Mythological Monsters in TTRPGs

all right let's see how this Gorgon drawing turned out oh oh my oh no what why why would I welcome to mapgrowth the RPG art show my name is Kyle and today we're talking about how to use mythological monsters in your RPG if you have seen any of my videos on building better monsters you may already know about monstrous which is an RPG book that will help you tell the stories behind the stat blocks of the monsters in your game so if you like this drawing or some of my other monster drawings you'll want to head to the link in the description below to find out more about the project download the preview PDF and sign up for the newsletter alerts the monsters of Mythology are an attempt to lyricize to poetically look at the world around them and help the world make a little bit more sense in some way but I feel that a lot of tabletop RPGs that use monsters from mythology like Medusa like Gorgons kind of mangle that poetry games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder and other games that follow in that tradition have a sort of preoccupation with applying scientific taxonomy to mythical monsters one of my favorite RPG writers zedek Zhu writes on their blog about this very every issue in a blog post called D D's obsession with taxonomy I would like to read from this post if I may the author says what the nerd approach to taxonomy a dragon is not a wyvern does well is to make a field of knowledge or phenomenon predictable quantifiable this is the way the world is therefore understandable I know the world therefore possible to act on I know what to do with the world you can solve it apply best practices to it optimize it Own It possess it definitive taxonomies like Goblin slash hobgoblin slash bug bear is better for you because then you can shorthand these creatures into three separate discrete scripts instead of goblin people come in lots of different sizes some are big some are puny some are kind some are not it all depends you just gotta pay attention to each one which makes things Messier more unpredictable meaning you have to pay attention exercise discretion and empathy more possibly accommodate New Perspectives I know the bug bear better than it knows itself I got this versus okay so how do I get to know Miss Goblin better apologies to everyone and the author for discovering my own emphasis in that reading from that blog post and I'll have a link to that post in the description below you should read the whole thing it's wonderful but to build off of this idea about how scientific taxonomy interacts with how we perceive the game world and the possibility spaces they're in let's talk about also how games talk about gods and moral or Cosmic alignments what is the DND alignment of the Greek God Zeus Zeus both enforces his law in his rules on the entirety of the universe and also does basically whatever he wants whenever he wants he is neither lawful nor chaotic nor is he good or evil the one thing that my understanding of Greek mythology demonstrates to me about Zeus is that he is powerful and therefore my role as a mortal would be to do whatever it takes not to get on his bad side and monsters are a part of that conversation oftentimes monsters in mythology are examples of what happens when you get on the bad side of the Gods let's look at Medusa the Gorgon for instance just to just to pick an example out of thin air so there's lots of Legends and myths and Snippets about Medusa that have been told and retold and reinterpreted and reappropriated over thousands of years so there is no like canonical Medusa it is a conversation a tradition of associated imagery it is full of Multiplicity and subjectivity reflecting as many people as have retold the stories and in this way presents a challenge to be incorporated into a definitive monster manual entry like in Dungeons and Dragons but to be specific let's pick the stories concerning Medusa as put down in the metamorphosis of avid around the eighth year of the Common Era in Rome now the Gorgons are already known as a group of immortal demigods of which Medusa is just the most famous because she shows up in the tale of Perseus now Medusa through really no fault of her own attracts the ire and jealousy of Minerva or as we would call her in Greek mythology Athena and Medusa's golden Gorgeous Hair is turned into snakes and that horrible Visage turns any who'd look upon her to Stone now what what poetically is revealed about the nature of the world through this story what resonance does this have in your heart forget what it says about the Theology of the Greeks or the Romans when you hear this what does it make you feel for my part it makes me wonder why do bad things happen to good people or why do the Good Die Young there's this sort of inherent unfairness and cruelty and fickleness of Fate that we experience as humans that I think this story is getting at so as a game designer or a dungeon master I want to try to figure out how to carry those questions along with the monster into my game and the fun part of activating old stories and mythological images in a contemporary game is you get to play with the Resonance of those symbols in a contemporary conversation both the tradition and text of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder have no qualms whatsoever of Exterminating this dangerous monster that lurks in the shadows of the world world and for that matter neither does Perseus after all the the Legends and poems about the slaying of Medusa don't really spend too much time shedding tears for poor Medusa but in the games that I like to run and with the players that I enjoy playing with if they are presented with this basic narrative context they will think thoughts and have feelings and perhaps come up with some alternate solution to the problem before them besides the extermination of Medusa so to accentuate this unfairness and lack of control over her own destiny that Medusa seems to have in my reading of these myths I have sort of mashed together I've kit bashed a couple of different images that I've seen in classical art to give my version of Medusa my version of the Gorgon sort of this more terrible Spin and also to change things up and avoid the familiar imagery of the Gorgon I decided to attach this snake-haired winged lady's head to the top of this giant ogre body that really references some of the other depictions of Gorgons throughout like Roman iconography I think there's something truly horrific about being Tethered to this you know cannibal giant idiot that ambles around whatever kind of swamp or ruin it's taken root in and there you are just perched upon its shoulders screaming out warnings to get away I don't know I just think that would be more fun for me than uh kind of reenacting scene from Ray harryhausen's wonderful work in Clash of the Titans but that's because I can't help myself I'm an artist in a tinkerer and I enjoy fixing things that ain't broke the other thing that I would do to freshen up my take on Medusa is to get into a specific Fab people from the metamorphosis of Ovid again where Perseus is confronting Atlas and Perseus in this story is asking for hospitality and a place to rest in his journey and Atlas is not having it uh so there after this altercation and back and forth Perseus says since my friendship is of so little to thee except this present and then turning his face away he Exposed on the left side of the horrible features of Medusa Atlas great as he is became a mountain now his beard and hair are changed into woods and his shoulders and hands become mountains and ridges and what was formerly his head is the summit of the top of the mountain his bones become stones and then enlarged on every side he grows to an immense height so you willed it ye gods and the whole heaven with so many stars rests upon him I just love the language and images from that story and I think it would be really interesting to also add in these ideas of like trees and stars and all these other symbols of nature being associated with people petrified by The gorgon's Gaze although I love these games and I love these monsters I am perpetually unsatisfied by the answers that taxonomy gives me as a Storyteller and dungeon master and I don't think my ideas are particularly better than anyone else's I just like them better because they're mine just like I think you like your ideas better because they're yours because they carry through your subjectivity your point of view what you think is interesting or moving about these stories that we are retelling in a modern context so this is my proposition to you find the images that compel you and the Poetry that stirs your heart and put that into your game rather than inheriting the traditions and assumptions of the people who just happen to write your monster Manual of choice so that's the show today thank you so much for watching and please check the links in the description below for some of the resources that I mentioned and also check out monstrous and download your preview packet and see what you think of what we're putting together so until next time my friends farewell and welcome to the aftercrow this is the part of the show where I just want to thank my patrons and respond to some of the comments and questions that I've been getting in various places like patreon and like the comment section of these videos um probably the top repeat question that I got on the last video was what is that cylinder that is around all of my pencils will see this in the bottom of the description and I if I know I'm going to be drawing for an extended period of time I will put this thick foam around these pencils to help with wrist strain I am entering my 40s pretty soon and um I if I want to be drawing for another you know a couple of decades I need to start really taking care of my body these are the things that don't occur to you necessarily if you're an emerging artist you know in your 20s but you know it's it's not the age it's the mileage as they say I also get a lot of questions about what kinds of pencils that I use if you see me using a pencil that is painted yellow on the outside it's just something I got in a 48 pack at you know Target or something like that I don't really use special pencils they have different softness ratings so the regular pencils are going to be HB but if you see me smudging uh graphite around I'm probably using a 6B or an 8B pencil like what you saw me using in the video today other than that I I might be using charcoal on some of these like more smudgy things and I'm always working on Bristol board and you can check uh the the description below for what kind of Bristol board that I'm using it's it's Strathmore like 110 pound something like that um but yeah if you have any questions or comments uh and I noticed that they're repeating a lot I might answer them in the aftercrow like this so yeah until next time see ya

Channel: Map Crow

Views: 14,230

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, dnd, monsters, game design, mythology, greek mythology, roman mythology, medusa, gorgon, zeus, drawing, dm preparation tips, dm prep tips, ttrpg design, ttrpgs, storytelling in games, storytelling in game design, illustration, art, fantasy art drawing, rpg design, pencil drawing fantasy art, map crow

Id: u0asUvoU8Rs

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 08 2023