An article today on Wizards’ website got me thinking. Let’s try a little experiment. Take a look at this creature and this creature. Assuming that you only have the pictures to go on (and, I guess, the names since they’re right there on the webpage), think about their similarities and differences. Consider where one would make more sense than the other, how players would react to seeing each, and what strategies they might take against each in a fight. We’ll come back to this example later.
As Jon Schindehette very correctly said in his article on undead, the visual aspect of a monster is a very powerful element in what a creature is and how they exist in the game world. It helps players picture what’s happening, it gives them information they can use even if they don’t recognize the exact creature, and it helps differentiate monsters that might otherwise be very similar. For example, if I said “savage humanoids, low level, tends to appear in groups”, that could be orc, gnolls, goblins, certain kobold tribes, or any number of scary beasties. But if I say “hyena-headed guy”, that’s all you need to think “aha, that’s probably a gnoll, and he probably thinks I’m delicious.”
Following from this, changing some visual aspect of a monster or character can change players’ idea of them even without a single mechanical change. Wielding a “greatclub” is not the same as wielding a “four-foot long metal club inlaid with a relief of fire-breathing dragons”. “The wizard casts magic missile” is not the same as “The wizard gestures nonchalantly, and five magical hands appear and punch you in the stomach.” The former is a clear and complete, if lazy, description, but the latter is far more descriptive and memorable.
I said this way back when I wrote about Law #3:
…most players don’t memorize monster information. A reskinned creature is as good as a brand-new creature when it comes to surprising and interesting players, but takes far less time.
So what’s the difference between the earthquake dragon and the nightwalker? Not a darned thing. At least, not when you switch their stat blocks, which you can do with barely a change to either of them. Either monster can serve as a stand-in for the other, and they can both be any number of other monsters and vice versa. The stats are neat and they make the game run, but the real impact is in how you choose to represent these stats to the players.
I’ve made a second career of this, by deciding what creatures I want the players to fight, then checking the Monster Manuals for something of equivalent CR or level that does roughly what I want. It’s worlds faster than making monsters from scratch, fast enough that I can do it mid-session if the players do something unexpected, which means the story is driven by them rather than by the monsters I’ve prepared. In the Tower campaign alone, I used dragon mechanics for everything from elementals to devils to Japanese cyborgs. Part of this is necessity, because 4th Edition seems to think that all dragons should be solos and most solos should be dragons, but it’s mostly because it’s a lot of fun to take something old and present it as something wholly new with just a bit of reskinning.
So I kind of like this idea of “different monsters should look different” even if it does make reskinning harder. If ghosts, wraiths, and shadows are all that different, one can’t substitute for the other, but I think that’s a good thing. It shows that Wizards might be getting past the numbers-first design of 4th Edition and back to an aesthetic of telling a story in a coherent world.
Or it could just be one writer with a good idea. I don’t know.
On Undead (and also, I Suppose, Reskinning)
An article today on Wizards’ website got me thinking. Let’s try a little experiment. Take a look at this creature and this creature. Assuming that you only have the pictures to go on (and, I guess, the names since they’re right there on the webpage), think about their similarities and differences. Consider where one would make more sense than the other, how players would react to seeing each, and what strategies they might take against each in a fight. We’ll come back to this example later.
As Jon Schindehette very correctly said in his article on undead, the visual aspect of a monster is a very powerful element in what a creature is and how they exist in the game world. It helps players picture what’s happening, it gives them information they can use even if they don’t recognize the exact creature, and it helps differentiate monsters that might otherwise be very similar. For example, if I said “savage humanoids, low level, tends to appear in groups”, that could be orc, gnolls, goblins, certain kobold tribes, or any number of scary beasties. But if I say “hyena-headed guy”, that’s all you need to think “aha, that’s probably a gnoll, and he probably thinks I’m delicious.”
Following from this, changing some visual aspect of a monster or character can change players’ idea of them even without a single mechanical change. Wielding a “greatclub” is not the same as wielding a “four-foot long metal club inlaid with a relief of fire-breathing dragons”. “The wizard casts magic missile” is not the same as “The wizard gestures nonchalantly, and five magical hands appear and punch you in the stomach.” The former is a clear and complete, if lazy, description, but the latter is far more descriptive and memorable.
I said this way back when I wrote about Law #3:
So what’s the difference between the earthquake dragon and the nightwalker? Not a darned thing. At least, not when you switch their stat blocks, which you can do with barely a change to either of them. Either monster can serve as a stand-in for the other, and they can both be any number of other monsters and vice versa. The stats are neat and they make the game run, but the real impact is in how you choose to represent these stats to the players.
I’ve made a second career of this, by deciding what creatures I want the players to fight, then checking the Monster Manuals for something of equivalent CR or level that does roughly what I want. It’s worlds faster than making monsters from scratch, fast enough that I can do it mid-session if the players do something unexpected, which means the story is driven by them rather than by the monsters I’ve prepared. In the Tower campaign alone, I used dragon mechanics for everything from elementals to devils to Japanese cyborgs. Part of this is necessity, because 4th Edition seems to think that all dragons should be solos and most solos should be dragons, but it’s mostly because it’s a lot of fun to take something old and present it as something wholly new with just a bit of reskinning.
So I kind of like this idea of “different monsters should look different” even if it does make reskinning harder. If ghosts, wraiths, and shadows are all that different, one can’t substitute for the other, but I think that’s a good thing. It shows that Wizards might be getting past the numbers-first design of 4th Edition and back to an aesthetic of telling a story in a coherent world.
Or it could just be one writer with a good idea. I don’t know.