What’s everyone’s favorite monster trope and why?
I particularly like boogeyman-ish monsters. It hits a kind of nostalgic fear that you think you’ve outgrown. Like Slenderman or The Gentlemen (Hush) from Buffy.
What’s everyone’s favorite monster trope and why?
What’s everyone’s favorite monster trope and why?
They are cool. I love vampires, after all.
Also a fan of bogeyman monsters.
Don’t blink.
I also like seeing dragons done well. The Dresden books had a great example of a mythic dragon. Mostly, though, I really like to see alien (that is to say, unintelligible on some level) monsters, like fae.
Yea, I was going to say fae as well, while being somewhat daunted to actually have them as prime “monsters” – could I make them so awesomely weird and alien as I feel they need to be? … guess I’ll have to try.
Definitely research a lot of different sources. (If you’re into unusual inspirations, Puella Magi Madoka Magica has a character who’s a stellar example of a fae creature, even if they’re not actually fae. True story.)
I think that the biggest key here is to figure out what does define such a creature. Not how they’re inhuman, but what they are. Then you can work on making that aspect so strong that it overwhelms everything that we’d normally consider human.
Look at some of the things that humans take for granted, and remove them. Much of what can make fae so foreign is their lack of understanding humanity. For example, picture this dialogue…
Human: “GWAH! Why are you sitting at my table?”
Fae: “I thought you wanted to see me.”
Human: “Well you could at least have knocked!”
It’s a very mild example (it’d work really well for a changeling type of character), but I think it starts to show off that other-ness.
I’m working some fae stuff in to our MotW story now. I really like them for the same reasons… and now I am totally going to check out Puella Magi Madoka Magica!
(As a side note: it’s not what it seems. I will say that much.)
Also, I’m pretty pleased with the Dresden take on fae, if you haven’t already read that.
I really need to read Dresden Files!
Oh, yes! It’s absolutely brimming with MotW ideas. Especially when it comes to pulling various monsters together into one universe.
Tonight I played a mystery with some vampires. 😉
It was set in Rome. My players are a group of hunter linked to a secret chivalric order who is connected with the Holy See and hunts monsters. We are on mystery #2. It’s the first MotW campaign set in Italy I’ve heard of.
Daniele Di Rubbo Awesome! I was just thinking of pushing my hunters out of familiar territory… time for a trip!
But I’m Italian, so Rome it’s no so unfamiliar to me as is probably for you (I traveled to Rome some times and two of the players are from Rome). By the way, all the campaigns we Italian players played before, for what I know, are set outside Italy.
The first feeling about playing in Italy is one of loss, because we have not a horror TV series reference fiction. We have several detective TV series, revolving around our police forces, but we generally regard them as series of very low quality (and, of course, they are).
Daniele Di Rubbo Oh, I know you’re Italian… but when you said you were the first MotW campaign set in Italy, it made me think I should push my players outside of the US. Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear!
Also… that’s too bad about the lack of horror TV series 🙁
Yet, we see horror TV series of other countries. Mainly American: the ones which are part of the sources of inspiration of MotW.
My favourite monster tropes are the almost humans or the would like to be decent but can’t. Usually these are people with a genetic oddity/unusual ancestry etc. Nothing cooler in a game than having the bad guy who has been eating people/infecting them or whatever turn around and establish some sympathy from the PC’s.