A Bestiary for more than the DFRPG: Nordlond Enemies Book

[DouglasCole]

The Nordlond Bestiary was accepted on Kickstarter today!

This enables the pre-launch page, which notifies people when the campaign launches.

To do it like the monstrous, um, manual I think we've always wanted for Powered by GURPS and the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (mockup on the right!) rather than small thematic volumes, this project will need a lot of support. Almost all of that support is for artwork.

More Details for the Curious

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a fantasy roleplaying game in possession of dungeons, must be in want of more monsters. No, more than that. Even more.

Whether riffing off Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or the more genre-appropriate Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, there’s no question that a giant book of creatures is a boon to gamemasters wanting to keep their campaigns fresh and exciting. For a long time, the classic big books of monsters have been hard to come by as a fully supported work for Powered by GURPS games.

No longer.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is purposefully generic: It is Powered by GURPS, after all. The Norðlond setting is not generic, borrowing from the literary tradition of the Viking culture. The sagas of looting, pillaging, and raiding for wealth and fame made a natural match for a game with a tag-line of “Smash Evil for Fun and Profit.”

Even with that in mind, the monsters here can be—and should be—repurposed and transplanted to other campaigns. Many of them are thinly disguised transplants from other cosmologies anyway: The nautamaðr is clearly based on the Minotaur; the Blóðughúfa, or “bloody hat” is the redcap, a fixture of Northumbrian folklore, perhaps derived or parallel to the Irish fear dearg, meaning “red man,” said to wear a red coat and cap. Animals—normal, giant, and dire—don’t require any work to move between campaigns. Much as the player characters pillage loot, GMs should pillage the worked examples here to make their lives easier when running games in any campaign.

That's what I hope to bring to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG through a Norðlond lens. Oh, and many of the creatures correspond 1:1 with creatures from That Other Game. So if you just want to pick up a module or adventure path and run it, referring to this book for instant stats?

That's one of the things I hope to enable here.

[ravenfish]

What's the spread of power level, by the way? GURPS Dungeon Fantasy monsters are generally tuned to challenge heroes who start "larger than life" and only get stronger from there.

[Anders]

So how many monsters would that be?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

What's the spread of power level, by the way? GURPS Dungeon Fantasy monsters are generally tuned to challenge heroes who start "larger than life" and only get stronger from there.

With Delvers to Grow, games can start down as low as 62 points, so I intend to provide support from "reasonable challenge for starting 62-pt delvers" all the way to "this monster will wipe the floor with six 250-point delvers and not breathe heavy."

The book also has a lot of plain animals, not to mention their dire and giant versions.

If the project achieves its final form - the 240+ page hardback I dream of - there will be plenty of room for all types.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anders

So how many monsters would that be?

Would you say you have a plethora of monsters?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Anders

So how many monsters would that be?

I have 200 entries. Some of those have multiple types.

The writing is being done in five blocks of 40-ish monsters each, but the first block ("Faerie and more") actually has 60 different creatures and variants.

If you think to yourself ... "Hey, did Doug ever write fully original fluff text for nigh-on every creature in the SRD for his version of That Other Game that actually birthed the Nordlond setting?" and you answer "Hey, I bet he DID write 130,000 words of fluff text!" then your thinking is correct.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Would you say you have a plethora of monsters?

Maybe of piñatas. I would say I have a plethora of piñatas.

[Farmer]

This looks great. Hardcover or not!

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Farmer

This looks great. Hardcover or not!

Truth. The important thing for a heavily referenced book will wind up being the sewn binding, which is one of the reasons I hope this really gets a lot of backers so it becomes a no-brainer on upgrading the print run with things like that.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

With Delvers to Grow, games can start down as low as 62 points, so I intend to provide support from "reasonable challenge for starting 62-pt delvers" all the way to "this monster will wipe the floor with six 250-point delvers and not breathe heavy."

The book also has a lot of plain animals, not to mention their dire and giant versions.

If the project achieves its final form - the 240+ page hardback I dream of - there will be plenty of room for all types.

Excellent!