“Generic” Monsters in Death Bed: An Impenetrably Medieval Dungeon Game
While not an OSR-type game itself, Death Bed is inextricably linked to the OSR and the OS that inspired the R by virtue of being a dungeon crawler. For Death Bed to survive, it has to be at least roughly compatible with classic and OSR fantasy dungeon modules, even if Death Bed doesn’t have elves or orcs or goblins or whatever.
This means that I do have to come up with something for PCs to do with coins in Death Bed even though the Death Bed setting “economy” uses coins even less than real medieval economies used coins. It also means I have to come up with Death Bed equivalents to a lot of the staple OSR monsters that are so commonplace in classic and OSR fantasy as to now be considered “generic” fantasy monsters like giant spiders, wolves, etc..
Also for Death Bed to survive, it has to stand out and represent the A.N.I.M. standard of quality and creativity. So, how can I do both?
The key to making “generic” monsters interesting is the same as making “non-generic” monsters interesting, you have to make their stats and abilities actually mean something, and result in different situations and tactical decision making than other monsters would in the same environment.
An example of not doing this I can think of is a particular D&D5e monster I don’t remember the name of, but one of its abilities is explicitly described as being able to take over the skeleton of a target and make the skeleton turn into an evil skeleton warrior inside their body and turn against them. That’s scary! What does this look like mechanically? It’s just XD6 HP damage…. And this describes a lot of D&D5e monsters actually. Extensively described abilities that only translate into doing more HP damage.
When monsters are just stat blocks that do X damage and have Y HP, there isn’t really must distinct about them in turn-based combat.
So, when tasked with including “generic” fantasy monsters in Death Bed, I have to make them distinct in some way. In a turn-based game, what makes fighting bandits different from fighting wolves? And what makes fighting wolves different from fighting giant spiders?
Well, bandits can talk. That alone means that a “fight” can go in all sorts of ways. Doing bandits that can talk, however, by A.N.I.M. standards, would mean writing at least one NPC in the group with a full set of “actionable information.” For this example let’s assume they are hollow bandits who can’t talk or reason and are just acting out the banditry they did in life. They’re still bandits, this is a large-scale mugging, not random murder for no reason.
So, they are liable to ambush the party and then wait for the party to hand over their stuff. If the party pays them, they’ll go away. If the party doesn’t pay them and it escalates to violence, they’re humans with swords and probably some armor. As hollows, their tactics won’t be extremely advanced, but they can still come in from different sides and use weapons that pose distinct threats by doing different types of damage. They are also likely to target the toughest-looking PCs first, because they know that with their fighters taken out, the non-combatants will be helpless. As hollows, they will also fight to the death. Living adversaries won’t typically do that. Also wearing armor means that PCs will have the most success using Piercing or Bludgeoning damage against them.
Now wolves. Unlike bandits, wolves want to eat the PCs’ bodies, there is no amount of coin that can satisfy them. Maybe they could be distracted by throwing them food, but there’s no way to know. They are also just as capable of executing a basic ambush and cutting off possible escape routes as the hollow bandits.
They don’t wield weapons, so their 1v1 tactics are very limited, but what they will do is gang up any vulnerable PC and try to drag them away from the rest of the group. They don’t need to engage with the most threatening PCs at all, as long as they can drag even one of them away, they win. Not having metal armor also means they are vulnerable to all form of damage, which is good for the PCs and increases their options. Another thing good for the PCs and the wolves is that the wolves have enough sense to retreat if they start taking too many casualties.
There’s a bunch of ways to do giant spiders. They might spin webs, attack out of holes, jump, just chase the target down, etc.. I don’t have time to go over every possibility in this post, but a monster that only attacks once the PCs are stuck in a web is definitely a different sort of fight to the kind that attacks before anyone is stuck in a web. Also, they have exoskeletons and a lot of relatively free-floating insides. This actually makes them very resistant to Bludgeoning damage relative to their size and strength. Being more resistant to Bludgeoning damage than Slashing or Piercing is a pretty significant reversal, and will make the PCs have to consider their individual attacks very differently than fighting the wolves or bandits.
I came up with a few more surprises for encounters like these, but I’m going to leave them surprises by not mentioning them in this post. I'm just laying out thoughts on how I can make even “generic” fights in Death Bed stand-out.
