Bestiaries?

#1
I'm on a roll with the questions today. "sigh".
How do people deal with the need for a bestiary? Do you use an online bestiary from famous RPG's or do you try to make your own with an original take on the species?
Do you perhaps just wing it? if so, how do you maintain consistency?
and lastly. Is it generally worth the effort to make your own in the first place?
I
enjoy original sounding monsters myself, but I do desire to know what other people think about this. It becomes a lot of outside the story writing to make a proper bestiary, but as soon as the number of species grow, it becomes impossible to keep track of them all for me at least.

If your bestiary becomes something of a book by itself, would publishing a bestiary be a good idea?
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RE: Bestiaries?

#2
It kind of depends on what you are aiming at. Are you attempting to develop a believable ecology for your setting or are you just throwing exotic creatures at your characters?
I would not recommend writing a comprehensive bestiary under either circumstance.
I see nothing wrong with including unique or IMPORTANT beasts on some kind of index page that you periodically update as needed. That's IF you are trying to frame an actual ecology.
If the monsters are just creatures for your characters to fight, just describe the monster and carry on. When I was an active DM many years ago, I rejected the monster manuals pretty early on and used them as guidelines/idea farms for my own creations. Better yet, I made PEOPLE the most common enemy encounters. I always found the profusion of both monsters and "races" (ie species) a bit ridiculous. I mean, if all these races have at least minimum breeding populations and civilization, what the hell are they all eating? And how are the absolutely necessary 0-level farmers surviving with food chain destroying magical monsters behind every blade of grass? Of course, I'm the killjoy who overthinks instead of going with the flow.

RE: Bestiaries?

#3
'Ryan Durnell' pid='830634' dateline='1512118488' Wrote: It kind of depends on what you are aiming at. Are you attempting to develop a believable ecology for your setting or are you just throwing exotic creatures at your characters?
I would not recommend writing a comprehensive bestiary under either circumstance.
I see nothing wrong with including unique or IMPORTANT beasts on some kind of index page that you periodically update as needed. That's IF you are trying to frame an actual ecology.
If the monsters are just creatures for your characters to fight, just describe the monster and carry on. When I was an active DM many years ago, I rejected the monster manuals pretty early on and used them as guidelines/idea farms for my own creations. Better yet, I made PEOPLE the most common enemy encounters.  I always found the profusion of both monsters and "races" (ie species) a bit ridiculous. I mean, if all these races have at least minimum breeding populations and civilization, what the hell are they all eating? And how are the absolutely necessary 0-level farmers surviving with food chain destroying magical monsters behind every blade of grass? Of course, I'm the killjoy who overthinks instead of going with the flow.

This is what is worrying me a bit as well.  I want my worlds to be fairly balanced, with the primary enemy forces being either rather normal/slightly modified nature that won't require a bestiary, but instead a varied set of factions that are non humans, including a few sentient monsters. very few, since they are to be unique and extremely rare. you can only feed a limited amount of dragons and krakens after all.
Plenty of level 0 farmers are going to die just from nature alone tho, so the wolves are well fed.

The issue for me is that I need to know how the general attitude of a species is. Not just individual filler characters, but their general population.
That do require a bestiary of sorts. It's not that each species is such a large thing, but once you add their politics against each other it get's complicated fast. especially since I try to actually give them an alien culture, rather than just being "Furries"
I actually have to take care to not to confuse the reader with this.
Just tossing ever more powerful beasts at the MC is bad writing imho. Just as it is bad GM'ing. I really hated that back in the day. a lazy GM can ruin the game totally with that.
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RE: Bestiaries?

#4
I mostly use "normal" animals and throw some more fantastic animals (e.g. dragons) in it. Standard animals (wolfs, bears, etc) are good enough early enemies for me. Tbh I kinda dislike it when authors create their own low-level animals. Using five paragraphs to describe that fantastic animal... which is a horse with another name. After that they fight against that really scary monster... a wolf with longer teeth. It can be nice, but most of the time it feels more like "Oh, the author wanted to be special" or "He just needed more words". There are a few stories where I enjoyed a complete different ecosystem but most the time it isn't fleshed out enough to justify the additional (wasted) word count.

I know using standard enemies and races can give a "run of the mill"-feeling, but most monsters and races became a standard for a reason. It's easier to use an orc as enemy where 95% of the users already have a clear image instead of an original orc-like monster. It also can help to underline important points more, if you use a well-known race and give it a turn. The "That's a new idea!"-surprise for the reader highlights the important point right away while a completely original race might burrow that idea under the word count.


Every reader and author has a different idea, but I wouldn't waste too much time/words on something that isn't a recurring theme. Because even the first boss might just be a small fly in the great scheme of things. So for me... if they aren't a returning, you don't need to give a full bestiary because nobody will care in 10 chapters. And if they are seen often, you don't need a bestiary because you can just point the most important stuff out again. If you do that, the readers will start to link something like a color or smell to certain enemies and they won't think "What's a dooglehupf?"...
Mountain Shelter - A story about people building a medieval town without modern knowledge or OP-Cheats.

RE: Bestiaries?

#5
Once off enemies aren't something I will spend time on. Neither will I on mere animals.
We all know them and how they look, so there is no point in turning them into something other than what they are. they are dangerous enough as is for the average human anyway.
I have a harder time with more alien cultures. even tho they for the most part have some human characteristics, some of them are supposed to be quite alien.

It's more akin to this: Say hi to Zork. He is a goober. When he enters a fantasy world, he likes to play as a little green goblin along with his friends. all 10k of them in fact. when playing space RPG's he likes to hide out in the airvents and sewage treatment facilities.  They are known for enjoying big bang gangs and food orgies no matter the setting. 

The worry here is that each species will loose their identity as a species when they change into the different roles. What I do wan't is the reader to hear goblin, in one world, and go aha when he meets perhaps the very same goblin later on at a gobgob infestation event on beta gramulon 2, Or when he meets him as a splendidly pimped up goober in the game lobby, where he, despite the all the killing and pillaging, can have a nice conversation about the fun times during the demon lord campaign.
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