Why are some elementals immune to poison? Who cares!

A strange thing I noticed while browsing the MM is that some elementals are immune to poison but not others. For example, azer, gargoyles and generic elementals are immune to poison, but magmin, xorn and genies are not. This may be a legacy from 3e, as in that edition elementals were automatically immune to poison, but this doesn't explain every example.

There isn't any explanation given for this, so I will just take it as a given. Not everything about a monster needs some kind of elaborate explanation. The poison in the game rules operates nothing like poison in real life, so it's acceptable that some monsters are immune without explanation. In real life, everything is a poison at certain doses, and different animals have different tolerances.

It's probably best to treat "poison" as an esoteric element, since that would explain its universal effects in the game world.

Subverting the green-skinned space babe trope

Those of you who frequent TVTropes may be aware of the "green-skinned space babe" trope, popularized by Star Trek's Orion, Star Wars' Twi'lek and more recently Mass Effect's Asari. I find this trope to be fundamentally sexist, since it objectifies women and values impossible beauty standards. So are its typical variations. Reversing it and portraying the aliens as sexy dudes still values impossible beauty standards. Revealing that the sexy babes are actually the males of their species, which is distressingly common as a joke, is transphobic.

I stumbled upon an unorthodox solution in the fanfiction The Enemy of My Enemy. In that story we are introduced to the Galra Empire, a vast stellar empire of purple cat people. These Galra are divided into six "genders" of qylar, gol, gal, qvir, raego, and ruj, all of which appear from a human perspective to be male. These genders are more like castes and are used to determine an individual's role in Galra society. They look noticeably different: some look like the thundercats, others like elves, and one gender has reptilian scales. The gal, qvir, raego and ruj are biologically male: they have a penis and testicles. The qylar, distinguished by possessing tails but otherwise resembling the qvir, is biologically female: they have a uterus and ovaries. The gol are sterile and possibly sexless. As I mentioned before, a human being would mistake them all as male because they lack human-like sexual dimorphism. Galra always use male pronouns regardless of their gender, further maintaining this illusion.

Orc lives matter (too!)

Psyche! I could go on a rant about how the portrayal of orcs in fantasy role playing is politically incorrect, but I decided to sidestep that debate entirely. This is fantasy escapism, not politics!

Do you want to add more depth to orc culture but still keep the stereotypical violent savages? Then justify their behavior by giving them a religion that literally claims god hate orcs!

Do you want to introduce a culture of good orcs alongside the stereotypical evil orcs? Then drop in the leonorks from Children of the Planes by Tangent Games, an entire race of goodly orc paladins right out of the mirror universe!

Giving depth to orcs:

• Orcs as corrupted elves. (Lord of the Rings, Elder Scrolls)
• Orcs as fantasy indigenous peoples displaced by human colonialism.
• Orcs as distant relatives of humans who lack self-awareness but excel at learning. (Ravenflight)
• Orcs as fantasy Mesoamericans who sacrifice people to keep the sun burning. (God hates orcs)
• Orcs as an entire culture of fantasy Christian crusaders. (Ravenflight)
• Orcs as a fallen people enslaved by conniving demons. (Warcraft)
• Orcs as the mellow descendants of a collapsed expansionist empire. (World of Aruneus)
• Orcs as cute monster girl amazons. 
• Orcs as pig men. (Animal Races: Clan of the Pig)
• Orcs as Gaia's vengeance (13th Age).

Other ideas:

• Pig-faced orcish Clans: Boar, Hippo, Orca, Pig, Warthog, 
• The Orcish Empire was a Mordor-like expansionist empire that ruled and conquered vast tracks of land in ancient times. After reaching its peak the empire collapsed and its citizens were left to fend for themselves.
• Amazonian Orcs: The Amazons are an orc ethnicity characterized by several distinct biological and cultural traits. They are all-female and cannot carry sons to term. They are dismissive of orc males and view human males as optimal mates. They specialize almost exclusively in violent pursuits such as hunting and warfare. They raid human villages to acquire slaves to perform other roles required to sustain their tribe.

Orc Ethnicities, see Tome of Horrors series

• Orc, Black... death worshiping orcs
• Orc, Blood ... even more violent orcs
• Orc, Common
• Orc, Ghost-Faced ... shadow orcs
• Orc, Greenskin ... forest orcs
• Orog (Greater Orc)
• Leonorks ... aasimar orcs 

Even more ideas:

• While I have nothing against people who prefer the traditional portrayal of orcs, if you want something new or fresh then I will provide. My cosmology uses a mix of Stormbringer and Manicheanism that divides the universal factions into Cosmos, Order, Discord and Chaos. All of them except for Cosmos are objectively evil, but all four sides consider themselves morally right.
• Orcs serve the forces of Chaos. Like most humanoids, their belief system is a strange mix of Aztec and Gnostic. They openly worship the evil archdemons and believe that the gods of demikind are evil too (why else would they prohibit drinking, prostitution, gay marriage, etc?). If the archdemons and gods are not entertained, then they will kill everyone or worse. So the orcs engage in raiding and other activities that cause suffering, but themselves are fully capable of altruism. They might adopt human orphans and raise them in the orcish faith.
• Orcs have multiple ethnic groups, like black, blood, greenskin, ghost-faced, etc. One incongruous ethnic group in particular is the leonorks, who are characterized by their allegiance to Cosmos and proclivity for the paladin profession.
• Options: The problem with treating orcs as people is that fiction typically uses this as an excuse to turn them into caricatures of Africans and Native Americans. Indeed, most of the time these stories don't have people of color at all. The WarCraft movie is a particularly racist example: all the orcs are played by black actors and all the humans, dwarves and elves are played by white actors.

Links: 

• http://incrediblevehicle.com/2014/09/24/evil-races-in-dd/
• https://cartographyofdreams.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/orcs-the-irredeemable-race/
• http://www.haresrocklots.com/words/essays/yrch/
• http://keepontheheathlands.com/2017/07/06/presentation-tropes-monster-races-fantasy-games/

Racial hierarchies

Fantasy gaming has a fairly detailed racial hierarchy, but for this post I will break it down into its most simple. Humanoid races may be grouped by varying criteria, usually by how human-like or pretty they are.

Resolving the paradoxes afflicting elementals

The MM entry on "elementals" is riddled with contradictions and plot hooks that go nowhere. In this post, I will examine those mistakes and provide solutions.

Monster intelligence, part 1: beasts

As an exercise, I decided to look up and compare the intelligence scores of the monsters in the MM. I was aided in this by a brief analysis of what intelligence scores supposedly measure and a spreadsheet listing the ability scores of all the monsters in the MM (see the links below). Thus, I decided to make a series outlining my findings. For my first post, I decided to look at beasts.

Undead hunger

5e does not have any rules for undead hunger, but it is a neat concept. I decided to use a twist on the idea: All undead are subject to physical deterioration without a steady stream of animating power.

Multi-headed and -limbed giants

D&D has a bizarre fixation with making every possible anatomical configuration of giants into a distinct race. For example, every two-headed giant is an "ettin," every three-armed giant is an "athach," every three-headed three-armed three-legged giant is an "ubue," every two-headed cyclops is a "biclops," every two-headed troll is a "two-headed troll" (at this point the writer gave up on trying to devise a new name, what a surprise!), etc.

This became so pervasive that Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon Vol 1 parodies the two-headed cyclops by introducing its own "biclops": a cyclops with two eyes, oriented vertically, that give it better depth perception.

Retyping monstrosities

The inconsistent world building and rules in D&D drives me insane. I finally sat down and took a look at the fifty monstrosities in the MM and changed their type to something that is not literally a miscellaneous category. I included a commentary explaining my decision and, where applicable, the monsters' type in 4e D&D.

Magic and technology, or why I dislike Starfinder

Starfinder is a spin-off of Pathfinder which takes place in outer space. As with typical modernist fantasy, like its predecessor Dragonstar, it treats magic and technology as separate. In Starfinder specially, the use of magic is on the decline as its role is being taken over by the convenience of technology.

I consider this convention, in a word, stupid.

Epic, mythic and divine rules suck!

The 5e PHB divides character levels into four tiers, based on what the heroes are expected to be saving. These are: save the farm/village (1-4), save the city/kingdom (5-10), save the region/continent (11-16), and save the world/universe (17-20). You may notice that this ignores systems like "epic," "divine" or "mythic." Those systems are stupid and I will give three reasons why below the break.

Exemplars of Law

Exemplars of Law have been published in numerous d20 books over the decades. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of creatures that could populate your planes of law.


Legends & Lairs: Portals & Planes

• P&P Automations, Dreadnaught
• P&P Automations, Spiked Demolisher
• P&P Automation, Vemonhacter
• P&P Champion of Law

Creature Weekly

• CW1 Dreadgem
• CW3 Emu-lok Template

Classic Play: The Book of the Planes

• CotP Inevitable, Jarut
• Exilarches

SRD v3.5

• SRD Inevitable, Kolyarut
• SRD Inevitable, Zelekhut
• SRD Inevitable, Marut

Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary

• PenB Zenzoga

Blood & Treasure

• Polyhedroids

Blood & Treasure Monster Tome

• Geometrons
• Metal monsters

PRD Pathfinder Reference Document

• Axiomites
• Inevitables
• Kytons

Tome of Horrors Complete

• N'gathau

Dark Roads & Golden Hells

• Axioms
• Maxim

Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races

• Neirut

I noticed a number of Recurring Archetypes:

• The Axioms/Axiomites/exilarches/etc are formed from mathematical formulae
• The Automations/Inevitables/etc are constructed
• The polyhedroids/geometrons/metal monsters/etc are living dice
• The kytons/n'gathau are cyborg torturers and stuff
• The maxim and neirut are planetouched

Inverted beasts

I'm of the opinion that the various fictional animals like owlbears and griffins in D&D are not unnatural abominations created by a mad wizard's experiments, but entirely naturally occurring fantastical animals that are natural to the fantasy world. That said, the universe could easily have a sense of humor.

Hence, the bearowl, noffig/noffirg, leogryph/leogriff, and other inverted beasts.

The bearowl appears in Behind the Monsters: Owlbear by Fat Goblin Games and Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon Vol 1 by Octavirate Games. It is best described as a reverse owlbear or leftover owlbear. Maybe whichever god was responsible for creating owlbears decided to recycle the leftover parts.

The noffig is a reverse or leftover griffon. It appears in Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon Vol 2 by Octavirate Games.

I'd like to explore more inverted beasts in the future.

Oriental dragons

Past editions of D&D included loads and loads of new kinds of dragons. The world building was ad hoc, so there wasn’t too much logic involved. The default dragons were Western-style dragons, so later oriental dragons were added. (Oddly enough, the gold dragon was originally depicted as an oriental dragon.) Most of their folkloric roots were absent. The interesting thing about oriental dragons in mythology is that they are literally gods. For example, rain dragons cause the rain and so forth. This is really interesting to me so I want to integrate it into my own settings.

Links

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon
• https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Oriental_Dragon
• https://www.scribd.com/document/317737017/The-Dragons-of-the-Orient-for-5th-Edition-d-d

Renaming true dragons

Like elemental and giant, the term "dragon" in the game rules refers to both a monster type and a monster entry. The rules acknowledge that this distinction is needlessly confusing, so I would prefer to replace it. (tl;dr I labeled the iconic articulate hoarding dragon "zmey", the Russian word for that exact concept.) UPDATE 3/15/2018: decided to use "tarragon" instead. UPDATE 9/19/2018: decided to use drake instead, taking after the original firedrake.

Ecology of the Lammasu, Shedu, Sphinx and Simurgh

Sphinxes attested in archaeology

Nomenclature: alad, apsasu, chamrosh, cherub, foo dog, foo lion, lammasu, Neo-Hittite chimera, purushamriga, shedu, simurgh, sphinx, tetramorph, urmaḫlullû

Description: Celestial beings with the body of a winged lion or bull and the head of a human, ram or hawk; assigned the duty of guarding scared places and secrets from intruders, but those that pass their tests are rewarded.

Slaughtering sacred cows: armor class and saving throws

The rules for armor class and saving throws suffer from redundancy. I think it makes more sense to condense them.

Ecology of the Vegetable Lamb (Cotton Plant)

Medieval bestiaries were filled with all sorts of fantastical creatures based on distorted accounts of real animals and plants. One of these was the vegetable lamb. Medieval Europeans did not really understand where cotton came from, but since it was similar to wool they believed that the cotton plant grew lambs. This is an excellent plant to populate the fantasy world! What follows is my attempt at an ecology for this plant.

©2015 Deimos-Remus

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.

Some bestiary art history books

Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, by John Vinycomb
Curious Creatures in Zoology, by John Ashton

The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, by Edward Topsell

Distinguishing leonine monsters: chimeras, lamias, manticores and sphinxes

D&D has introduced a number of leonine monsters which look like they could be related. In my cosmology, this is merely an artifact of the morphic fields underlying spontaneous generation. UPDATED 10/24/2017

© Humon Comics

Pronouncing djinni, genie and janni

The genie family has a number of homophone names. What is the difference in pronunciation between genie and djinni? There isn't one! Genie, djinni, janni and so forth are actually alternative spellings of the same word. The same goes for efreet and ifrit. In this post I will provide a scheme for pronouncing the names of the genie tribes.

The physics behind martial arts (aka weeaboo fightan magic)

In my campaign setting, really more of a cosmology at this time, martial classes have "martials arts" or less charitably "weeaboo fightan magic." The reason? Having Conan the Barbarian adventuring alongside Naruto is stupid. Since my cosmology does not make an arbitrary distinction between magic and non-magic, but defines nature and technology as types of magic, it is natural for martials to develop wuxia and other capabilities that would be considered supernatural in real life. In fantasy land, this is par for the course.

Agathions, angels, archons, azatas, argh!

The 5e Monster Manual only lists angels as its major celestial group, but past editions and Pathfinder added loads and loads of other varieties. As with many of the older groupings, monsters were often grouped into arbitrary or poorly distinguished categories. With the OGL, even more were added in third-party supplements.

Ecology of the Cult of Cthulhu

Since mind flayers are product identity, I decided to replace them with some open content substitutes. The Cult of Cthulhu are the offspring and avatars of the Great Old One Cthulhu. All of the various freaky psychic tentacle monsters from monster manuals, bestiaries and third party products are different varieties of the Cult. UPDATED 10/30/2017

Defining life in a magical cosmology

I stated before that my cosmology runs on fantasy physics rather than real physics. There's no separation of magic and nature, the magnetic/solar/fundamental fields are the magical fields, etc. One thing that is of relevance is the definition of life. In real life, there are a few different criteria for determining whether something is alive. For example, living things require sustenance and reproduce themselves. In fantasy this definition is complicated by the existence of demons, elementals, constructs and undead, among other things.

Ecology of the Catoblepas and Metallic Bulls

Because of a mistake by Edward Topsell in his 1607 zoological text, The Historie of Foure Footed Beasts, the monster manuals labeled the Catoblepas a "gorgon" and conflated it with the Bronze Bull of Greek mythology. Later monster manuals would introduce a "catoblepas" as a separate creature with little in common with the catoblepas of medieval bestiaries. For those of you who remember gorgons as snake-haired women, here are some alternative ways of representing the catoblepas, metallic bulls and similar creatures. UPDATED 10/26/2017

Good liches and bad liches

After reading The Lords of the Night: Liches and Dweomercraft: Lich, I was inspired to incorporate those portrayals into my developing campaign setting. This gives liches of varying shades of morality on opposing sides.

That monster's name does not mean what you think

Many of fantasy gaming's monsters originate from mythic, legendary, folkloric and literary sources. In many cases their portrayal in mangled in the process. For example, a number of monsters have name which had completely different meanings before being co-opted by fantasy gaming.

5e has not fixed the martial/caster disparity, because it was about utility not damage

I often hear 5th edition being commended for solving the martial/caster disparity. This patently false and misunderstands the disparity argument in the first place. Here's why...

Ecology of the minotaur

D&D has a history of taking singular monsters from Greek mythology and turning them into an entire race, which typically act contrary to their mythological origin. D&D also has a history of giving mythological and medieval monsters ecology that loosely mimics real world animals or is needlessly convoluted. I am going to list different varieties of the minotaur that include unique individuals, demigods, divine blessings, curses, playable races, etc and try to fit them all into a cohesive narrative.

Alternatives to Turn Undead

Turn Undead is a class feature of all clerics with situational usefulness. How often do you fight undead? How often do you fight humanoids?

Yeah, I thought so.

No such thing as a "male dryad," unless you count satyrs and curetes

In Greek mythology, nymphs are female in both gender/sex and grammar. The word nymph itself translates to "maiden" in English (i.e. a girl of marriageable age). In Greek mythology, nymphs have multiple male counterparts: satyrs, panes, potamoi, tritons, even centaurs (as the mother of all centaurs was a cloud nymph). Of course, that did not stop Paizo from including a male dryad in their Pathfinder comics.

Building fantasy counterparts of Earth?

A common trope in fantasy is modeling the fantasy world's geography and cultures after those of Earth's history. While there is nothing wrong with this besides being uninspired, it is rather arbitrary that this planet specifically resembles Earth and this setup needlessly constrains possible stories. Tolkien's Middle Earth set the standard for fantasy settings (even grimdark settings like the Warhammer World and Planetos are not immune) and after the umpteenth time it has become really stale.

Ecology of elemental verms, weirds and wyrds

Weirds, also called wyrds and verms, are elementals characterized by their serpentine forms, dependence upon pools of their element, and being in touch with fate itself. Weirds come in the classical elements of air, earth, fire and water, as well as esoteric substances like acid, blood, frost, fungus, ice, lava, lightning, magma, mud, ooze, smoke and snow.

Heroes and ordinaries

Earlier editions of D&D used to relegate most NPCs to "zeroth level." While they could have high proficiency in whatever skills they were expected to have, this did not translate to combat. Even the king of a country could be limited to zeroth level, meaning he would die to a single sword slash. Not all editions were like this.

So what does the monster eat?

There is a tv trope called "The Needless," describing characters which lack one or more of the same physical or mental needs as humans. In AD&D, every monster had an entry for "diet." 3rd edition ignored all that and made numerous monsters into perpetual motion machines. The vast majority of the time this detail is pointless and nonsensical.

Giants versus Ogres versus Trolls

In the dictionary, the words giant, ogre and troll are generally synonymous. A giant is "an imaginary or mythical being of human form but superhuman size." An ogre is "a man-eating giant." A troll is "a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance." If you did a little deeper you will find a surprisingly diverse mythology of giants all around the world. Greek giants have snakes for legs, trolls live under bridges, and so on.

Dark elves need diversity

The drow are one of those bizarre examples of fantasy's tendency for political incorrectness. Not only is their portrayal offensive to real world minorities, but within the fantasy world any racism directed at them is analogous to anti-white prejudice in reality. I do not care to discuss those issues, as other articles have done so at length. I am more concerned with the fact that drow have a huge diversity problem.

If you google "dark elves", you will get a huge diversity of skin tones in the image results. Drow skin tone should be variable like that. EverQuest Next once ran a poll to see which skin tone was popular, which I feel is a false dichotomy: there's no reason why the dark elf population cannot be variously light, medium, saturated or dark.

I don't think dark elves need to be pigeonholed into cartoonish evil. I've already written articles about how evil societies are generally nonsensical and my cosmology doesn't used alignments except for streamlined cosmic factions. You could have dark elf societies which are alien or even good!

I don't think dark elves should be limited to living in the underworld. They should be able to live anywhere they can carve out a niche. You could have dark elves living in temperate forests, jungles, the arctic, or even outer space!

Relevant links

• https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-733484.html
• http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/10/my-elves-are-different-or-erlkoenig-and-appendix-n/
• http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2012/06/11/reinventing-fantasy-races-my-elves-are-different/
• https://zaewen.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/tropebusting-matriarchies-in-gaming-and-sci-fifantasy/
• http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2010/03/drow-should-be-lawful-evil-among-other.html
• http://knighterrantjr.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-problem-with-drow.html
• https://www.geeknative.com/19332/drow-a-non-racist-alternative/
• http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2014/01/27/ravenflight-part-1-my-halflings-elves-and-dwarves-are-different/
• https://www.ragingheroes.com/blogs/news/tgg2-update-70-dark-elves-and-void-elves-stories-and-a-video
• http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/race/drow.html
• https://warriorsofmyth.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Elf_Gallery
• http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2016/02/drizzt-dourden-and-failure-of-fantasy.html
• https://everquestnext.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_Elf
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/page-3#post-437359
• https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eqnlandmark/index.php?threads/which-skin-tone-do-you-find-most-appealing-for-the-dark-elves-images-in-blog.41631/page-4#post-437514

An entire race of Smaug is boring, so take some inspiration from myth!

D&D has traditionally segregated dragons into a variety of arbitrary categories and devised pseudo-naturalistic explanations for them. I have decided to just ignore all that in favor of treating dragons as dragons. Take the statistics in the MM and reskin the dragon however you need to. They don't need to be a natural species with a place in the ecology. Every dragon could be unique!

Ecology of serpentfolk

Yuan-ti and sarrukh are not open game content, so I will be replacing them with a generic saurian and serpentfolk race.

© Beth Trott

Nomenclature: illujan, inphidian, nagaji, ophidokolasis, ophiduan, reptoid, samat, scalrath, serpentfolk, viskanya, etc

Description: squamous humanoids descended from lost empire, prone to mutation and crossbreeding

"Cecaelia" isn't a word and you should stop using it

Pathfinder labels the octopus mermaid as a "cecaelia." This isn't a real word, so you can be forgiven for thinking Paizo made it up. In fact, it originates from a wikipedia article posted in 2008 which has since been deleted for being a meaningless neologism. In all likelihood, "cecaelia" is a misspelling of the feminine given name Cecilia or the amphibian order of Caecilians. Both words are derived from the Latin word for "blind" and have nothing to do with octopuses, mermaids, or octopus mermaids. UPDATED 12/4/2018 8/17/2023

undead race options

Some undead race options I stumbled across while googling.

Living dead:

https://daemonsanddeathrays.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/the-living-dead-an-undead-race-for-dd-5th-edition/
Soulbound: http://www.tribality.com/2015/02/23/richs-gameroom-soulbound-bonus-archetypes-college-of-the-banshee-pale-knight/
Awakened undead (1): https://dnd-5e-homebrew.tumblr.com/post/134526127807/awakened-undead-race-by-thesingularanyone
Awakened undead (2): http://walrock-homebrew.blogspot.com/2015/12/race-awakened-undead-third-draft.html
Eleti: http://dragonstarsrd.freehostia.com/races/eleti.htm
Darakhul http://www.dashjperiod.com/tag/undead/
Risen https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/119501/Liber-Vampyr
Restless Soul https://paizo.com/products/btpy8da9/discuss?Restless-Souls
Dødelig https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/player/underworld-races-dodelig/?doing_wp_cron=1562490716.5211520195007324218750
Obitu https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/obitu/
Promethean, raijin and uzamati: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/128350

Evil, savage humanoids

My cosmology removes Good and Evil in favor of Chaos, Cosmos, Discord and Order. Of those, cosmos is the only allegiance which is not inimical to life as we know it. The evil, savage humanoids in the MM are re-imagined as agents of Chaos.

My setting uses a single pantheon for the entire world rather than race specific pantheons. Humans and demihumans worship the gods (Cosmos), humanoids worship the demons (Chaos). What makes the monstrous humanoids psychologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they are predisposed by nature/nurture towards serving Chaos. This means that their driving goals are to tear down civilization, pollute nature, and generally cause mayhem and suffering. Their reason for doing this is fairly rational: in hell your status is determined by how evil you are (by comparison, humans are nice to other humans out of a combination of empathy and desire to go to heaven). Since committing atrocities against their own tribe is counterproductive, humanoids generally commit atrocities against outsiders.

What exactly does it mean to be inclined by nature and nurture to serve Chaos? It does not mean they lack free will or have it limited, despite what the MM may say. One of the conceits of my setting is that corruption, the currency of hell, may only be accumulated if the actor is free-willed and knowingly causes harm. (BTW, I am using the corruption mechanic from Mongoose's Book of Hell.) Humans and demihumans all have a conscience and an id. The conscience is a voice in their head that tells them to do the right thing, while the id tells them to pursue self-gratification regardless of the consequences. Humanoids are born with an inverted conscience which urges them to serve Chaos, cause unnecessary suffering, and ultimately destroy reality. This cheats the prerequisite for free will and does not absolve them of responsibility for their actions. Where a human born in a deeply misogynistic, racist culture will turn out completely different if raised in an egalitarian culture, a humanoid raised in human society will constantly struggle with their inverted conscience.

What makes humanoids biologically distinct from humans and demihumans is that they don't really have any kind of childhood. They are generally "born" as adults (or miniature adults) with sufficient knowledge to survive. This saves energy which would otherwise be spend on raising and educating children. In many cases they do not actively reproduce, but generate spontaneously in response to certain stimuli.

The art design for naga

D&D Naga are a lot less colorful than their Hindu inspirations (Addendum 7/11/2017: or even the Naga in Creatures of Rokugan). These are my suggestions to make them look (and maybe act) more interesting.

©2012 Kuroi-kisin

Ecology of the Peryton

The peryton was originally an elaborate practical joke invented by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings. D&D ran with this and turned them into another weird monster. Unfortunately, D&D discarded their tragic and disturbing mythology. I decided to adapt that back in.

Some physical contradictions of typical fantasy settings

I mentioned before that most fantasy campaign settings operate on the conceit that magic and nature are two different things. The fantasy world operates according to modern science while magic is haphazardly tacked on to explain any divergences. This leads to numerous bizarre contradictions which many gamers are painfully oblivious to.

Ecology of the rot grub, slime crawler and carrion moth

© Bioware

Nomenclature: carcass scavenger, carrion moth, catcher-in-filth, corpse creeper, emvika (in Dwarvish), flesh crawler, rot grub, scavenger worm, slime crawler

Description: giant caterpillar, maggot or grub that consumes carrion and incapacitates prey with venomous tentacles or spray, later metamorphoses into a giant moth or beetle

Goblin babies: a false dichotomy

Evil has always confused me as far an alignments go: a society of amoral sociopaths could not function. Dungeon crawling is crime fantasy, the fantasy genre is founded on racism and alignment exists more or less to justify genocide. So why equivocate? Here I present alternatives for those who want to portray "evil" societies in nontraditional fashion, tying into my reinvention of the Evil alignment as the Chaos allegiance. I have reduced the portrayal of savage humanoids to three basic archetypes based on the goblin baby dilemma: no goblin babies, goblin babies must die, and klingon babies.

Fantastical humanoids

Much like the distinction between beasts and monstrosities, the distinction between humanoids and monstrosities is arbitrary. I suspect this may be due to poor editing but I cannot be sure.

Merfolk are labeled humanoids despite having a tail in place of legs, when the description for the humanoid type specifies humanoids are bipedal. Centaurs are labeled monstrosities rather than humanoids because they are quadrupedal and/or large size, despite being neither unnatural nor malevolent. Yetis are labeled monstrosities rather than giants because... I cannot think of any logic behind that.

Maybe we should have a tag like "Honorary Humanoid: As a PC, you are susceptible to magics and effects that are stipulated for "humanoids" even though, as a species, you are not." Maybe?

Whether a monster looks stupid or not depends largely on execution

A Paizo forum member once posted (while discussing adapting monsters from mythology), "In my opinion if something is stupid, like some depiction of the Tatzlwyrm as a snake with a cat's head, then it needs to be changed."

I cannot believe that anyone who ever cracked open a monster manual would say that with a straight face.

Monsters of (sadly mythtaken) mythology

D&D and its derivatives have a history of taking monsters from mythology, folklore, fairy tales, cryptozoology, urban legends, etc. In the case of mythological monsters, originally singular monsters are expanded into an entire race. In the process, the properties of the original monsters and the (often warped) moral message of the original myth are reversed, twisted or lost entirely.

Earthbound evils

While demons typically arise within the lower planes (and are largely trapped there), some people are so evil that their souls may become demons without ever leaving the material plane. Likewise, some terrestrial spirits may become so corrupt that they are twisted into demons. Some may build fleshy bodies for themselves or reincarnate within family lineages. These earthbound evils are commonly known by names like div, oni, rakshasa, and sahkil depending on the local culture. Pathfinder introduces all of these as new races of demons, but I prefer not to split hairs. The rakshasa and ogre mage in the MM are examples of such demons, but they come in many more varieties (see the PF bestiaries for ideas and then build them using the DMG guidelines).

Why are undead evil? Why does necromancy get such a bad rap?

Why are undead always evil? Necromancy is not evil: it includes healing and resurrection! How many stories portray ghosts or vampires as sympathetic? Zombies and skeletons are supposed to lack the free will necessary for moral judgment in the first place. Making undead inherently evil is redundant when you have fiends. I take a morally grey approach, using other sources to derive alignment rather than undeath itself.

Soul magic

Souls and corpses are not really given much thought in the rules. Do undead have souls? Do celestials or fiends? Do they leave corpses behind? How do they interact with animate dead, magic jar, raise dead, speak with dead, etc?

What is a spirit and how does it differ from a fey or elemental?

My cosmology is built holistically. That means that I take into account how everything fits together, where things come from and where they go, rather than cobbling together a random assortment of fantasy stereotypes and expecting them to play well together. Spiritually is a foundation of my setting, which I will explain in detail.

Planar flora and fauna (using the Fire Plane as an example)

The D&D rules are weird and geocentric. If you tried to run a campaign entirely on the elemental plane of fire, you would run into problems with various spells and class features that target specific types because by the rules as written every living thing on the elemental plane of fire should be typed as an elemental. Inspired by Planescape and The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire, I would suggest a few changes using the elemental plane of fire as an example.

The fey life cycle

Fey have always gotten the short stick in D&D. They aren't well defined, aren't integrated in most settings, and there are very few of them if any. I'm using The Complete Guide to Fey as my primary source in defining fey.

Fantasy space travel primer

At I explained previously, one of the key changes in my cosmology is merging the Ethereal, Astral and Faerie planes. Furthermore, this plane serves a dual role as outer space: space travel may allow travelers to visit other planes as though they were planets or islands on the sea!

The problem of evil

In my campaign setting I replaced "Evil" with "Chaos" a la Warhammer, but it is essentially the same. (Discord and Order are also the nominally evil cosmological factions, but that's largely because of their extreme mindset in trying to benevolently end suffering.) When evil is a cosmological constant, it raises a number of questions. Why is there evil? Who defines it? Why would anyone knowingly serve it if that means eternal damnation? How are so-called evil societies able to function?

Demonic aesthetics

My problem with the demons and devils is that they lack unifying motifs. Each side is a grab bag of random designs and their hierarchies and behavior are more similar than not. I have a few different ideas for explaining why demons look and act the way they do, and making a clearer distinction between demons and devils.

Gods be good

Unlike other settings, my cosmology does not segregate gods by alignment. Gods are, by definition, good, not deaf to humanity's suffering, or play some key role in maintaining reality. They are the protectors and allies of the cosmic balances.

Cycles of the soul primer

ADDENDUM 9/27/2018: I have slightly revised this post to reflect what I have learned since.

Mongoose Publishing published a few books about the planes. Two of them dealt directly with the passage of souls into the afterlife. In this post I will briefly compare them and then try to synthesize them into one.

Whither dungeon?

Many settings are content with including dungeons infested with monsters without explaining where the dungeons came from or how they continue to exist. Here I present some brief options as to the ecology of dungeons, including both gygaxian naturalism and mythic underworlds.

Elemental Lords and Beast Lords

The material world is composed of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. These elements occurs in both their raw forms and in more complex forms within living creatures. The elements not only form the basis of the four humors, but the temperaments of living creatures.

The elemental planes have multiple governing bodies, just like the material plane. These governing bodies act as a series of checks and balances on one another’s power, preventing any one party from overwhelming the interests of the others.

Spirits primer, elementals expanded

5e doesn't have a spirit type, despite spirits being a more or less universal concept. I have now expanded elementals to fulfill the same role. Some explanation, mostly quotations from and references to OGL sources, follows.

Reimagining the elemental planes

The elemental planes are generally presented as infinite featureless expanses of their element. The plane of fire is the sun, water the ocean, earth the compost, and air the sky. These portrayals are quite boring and do nothing to make players want to actually visit these planes. Which makes sense because the elemental planes were originally meant to explain where spells drew material from and not places to visit until the Manual of the Planes fleshed them out. I, on the other hand, would prefer an approach similar to that of The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire...

Ecology of the Dupli-cat (Coeurl)

Coeurl, Final Fantasy X

Nomenclature: black destroyer, coeurl, displacer cat, dupli-cat, greymalkin, missing lynx, pard, phase panther, phase tiger, shadow stalker, tangtal.

Description: a feline predator that exists slightly out of phase with reality, thereby concealing its position and evading attacks.

Plane of Agony

What is a "monster"?

The word "monster" (with or without a capital M) has any number of definitions in the context of fantasy roleplaying games:

Why is dragon a type?

Dragons are not beasts or monstrosities. Why do they have their own type? What makes their essence unique? Why are reptilian monsters like basilisks, behirs, chimeras, cockatrices, hydras, etc not considered dragons?

What are fey?

Fey have never been well defined in the many editions of D&D. There seems to be a vague idea of them being nature spirits, but what is classified as fey or not has never been very consistent. Blink dogs and hags are labeled fey, but they do not resemble nature spirits. So I have decided to adopt a clear definition of fey from The Complete Guide to Fey by Goodman Games, which to my knowledge is the only source book that has ever given the fey a clear definition.

Beasts versus monstrosities

Many tabletop games treat magic as separate and self-contained from the "normal" physics of fantasyland. I believe that settings may be enriched by removing such arbitrary distinctions, hence my introduction of magical background fields underpinning reality. Continuing that line of thought, I would tackle the magic versus mundane argument as it applies to animals.
UPDATED 10/20/2017

Fantasy diets

All creatures in the fantasy world require sustenance to survive. That said, these diets do not necessarily resemble conventional diets.

• Physical diets: the creature feeds on something physical, such as air, food, drink, soil, fire, warmth, etc.
• Abstract diets: the creature feeds on something abstract, such as color, shadows, emotions, memories, life force, psi energy, etc.
• Passions: the creature does not feed per se, but must fulfill a specific series of actions in order to sustain itself, such as mimicking a diet despite otherwise lacking any sign of digestion, tormenting victims in a specific fashion or pursuing unfinished business.
• Anchor: the creature has no diet or passions, but its continued existence is dependent on a physical or abstract anchor such as an amulet, a temple, a bloodline, or faith in an institution.

Disambiguating taxonomies

D&D has a problem where it uses the same words to refer to monster types as well as specific families within those types. For example, the types dragon, elemental, giant and ooze are divided into "true" and "false" or "kin" families. The distinctions are often minor: "true" dragons have age categories, "true" elementals are amorphous blobs of one or more elements, "true" giants are prettier, and "true" oozes are fast moving. I'm going to devise some alternative terminology that is not ad hoc.

Three axis alignment

13th Age and 5e have largely dispensed with alignment mechanics. That said, alignments could serve as a useful guide to behavior for characters to follow. However, the traditional two axis alignment is too confining due to the confusion of methodical with law-abiding. Therefore, I propose dropping neutral entirely and splitting the law/chaos axis into orderly/chaotic and lawful/unlawful. The orderly/chaotic axis represents a character's general thought processes, while the lawful/unlawful axis represents their respect for society's laws. This gives a total of 2×2×2=8 alignments, one less than the three axis model.

For example: a demon barbarian would be chaotic unlawful evil, a demon manipulator would be orderly unlawful evil, and a demon bureaucrat would be orderly lawful evil.

While I feel alignments are too simplistic to represent realistic moral divisions, I do find them useful as a guide for distinguishing general categories behavior. I will be using them in the future as a means of differentiating between, say, demons and devils and deuces and whatever.

The Corrupting Chaos of Tarássein

The Shadowfell: Too Spooky For Me

Fiends are fiends

Demons and devils have always have more similarities than differences. Their hierarchies, their goals, their appearances, etc. Some of them are chaotic, others lawful, but in the end fiends are fiends. AD&D DMG Appendix D used the same random generation tables for demons, devils and daemons. Why equivocate? To coincide with my condensing of the Lower Planes into one plane of arbitrary size, I am likewise condensing the various differences between fiends.

Alignment factions primer

I do not think the two-axis alignment system really makes much sense, but unfortunately for me it is baked into the design of the game. Even if PCs do not need to select alignments, the monsters and cosmology (including my homebrew) are still informed by alignment. So I am going to reframe the alignments of chaos, evil, good and law into allegiances loosely based on "Essences" from Mage: The Ascension or "Urges" from Nine Worlds or the factions from Age of Sigmar.

The order/chaos conflict

The worlds of 13th Age are locked in a fairly typical conflict for mythology: orderly civilization versus chaotic nature. [Insert fumanor references]

Order is informed by Ancient Egypt's Ma'at and Michael Moorcock's Cosmic Balance (rather than stultifying Order). It recognizes that chaos may be constructive (e.g. forest fires making way for new growth).

Chaos, then, represents mostly or only the destructive aspects.

Alignment, moral ambiguity and grimdark fantasy

5th edition downplays the influence of alignment on the rules, but it still informs the canon cosmology and my simplified cosmology. Instead of arguing the meaning of alignment, I prefer a practical approach in the form of allegiances. Inspired by Mage: The Ascension and Requiem Chevalier Vampire, my cosmology is the backdrop for a conflict between four opposing forces with dramatically different yet sympathetic world views.

An alternative great wheel

As a temporary break from my planar musings for 13th Age, I have decided to take a crack at building an alternative cosmology for 5th edition. The cosmology in the DM's guide is a bit more complicated than it needs to be in order to please Planescape partisans. I do not wish to insult that setting, but I think that many of the planes suffer from either being too hostile for adventuring or too similar to other planes. This post will explain where my cosmology departs from the canonical cosmology.

Worlds of Existence primer

The cosmology of 13th Age divides the universe into a few ages and a few worlds: the World or the Land, the Overworld, the Underworld, Hell, the Otherworld, the Aquatic Age, and others. Other worlds are alluded to in the sourcebooks, but we never received a map of the worlds so that GMs could detail it as they wished. This is my expansion of that cosmology.

Planetouched primer

Planetouched is a general term for player character races who are descended from the planes. Perhaps their ancestors were mere mortals who made a pact with or married angels or demons, lived in close proximity to a source of planar radiation or toxins, tourists from another plane of existence, or maybe nature itself is literally their mother.

When creating a character who is planetouched, take some time to consider their origin and how this would affect their appearance and history. Many sourcebooks have given colorful origins for planetouched: Legends & Lairs: Mythic Races, Secrets of the Planes: Planar Races, Children of the Planes, etc. I advise treating these as backgrounds and reskins of existing races from the rulebook, third party sourcebooks, and Vault of the 13th Age. There's no need to waste your one unique thing on being planetouched.

For example, the Neirut from Planar Races may be represented by Forgeborn whereas the fiery races from The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire may be represented by Elementborn. I will try to present more examples in later posts.

Nymphomaniacs: centaurs, satyrs and tritons

A little house rule I am introducing is in regard to single gender monsters: there are no monsters which consist solely of one gender and especially not ones which must reproduce by non-consensual relations with humans. That is supremely creepy and has no place in a group activity like tabletop roleplaying games.

My go to example are centaurs, satyrs and tritons in their original sense as wild male nature spirits in Greek mythology. These three dudes are now fey (see 13th Age Monthly Vol 2) and are the male counterparts of nymphs, hags and other female fey. They are all the same species which display great physical differences based on their gender and other factors.

I will be adopting this sort of model for all my monster ecology. That said, the human superpower is still that they can have kids with lots of weird creatures. I just prefer not to dwell on creepy or fetish material. Call me a social justice warrior if you like, but I will not budge.

Multi-type monsters

Both 13th Age and 5th Edition use "types" as a quick means of identifying and targeting monsters.

• 13th Age has Aberration, Beast, Construct, Elemental*, Demon, Devil*, Dragon, Giant, Humanoid, Ooze, Plant, Spirit** and Undead. (*13 True Ways; **13th Age Monthly)
• 5th Edition has Aberration, Beast, Celestial, Construct, Dragon, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, Giant, Humanoid, Monstrosity, Ooze, Plant and Undead.

I think that is a decent list that covers a lot of ground while being easy to tweak. A little house rule I would use is that a given monster may have multiple types as appropriate a la Dark Dungeons or Fantasy Craft. These would be separated by forward slashes: e.g. a chimera of goat, lion and dragon would be [Beast/Dragon], or a fey like the nymph or satyr would be [Humanoid/Spirit].

Elementals primer

What are elementals? Generally speaking¹, elementals are masses of base matter animated by a possessing demon, spirit, undead or other entity. They may be broadly divided into two groups: wights² and works³. Wights are the prototypical amorphous and homogenous elemental, which are the "elementals" presented in 13 True Ways. Works are elementals that have been somehow shaped into a more or less fixed form with unique traits.

Beyond air, earth, fire and water, there is also the fifth element and variants of these five. The fifth element, or quintessence, encompasses lots of weird things and will not be discussed here. Variants of the classical four elements include lightning, smoke, mud, lava, ice, vapor and so forth. There isn't any difference between these and mixtures of different pure elements because they are platonic ideals unconnected with real world science.

13th Age Monthly Volume 1 introduced the Spirit type. Sometimes the distinction between elementals and spirits and constructs may be ambiguous. As stated above, an elemental is a dual entity consisting of an animating force such as a spirit and a body composed of normally inanimate matter. Whether the animating force is a demon, specter or nature spirit will determine their behavior and motivation. The most common elementals are animated by nature spirits and are responsible for causing physical phenomena like earthquakes, morning dew and frost on windows.

Constructs and elementals are similar because their bodies are composed of base matter and both have animating spirits bound into them, and in some cases constructs may animate spontaneously or self-replicate or display a metabolism. The key (and perhaps only) distinction is that a construct's body is always a recognizable artifice⁴, hence "construct." So-called "junk elementals" arising from scrap yards would therefore qualify as constructs rather than elementals even though likely animated by a nature spirit or ghost.

Contrary to popular belief, the elemental planes are not inhabited primarily or mostly by elementals. The elemental planes are inhabited by flora and fauna no less diverse than that of the tellurian.

Endnotes

1. As an adjective "elemental" may refer to anything related to the elemental planes and their elements, such as the giants and various beasts which inhabit them.
2. The word "wight" means "a person of a specified kind, especially one regarded as unfortunate" or "a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being." The undead of that name are properly known as mortwights or literally "dead people."
3. This is derived by analogy from the dictionary words earthwork, firework and waterworks.
4. This is similar to the distinction between a flesh golem and a zombie.

Mundane versus magical beasts

Fantasy often makes a distinction between mundane and magical or supernatural beasts, which is often arbitrary and illogical. This distinction doesn't exist in 13th Age, which relegates all such things to Beasts. However, this sort of thinking still permeates the fluff to a much lesser degree. For example, the druid's beast form power states "Stick to four-legged natural predators, not creatures with supernatural abilities or the ability to fly." One of the listed aspects is the owlbear, which in other fantasy (outside Avatar: The Last Airbender) is considered a magical or supernatural creature. (The form itself is cosmetic, so even if this was ignored the druid still couldn't fly as a bird or petrify with a gaze as a basilisk.) How could this be explained from an in-character point of view without sounding silly?

Distinguishing elementals, spirits and undead

13 True Ways and Eidolons introduced the new types Elemental and Spirit. Sometimes the distinction between these and other types may be ambiguous. I will try my best to sort that out here. Later I should write a primer on spirits and related things.

Spirits are the souls and personifications of natural forces, abstract concepts and emotions. They may overlap with spectral undead, in which case the GM could decide that spectral undead automatically qualify as both undead/spirit types.

Elementals are seething masses of base matter animated by demons, spirits, undead or similar entities. Constructs and elementals are similar because their bodies are composed of base matter and both have animating spirits bound into them. Some sourcebooks have included spontaneously animating constructs. The distinction is that the two are tied to opposing magical winds: constructs to artifice, elementals to nature.

Constructs and undead are pretty similar, being animated masses of something which isn't alive but might have been in the past. The difference between them is that they are tied to difference magical winds: constructs are tied to artifice, undead to death.

Not everything made of something other than flesh is an elemental, however. It is entirely possible for beasts and humanoids to have alien physiology based on fire or crystals or whatever. The reason why they aren't constructs or elementals is because they have a living metabolism: they eat and reproduce just like other living creatures.

The Winds of Magic

As modern humans we take it for granted that the fantasy world operates according to real world physics with magic added to let us cheat. Unifying magic and nature requires detailed explanations about how physics in the fantasy world is fundamentally different from our own reality.

The Crusader and the Priestess: strange bedfellows?

The Crusader and the Priestess, as well as their patron gods, are ultimately on the same side: the side of Ma'at. They serve order, balance, and justice, though in dramatically different ways. The Crusader, viewed in the most positive light, is a morally ambiguous man who makes difficult moral decisions.

But Order and Balance are not necessarily the same thing. If left unchecked by Balance and unopposed by Chaos, Order would ultimately petrify the universe like a fly in amber.

Since the current age is one where Chaos is ascendant, then Order and Balance work together to oppose it. But in another age this could quite easily turn around, and the heroes would be recast as freedom fighters against an oppressive regime.