Request: Better Monster Signal:Noise or Information Design

[beaushinkle]

Confession: I find DFRPG monsters difficult to run, especially the more complicated ones.

I'll analyze some examples from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters, and also from Nordlond Bestiary and point out what would make this easier for me to run.

Draug (DFM23)

It starts with 164 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information

• they're angry (especially about their valuables) undead
• usually groups of 1 though they sometimes come in groups of up to 6, or more
• intelligent

Then, we get a compact stat block and list of attacks (this is great)

Then, we get the following trait list:

Bad Smell; Bad Temper (12); Bloodlust (12); Combat Reflexes; Dark Vision; Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Frightens Animals; Hidebound; High Pain Threshold; Immunity to Disease; Immunity to Poison; Indomitable; Intolerance (The living); No Blood; Single- Minded; Temperature Tolerance 5 (Cold); Temperature Tolerance 5 (Heat); Unhealing (Total); Vulnerability (Fire x2).

The following skill list:

Axe/Mace-16; Brawling-16; Broadsword-16; Shield-16; Wrestling-14.

and then unstructured notes:

Effective ST for grappling is 23 due to Wrestling skill. Carries a medium shield (DB 2), a broadsword, and an axe. Wears mail (DR 4/2, combined with innate DR 2 above) and a segmented plate helm (DR 4, giving the skull total DR 8). Some are buried with much better gear, enchanted or of superior quality. A buried-but-lively barbarian lord with a Sword of Wizard Whacking will be using it, of course! Unwilling to negotiate.

Analysis

The description is wordy. We get information about number appearing, but don't get information about what sort of treasure they might have.

The entries (and this feels like the general theme), feel like an odd midpoint between "the information useful for running the monster" and "build out the monster as though it was a PC".

DFRPG doesn't give us a full mechanical description of the Draug, but it also includes many traits that we don't need in order to actually run it.

• Bad Smell: Marginal value here; them smelling bad can be inferred from them being half-rotted corpses. Mechanically, this says the players get a +2 to detect or track the draug by scent, so if that wasn't something the GM could make a ruling on, now it's here (but buried in a trait description).
• Bad Temper: we already know from the flavor text that they're angry; is the expectation that we're going to actually be rolling Bad Temper checks for the draug (who does not negotiate, according to the notes)?
• Bloodlust: This one is useful; it informs how the draug actually behaves in combat.
• Combat Reflexes: necessary; large mechanical impact
• Dark Vision: necessary; large mechanical impact
• Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour): useful
• Doesn't Breathe: marginally useful; it can be inferred that a draug doesn't breathe if this comes up (or the GM can make a ruling on it).
• Doesn't eat or drink: unnecessary; if there is ever (for whatever reason) a question where knowing if draug have to eat is relevant, the GM can either infer it or make it up.
• Frightens Animals: unnecessary; animals don't need to be making reaction rolls against draugr, and the GM can decide the behavior of mounts/watchdogs without explicit mechanical guidance.
• Hidebound: mildly useful; I have a hard time imagining when I would need to make non-combat rolls for the draugr (rather than deciding what they do), but if you do roll skill checks for draugr out of combat (they have no non-combat skills), and you want to spend the mental effort deciding if the task was expected or unexpected, then knowing they get a -2 penalty is useful.
• High Pain Threshold: necessary
• Immunity (Disease, Poison): decently useful; a GM could rule that draugr are immune to disease and poison as a consequence of them being half-rotted undead, but I don't mind the explicit callout here since it's important in combat
• Indomitable: important; stuff like this gives Empathy value
• Intolerance (the living): unnecessary; we don't need to know how other NPCs react to the draugr, we can just choose. The PCs don't roll reaction rolls to see how they feel, they decide.
• No Blood: covered by immunity for most mechanics, gm rulings otherwise (in cases where you need to figure out if a vampire can drink the blood of a draugr)
• Single-Minded: fringe mechanical usefulness
• Temperature Tolerance: This one is confusing to me. Temperature tolerance reduces FP penalties for bad weather, but draugr don't have FP!
• Unhealing (total): important
• Vulnerability (Fire x2): important

Suggestion

Trim down the trait list to: Bloodlust (12); Combat Reflexes; Dark Vision; Dependency (Rest in own tomb 1/3 of each day or lose 1 HP/hour); High Pain Threshold; Immunity (Disease, Poison); Indomitable; Unhealing (Total); Vulnerability (Fire x2).

Here is the OSE Mummy, as a sort of parallel reference. Note how little information needs to conveyed in order to actually run it, and how the description is in bullet points and terse sentences, making it easy to reference at the table. The rest of the information about the mummy is implied or left to GM fiat.

Shark (NB161)

It starts with 163 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information:

• they live in the ocean/near shore
• capable of leaping out of the water
• they have a great sense of smell and also blindsight (pressure waves / electromagnetic sensors)
• hit and run and stealth tactics
• won't fight to the death unless it has slipped into a blood frenzy

Then, we get a compact (ish; the control thresholds section is huge) section for stats, a list of attacks, and special abilities. Good!

Then we get this list of traits: Acute Taste and Smell 3; Berserk (Feeding Frenzy) (6); Dependency (Water, 1d FP per minute out of water); Discriminatory Smell; Enhanced Move; Gills; No Legs (Aquatic); No Manipulators; Pressure Support; Slippery 3; Temperature Tolerance 5 (Cold); Vibration Sense (Water)

And the following skills: Brawling-13; Stealth-12; Swimming-14; Tracking-14

Analysis

The description is great info, but wordy. Missing: how many sharks are often together? What sort of treasures might a shark contain (no treasure)?

Then traits:

• Acute Taste and Smell 3: At first I thought this was reasonable, and then I realized that there next to no mechanical support for smelling things. DFE9 includes rules for making smell checks but includes no information about range (that's only for vision checks). It does say "The GM may assess bonuses or penalties for strong or weak tastes or odors". So if the GM wants to use the shark's 13 smell (vs it's normal 10), the GM also needs to invent some sort of range penalty system. Far easier to just say that the shark smells you when it's fictionally exciting.
• Berserk (Feeding Frenzy) (6): The rules text for berserk doesn't take a type, but I think the intention here is to say "the Shark goes into berserk not when it takes injury over HP/4 in one second, but instead when it has a feeding frenzy". Feeding Frenzy is defined above, and says "After tasting or smelling blood, if a white shark fails its self-control roll for Berserk by 3 or more, it attacks anything it can see or sense, including other sharks". The mechanical result is unclear: does it berserk when it smells blood but only fails by 1 (as berserk would imply), or is this actually just a special ability? IE: "The shark has a 8-in-3d chance upon tasting or smelling blood to enter a Feeding Frenzy, and attacks anything it can see or sense, including other sharks."
• Dependency (Water, 1d FP per minute out of water): mildly useful; this gives us a mechanic for dealing with sharks suffocating out of water, but I don't know that we needed one. In lieu, we can use the holding your breath and suffocation rules.
• Discriminatory Smell: This jacks our smell up to 17, and has mechanics about memorizing scents based on IQ rolls. Unfortunately, the shark can't succeed at memorizing smells given it has an IQ of 2. Thus, the smell bump could have been Acute Smell 7, which is already of dubious value.
• Enhanced Move: I'm torn about enhanced move. It's extremely important information, but it's already well-encoded in the stat block, since "Move" is written as "5/10".
• Gills: unnecessary
• No Legs (aquatic): unnecessary
• No Manipulators: unnecessary
• Pressure Support: unnecessary
• Slippery 3: necessary (it informs grappling and squeezing through things), but weird. Shark skin is the opposite of slippery; it feels like sandpaper.
• Temperature Tolerance (Cold) 5: I'm still unclear what to do with these. Are we supposed to make temperature checks for all enemies as combat starts to see how much fatigue they're missing? Do sharks have actual ways to spend fatigue in combat? DFRPG does not have any extra-effort-in-combat rules to speak of, and sharks don't cast magic.
• Vibration Sense (Water): important

Suggestion

Trim down the trait list to: Enhanced Move [maybe]; Vibration Sense (Water). Include temperature tolerance if you really expect sharks to be making temperature checks for fatigue loss. Infer or making rulings about everything else. Make the feeding frenzy special ability self-contained.

For comparison, here's the OSE Shark!

[beaushinkle]

Thoughts? Do other GMs feel overwhelmed trying to find important information in the long descriptions and trait lists? Do you find yourself using most of these traits as written? Do you roll for temperature-based fatigue loss for monsters?

[Rhino]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Thoughts? Do other GMs feel overwhelmed trying to find important information in the long descriptions and trait lists? Do you find yourself using most of these traits as written? Do you roll for temperature-based fatigue loss for monsters?

I personally am with you on this. Perhaps a bullet point critical trait list and then a text lock of the mostly obvious ones for those that like or need them.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Confession: I find DFRPG monsters difficult to run, especially the more complicated ones.

Then cut them down to whatever 'size' is easiest for you.

It starts with 164 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information

• they're angry (especially about their valuables) undead
• usually groups of 1 though they sometimes come in groups of up to 6, or more
• intelligent

That's not all the info it gives, but sure.

Notably missing form your truncated listing is "can speak but doesn't bother to", must lay senseless for 8 hours per day, and might ignore delvers who don't bother it.

See that 'might'? That's what Bad Temper and Intolerance (The Living) is for, if the GM wants to randomly decide if the draug gets upset by the living walking past its accursed resting place.


And another tidbit buried in the lead: The draug might be upset because of it's burial state (or in the case of a battlefield worth, their unburial state). Which could give a group a method of dealing diplomatically with a group of intelligent, angry, but capable of speaking undead. Granted they have get passed the Bad Temper and Intolerance first.

... but don't get information about what sort of treasure they might have.

That's for the GM to decide. As is "number appearing". This isn't D&D, if you want 100+ draug on a battlefield, well... that's gonna be a real mess to deal with.

The entries (and this feels like the general theme), feel like an odd midpoint between "the information useful for running the monster" and "build out the monster as though it was a PC".

DFRPG doesn't give us a full mechanical description of the Draug....

Of course it does. What do you think is missing aside from "Treasure Type", which isn't a GURPS thing?

... but it also includes many traits that we don't need in order to actually run it.

All those are still necessary. I'm just going to speak to the things you don't think are important:

Bad Smell: Marginal value here; them smelling bad can be inferred from them being half-rotted corpses. Mechanically, this says the players get a +2 to detect or track the draug by scent, so if that wasn't something the GM could make a ruling on, now it's here (but buried in a trait description).

Firstly, they're all buried in trait descriptions. It's here because it's a trait.

Bad Temper: we already know from the flavor text that they're angry; is the expectation that we're going to actually be rolling Bad Temper checks for the draug (who does not negotiate, according to the notes)?

No, as mentioned above, it's because it's a trait which informs the description, and incase you want to roll check and see if these draug ignore the group that's just walking past with no intent to get all up in the draug's goods.

Doesn't Breathe: marginally useful; it can be inferred that a draug doesn't breathe if this comes up (or the GM can make a ruling on it).

Again necessary. Draug can talk, so they must 'breathe' in air to so (presumably), this just means they aren't affected by asphyxiation or other such annoyances associated with breathing (like being underwater).

Vamps are also quite often Unliving, but also quite often have to breathe.

Doesn't eat or drink: unnecessary; if there is ever (for whatever reason) a question where knowing if draug have to eat is relevant, the GM can either infer it or make it up.

Again, it's a trait, and it means the draug never get hungry, unlike the various hungry dead.

Frightens Animals: unnecessary; animals don't need to be making reaction rolls against draugr, and the GM can decide the behavior of mounts/watchdogs without explicit mechanical guidance.

Not all Unliving frighten animals, also this means draug can never "work with" animals and a group's animal companions will react very negatively to a draug's presence.

Hidebound: mildly useful; I have a hard time imagining when I would need to make non-combat rolls for the draugr...

IQ rolls for developing "cunning plans" to deal with an especially canny group of delvers who've figured out some way to deal with the draug without directly whacking it with sticks.

Intolerance (the living): unnecessary; we don't need to know how other NPCs react to the draugr, we can just choose.

This isn't for other NPC's reaction rolls, it's there so you know when the PCs decide to try to negotiate (from a safe distance) the draug don't like living beings.

No Blood: covered by immunity for most mechanics, gm rulings otherwise (in cases where you need to figure out if a vampire can drink the blood of a draugr)

This is literally so you know it can't be injured via any "bleeding" damage.

Single-Minded: fringe mechanical usefulness

"Chasing delvers" would run against its Single-minded "protyect my stuff/cursed burial ground" so this is just a reminder that draug aren't doing stuff like that.

Temperature Tolerance: This one is confusing to me. Temperature tolerance reduces FP penalties for bad weather, but draugr don't have FP!

Don't have FP to spend or lose doesn't mean "immune to extreme temperature". However a +5 to a HT 15 kinda does mean, works im both blizzards and death valley temps with issues. However, should you decide that worse conditiond could deal HP damage on HT failures... well, you know they're starting at a HT 20 to resist.


Every place you wrote "the GM can either infer it or make it up" is true, but GURPS operates under a very strong streak of "if it's not on the sheet, it's not there" for everything else, so it does so for NPC traits as well.

Personally? I cut everything not directly needed in my notes, so for me a draug's entry might just be:

ST: 22 HP: 27 Speed: 7.00
DX: 13 Will: 10 Move: 7
IQ: 10 Per: 10
HT: 15
Dodge: 11 Parry/Block: 12 DR: 6 (4 vs. crushing) Mail
Shield DB +2
Axe (16): 4d+2 cutting. Reach 1.
Broadsword (16): 4d+1 cutting or 2d+2 impaling. Reach 1.
Punch (16): 2d+2
Grappling ST 23
Dark Vision, Fire x2, most Immunities, Unliving.

And honestly, for most encounters, I don't even need anything other than HP, DR, attack and damage.



As for your suggestions... that's great for you, but for anyone who wants all the Traits, it's bad. So it's better in the long run to let you just whittle off what you don't think is necessary instead of leaving a bunch of blanks for GMs who prefer to not be having to constantly fill in the blanks.

[Rolando]

It have all that information because if it didn't it would be a terrible list of 2 dimensional monsters and enemies with no personality nor flavor.

As a GM you use what you need, but the book must have as much of it as possible.

The wordy description, for example is the best component of the entire monster for me, their attributes and traits I fudge whenever I find it convenient. The advantages and disadvantages are part of the description to me, they are descriptive in a rules way for me.

The treasure thing is not something all monsters have, each may have some,none or a lot, and many things in between. The GM decides the loot if any, but as this particular monster is obsessed with it there must be some or part of the encounter is that it is ****** off because it got stolen or lost.

[zoncxs]

Also note, the very last page of DF Monsters is the index card size sheet you would print and use to keep track of the monsters, traps, and disease and poisons you are using for your adventure.

Those indexes are small, allowing you to only list what is important. I recommend actually using that.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Then cut them down to whatever 'size' is easiest for you.



As for your suggestions... that's great for you, but for anyone who wants all the Traits, it's bad. So it's better in the long run to let you just whittle off what you don't think is necessary instead of leaving a bunch of blanks for GMs who prefer to not be having to constantly fill in the blanks.

Originally Posted by Rolando

It have all that information because if it didn't it would be a terrible list of 2 dimensional monsters and enemies with no personality nor flavor.

As a GM you use what you need, but the book must have as much of it as possible.

The wordy description, for example is the best component of the entire monster for me, their attributes and traits I fudge whenever I find it convenient. The advantages and disadvantages are part of the description to me, they are descriptive in a rules way for me.

The treasure thing is not something all monsters have, each may have some,none or a lot, and many things in between. The GM decides the loot if any, but as this particular monster is obsessed with it there must be some or part of the encounter is that it is ****** off because it got stolen or lost.

Agrred with both these posters.
You speak of whats right for you as if thats right for everyone else.
It is less work for the GM to ignore things they dont think are relavant in the encounter than it is to add them if they come up during an encounter. I would much rather have fewer monsaters in these bestiaries than more that are cut down to mere stat blocks or simply have less flavor to them.
Besides the points above various spells might be impacted by these traits, or use them to affect casting such as Shapechange and Summoning spells.

[Anthony]

I do agree that there are a lot of traits that don't actually need game mechanics, because NPCs don't need point scores and usually don't make self-control rolls, they just do whatever the GM wants them to do (it could in theory matter if a PC tries to provoke some disadvantage). For the draug, you could perfectly put well bad smell, bad temper, bloodlust, frightens animals, hidebound, intolerance, and single-minded into a description and leave it out of the stat block. You could probably do the same with dependency, doesn't eat or drink, and unhealing, as the first two mostly influence where you're going to encounter the creature, and the third only applies if you run into the same draug more than once.

That leaves Combat Reflexes; Dark Vision; Doesn’t Breathe; High Pain Threshold; Immunity to Disease; Immunity to Poison; Indomitable; No Blood; Temperature Tolerance 5 (Cold); Temperature Tolerance 5 (Heat); Unhealing (Total); Vulnerability (Fire x2). All of those traits might actually come up in a combat encounter.