits. That's not to say that these sorts of encounters can't fit into this new model, but you can now do away with the need to pad out an adventure with encounters to keep the action going and use role-playing, NPCs and mysteries to pull the players toward these, in my opinion, more rewarding encounters.

The mechanics of this shift in play style is pretty straight forward. Target your encounters to be at least dangerous or greater difficulty level in nearly every instance with the exception being those lesser encounters that push the plot along such as scuffles with NPCs, minions or the freak environmental encounter (wolves, dangerous plants, lesser undead) that build the theme and tone of the adventure. Choose your featured creatures from those that are complex and powerful, looking for those who have multiple resistances and vulnerabilities that the PCs can learn to counter and exploit. Monsters with lair, legendary and even epic actions are most suitable to this style of play. If needed, I fully encourage beefing up existing monsters to suit your needs through simple tweaks such as increased AC, additional resistances and new abilities that fit their theme. I highly suggest that you avoid adding more HP to these modified monsters as this will not add much in the way of interest to the creatures but will certainly turn fights against them into slogs. What we should always be looking for is creatures that can be defeated if only the party knew how. 

Once you have established the central encounter of the plot, you must then spin a web of motivations, secrets, lore, clues, and useful items the party can find to use against these potent foes. This is the meat of this style of play and I cannot overstate the importance of making the majority of such adventures as much, if not more, about the preparation to confront the foe as it is about the confrontation itself. Items that will aid the party in their fight can be normal magical items that one might find in other D&D games or they can be things that resemble lesser artifacts, full of risk and danger themselves. It is also easy to make these key items into single-use items.

So, you have your plot, it's main encounter and a web of investigative clues, tricks and tricks. Why would your players ever want to play this style of play? 

First of all, any use of this method is going to require buy-in by your players but it is important that your frame it to them in a way that assures them you aren't trying to rob them of X.P. or the chance to see their characters improve and truthfully, this is absolutely not the intention of this method. The real goal here is to provide the players with a chance to act less like cartoon action heroes and more like their favorite investigative, problem-solving characters in fiction, movies and TV. Police procedurals, detective stories, true crime podcasts, even YouTube lore videos are what this style of play feeds into. As mentioned earlier, The Witcher is a great source to reference what you are going for. 

You can assure your players that their characters will grow and develop but they will spend more time getting to know their characters. It is also worth noting that their accumulations of lore, secrets, tricks and items that let them combat these more powerful foes will add texture to their characters while they spend a greater span of time at any given level, much like in older editions. The end goal should always be adventure but adventure with more nourishment of the imagination and the player's abilities. Fights will be tough but rewarding and the pre-work of the players and their characters should pay off every time.

PULP ALLEY - ONE SYSTEM TO RULE THEM ALL

It is no great secret thatone of my favorite miniatures skirmish game system is Pulp Alley. With its ease of play, character building, and customizeable content it is just so easy to pick up and play. There are so many options available within the game that allow you to play nearly any setting you like that it really does beg the question of whether or not I'll ever need to buy another skirmish miniatures game system again.

If you are not familiar with Pulp Alley, it is a game in which you create a custom team of miniatures, called a league. Your league engages in various scenarios of which their are now scores, either against other players and their leagues or in solo or even co-op play. Characters are built around die codes that are expressed as a number of certain dice from D6 to D12 which coorespond to a character's skills and what ther games would call ability scores. Unlike many games, Pulp Alley doesn't get bogged down in specific skills or equipment, choosing rather to abstract these concept through broadly expressed abilities  that a player selects during the league generation. 

                                      

Leagues also get perks which are league-wide abilitis and/or variations on league structure or league resources. Through this manipulaton of perks a league may be as few as two characters up to a small army of rank and fire squads. There are even ways to play leagues without top-level characters in the field, making it possible to model up miltiary units, tribal groups or the minions of some shadowy cabal. Leagues also have off-board assets such as contacts, laboratories, specialists, etc that provide them with bonuses when playing scenarios without placing a character in the roster. So, you might have a dynamic duo that benefitted from a high tech lair full of gadgets and a faithful butler who knows things and people. 

The game play is your typical dicing back and forth with some exceptions. Almost never is there a situation in combat where only one side is acting. Attacking somebody generally means they get to fight back, if they choose. The action of the game is further enhanced through the use of cards, held in a secret hand by each player. These cards are dual use, serving as effects to be played on a players own character or against their opponent or as a sort of meta currency when resolving certain challenges in the game. There are even themed decks to add in or substitute out the standard decks for such things as Horror. 

Scenarios are abundant and easy to create once you have played just a few. They are designed to focus in on a particular moment of action, often being framed as part of a greater narrative. Each scenario is expressed with certain guidelines for set up as well as any special rules for play. Most scenarios are settled in as many as six  turns at the end of which the game is over unless otherwise stated in the scenario. Campaigns are avaialble and the game is designed with campaign play in mind. 

While the action in the game is built around characters, it does also include detailed rules for vehicles, squads of generic troopers, super science, magic, and monsters should you need any of those for a scenario.

The game lets you use any miniatures you choose for whatever genre you want to play from  pulpy scifi to prehistoric adventure. No need to feel hemmed in by editions and miniatures ranges. Create and built and colelct in whatever ways you and your players feel is appropriate for the games you want to play and the stories you want to tell. 

So, why is this the game to beat all?

Well, it's not, exactly, but it's really close. 

Pulp Alley is never going to replace games of large bodies of organized troops or games with more detailed, tactical or strategic crunch. Pulp Alley cam be almost anything but it will always be the movie version of things - fast, loose, fun and satisfying on a storytelling and character basis. You're not going to get the depth of tactical choice that you would with a more military-oriented game. But it can do a lot and so I often find myself giving pause when considering a new, easy to play skirmish game. I have to ask myself, "Is this new investment worth it when I already have Pulp Alley?"

A recent example of this came when looking at two games, "The Baron's Wars" and "Pillage", both medieval one later and one early "Dark Ages". I really want to play in this time and even have a crap ton of Victrix Norman foot to work on that I could split across two or more warbands. Both games were tempting and both providing a very similar game even though the focus of their periods of history was separated by hundreds of years. 

But did I need both? Did I need either? Neither game seems to be a cupser crunchy attempt at historical simulation, focusing on histoical flavor and solid game play. This brought me back to Pulp Alley.

Pulp Alley can easily handle the warbands aspect of either game. There are rules for heroes and lesser heroes but more importantly you have the Gang rules which account of squads of "mooks". The various character abilities would allow for a fair amount of characterful individuals to distinguish individuals and, if one wished to venture into more legendary history, there are rules for minor supernatural abilities. So, I eased off getting either of the games, until I see if I can get a satisfying play out of Pulp Alley for these periods.  If it doesn't end up feeling right, the models will be painted up and those other games will still exist. 

I've already successfully played Star Wars games using Pulp Alley, with hoards of Stormtroopers being played using the Gang and Weapon Team rules. Imperial Officers are easily represented as Level 2 or 3 characters while the true badasses can be made reasonably well with Level 4 Heroes. The same thing goes with the good guys, though they are better built using another sort of League organization that focuses more on a few good heroes.

Pulp Alley is very much a simple, one-stop solution to almost any lighter skirmish fun you may want to engage in.