There are two primary categories of monster, those with the agency and intellect to organize themselves and pursue complex goals and those without. As part of my broader effort to innovate the way Kodiak-Game handles “Dungeons” I have been doing some thinking on how monsters in general should be handled in the context of the campaign.
For the latter sort of monster, the bestial and wanton sort which only make their way through the world on some combination of instinct and wrath, the typical methods of deployment make enough sense. There will be a table which indicates what monster you will encounter on the throw of a die based on your environment. Wandering griffons and marauding owlbears can just be essentially magical wildlife more dangerous than the average beast. They will sometimes be encountered in a “Lair” (a term I intend to commandeer for a very particular purpose later on) which will have young or treasure or what have you.
The former, sapient monsters, require a revisit in my experience. ACKS has a wealth of good advice and procedures for designing a campaign. Something many games are woefully lacking. ACKS suggests that judges build a “web” that connects different monsters, plots, and rumors together. One of the consequences of this is the emergence of “factions”. If this dragon and these orcs are aligned on this plot they form a faction. As time goes on in the UltimACKS campaign, I can’t help but feel like the approach to placing sapient monsters of any variety in your campaign world should revolve around developing factions. So follows that dungeons, which are often populated by sapient monsters, should transform into “outposts” of a particular faction.
When moving about within civilization in a TTRPG, almost every NPC encountered will belong to some faction or group. They will benefit from the protection of some institution or country. Even peasants and beggars can claim the protection of the local lord. This is simply the way humans ordered themselves historically, doubly so in the context of a fantasy world full of supernatural and magical threats. So when the party encounters a band of goblins, the same sort of considerations should be at play. Chaotic and monstrous forces may not be as organized as lawful civilizations but it must follow that numerous and petty creatures require the protection and leadership of mightier ones, lest they be torn apart by wandering dragons and other dreadful foes. So follows from this that they should have agendas, and responsibilities. Even if they are relatively simple (rape, pillage, so on). “Who do these goblins work for?” Is a reasonable question, but only if the answer is something gameable and interesting.
The dungeon is among the oldest trappings of TTRPG culture. An entryway into a mythic and evil underworld which is replete with both danger and treasure. The delving of such dungeons is an important source of income for characters in most RPGs. Dungeons shouldn’t be required to “make sense” they should always be dangerous and backwards places one degree of separation away from understanding. Reimagining dungeons as outposts of a faction of monsters isn’t to apply undue scrutiny or logic to their nature, but to better contextualize what is actually happening in the wilderness areas of your campaign world. The dungeon itself can remain a portal to the mythic underworld, one perhaps as dangerous to the monsters that dwell there as it is to the adventurers.
My idea is to create what I am calling “Dominions” which are essentially factions of monsters which scale as entities based on the power of their leader. Chaotic creatures of course can only order themselves around the autocracy of a personally potent leader. Sapient monsters will not be dispersed in the game world outside of these Dominions in Kodiak-Game. Some dominions could be as small as a particularly tough ogre and one or two goblin villages under his influence, or as large as legions of hobgoblins arrayed beneath a great and terrible dragon. The purpose of this is to make managing these monsters easier by codifying their monthly operations in a way that only takes 5 to 10 minutes of homework to manage. In turn, this allows sapient monsters to move around the gameworld as agents of a particular being’s will or agenda, making the game world and its threats dynamic, logical and inherently connected. They area grim reflection of the domains and fiefdoms of lawful civilization.
I plan to continue posting about Kodiak-Game to create a dialectic about my personal preferences and wisdom acquired by actually running TTRPGs as I work through drafting the actual game. I am taking suggestions for placeholder titles so I can stop calling it Kodiak-Game. Winner gets a prize. Something with an acronym built in (ACKS, D&D) is preferred.