Tabletop RPGs

Today I'm turning my attention to dinosaur-themed monsters.

The koattle is a small, ostrich-like creature that lives in packs of about a dozen adults. Native to plains and lightly forested areas, they are omnivorous, generally killing one small animal every few days and otherwise eating tougher fo...

Continue reading...

Last week, I created an ice bear. Let's do the same to another creature, and create an ice boar.

Whenever I think of boars, my mind immediately jumps to the boars from Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece Princess Mononoke. Those porcine antagonists were truly monstrous. How can we mimic them?

The boa...

Continue reading...

We've hit another cold spell, and I'm still in the mood for a winter-themed monster.

Let's not just create a bear with a frost attack. That's dull. Ice bears, in contrast, are literally driven insane by the cold. That's why they've broken out of their hibernation. A cold snap combined with backg...

Continue reading...

I'm writing this during a cold spell, so let's create a giant frost mammoth.

However, a frost mammoth shouldn't just be a big, hairy animal. Oh, no. A frost mammoth is an avatar of winter, a force of nature that can use the ice itself as a weapon. Any normal person who stumbles across a frost ma...

Continue reading...

Victims of cruel experimentation by an insane sorcerer, a small group of diminutive men and women found their freedom. Shunned and feared by society, they have become small-time bandits, using their special abilities to survive.

They specialize in ranged attacks, using their innate time powers to...

Continue reading...

Some folks like to subvert expectations by creating an evil Santa Claus. To me, that undercuts the spirit of the season a bit too much.

Instead, I'm going to stat up Saint Nicholas as an ally NPC, using a monster stat block just because it's frankly easier when running an NPC.

Saint Nicholas run...

Continue reading...

In the cyberpunk near future, hoverbike gangs rove the streets looking for excitement.

Gangs are wonderfully versatile tools for the GM. Need to talk to someone? They belong to a gang. Need to get into a location? It's in the gang's turf. Need a complication? A gang drives by and takes offense a...

Continue reading...

As with the frost mites from a few weeks ago, frost lizards don't challenge the PCs so much for their raw combat ability than for their ability to freeze their environment.

Huge frost lizards survive their extremely cold habitats by magically storing cold in their body and releasing it on demand....

Continue reading...