Beasts versus monstrosities, part deux

In past posts I explained my disagreement with the questionable logic behind the "beast" and "monstrosity" types. In this post I will explain some possible alternatives in greater detail.

Recap: fictional != magical/unnatural/whatever

Reality has a long history of inventing fantastic beasts. The idea that fantastical creatures like gryphons, unicorns, etc are unnatural or magical or whatever is actually a modern invention. In fact, it appears to be largely an invention of fantasy roleplaying.

Medieval bestiaries often described fantastical and ridiculous looking creatures such a gryphons and leucrocuta and unicorns as though they really existed as parts of the natural world, not unnatural or magical monstrosities. While the animals in bestiaries were sometimes based on accounts of real animals, they were described in terms of physical similarity to others animals known to the writers. This resulted in depictions being distorted from their actual appearances and into bizarre patchworks of other animals. The gryphon, for example, may have been based on fossils of ceratopsians. The crocuta, on the other hand, was based on hyenas; it doesn't look much like a hyena, though.

In the 20th and 21st century, cryptozoology is a fringe scientist predicated on the possible existence of creatures otherwise considered myths, urban legends or jokes made up to entertain tourists, like the drop bear, chupacabra and wild haggis. Obviously, cryptozoologists must consider these creatures to be perfectly mundane and natural. In more recent times, works of fiction like Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend of Korra have given us worlds where all wildlife appears strange and fantastical to us Earthlings while being perfectly mundane in the story itself.

As I've said before, the flora and fauna of fantasy land (or at least my version of it) come into existence through intelligent design and spontaneous generation then become subject to natural and artificial selection. Since this is fantasy, many of these creatures do not exist on Earth but are otherwise no different from terrestrial animals.

Problem: the fluff is nonsensical and the rules are inconsistent

The MM is not consistent when it comes to determining whether an animal is a "beast" or a "monstrosity". The beast type includes real animals (both living and extinct), giant versions of real animals, and ahistorical/extraplanar/intelligent/mutant/whatever animals (e.g. cranium rat, flying snake, stench kow, stirge, tressym). The monstrosity is a miscellaneous category that encourages lazy monster design.

The beast type is supposed to limit itself to animals, real and fictional, which play a role in the fantasy ecology; yet it includes engineered mutants like the cranium rat. The monstrosity type is supposed to limit itself to extraordinary, unnatural, and malevolent entities created by mad experiments and divine curses; yet it includes griffons and centaurs which otherwise appear wholesome and natural. Based on the background, you would expect druids to hate cranium rats and love griffons, but the rules suggest the opposite. The distinction between beasts and monstrosities is arbitrarily applied.

Furthermore, the fluff behind these ignored distinctions is nonsensical. As I said before, fantasy gaming bases itself on the conceit that the fantasy world operates according to modern science with magic tacked on. We are also told that young earth creationism is true in the the fantasy world, and numerous other details which will mike your head explode if you think through the implications. Ignoring that problem, we immediately run into the problem that the fluff is operating based on our modern understanding of ecology. While this in itself is not nonsensical, it falls apart when you take into account that magic suffuses the world and makes all sorts of impossible things happen that should prevent any kind of stable or conventional ecology.

To add insult to injury, the fluff acts as if all these concepts are taken for granted by the characters within the fantasy world. We are expected to believe that uneducated pseudo-medieval peasantry have detailed knowledge of ecology and magic that they are able to apply in their daily lives in a manner consistent with the rules. This is complete nonsense! Human ignorance of ecology for most of history lead to numerous ecological disasters and even with modern education this still occurs. For most of history people considered wild animals like wolves to be vicious monsters, so it makes no sense they would apply the game distinction between beasts and monstrosities even if it was consistent.

Solution: pretend to care and retype the monsters

A post on the Chainsaw Chirurgeon blog attempted to lay down guidelines for creating hybrid animals of the "beast" type. While I appreciate the effort, beasts in official source books ignore these rules: the stirge violates rules #1 and #2 because the anatomy is entirely fictional, while the cranium rat violates rules #3 and #4 because it is lawful evil with psychic powers.

At first I decided to justify the beast/monstrosity distinction using my winds of magic cosmology. However, this still runs into the problem that nobody would think to apply this distinction when encountering monsters. Wolves and worgs both attack sheep, so a farmer would not distinguish between them.

To determine whether a fantastical beast should be classified as monstrosity rather than a beast, I would use a simpler, more rigorous distinction: "Beasts" are driven to satisfy their basic needs for food, shelter and reproduction while "Monstrosities" are typically driven by an irrational urge to destroy and cannot reproduce conventionally. In other words, beasts include fantastical beasts which play a role in the fantastical ecology whereas monstrosities do not and cannot play any role in the ecology.

In 3rd edition and derivatives there was a distinction between animals and magical beasts and between humanoids and monstrous humanoids. For the most part, magical beasts and monstrous humanoids from 3rd edition have been typed as monstrosities in 5th edition. As with the distinction between beasts and monstrosities, the distinction between humanoids and monstrosities is arbitrary and flimsy. Indeed, the distinction between humanoids and monstrous humanoids in past editions was also arbitrary and flimsy, since there is no non-arbitrary way to distinguish them.

So for monstrosities which are roughly humanoid, intelligent, have cultures, play a role in the ecology or whatever the criteria is... the only recourse is to type them as other types. As with my preceding criterion, the Monstrosity type should be reserved for actual monstrosities and not just every other monster. Something like the centaur and lamia, who have cultures and families and stuff, should be humanoids. Something like the medusa and minotaur, the result of divine blessings or curses, still make sense as monstrosities.

Hopefully I will never need revisit this topic...