Saturday, August 26, 2017

Scary


This is only the bugbear and I wouldn't say I made a big change to the monster.  The rest of it can be read on the wiki.  I'm only posting it here because I had a thought during its writing that led to a good idea.

I was reworking the details about bugbear leaders, shaping it to my own world, adding bugbear shamans, clerics and mages, and finding the whole description increasing in clumsiness.  That's how I always felt about humanoid races from the books.  Unless I was prepared to do a lot ahead of time, it wasn't practical to have the party come across a large number of a particular kind of humanoid.  It is easy to roll hit points for two or three giants.  It is annoying as hell to create leaders, stats and hit points for 30 bugbears.

That is why, I suppose, so many just make them exactly the same.  And I have done that.  But it occurs to me, why not just attach a bugbear clan generator to the wiki page?  Then it can roll the classes, the followers, even give them detailed character stats and ready made hit points.

The reader can find an excel file on the wiki page, that can be downloaded and observed.  It covers both kinds of bugbear: what I call the Nissi An type, or homeland bugbears, who are more primitive, and the outworlder bugbears, who live among goblins, hobgoblins and norkers.

It's cute and helpful and not the end all and be all of generators.

However, why not a generator in the same format for every monster?  On its wiki page, waiting to be opened, downloaded in a couple of seconds and boom, stats and details, good to go?  Sounds good to me.

Then, as I move forward, I can make those tables more and more detailed.  I can make them more helpful.  As someone who heard this idea just told me, "Scary."

2 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness that would be a fantastic resource! Take a bit of time to implement, but so worth it in the long run - as most of your projects tend to be... So many things that might be generated on one sheet... goods, food, animal allies, there is a very deep potential in this idea of yours.

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  2. Lot of work, but potentially super useful. Seems to be a running theme with you. :)

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