Design Journal Part 6: Monsters of Umber
Like most DMs, my early D&D campaigns featured just about every monster under the sun. Inspired, no doubt, by such monster-packed adventures as Keep on the Borderlands, there seemed little reason not to pack my games with every critter from aarakocra to zygom.
Over the years, however, I've come to look at monsters from a different perspective. Like everything else in a DM's campaign world, the monsters that populate it say a lot about the world itself. A land where the nastiest foe is a dire bear or manticore is a very different place than one in which great wyrms and fire giant tribes lurk in every mountain pass.
In my Bloodlines game, I took a hard line on limiting the number of sentient humanoid races. The world had no orcs or gnomes, no lizardfolk or gnolls, and even such D&D staples as bugbears and dark elves took on a very different aspect in Bloodlines.
For Umber, I decided to go one step further--I would target specific monster types for inclusion or exclusion (or nigh-exclusion). By making certain types of creature more or less common than normal, I aimed to shape the characters' (and, by extension, the players') viewpoint of the world.
But how to choose? Well, I started with some of my basic assumptions already made about the world. I knew that the divine touch of the deities was essentially gone from Umber, which suggested that the Outer Planes themselves might no longer be in such close contact. Outsiders, then, were the first type of creature to be targeted for exclusion. Elementals, on the other hand, could stay--druids needed something to summon, after all.
Similarly, if clerics weren't around to create them, undead wouldn't be nearly so common. While I didn't want to completely eliminate them--what's the use of including Sanity rules if you don't have shambling corpses showing up now and again--they certainly wouldn't occupy the ubiquitous place that skeletons and vampires do in the typical D&D setting.
Since the magical arts were on the wane, constructs seemed the next to go. Sure, there might be a few golems or animated objects left in long-forgotten ruins, but they'll be rare in the extreme.
Before I went too far in eliminating creature types, I thought I should come up with a few that I wanted to include. Despite the harsh conditions, Umber has plenty of animals (mostly those common to temperate or cold climates). The land also includes many humanoid races, though again, I wasn't going to use all of them. This time goblinoids were out and orcs in, along with dwarves, elves, gnolls, gnomes, halflings, and a few others.
Giants still lurk in dark forests and rough hills, though they mostly keep to themselves (except for the occasional ogre or hill giant mercenary). The category of monstrous humanoid is enough of a mixed bag--ranging from centaurs to grimlocks--that I'd be picking those as carefully as I did humanoids. With the druidic heritage still lingering, fey had a place in Umber, though I decided to tie their strength to that of the land itself. Thus, the power of the fey wanes as the world falls deeper into Gloom.
Speaking of the Gloom, that tainting influence gave me a great way to introduce some strange "new" creatures to the world, including bizarre magical beasts such as chimeras or owlbears, gigantic vermin, disgusting oozes, half-sentient plants, and of course, horrifying aberrations. For many of these creatures, the characters' first encounter may well be the first time they've even heard of such monstrosities.
That left me with only one creature type left to judge: dragons. I was very happy with the role that dragons played in my Bloodlines campaign, and, coupled with the recent publication of the Draconomicon, you could be excused for being surprised at my decision.
Umber has no dragons.
Heresy, you say! How could I run a game of D&D and not use one of the Ds? One word: overexposure. Dragons played a central part in many significant events of the Bloodlines campaign--heck, the largest kingdom was named after one of them!--and I didn't want the players feeling that level of familiarity. Thus, no dragons--the proud draconic heritage would be carried on only by the dragonblood race.
Oh, it's not really a complete ban. I'm sure that the occasional wyvern or landwyrm will rear its ugly head to threaten the PCs. But the time of dragons in Umber is long past, and the proud creatures are now lost to legend.
To recap, I present my categorization of monster types for the campaign.
Common Types
Animal
Humanoid (dwarf, elf, gnoll, human, orc, reptilian)
Uncommon Types
Elemental
Fey
Giant
Magical Beast
Monstrous Humanoid
Vermin
Rare Types
Aberration
Construct
Dragon
Ooze
Outsider
Plant
Undead
Common monsters should account for roughly one-half of the encounters. Uncommon creature types account for about a third of the total encounters, and creatures of the rare types the remaining one-sixth. Assuming 13 encounters per level, that suggests that a given level's worth of adventuring might include seven encounters with animals and/or humanoids, anything from a pack of hungry wild dogs to a rat swarm infesting a ruined inn to a lone barbarian hunting his enemy. Four more encounters would feature monsters less common to the world, including monstrous spiders, ogres, or a lonely dryad. And, a couple of times per level, the heroes might well run afoul of something that maybe shouldn't even exist, such as a carrion crawler or ochre jelly.
The rarer monsters also tend to have more special powers, meaning that such encounters may well be more difficult or even deadly for the low-magic player characters. (Not entirely coincidentally, such creatures are likely to take a larger toll on the heroes' Sanity scores.)
There you have it. I'm hoping this experiment helps define the world of Umber, both for me and for my players. If you've tried similar experiments in your campaign setting, share your experiences on my message boards!