Building Better Monsters | Animated Armor
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- čas přidán 16. 10. 2022
- Redesigning the Animated Armor from Dungeons & Dragons by adding a little more love!
Moriko T. Raider's article "Animating Objects: Tsukumogami ki and the Medieval Illustration of Shingon Truth" : www.jstor.org/stable/40660967...
I use 6B and 6B pencil, some soft charcoal, a kneaded and a mechanical eraser, and a wad of paper towel. This was drawn on 100 pound Strathmore bristol board.
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Twitter: @kylelatino
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Every time I watch one of these videos I am absolutely blown away by your art. Amazing! And it includes great DMing advice to boot.
Wow, thank you! I enjoy drawing almost as much as I enjoy running my mouth about DnD! Haha!
Damn dude I cannot believe your channel sometimes. The research, the academic seriousness with which you appraise these concepts. That poem was fire also, great find
Thank you! Yeah, whenever I start on of these monsters, I like to tie it to some existing writing in some way. It deepens my experience with world cultures and DnD!
Animated armors always get me thinking about what other stuff can come to life. What about a river that refuses to let people take water from it? or a bed in a tavern that wants to experience its softness for itself, creating a person-like spirit that steals the blanket away? Why can't the floorboards and the ceiling have a angles vs devils dynamic with who is above/below the other?
Great work as always, building better monsters is definitely one of my favorite series on the platform.
Video Ideas:
Building Better Witches (What is the intent behind all that potion brewing and children eating?)
Building Better Creatures of the Deep (Do krakens swim upstream to lay their eggs, like salmon? Do Merfolk even know how far down their lake goes? What stops the Merfolk who do go down from ever coming back up again?)
Heck yeah! I did a map for a Mimic House for my Old Roads project! Anything can move around, but how does it offer different challenges, that's the tricky thing to figure out! Haha. Sounds like you got some great questions to start writing your own Building Better Monsters entries!
Great stuff, loved the Wrathful Deity faces on the armour, damn. The idea of using Japanese Kami is very good and fun; it hits that Toy Story bone of personifying random objects that I think a lot of us have hahahaha
One of my favourite interpretations of the living armour trope comes from Delicious in Dungeon manga, in which it's actually a form of colony of mollusk that lurk inside the armour (as in, between one plate and the other) and perform the function of the muscles. Inside the armour is the egg sacs of the colony, so that's why the armour attacks: the colony of mollusks inside the armour is protecting the egg sacs within.
Also, when the egg sacs hatch they start to make their own armour and the old armour is discarded. It's a more zoological take, but one I appreciate =)
Gotta love Ryoko Kui's Monster ecology.
Such an amazing manga!!
Haha! I almost made some Toy Story references!! The Wrathful Deity faces are Gorgoneion from the classical era! Love Delicious in Dungeon! It skews less mythical and more scientific because it needs to have these monsters work in recipes, but I love that weird story so much!!
I love the art and the concepts you come up with to spice up monsters! It’s very intriguing and thought provoking to think about these kinds of monsters in new ways
Thank you so much!!
A suit of armor that is looking for a worthy person to wear them could be fun! Amazing illustration and wonderful, thoughtful video as always!
The suit was made for you, JP! It's looking for you!!
@@mapcrow And I will wear it!!!
This makes me think about what I'm doing with all of my character's stuff I've acquired over ~2 years of weekly adventuring. I appreciate the new outlook on the game you gave me. Thanks!
As for building better monsters, I'd like to see your take on the different Genies - Marid, Dao, Efreeti, and Djinni. The lore for them in the monster manual is okay, but could be better IMO.
Monsters from outside european cultures are something I'd love to tackle in a collaboration with folks who have a background or expertise that would help bring out a different flavor than I could on my own! Also, one of the nice things about DnD Beyond is you can easily spy on PC inventories! Haha
My thoughts went to the trope of cursed objects possessing a will of their own. Maybe the animated armor wants to be worn by the players to enforce its curse upon them!
It makes your objects go wild
Sounds like a sleazey VHS! Haha
Love the idea of getting notes from your bag of holding regarding the removal of the ork heads you threw in 9 sessions ago.
By the by in the way of suggestions for future videos, I never know what to do with Gargoyles
Oh dang! I do have a good idea for gargoyles! Thanks for reminding me! Yeah, I feel like body parts that you toss into a bag of holding HAVE to do something awful to you at some point! Haha!!
The group awakens to find that everyone in the party is missing something, but not anything they'll miss. It seems that at some point in the night someone robbed them, but mysteriously they only took the items they don't care about anymore. The Frostbrand that's been languishing in a Bag of Holding since the Hexadin found a more powerful weapon. A Helm of Tongues that the bard's been meaning to sell next time they were in town, for the past five times they were in town. The Cleric's missing a whole sack full of healing potions she just had no idea what to do with...
After taking a serious inventory of what's available, they realize it's all junk. Nothing they will miss, and they've got bigger fish to fry.
In a nearby cave, the items in question form an unholy union, bound by their growing jealousy and rage at having been set aside so callously. The items together are stronger than they ever were alone, and now with their combined might they form a sort of unified ego with the will to hunt those that spurned them.
A Voltron of unloved items! Haha!!
@@mapcrow honestly, I'd been thinking of a way to put in some sort of Yokai thing since my kid started playing D&D with us (he used to love the Yokai Watch Cartoon). And then watching Thor Love and Thunder with Stormbreaker being jealous of Mjolnir, I had the seeds. This vid put it all together in my head.
I thought mollusks animating the armor was weird, but revolutionary leader certainly wins.
UNIONIZE YOUR INVENTORY! Haha!!
After revisiting this, I can say that I've been playing my character off of what he'd really be like and should revisit their inventory. Thank you for helping me see the RPG world through different eyes.
Baptiste comes from a clan in the freezing forests that have a sustenance-based style of living. After a year of weekly adventuring, he's accrued multiple items that he no longer uses in a typical "adventuring day." That's antithetical to the "waste not, want not" kind of upbringing he had.
Great video! I’d love to see a reimagined version of Hags, particularly the Green Hag, because, you know, Halloween spooky witches ooooooo 👻 Might be a bit challenging, but I think you could handle it 🤝
I love witches in stories so much, but I've always found it weird how they are like a whole different species in the Monster Manual. I think I'd really play up the fey realm aspect? Perhaps we'll see!
I love love love the idea here.
I've been fascinated by progression systems that are based on loot instead of XP. And this concept really adds a dimension to this. Loot needs a purpose. Without a purpose loot becomes unstable and possibly dangerous. You can't just discard loot, it might be offended by that and haunt you. You want to upgrade to better loot but the old items you posess need to be dealt with eventually.
Heck yeah!! I really enjoy running inventory as class in games like Into the Odd and Knave!
After just starting to read Delicious in Dungeon, I was expecting something much different than this take. Great video, per usual!
I'd be curious to hear your take on merfolk/mermaid/kuo-toa/fishy humans. I bet you'd go somewhere fun with it.
Love that manga! The monsters are very scientific in that story, but I tend toward the mythic. I've never run an aquatic game before, so I'd have to think about what to do with that time of monster!
I love this idea! Also probably one of your strongest illustrations yet!!
Thank you so much!! I feel the same way!!
In the Pathfinder 2e book "Grand Bazaar", there's an Ancestry (same as race in DnD, but less problematic name) called "Poppets". The idea is that they're basically animated toys; you can get a poppet as a familiar and it's not unheard of for wealthy families to commission a poppet for their children. They're usually your garden-variety animated construct, but very rarely they can spontaneously attain sapience.
One personality quirk it mentions for the playable poppets is that some have a habit of talking to inanimate objects, so that they can be friends when *they* finally "wake up".
And this vid gave me this image of this little Benke-looking beanybaby casting Animate Objects by giving a rousing revolutionary speech. Or maybe they just sneak into adventurer camps to dump out bags of holding and steal stuff.
(Can't remember how that name's spelled. The guy from Japanese mythos that takes the weapons of his fallen enemies.)
I'm so happy to have found your channel!
I liked the van richers guide to ravenloft idea of having a swarm enemy inside them, when the armor is defeated the swarn bursts out and attacks
Dang that does sound cool!
Love the shows! Thanks for everything.
Glad you like them! Cheers!!
Thank you so much for linking that article! POV provides so much vitality to characters and the world in general!
A great video as always! Your content always gets my brain thinking in interesting ways that I really appreciate. Thank you for all your hard work and look forward to seeing what you are going to do next.
Thank you so much!!
Your art is great it’s always a joy to watch your work with your unique and creative take on monsters to the very inspired art you draw
Thank you so much!!
So glad you mentioned tsukumogami in a video about animated objects. Yokai in general are such an interesting angle to take inspiration from when coming up with ideas!
Yeah!! It’s fascinating!! I just don’t understand enough of it to speak very long on the topic.
@@mapcrow if you ever get a chance to collab with someone who could help with that, it would make a great video!
Beautiful work, as always! Great and inspiring ideas with the inventory management as well.
Thank you very much!
Love this series, so much useful, usable inspiration to make my games better!
Glad you like them!
all that metal detailing is just mesmorising!! incredible work as always, i find your approach to dnd design so fun to listen to.
Thank you very much! It took a lot of time to do it, but it was so fun!!
I love living armour, really like your spin on it. Good stuff
Glad you enjoy it!
I think it'd be cool to try to befriend and equip animated armor following this narrative. maybe whenever the player is incapacitated the armor could prioritize getting them out of harm's way to avoid being without a purpose again
Heck yeah!! I think that would be great!! There are even so stories about animated objects seeking enlightenment that are mentioned in the article I linked! A redemption arc for these items would be really cool!!
Man I love your stuff. So thought provoking
Thank you so much! I love doing this stuff, but I love that folks have their own ideas from these videos even more!! Cheers!
Another banger. Thanks Crow!
Thank YOU!! Thank you so much!!
I love everything you make but this piece is particular blew my mind to watch you create! Also loads of food for thought re: a monster I had never considered using before but now really want to fit in somehow.
Thank you so much! I had a lot of fun drawing this one!
It's perfect, I love it!
Thank you so much!!
Bro, your voice feels so much like asmr, so relaxing and I love the style , so orderly chaotic. The Bronze age inspired armor looks so cool, thanks for the update.
Wow, thank you! I actually listen to a lot of asmr while drawing actually! It's nice for when I need to keep a chill vibe and get a lot of work done!
there actually is a preexisting monster thats based around what you are describing: the raggamoffyn, a collection of magic trash that gained sentients.
There is also the japanese tsukumogami spirit that I mentioned and linked to as well. When folks started mentioning the raggomuffyn, I looked it up and it seems fairly different, behaving like a slime or a golem. Might be one of the reasons it hasn’t come back since 3e.
this is my favorite one of this series yet! animated armor has never held much intrigue for me, but you added a whole new dimension that makes me really want to incorporate it into my game :D
also, the art RULES
Thank you! Yeah, I felt the same way about them. They are just boring monsters that don't speak much to me. I'm glad you enjoyed this!!
Awesome video! I absolutely love your art! Think you could do the wendigo for the next building better monsters?
I think like, scarecrow/headless horseman? or maybe the flesh golem/frankenstein? both would be cool!
Right on! Those are great suggestions! Thank you!
its rgeat to know that youre focusing on the quality of your ideas for these videos. as much as i want my demons and devils episode to come out, its the quality, and the new life youre able to beathe into these old concepts that i love, keep doing what youre doing, man.
that being said, i love this inspiration youve gotten from japanese yokai for this episode. animating things that arent supposed to be alive is always fun. that being said, i think a "building better oozes" episode could be fun.
I tend to treat my oozes in my games as a kind of mold or fungus. "The acrid stench of death and decay of adventurers long past fills the air as you step into the damp corridor. You spot a vibrant yellow writhing mass of tendrils and veins sprawled across the floors and walls, as well as the few corpses that little the hallway." Im inspired by the yellow slime moulds in our real world for oozes. I typically have these slimes be after one particular thing. Food. wether that be the rations the players carry, corpses on the ground, or the payers themselves. These oozes can use their veiny tendrils to lock players in one position, and try to drag them into the main mass, so the mold can swallow up the players whole.
DANG!! That's some good stuff for oozes!! I have some ideas for oozes ready to go, but I haven't figured out the visuals yet. Your description of them is super good though!! Thanks for the kind words as well!!
@@mapcrow of course, man. i love your work, and what youre doing. Having new takes on old monsters is always fun. :3
I cannot freaking believe this drawing OMG
OH MY GOD DUDE!!! How do you keep raising the bar on a technical and creative level ???
Ha! Thank you!! I just try to keep things interesting for me. Try to stay curious
I love this encounter idea, weirdly scary, and a great way to shake things up for your players
Always looking to shaking things up! I don't think every fight should have some weird gimmick, but it's better to have it and not need it than the other way around!
The concept of animated armor has always been such a cool concept to me, and it's always been underappreciated in my eyes
Aside from the obvious Scooby Doo trick you can do, you could take it down the route of a Terminator-like being
A intensely durable machine with no easy weakness. It'll walk right through fire and water, magically repair itself, climb up walls and hack its way through anything to get to you, and hunt you down until you die or GTFO it's dungeon. It forces you to get creative, find a way to slow it down, or delay it, crush it under rubble, knock it off a cliff or something nobody ever realized was on the table.
Make it less of an obstacle, and more of a horror monster. Maybe the only way to beat it is found at the end of the dungeon with some magic macguffin, or you need to exorcise it, or appease it in some other way. A warrior without a body has a lot of poetic ability to it, idk, that's my line of thought
Heck yeah! It's a really good image to stick with!
@@mapcrow If you're serious about the idea, I'd love for you to take a look at Revenants, Nobles who have come back from being wrongfully killed to avenge their own deaths where no magic can hide their target from their gaze.
It could be fun to play with, a good punnishment for Evil party members, or maybe spawned through some kind of misunderstanding?
They also lose their willpower to go on after one year, which is a cool rule i think
Revanents are rad! I just did an undead video with the Wights though, so I’ll probably wait a bit if I decide to do an episode on one.
@@mapcrow Don't wait too long! Perfect for spooky month imo
Ohh Gnolls are tons of different ideas come up. Defo want to see. But whyll we are waiting for them what about Minotaurs, tons of ways too look at them. Great job on this one gives tons of Animisim vibes which is a great source of inspiration
Minotaurs are so fun!! Love the short story, House of Astarion!
Such a nice and refreshing interpretation of the living armour ! I know it a bit classical, but I'd love to have your own interpretation of goblins ! In my humble point of vue they deserve better representations (PS : sorry for my english, classical french)
I have a take on goblins! I just need a visual inspiration. Haha
By the way, I really like Splatbook 😁 All your videos and podcasts always give me sooo many new ideas
Heck yeah!! Thank you so much Olivia!
My players are about to go to a city in my custom (eastern-flavored) setting that's known for its specialty in a particular kind of magic: Animus magic. This is expressed in two major ways: common animals being 'magically trained' into servants and special pets; living objects being practically commonplace, such as the palace doors or dancing blades - but also quiet rumors of necromancy. Dancing or otherwise living weapons have always fascinated me a lot and I am really enjoying the creative prospects of these things.
This video was full of great ideas and juicy things to chew on - looking forward to more ❤
Right on! Yeah I think there is plenty of food for thought for a setting like that!! Thank you!!
id love to see you tackle the demogorgon, I think it's a cool as monster that deserves some love
Demogorgon is a creature that was created specifically for DnD, which sometimes makes it hard to find a way to change them. Mind Flayers and Beholder have really clear gimmicks at least, but I'm not familiar with demogorgon to have an idea. Still, I'll add it to the list! Thanks for the suggestion!
I absolutely adore this piece, it's just so damn evocative! If I had to make a suggestion about something to give a go at redesigning, I'd be really fascinated to see how you might go about redesigning an ooze!
Thank you!! Yeah, ooze is on the list, I’m just trying to figure out the visual twist!
@@mapcrow if I might make a suggestion, what if the ooze didn't have its own form, and instead acted as a parasitic infection, replacing the host's blood and fluids?
@@yo5tan Thank you, but I'd like to find my own twist on this. Plus, I don't want to swipe someone else's sick idea because I'd like to put these into a book.
@@mapcrow oh no problemo! I completely understand that, but I wouldn't have shared it if I didn't want you to have it ☺️
Love it as usual! Great art. Great ideas. Couldn’t ask for more. As someone who wants to DM a game with a more Japanese style cosmology this comes at a perfect time. ✨
Wonderful! So happy to be timely! Haha
I love how your videos always seem to give me well needed inputs to my campaign.... The remarks about the rope just turned into a hags lair Action in my mind, that turns the players unused rope into constructor snakes
Oh dang! Hags can do that? That's so cool! Hags are something I need to think about before the end of the month...
@@mapcrow I mean hags pretty much invite home-brewing as the description just says they use weird magic items and animated objects to sow misery... My players at the moment are tracking a hag and stumble over the aftermath of her selling magic items in the guise of a travelling merchant in the style of a monkeys paw: a dead fisherman who bought a "fish catching potion" which turned out to be a potent necromantic posion that now dissolved him and leached out of the boat into the stream, killing all the fish.... A completely flattened and broken corpse, who was an athlete that wanted to jump higher than anyone elses so he got a ring of jumping.... That was 20 times stronger than intended, and did not cover the landing part... An emaciated woman who wanted to lose weight and got an amulet that allowed her to eat 'anything she wants without gaining weight ", but which also makes anything completely devoid of nutrients but she can't take it off.... And so on and so forth... Sorry for the long text.... I just love the weirdness and creative potential of hags
This is sick as hell
Thank you!!
There's this video by Tale Foundry on writing characters who aren't people that I was really reminded of watching this. It's really good stuff, these two videos would actually go really well together.
Oh neat! I’ll have to check that out!
Great video as always!
For additional Halloween monster ideas:
- Sibriex
- Bander Hob
- Oozes
Thank you!! Yeah, oozes are definitely on the list!! Hadn't seen those other two before! I kind love the idea of Bandersnatch becoming a modifier word with Hobb!! What a wonderful play with language!!
I gave my players a choice: head deeper into the Shadow Wood on the road to a town ruled by a vampire king, or head to Animal Town, where old familiars retired outside the merging of the Feywild and Shadowfell, but carrying parts of both. *They chose Undeadburg.* They’ll meet an old enemy who’s returned from the dead to be an ambassador to the Vampire King, and lose a player who got married (his character leaves as a villain), but they’ll also face *all the cursed and neglected items in their inventories for that PC’s final betrayal session.*
Most of this is the player’s idea. Most.
Ordem Paranormal a Brazilian TTRPG has a lot of cool scary monsters ideas , like the "ocioso" a monster that is ALWAYS in the same room one player no matter how small , it also is invisible to other players , it will atack if the player does so because of it maddening and empty look , it never kiils it's victims it leaves them unable to move and just stands there looking at them till they starve
Oh that's wild!! I'll have to look that up!! Thanks!!
Reminds me of the Grisgol from 3.5, who's a golem made of old magic items, spells scrolls, wands and potions. Maybe born because adventurers discarded them ?
I wasn't playing DnD for 3.5, but yeah, that's the general idea! I think I would rather focus on mundane items that players forget to use, that way you don't just create a pile of magic items when you defeat the monsters, which would be antithetical to the message, "Care about your items more." Haha
Speak with animals is indeed the best spell for a player to cast!
It's next to, "I set it on fire" for sentences that make the game immediately better! Haha
Magic the gathering's Kamigawa expansion had a card text that putted me in a similar thinking path. It was something like "The warriors could do nothing when the spirits of they weapons revolted agaist them". I've used the idea when a party entered the city of one of the pc. They found bodies clutching bloody weapons without sign of an enemy around. Pretty surreal and spooky for them.
Heck yeah! Lots of cool stuff to look at with Japanese folklore!! I didn't play that MTG set, did you enjoy it?
@@mapcrow I started to play after it, but I had some cards, it was a good one in my knowledge.
Right on! I was really into Arena for a while, but fell off when I got busier.
GREAT VID
Thank you so much!
Are there any Monsters you think can't or shouldn't be reinterpreted?
What are some that would be tougher than others?
Do you think that the classical Greek monsters, like the minotaur or Medusa (gorgon), are too iconic to reinvent?
Yeah! There are many monsters that were made specifically for dungeons and dragons that are tough to reinterpret because they only exist for DnD anyway. Nilbogs are a great example of a gotcha monster that is designed specifically to trip up veteran players. Great question!!
Hey, any plans to add some more of your works to your redbubble shop? Love my posters and shirt!
The redbubble is probably going down soon, but I am looking into other options for those items. There will be an announcement when that happens.
I don't normally make requests of creators but since you were asking what people were interested in. I've been messing around with Ogres in my world, essentially making it a thing that happens when giant blood is used in a ritual and was curious what you'd do to spice up ogres compared to what's in the books already.
Right on. To be clear, I am trying to reach out for monsters to overhaul, not suggestions on how to overhaul them. That said, your idea sounds really neat, and I hope you flesh it out more in a Zine or blog post for folks!
Another funny way to play with the idea of Animated Armor is to take it literally. By that I mean that it is literally a child's drawing of armor that came to life. Seems like a good fit for a silly game. 😛
~ Adam
I'd love to hear you talk aboutt Extraplanare.Not Demons, but Solars and denizens from Mechanus for example. Creatures that are concepts, like Inevitables and such.
3:30 whaaaaaat kind of magic eraser was THAT? It just... erases. Nothing left.
Wow.
It’s because of the paper is Bristol board and the graphite is just smudged onto it with paper towel. It’s a soft graphite that isn’t being ground in with pencil point. Haha
Drider could be a good halloween themed monster to do.
Oh yeah! I was going to do a spider video, but the beholder looks a little too spidery and I want to keep variety this month! Haha!
This reminds me of a creature from older editions called a Raggamoffyn. They're effectively old pieces of cloth or armor that gain sentience thru magic, then search for a body to possess so they can interact with the world.
Ha! That's great!!
As far as creepy monsters go, nothing comes to mind more than playing Minecraft alone at 3am and encountering the “Enderman” for the first time. This tall shadowy figure with glowing violet eyes ominously watching at a distance accompanied by a faint tune of abstract sound. The unknown is always a factor of terror but what added to this encounter is the feeling of seclusion and the creature seemed to be interrupting my plans without a care of my presence at all. The entire disregard of me, the closest comparison to me personally is the Slaad, creepy extra-planers with those ominous eyes. I’d like to see your take on Slaad. Or Bulywug or other slimy things with ominous eyes that go bump in the night. (Hopefully this idea is not too close to your beholder episode)
In my world most creatures from the beyond are Monsters that attack you through your dreams. Visceral, violent physical nightmares. Even if you don’t take my suggestion, hopefully it helps you decide what you are going to do next. Great video Kyle!
Slaad are so so wild, and I love me some talking frogs! Yeah, not a big Minecraft guy, but those Endermen are some spoopy boys!!!
I absolutely LOVE your building better monsters videos! They're so inspiring to me and genuinely just fit so well with my aesthetic sense..
If I may give a suggestion for a future video, I think harpies and sirens would be really fun and interesting to redesign, especially since they both kind of originate from the same idea with the whole "beatiful lady-monster who lures people out with song to kill them"-concept, which I think could be explored in some fun ways! Are they actually sentient like humanoids? Are they animals using mimickry? Why is it only lady-monsters? Why not seducterous man- and non-gendered monsters? I also just think harpies and sirens are really fun and cool visually.........
I've used harpies before, and I think they are a lot of fun. I don't know how I would change them honestly. I think they work best as divine torment, like in their appearance in Jason and the Argonauts, when the gods have cursed a prophet to have his food eaten down to scraps everyday by the harpies.
Better Zombies, great channel keep it up
Better Wights just came out a couple weeks ago, which is basically what I would do with zombies…. Or wait, no, just had an idea! Haha
I would love to see Building Better Giants at some point- something about their depiction in the MM always felt a bit hollow and systematized- all the different elemental classes of giant having their token cultures, but they never feel like ancient titanic proto-gods, or whimsical cloud-dwelling tyrants
I have so many gnome thoughts!! I want to get into a Building Better Classes and Heritages someday!! I think gnomes work better as NPCs than they do a PCs personally. Really cool gnomes in a french language comic called Throgal!!
The preachiness can work if you acknowledge it in-universe. Say, these spirits are created by the curse of a god of wealth to punish misers and hoarders.
Woo hoo!!
here's a cool monster idea
Chalice of desire: a simple chalice created by a genie, devil, god, something of that nature that made it so that when someone stares into the still liquid inside the chalice they see their greatest desire or fantasy and become almost entranced by it, maybe the chalice sucks them into their fantasy inside a pocket dimension and they hear a voice saying "Claim your desire or be consumed by it," then whatever their desire was begins to distort and become a monster for them to fight. Upon defeating one such "Chalice dream" the chalice will say something like "you have proven worthy, take but one of your desires, they have become yours to keep"
sorry for the rant, but monster design is always fun.
Wonderful! Monster ideas like this are too good to leave in the comment section! Get an itch page or a google doc or something started! Start polishing this stuff up for people's games!
@@mapcrow I mean I would use it in my own, but I'm only just starting out, despite having a 30 page google doc on my game...., i'll have to make my own bestiary for my game when I work on the second edition inevitably.
Also have you ever played Final Fantasy? It's the main inspiration for my game and it's combat system.
would a suit of armor animated like this would really be a con struct if it constructs itself? if it's just it's will and the will of it's existance that gives it anima? wouldn't that make it more like an elemental of craft?
I'd be interested in a Building Better Chimeras.
There's the one 'chimera' in the Monster Manual and I would consider a Flesh Golem to be type of chimeric monster too, but they're pretty limited. Which is a shame, because I feel like there's a lot of potential for them as a monster type, and I just really like them. I've homebrewed quite a few for my own homegames.
Just for posterity, I would define a chimera as a man-made living or undead being which is comprised of body parts from disparate creatures.
Ah! Yes, maybe check out the art I’ve drawn for the witch video!
@@mapcrow I've seen it. Very good, as always. I'll have to give it a second watch and pay special attention to the monsters.
I guess 'chimeras' might be a bit too broad of a topic for a video, now that I'm thinking about it.
I love your focus on verbs. As a teacher, we were taught to make ACTIONABLE objectives for our students, and that's all about verbs. To "learn" something is not a good objective. They need to "identify" or "analyze" or "compare/contrast." I know you're a teacher as well, so you probably already made this connection, but I hadn't thought of RP in those terms before, and now I'm changing my approach to DMing. What is the objective of this encounter, and what verbs does it incorporate?
Ha! Yeah, there is a lot of crossover between good game design, gming, and pedagogy! Teaching game design has made that very clear to me! And Ben Milton from Questing Beast is also a teacher, and has shared similar thoughts on the matter as well!! What do you teach? What ages?
@@mapcrow I taught highschool math for a few years, but now I mostly just tutor. Stay at home mom by day, math tutor on weeknights, DM on weekends. 😆 I'll check out the other channel as well, that sounds cool!
@@mathsalot8099 Heck yeah! I sometimes DM for my students, so I am always a DM I feel. Haha! Questing Beast is mostly an RPG review channel, but you can still hear a teacherly point of view in them. I just heard him talk about teaching on a podcast interview once.
I'd really like to see a reimagining of slimes. I don't think I've seen really many creative or exciting depictions of them.
Slimes are on the way! I just need to think of a strong visual hook!
@@mapcrow thanks!
Have you thought on a video on Trolls?
I have not yet! I think I'd like to read more myths about them first, because the DnD ones do kinda fall short for me. The regeneration bit is a weird thing from one of the novels from the Appendix N, and I'd like to see what's happening more broadly in the older stories first.
Great video. Better gorgons (Medusa) would be cool.
Great suggestion! Thank you!!
Here's an idea for a cool living armor boss fight. Alright so what if there was a knight or someone like that who went into a dungeon searching for a challenge but found it far too easy to complete, after the dungeon caved in from a bomb or something like that leaving said knight to starve to death without finding a worthy challenge. what remained of his body (the armor) became animated by his restless spirit with a single desire being to find a worthy opponent to be slain by. Then when your adventurers go to this dungeon you can have some banter between the armor and the players maybe they are like "If you can defeat me then all of this place's treasure may be yours," or something like that and when they beat them maybe the spirit will allow them to wear the armor so that they can "witness they're triumphant journey," or something like that
Sorry for the rant, just thought it was a cool idea.
Heck yeah! You could write a whole dungeon around that!! You should run with that idea!!
@@mapcrow Maybe in SrG 6 (I made way too many campaigns... but hey that's fine since 6 won't come out until second edition is done)
How bout the kraken (or undersea horror leviathans in general)
I always feel like the kraken in the book needs to be more unknowable and eldritch but I guess that’s just inherent problem with monster manuals, huh
I do need to think about undersea and aquatic fits more! Thanks for the suggestion!!
Please do the wood woad. V spooky lore
Hadn't heard of that one! I'll have to look into it!
How bout a video about the Obyriths. The ancient demons that existed before the Tenari. You could make a specific one for your own taste big bad style
Cool! Never heard of them before! I'll check em out!
@@mapcrow I reccomend Aj Pickets video on Obox-Ob
Im just catching up with your new videos i don't get why i didn't get any notifications for them i am subscribed >:V
Haha! Yeah, CZcams won’t send notifications unless you also click the bell. It’s a weird two step process. But thank you for watching!!
combat as just combat is boring combat with outher opitions are far more fun
I know april has gone by but i just had an idea for an april fools video "Building Better Monsters the Map crow" like what is a it a crow made of maps a crow that will chese those with maps
Ha! Building Better Map Crow is what I call therapy! Hee hee!
Hydra, or a Wisp
Noted! Thank you!!
Demon/Devil inspiration: Long ago, fate was real.
In the first era, gods walked the earth. Everything was as it was planned to be by the creator. The cosmos was clockwork. But Oberith, the god of knowledge knew... it would not last. Oberith knew that one day the clockwork would break. The rules laid out by the creator would stop being true. Fate would end and free will would be born. And if there was no such thing as fate, then there would be no such thing as a god of knowledge. Omniscience would be impossible without fate. As the personification of knowledge, Oberith knew that he could no longer exist.
So, as Oberith always knew he would do, he wrote a book which contained all knowledge of the true workings of the universal clockwork. And then... he died.
Oberith's body rotted. The maggots and carrion beasts that fed upon him were eating a god's flesh. This blessed nurturance invigorated them and made them crafty. These vermin became demons, creatures of supernatural instinct. Demons, despite lacking any higher reason, know more than mere mortals. Their actions serve a grander purpose that they cannot even fathom. Most humans fear them and their eldritch customs, but a few learned people watch demons with a dark curiosity. What are they after, when they slaughter villages, only for the joy of placing clean, freshly licked skulls all facing east? And if I help them find more skulls to erect, will I witness the final working coming to fruition?
And then there's the book itself. It promises all knowledge. Simply reading a page changes the reader. Read a chapter and their skin turns red. They grow horns, hooves. Their hair grows coarse and black. They begin to resemble old Oberith, as if they were children of the wise god. The more they read, the more powerful they become, but if they read too much... They can no longer exist. They can't ever finish the book. The book can exist forever- it knows nothing. But the Devil can't compile it all in their mind without becoming impossible. The only way they could ever do so is if they repair- or even better, improve on- the celestial machine. And to do that, they must enter the most sacred realm where it is kept, Heaven itself.
Ghouls
I know it's a really out of the way idea and it's not seasonal but I made up a creature called "beard-beard" (work in progress name), called so because it is a magical beard that grows it's own beard as it grows in magical power, eventually shedding it's own beard in a form of asexual reproduction and they both then each go into hibernation to grow small beards and go on to accumulate new magic to bring their beards to life.
This creature was created because a wizard, who was looking into making his hair last forever, accidentally turned himself into a non-sentient beard creature through an accidentally produced curse.
I think that was an episode of the Tick cartoon show! Hahha!
@@mapcrow I have never heard of that but okay!
Myconids?
Oh dang!! I gotta think about that!! I love them the way they are, but I also want to draw them!!
@@mapcrow A cool (and kind of scary) rework could be making them less of humanoid individuals and more like disparate neurons within a fungal colony, sort of like slime molds. A fully intelligent myconid would be several individuals all growing and fused on a cave wall while a single myconid or a few fused to make one body would act more like an animal.
Sense people keep suggesting knolls here’s a video that might give inspiration. czcams.com/video/Ba19Lemgu2U/video.html
The thing that always bums me out about werewolves and witches is how these concepts have been deployed to justify cruelty towards real humans in history.
Absolutely fascinating! I'm wondering if I could do this with mimics ...
This video reminds me of Jacob Geller's video on 'living'/haunted houses ( czcams.com/video/mexs39y0Imw/video.html )
Oh wild! I'll have to check that out!
draw a litch
Already did! Check the playlist, my friend!
@@mapcrow nice Litch video. May I suggest a Oni then.
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