Monster action verbs Rewrite: 1

bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Have them doing something
+crows gulch encounters

wanderers
+saving saxham
+shrine fallen angels
 
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bryce0lynch

i fucking hate writing ...
Staff member
Palace of the Vampire Queen was the first adventure published. Its room entries looked like "Room 3: 12 zombies." IE: just a notation of what kind of creature was there and how many. This is generally referred to as minimalistic keying. Fast forward a few years and we get adventure module B2, The Keep on the Borderlands and the creatures in the Caves of Chaos. Now the creatures are doing something. They play dice. They are feasting. Or, at least some of them are.

This sort of dynamism in the rooms adds to the flavour. Rather than just 12 orcs, or 12 orcs waiting to attack, suddenly the party is coming in something that resembles real life. Verisimilitude. They are dicing. They are wrestling. They are debating the search for meaning in an existence that is inherently meaningless. This gives the party the chance to interact. Even if it's going to inevitably lead to combat, the suspension of disbelief is still intact and it gives something for both the party and the DM to riff of of during the encounter.

The creatures need to be doing something. They have not been waiting in ambush for the last seven days. They are not just “in” their rooms. They need to be doing something. Bored and setting up an elaborate “chopy chopy” game while in ambush? Ok. Giant rats in a room are boring. Giant rats eating a corpse is better. Giant rats feasting on the corpse of a monster that is also two rooms over is even better. Make sure people are engaged in an activity. It brings the adventure to life.

A related point concerns wandering monsters. If you're going to use them then have them engaged in some activity while they are wandering about. And "some activity" means, of course, more than just laying in ambush for the party and/or patrolling ready to attack. If the adventure has limited room for wanderers then this should be easy. Just a short sentence or a few words on what the creatures are doing. If the wandering opportunities are more likely to be extensive and repeated, a six hour dungeoncrawl with encounters every ten minutes, for example, then you might consider a subtable. An activity table, rolled with the wanderer, to help determine what the wanderer is engaged in. Something minor, even just a word, but something for the DM to riff off of. A wandering guard patrol arguing about pay, or licking their wounds, is far moreinteresting than just the same old same old "the creature attacks"!
 
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