I have an objective to create 1000 monsters. It's going pretty well. To be honest it's gotten a lot easier with the AI art maker. I'll get into that at the end of this because the picture comes at the end.

At the beginning comes an idea.

Intermittently I'll be told that I have novel or creative ideas. That's the type of praise to which I'm conditioned to respond positively & so I've pursued novelty & creativity in my efforts. So I've come up with some aids to imagination that have really worked for me. Here's a method that may be useful to you:

What makes a monster monstrous? People get called monster every day but hardly anyone is a dragon or an ogre - they may behave poorly enough that they're metaphorically similar to those. Peoples' (and I guess animals') bad behavior has been described as monstrous so that the things they do & their mannerisms, collectively have come to describe a paradigm that is absorbed into the panoply of a monster. That's the psychological or aesthetic origin of monsters; some people acted horribly & that horrible behavior was described until it became a distinct identity. The vampire is a predatory person who drains what is vital from someone. As a metaphor for tuberculosis - they drain health, as a metaphor for capitalists they drain labor, as a metaphor for victorian homosexuality they drain romantic attention. The vision of the vampire is an enervating force that drinks from the victim while overpowering them with their hypnotic power, the superior resources & their seductive allure respectively. In all the cases the vampire is: More powerful than it's victim & parasitic to their victims. The vampire's horror is that it needs you to survive & you can't refuse to sustain it.

There's a core intention to monsters. I posit that the domineering parasitism reinforced through social exploits is the Main Thing about the vampire- not that it's dead, not that it's immortal, not that it drinks blood specifically - these are the trappings of the vampire that are metaphor for the actual social horrors with which people contend.

So? The thesis here is that the trappings are mutable, even irrelevant, the actual monster is the specific relationship the creature has to you. Once you've landed on this act of horror: A powerful being you cannot resist forces you to surrender that which is most precious to you until you are empty & servile.

Once the actual monstrous deed is described, you can come up with other trappings, different form factors, different concepts & then work out the correlations. The correlations are always changing. In the 19th century the Vampyr was transgressive against heteronormative middle-class expectations. That's certainly not monstrous in contemporary culture, so much so that that characterization provokes distaste in most of us. Meanwhile the PMC is in bloom & the Vampire as Boss is a prevailing view. The core behavior is the same, but the trappings shift into symmetry with the contemporary lived experience.

Given this, you can determine what is deemed bad in a society based on the things that the society deems monstrous via their folklore. Obvious, of course -but we're writing societies, so we're writing their monsters. And this is the second trick. The Monster has to have a role in the places that consider it monstrous. Else it's just a different kind of person that is othered into the periphery & made an acceptable target of violence. Probably controversially, I'm not in total opposition to the genocide simulation aspect of the hobby. This isn't a troll or a provocation. Rather, I think it's useful to demonstrate the reality of genocidal actions taking place in the real world most of the time. Comfortable players in north america may not think about genocide, they may not wonder what it is to be a practitioner or victim of genocide. My perspective is that better citizens come from thinking about these things and the hobby offers a tool for inciting such realizations. So, making players contend with creatures pleading for their lives in the abattoir of their family as they explore the keep on the borderlands heightens the play experience because it creates an intellectual friction in the players that creates more immersion while the game edifies & educates. Whether intentional or not, this is something I learned playing the game. Polemical aside over

It takes monsters to build a world.

Let's take the "powerful being that you can't resist that uses you up" and do something else with it. For this, I like to make use of a powerful psychedelic. In terms of changing one's thinking, creating oblique perspectives & provoking the kind of uncertainty that demands to be understood. So I make some random tables. Here's one:

Monster Origin

1. Natural
2. Automata
3. Dragon
4. Essential
5. Dream
6. Azoic
7. Cursed
8. Giant
9. Demon
10. Kamazotz

These origins are setting-specific. What exactly each means is a matter that will be addressed going forward, but in the meantime, I'd appreciate a little patience - I'm going to try to take you somewhere you'll enjoy being.

I always have dice in reach so I roll & come up with 10 - Kamazotz which is the term I landed on to name the Ancient Aliens. In imitation, if not homage to the GOAT, who used Cacogen (like a hero-genius). So my monster's origin is the galaxy, once a place that mattered, now dissipated into nonexistence, they are through relativistic travel & handwaving visitors as well from the distant past. The intention is that they're from so far away in time & space that they are completely unrelatable in terms of motivations, appearance & so forth - they are aliens. This complicates things for me because the vampire is a predator. Predation requires some amount of biological compatibility which I've stricken from the monster's concept with a single die roll. Now I have to think...

Or I can postpone thinking. I have more tables to roll, helpfully, so I don't have to commit to ideas yet. I'm forming intuitions though. Distant in time & space. Maybe this isuggests the resource the creature consumes? Maybe. Let's roll again:

Monster Form Factor

1. Beast
2. Plant
3. Serpentine
4. Humanoid
5. Squamous
6. Swarm
7. Pack
8. Colony
9. Amorphous
10. Avian

Eventually we'll be describing this thing, it's meant to exist in the setting so I'll need to have something to say what it looks like. My preference is to start with the form factor. This is useful to me because it gives one a sense of how the thing occupies space & moves. The options here are meant to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. Evocations of proportion & silhouette. I'm not making my task any easier with a roll of 7 - ending up with Pack. So our Hungry-Hungry Space Vampire also has many mouths to feed. And I'm still not sure about what it wants to eat. Hm.

Let's roll again. I'm making a game that's used to generate stories - crucially, not a story. An engine for making stories still needs context to stand on. We use words to tell stories & what we're doing here is inventing a whole new word, definition first. The monster does something in the setting, so I have to define the kinds of roles that monsters should occupy in the setting. Here's a sample from my list:

Role

1. Antagonist
2. Villain
3. Tempter
4. Attacker
5. Thief
6. Pursuer
7. Puppetmaster
8. Barrier
9. Hazard
10. Deceiver

I get 5 - Thief. So it's a pack of aliens that steal & which fulfil the social role of the vampire. I have a lot of roles that aren't maybe typical of the monster-roles found elsewhere - this owes to the concept of the game I'm making here - where not all resolutions are combat and encounters aren't always about fighting. The idea is crystallizing. I'll show you what I'm thinking but not until the end -see there are more tables yet. let's get through these quick:

Threat to Life Monstrous Feature Descriptive Cue

1. Anathema Giant Body Part Tubular
2. Benign Slimy Gelatinous
3. Polluting Bodily Weapons Sinister
4. Consuming Extra Body Parts Emanates
5. Replacing Armored Chattering
6. Destroying Rays & Beams Chaotic
7. Harming Breathes Wicked
8. Ruining Heavily Armed Implacable
9. Lulling Disease Spreading Magical
10. Hypnotizing Madness Inducing Stinking

Note that my list (truncated, the proper tables have 100 values instead of 10) is Extremely Idiosyncratic. Fortunately I like how I am, and how I am means I always have a d10 close to hand. I get Anathema, Armored & Emanates. Now I have all the cues, really more cues than I need to dream up something new. More specificity means more unique utility, more breadth & so on. I don't have to have these things everywhere in the world or the setting, I can have a variety of creatures doing the same transgression while occupying different individual niches. When the thing is created entirely & I get to filing off the serial numbers, you hopefully won't see the table-results in the monster's look - because they're meant to guide imagination not to dictate a rule.

So, it's like a vampire in its role in fiction but - it's extremely alien, a pack feeder, a thief & an anathema, that is armored & its effect is an emanation.

What did you think of? gameofthenorth@gmail.com -I'd love to know.

I'm going to work through mine here to continue demonstrating my technique.

Armored & Space Alien is useful, I've got the ghost of the astronaut in mind now. Pack is still nagging at me. Do I want a gang of spacewalk suits containing aliens? That seems a lot like just another kind of person. Think harder! Emanation adds into it too - it feeds by exuding a kind of smoke & it steals. Stealing is relevant. How though? Because I'm not personally monstrous I always end up somewhat empathizing with my creatures. It's a space alien that steals? What does it want? To go home probably right? Again this is just another kind of guy - not a monster. Certainly you could come up with an opponent that uses these elements - but we're still working from the vampire. It has power over you but requires you for sustenance. Alright, so what resource does it command that gives it power over people? The vampire controls sexuality, wealth & obsolete hierarchies. This creature needs a hierarchy to belong to. The pack works with that - can work with that. Think harder!

How's this?

The Inyigabdo

A legendary being in Thunic culture, the Inyigabdo is an incomprehensible horror from beyond the stars. It's proper name is unknown, it's victims vocalize many unknown words but Inyigabdo is the most common of these across victims & so it has become the monstrosity's apellation. In culture, the creature lurked within the militaristic hierarchy of Thune & may well have infiltrated the hierarchies of other militaries - for it is elusive & difficult to anticipate given it's alien motivations. Constitutionally opposed to the ongoing existence of people, the Inyigabdo cannot long interact with people without its deleterious emanations inflicting grave harm, thus it exerts its influence remotely until it is ready to strike. The creature is itself indistinguishable from an exotic suit of armor that lairs in still ponds, sewers, cisterns & other bodies of water near to people. In water the Inyigabdo has more control over the movement of its smoky tendrils & it is able to extend them into the people who consume that water, this is how it infects the minds of its victims. When it has captured a number of servants it controls them through subtle mental domination & compels them to form a military unit, albeit one of unique construction with unknown ranks & specializations. This new-minted military force commonly exists within another military as a kind of parasite. The Inyigabdo uses its forces to advance its own inscrutable cause, a cause no mortal person can hope to understand. Instead one can only speculate based on what it has its servitors do. They steal highly specific military hardware, often using sophisticated methods to perform these heists. When they've hoarded enough materiel in a location that they control, the Inyigabdo will appear. In air its tendrils of emanation quickly wither & age its victims while releasing its control over them. It is speculated that this release of control is necessary for the creature because during this culling it exposes itself through the tortured cries of its victims. In a particular instance a group of officers were identified by the high command as acting suspiciously, they were put under investigation & it was the detective in charge who discovered the Inyigabdo when he rushed to discover the source of sudden terrifying screams coming from a barracks on base. In the barracks the detective found a strangely proportioned suit of armor from which emanated a sickly red smoke which seemed to penetrate & torment the very servicemen the detective had been investigating. These victims all screamed without cease. The observing detective noted that among them, the 10 victims shouted "Inyigabdo" several times each. The creature was presumably defeated through liberal application of explosions & fire though the only remains that were located after the fact were lumps of a peculiar alloy, rendered shapeless in the conflagration.

Whew. That's a lot. I like it though. It isn't simple, but I can work with it. It's a good monster because it brings its own plot & adds mystery. What's this metal? What is it stealing? Why does it form these soldier cults? What is it emanating? What does it look like under that armor? Is it that armor? The monster needs to be described, but it needs to evoke mystery & convey threat as well.

Finally, I forgo the struggle of trying to depict it myself and ask the ai to make a few dozen times until I end up with a picture that's suitable enough:

Edit Image

This is how you too can make a new monster every day. I recommend it, it's tremendous fun.

Update to add that I liked making this monster & got it into my head to write a story about it in the style of an old horror pulp.  I think it came out pretty well, I hope you like it too  https://www.patreon.com/posts/monster-of-week-84405426?utm_medium=clipboard_copy...