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T. B.
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
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Some supplements are more fun to use than they are actually useful. The Random Esoteric Creature Generator is a prime example of this- It’s not so much a tool for building a part of your campaign as it is a reasonably entertaining game in itself that a GM can play when he’s got some time between sessions. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. A more apt comparison might be to the exercises that writers use when they need a little help getting their creative juices flowing. Writing three paragraphs about the color brown may not be directly adding anything to your science fiction novel, but it could help get you into an imaginative frame of mind so that you can get going on starting chapter 3.
The RECG is a thin book, a pamphlet almost, that purports to address a problem that anyone who’s ever run D&D, or a D&D-like game, has encountered from time to time- namely that these games have been around for so long that the typical monsters that lurk in the typical dungeon are pretty well known, and, frankly, kind of boring. The players kick open a door on level 1 of the haunted keep and encounter three orcs- we all know what to do with orcs, right? You kill them and move on, no surprises there. On level 4, the players kick open a similar door and encounter a troll. Well, they’ve dealt with this before, so they bring out the oil and the torches and struggle to keep their eyes open as they stifle a yawn and set about making a little troll flambé. On level 5, they kick open a door and inside there waits a quadrupedal, apple-shaped plant creature covered in slime and advancing to attack with 8 lashing tentacles- Didn’t see that one coming, did they?
And that is what the RECG is for: introducing weird ass monsters into your campaign that will frighten and confuse your players. This is, I believe, a laudable goal- who doesn’t love that WTF expression that flashes over a group of players’ faces when they realize they have literally no idea how to deal with the menace that has suddenly reared up to confront them? But the Random Esoteric Creature Generator is a peculiar piece of work, and anyone considering picking it up needs to know that it really will only help you make one specific kind of monster- the batshit insane, gonzo abomination kind. However, it does that very well indeed.
To be clear, then: this is not some high-faulting book that’ll aid you in drawing forth creatures of legend and fairy tale and breathing life into them, nor a treatise on the nature of monsterhood and how to develop universal human fears into beasts that will haunt your players’ dreams. This book is, to put it bluntly, a bunch of random tables that stick various animal parts together onto the same creature and then gives it magic powers.
Here’s how it works- You as the GM have decided that you want to throw your jaded D&D players a curve ball, really shake them up with some completely weird beastie. You’ve got your RECG, an assortment of dice (the usual suspects), a piece of paper and a pencil. You figure you want a reasonably strong monster, so you choose a starting hit dice level of, let’s say 4. And then, you start rolling dice. And then you roll more dice. And more dice, slowly working your way through the sequential multitude of charts that the RECG is made up of. One chart tells you a basic shape for the monster (everything from bipedal and human-like to polyhedral); another tells you whether it’s a mammal, a reptile, an insect, a bird or some unholy combination of the above (“if the combination makes no sense… good” the author helpfully advises,); another tells you how it moves; another how it attacks; another gives you an assortment of “distinctive features” like “two heads”, “mechanical parts”, “shimmering body” or “suction cups on limbs”; and yet another provides the thing with special attacks like “telekinesis” or “duplicates upon being hit”. Some of these results will add to, or reduce, the monster’s hit dice, or number of attacks, or damage; some will throw in features that will make you laugh, or completely surprise you, or totally ruin the creature’s ability to survive. You will literally have no idea what you’re going to wind up with until the process is finished.
It’s a lot of fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Just like it says in the title, this process creates totally random monsters, and there’s a good chance that you will have no idea how to use the thing that gets spit out when you’re done. That’s why I say it’s like a game in itself, or an exercise to jog the imagination, rather than a tool to help you build a monster to serve a specific role in your campaign. After all, if what you’re looking for is something to guard the abandoned desert temple of the lizard men, you’re not going to find it very helpful when what you wind up with is an underwater-dwelling feather-covered pyramid that can only “attack” by somehow causing deafness.
I’ve probably used the RECG a good eight or nine times since I bought it, and I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth of enjoyment out of it. A few of the beasties I’ve made have found a home in my Swords & Wizardry campaign, but most of them have been so outlandish as to be pretty much useless. As examples, I generated two monsters while preparing this review. The first was an aquatic six-foot long serpent with a fox’s head and fur, eyes on stalks, and the ability heat itself up to boiling temperature when threatened (jets of steam and all). I don’t know if I will ever use the “Foxness Monster” in my campaign, but I certainly could and feel like it would be interesting to catch my players off-guard with that boiling skin thing. The second, however, came out as an eight-foot tall swan with stony skin and two lashing tails. Now, it was plenty of fun to make, but when I looked at the final product I realized that there’s no way I could actually throw that into my dungeon without causing my players to break down in laughter. So there you go: it’s random and sometimes you’ll get something cool and sometimes you’ll get something ridiculous.
Perhaps the best and most useful part of the whole process comes after you’ve gone through all the random charts and you’re staring down at the unholy aberration that you’ve created. If it’s a good one, you know you want to use it in your campaign, but you’ve got to figure out how. That’s when the creativity really starts to flow as you try and visualize the different ways you can fit an eight-legged acid spitting monkey into your world. You start to picture it swinging from the rafters of your lizard man temple, or maybe crawling out of the sewers of the local mega city, or maybe even being summoned by an evil wizard to hunt down and kill his enemies. You begin changing things about it- maybe if it’s got eight legs it should spin a web? - And soon, it becomes a real part of your campaign and very much your own creation.
Other than the random charts that make up the body of the work, there’s a brief introduction and some advice from author James Raggi IV on how to use RECG monsters in your game. The latter section makes for an interesting and entertaining read, but I’m afraid that it serves as more of a glimpse of the author’s own guiding philosophy for his games than it does as generally applicable advice. Among other things, for instance, he recommends against using any RECG monsters more than once, or, for that matter, giving them any kind of name at all, in order to preserve their status as unique abominations. This is fine advice for using these monsters in one specific way, but there’s certainly many more possibilities than that, and it would have been nice to see some more of them addressed. There’s no drawback at all to fleshing some of these creations out and make them a more consistent feature of your world, for instance. Still, the great thing about such advice is that one is perfectly capable of taking it or leaving it, and with that reservation, I do enjoy getting Raggi’s perspective.
All in all, I think that the RECG offers a fair amount of value for its cover price (irrespective of its somewhat anemic page count) provided that you know exactly what you’re picking up. Anyone who hopes to find a system for designing monsters to meet specific campaign needs is going to be unsatisfied, but if you’re happy to let the book do what it’s designed to do- namely, create bizarre, surprising and above all RANDOM monsters- the Random Esoteric Creature Generator will not disappoint.
Buy This If-
- You like random tables.
- You enjoy exercises that can stimulate your creativity.
-You know you want to scare the hell out of your players with something, but you have no idea what.
-You don’t mind spending twenty minutes creating a monster that just isn’t going to work at all.
Don’t Buy This If-
- You’re hoping for a book that will help you create monsters to suit specific niches in your campaign.
- Random tables give you hives.
- You and your players have just started out, and the idea of a room full of goblins sounds like an exciting and dangerous encounter!
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Simon Crowe
United Kingdom
Sheffield
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 for "Foxness Monster"
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T. B.
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
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Scrowe wrote: for "Foxness Monster"
Credit goes to my wife, then, as it was her inspired comment.
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James Hutchings
Australia
Unspecified
Unspecified
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People who are interested in this kind of thing might like my Creature Creator page:
http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/creature
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T. B.
United States
Albuquerque
New Mexico
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Quote:
Carytesk, or Gibbering Conqueror
This creature is small (roughly the size of a child).
They live on the surface of the sea. They travel over the water as if it was land.
A typical group, or mob, consists of 2-12 creatures.
The Carytesk looks like a beautiful young woman above the waist, a crow below.
They're humans whose evil forces them to return in this form after death.
They're a type of Spirit (see below).
They have only animal-like intelligence.
Incorporeal: The Spirit can't be harmed except by magical means, nor can it directly physically harm anyone (like a ghost).
Camouflage: The creature can change their flesh to the colour of their surroundings, making them harder to spot.
Greater True Sight: The creature is totally immune to magical attacks based on illusions or fear.
That's an awesome site!
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James Hutchings
Australia
Unspecified
Unspecified
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Thanks!
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