Avoiding the frustrations of taxonomies

This post isn't strictly about planar revision, but it will inform my design goals.

Since third edition rolled around monsters have been classified into a convoluted and inconsistent taxonomy. For simplicity’s sake, I will ignore all these distinctions in favor of something simple, consistent and easy to remember but which may be added onto without falling apart.


There are four basic ways of classifying the various bags of experience points that inhabit fantasyland: (borrowed from the excellent Mazes & Minotaurs)

• Animates are animated masses of something that is normally inanimate or vegetative. Examples include golems, shambling mounds, zombies, and creatures composed of living elemental material like gargoyles and gorgons.
• Beasts are any meatbags which lacks fine manipulator appendages and the capacity for civilization. This includes Terran animals, the hybrid animals from Avatar: The Last Airbender, the alien animals from Jame Cameron’s Avatar, and the fantastical animals from mythology and medieval bestiaries.
• Folk includes any meatbags with fine manipulator appendages and the capacity for civilization. This includes humans, demihumans, humanoids, giants, and those squid people from that obscure third party supplement.
• Spirits are souls that exist outside or bereft of bodies. This includes nature spirits, ghosts, angels, and demons. They are immortal until slain and don't reproduce among themselves, but may have hybrid offspring with mortals.
• Monsters, an optional fifth category, refers to anything which hunts folks for food or sport as a matter of course and whose sole reason for existence is to cause mayhem until slain by the player characters. They reward better treasure and higher XP too.

Don't forget that I stated that this may be added onto. It is simple to add subcategories to further distinguish if so desired, and I will do just that in later posts.