Luau Lou is, without a doubt, the most prolific creator in the MCC space. He’s created 3 adventures and 3 monster collections, plus several “mini-adventures” that are printed on what might otherwise be a judge’s screen (and he’s certainly got plans for even more!) He’s currently crowdfunding part 4 of his post-apocalyptic monster collection for Mutant Crawl Classics. Designing such a huge number of monsters is a tough thing to do! So I figured I’d ask Lou a few questions and see if he could teach me a thing or two about monster design.

So around how many monsters have you designed at this point? I imagine after developing so many that you’ve learned a thing or two about making an interesting monster.

That first one is a hard question to figure out. If I narrow the count to just monsters in the “Unnatural Selections” monster collections, it’s about in the four-hundreds, but that’s including sub-entries. For instance, I sort of like to do these generic entries (like: “Giant Insects”) with very middle of the road stats and a bunch of random charts to give the creature some specific abilities. This all keeps with the DCC theme of “the monster” not “a monster” - that is, each time you roll up one of them, it’s unique. But then, sometimes you want a particular version without stopping to roll things up. So, I normally follow those generic entries up with specific versions. So the “Giant Insect” entry bleeds into “Giant Grasshoppers,” “Giant Mosquitoes,” “Giant Ants,” etc. On top of that, there’s little monster entries hidden in some of the main ones - like there are stats for some of the beast companions listed under the “Beast Thing” entry. So, you can see that it’s kind of hard to count!

I’ve learned a lot about monster making across these four years. One thing that’s happened is that, I’ve come to see the many roles a monster can play in a game and all the different ways a monster can present a challenge or threat to the PCs. So, for roles, most often a monster is thrown in for a bit of combat action. -But sometimes the point of a monster encounter can just be to establish mood, act as a change of tempo, fill-in some ecological need making sense of a strange environment, or to foreshadow a part of an adventure’s plot. The common mistake I think we all make when we first get into designing monsters is to think of them as just threats to a character’s hit points. Where good design begins is when a creator starts to think of all the other ways a monster can threaten or challenge a character. For example, you can (permanently or temporarily) affect stat blocks through things like poisons, greasy coatings, mind-numbing chatter… You can threaten a character’s action economy by slowing their moves due to things like time-altering powers, excretions of sticky puddles, or perhaps entangling filaments. Then you have creatures that can threaten a PC by imposing penalties on their actions or damaging their possessions. What I find really interesting is when the threat is somehow leveraged against the player’s role play experience. You see a of tame example of this in the old D&D ghost write-up, where it would age your character like ten years per hit (“Send in the elf!”). In someways, having a monster that threatens the very concept of your character is perhaps more terrifying than facing a character death. What if a creature had a infectious saliva that made mutants lose their powers? What if the healer in the party was hit with a mnemonic beam that erased all the medical know-how in their mind? Now, that’s scary stuff!

I’ll try not to go on and on, but I’ve come to see each monster like one of those studio soundboards with all the sliders and knobs and stuff. There is such a fine minutia of things that can be tweaked one way or another to affect how a monster “feels” when it is encountered. Just in the really basic stuff like hit points, AC and attack bonuses you can make a creature that’s lethal but quick to dispatch, that’s not real threatening but hangs on forever in a fight, and everything in between. And what a great thing that is, because then you can design monsters for all different levels of characters and ranges of dramatic tension.

What’s a “stand out monster” from Unnatural Selections 4 that you’re really proud of?

So “which of my kids do I love the most?” -eh? Ok, I’m going to talk about a couple and you can edit this to one if you want! One of my favorites is the “Isolated Singularity.” So this is like a miniature, localized black hole. The idea came from hearing a physicist talk about how math shows that black holes could exist on a microscopic level. That just put this image of a group of seekers scrambling to escape this section of ruins where this floating black sphere is bending everything into itself… How could you “fight” something like that? What sort of damage would something like that do? That was a fun one to play with. I’m also excited to release a monster called “The Spirit of the City.” It is sort of a monster made of composite psychic energies, left behind like a stain when certain cities were vaporized in one of the cataclysmic wars that led to the post-apocalypse. I like that one because it is neat to deal with an intangible thing like psionic energies but make them accessible to ALL characters through RP elements like declaring the evocation of certain memories, etc. Finally, there is a “Toad-a-Saur.” Without apologies, this is my take on one of my favorite AD&D monsters, the Froghemouth. I tried to make it just a cavalcade activity and “troubles” constantly thrown at the PCs once they engage with it. -It’s drowning them; it’s retaining them with its sticky tongue; it’s poisoning them with its spine-riddled tentacles, and they are under fire from its microwave generating eyes! I just really enjoy a monster that plays like its illustration looks.

Do you categorize monsters in any way when designing them? Like, do you think of some as ideal to serve as bosses, minions, or “puzzle monsters”?

Definitely. I am always trying to be cognizant of the need for simple dopey monsters, and the kind that take the whole team to bring down. Then there’s the kind that may not be a monster at all, but a creature that is only a threat if misunderstood. You got tiny things, massive things, things that fight in packs and swarms… Monsters that are meant to be funny, ones that are deadly serious…. Puzzle monsters are a fun part of that too. I try to stray from making monsters that can only be defeated by a single particular thing, but rather make it so they are easier to take down with certain means or if you have certain knowledge. When putting together the different volumes I try hard to make a good mix of all these sorts of elements.

Are there any rules or guidelines that help you make a good monster into a great one?

The simple version is that if I reread it and don’t have an interest in encountering it myself, it gos back to the drawing board. I also have a very hard time with monsters that seem like impossible killing machines. I’ve included some of the monsters from the DCC and MCC rule books, at even some of those, I had to convince myself, that they were reasonable for higher level play, because, DANG! - when a giant has a +15 to hit and 8D10 hp… That’s not something you want to put in a game willy-nilly. I always want a monster to have something that makes it “play special.” A rule or mannerism that makes it a memorial encounter.

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Thanks for sharing! Anything else that you’d like folks to know?

If you’re interested, volume 4 is up on Backerkit now, with the other volumes discounted as add-ons. For third party producers out there, the creatures I’ve designed in the book are free for use in other products (you just have to write your own descriptions and use your own art). Thanks for having me, Stefan. Your newsletter is always a fun read!

What’s the coolest monster that you’ve ever created?

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