A few sessions ago, my hunters found a grimoire during a mystery and ended up keeping it.

A few sessions ago, my hunters found a grimoire during a mystery and ended up keeping it.

A few sessions ago, my hunters found a grimoire during a mystery and ended up keeping it. To make the grimoire feel more real, I gave them a list of summoning spell titles and have prepared a corresponding monster for each spell. I liked how the monsters turned out, so I figured I would post them here! Feel free to use them exactly as they are or change ’em up completely!

A couple notes…

1) Keep in mind that none of these monsters (with the exception of the Salmon of Knowledge) have seen play yet, so I can’t personally vouch for all the mechanical stuff. Tweak as you see fit.

2) Since these are monsters designed to be summoned and not the centerpieces of their own mysteries, I created some new monster motivations, such as the Worker (to carry out a job or mission) and the Survivor (to act in self defense). Again, you may want to tweak these depending on what you have in mind for your mystery.

2) Of course, you don’t have to follow my lead and introduce a grimoire into your game, but y’all, it’s such a fun wild card. Tonight my hunters summoned the Salmon of Knowledge in the middle of a mystery thinking it would help them, and in their hubris nearly got themselves killed trying to eat the damn thing before either one of them bothered to Investigate or Read a Bad Situation. We were all in tears with laughter by the end. Bottom line is that I highly recommend saying the phrase “try to kick the Salmon’s ass” at least once in your life.

Hi, all!

Hi, all!

Hi, all! I’m working on putting together a comedy one-off based on the Dancing Plague of 1518 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518), an event during which a bunch of people danced so hard and for so long that most of them died of exhaustion.

I’ve got a pretty good idea of how the countdown is going to go and some ideas for custom moves that’ll involve the hunters having to act under pressure to resist dancing, but…I don’t have a monster! Does anyone either a) know of any monsters from folklore that could conceivably cause an event like this; or b) have any advice on how to create a monster that’s actually a “virus”? I’m open to any suggestions, really.

Thanks in advance! And if anyone has already run a game based on this, I’d love to hear about it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518