Café de Nuit

When reading books and stuff from the good old days, I'm always surprisedto find here and there a monster that we do not generally associate with Ravenloft.

Ex: Ogres in Invidia
Ex: Ettercap in unammed village (Nightmare Lands)
Ex: the red dragon in Strahd's castle (novel KotBR)

Do you know of other examples?
What are your thoughts on it?
Do you use "fantasy" monsters in your game?

Joël

Depends on the domain, but mostly I do use fantasy monsters.
The Shadow Dragons, drow and others in Darkon
Quite alot of For.Realms monsters in the Catacombs of Toyalis and the rest of Hazlan (Beholders, Deepspawn...)
Same for Dragonlance in Sithicus (Ex. Dragonspawn calibans)
and the Burning Peaks have become my personal LotR/Ravenloft crossover playground

Well the Ettercap might work as an eerie bogyman type creature that comes out at night with a swarm of black spiders to steal away unwary travellers on the lonely nights road.

Just imagine a small group setting up camp for the night in a forest and as the wind howls softly through the trees something falls onto the person sitting beneath. Franticly as they try to remove the black swarming mass another remarks, there sure seems to be an awful lot of spiders around these days. Then the undergrowth erupts as another member screams and vanishes with out a trace.

I've always fancied trying an Ettercap adventure in my campaign, where the players have to investigate some disappearances and work out what is causing them.

Given the right background and hook, I'm sure the humble Ettercap could turn into more than some fantastic cannon fodder.

Sure, I think even a T Rex would fit Ravenloft, given a good backstory!

The Ettercap use in NL was fine IMHO, as they were used in a mystery who-done-it adventure.

But Ettercap is not a monster we usually associate with RL as the monsters of this list (first book reviewd - the MM)

Joël

The most fantastic creature I used in a game is the Otyugh in the sewers of castle hunadora. And it didn't seem so out of place.

Well when my player will be high level(they are now lvl 2 ) I will use a dragon!
Maybe a gold or silver dragon who want to kill them ebcause of some of their evil deeds(yhup an evil quest in ravenloft)

The only "Classic" dnd monster I can't think of a gothic backstory for would have to the Giant. No matter how hard I try I can't rationalise a 30' foot frost giant that could destroy Castle Ravenloft just by burping at it having a moral quarndry and moping around as a minion of the night

A ghost giant, maybe? Or is that cheating?

You mean like the greek ghost giant in CoN:Ghosts?

Jasper o' nine lives wrote:The only "Classic" dnd monster I can't think of a gothic backstory for would have to be the Giant.

Indirectly; perhaps a 'mad scientist' with a 'shrinking' device would have the same effect. Perhaps more 50's 'B' movie or "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" than truly 'gothic', but to a miniaturized party, all mundane items and creatures become 'giant'. (Am I the only person here old enough to remember the Saturday morning series "Dr. Shrinker"?)
Conversely, the same miscreant with an 'enlarging' device could create giant creatures run amok and then we truly are non-gothic ("Kong", "Them", "50 foot Woman", etc, ...although there might be a place for rare colossal critters in Rokoshima.)

I think a DM can get away with giants easily in Ravenloft. While specific breeds of giants wouldn't work, such as fire giants, desert giants, ect..., the base idea of a really big man works wonderfully. Giants are a fantasy staple, even more so than ogres, really.

A boogeyman from Hati was Uncle Knapsack, a cannibalistic giant who
carried people off in a great big sack.

Deadlands offered the creatures, Appalacian Giants, which were a very neat monster for that setting.

For example; Uri Bakachev lived in a lonely village in the Balinok mountains. He was a lowly, good for-nothing bully even when he wasn't drunk, which was rarely. He farmed a pathetic plot of rocks and frequently took out his frustrations on his wife and neighbors. Indeed, it seemed his only joy in life was to torment people weaker than he.

One night, after having too many brews, Uri provoked a fight. As was usual, he won the battle, though he was too enthusiaistic in his work and broke the other man's neck. The village elders were reluctant to have Uri executed, since it was technically self defence. Instead, they banished him from the village, seized his farm and gave it to his victim's kin. Uri left for the mountains, where he brooded.

Alone, without any real point of reference, he didn't notice the transformation that took place. As the decades past, he did not weaken with age, but rather grew stronger and taller. From time to time, he raided his former home, stealing livestock, and smashing tools.
His legend would grow with time - Uri Big Rock - the giant.

Alternatively, Giants, and many other generic fantasy creatures, work rather well in "really freaky and bizarre" kind of environments, such as Nightmare Lands, or the Shadow Rift.

Yeah, giants would be tough to use. Same with orcs. They just ruin the mood. Most monsters could be made to work with Ravenloft, though, if you're careful and describe them properly, playing up the fear of the unknown. Aside from orcs and giants, the toughest monsters to use would be ones meant to be comedic: the flumph, flail snail, giant space hamsters, and so on.

Guys, I always use giants IMCs. There are not tough to use, they are just fantasy monsters.

Mages charm them and use them as muscle and they roam the countryside and the wilderness. They suffer from undead and other beasts as other living creatures do.

PS. A frost giant is 15' tall and couldn't even defeat the trio of brides Strahd keeps in his basement.

hook:
- A wizard kills a giant with a special weapon (like Azalin's daggers for the Grim Harvest) and steals its soul. Then he creates a cursed potion that transforms the drinker to a giant 15' tall (use the frost giant, but not of cold subtype) but wipes out personality and memory. In the distortion of the body, several unpleasant changes occur. The giant has 1d3+1 deformities as a caliban (use QtR for deformities) and several other "cosmetic" deformities.
As a "prototype" the wizard chooses the beloved husband of a pretty woman that turned him down a few years ago. . . The creature is still recognizable from outside but nothing of the kind young man remains inside. The creature is a marauding, self-loathing, creator-hating creature. However it is under the power of its creator and takes out its anger on others.
The PCs have to find a way to get rid of the wizard, destroy the potions he made and free the spirit of the man.

Not horrific? Make the creature a "stealth" giant. The creature has invisibility 3/day as 10th level caster and improved invisibility 1/day and gains a racial +10 to move silently checks. The DC to follow the creatures tracks has a +8 DC and also it usually tries to cover the trail, making tracking it for low level rangers difficult.
Also it can immitate voices as an extraordinary ability and uses this to lure creatures away, since it likes to play with its victims before killing them instead of smashing them to bloody pulps with rocks as other giants do.
Before killing a victim, it learns which village the victim comes from and at night the giant invisibly visits the village to leave the mangled corpse hanging from a tree.

IMC I've used both Tallwich, the Giant of Nartok, and Nabon would be another giant I'd love to use. I've also used centaurs, half-drow, Ebb the Shadow Dragon, and let's not forget the aranea that helps lead the Dark Delvers.

IMO, there's gothic potential in any creature that is an individual.