The GURPS
Fantasy Bestiary.
It began with a late-night phone conversation in November,
1989. Steve Jackson called me up, commenting that I had had a nice long
break from writing, and would I like to do another book? We need a Fantasy
Bestiary. . . and, oh, we need it soon.
Some people have no sense -- meaning me, not Steve. Knowing that I have
been a slow writer in the past, I accepted the job anyway. Now that it's
done, I can say it was worth it -- but at the time, I wondered! I was tired
for four months straight!
This book really began with the GURPS
Bestiary. A number of creatures that I rather liked were
cut from that book for lack of space. And I continued to think of more creatures
long after the book was published.
I got many comments on the original Bestiary, most
of them favorable. But every now and then I'd meet someone who'd say, "There
aren't enough monsters -- nothing to scare a party in plate mail."
These words were a revelation to me -- there are radically different styles
of play, and all GURPS gamers have to use the
same sourcebook! When I GM, I don't allow PCs in anything heavier than DR
2 armor, so I was surprised to hear that some people never appear in less
than DR 6. I began to feel I had unwittingly cheated some people by not
supplying them with enough "monsters." It began to feel that the
first Bestiary was unfinished.
I am a professional storyteller, and tell mostly old legends, myths and
other tales. So I read these types of stories constantly, and have been
running across "monsters" for years.
Now I had another chance to glean those stories for appropriate fantasy
creatures -- not races suitable for player characters, though.
Those are covered in another GURPS book, Fantasy
Folk. There are still a lot of interesting creatures out
there, even with that limitation. And once more I began to read and read
and read . . .
Many of the creatures I found reference to were not spelled out very clearly,
alas. Some were, and those were easy enough to write up. But I really earned
my pay on this one in two ways: research (which was very intensive) and
interpretation. The creativity involved in the latter exercise made up for
the sheer hard work and bleary eyeballs of the former.
I actually found reference to well over a thousand legendary monsters, but
so many of them were so vaguely described that I couldn't use them. Others
had no names -- more on that in a bit.
Often a storyteller would describe a monster very briefly, and then turn
his attention to the hero. So I looked for clues in the hero's reaction
to the beast it was fighting. As an example, I read that "even the
mightiest warriors found their arms tiring as they faced this creature."
Now that might just be a poetic build-up for the hero who finally does
overcome the monster, but I took the liberty to read more into it.
I had to -- there wasn't much else written about the animal except a brief
description!
So I wrote that this particular monster (it was a dragon, by the way) cast
the Fatigue spell with its glance. This accounts very well for the mightiest
warriors tiring, and makes for a more interesting creature than a simple
collection of numbers. And it doesn't really violate the original
myth!
I found well over a thousand references to animals with no names.
This was very frustrating, for some of them were great creatures! Occasionally
I took the liberty of blending the best characteristics of a nameless animal
into a similar creature in the same culture's mythology. This does violate
the purity of the creatures a little bit, but those who don't like such
adulteration can ignore them. I assume that class of reader is very small
-- most of us would rather have interesting creatures than by-the-book
accurate descriptions.
After a while, motifs began to appear. There were numberless "giant
this" and "giant that," and an even greater number of "part
this animal, part that animal." So I collected the most common patterns,
and wrote what I consider to be the real core of GURPS Fantasy
Bestiary -- the chapter
on Mythological Motifs. Here is where I feel the best value of the book
is. Any GM who takes this chapter to heart can effectively multiply the
number of creatures available in the book -- and in GURPS Bestiary!
-- a hundredfold. I'm proud of that chapter, and I hope somebody out there
likes it.
The names of the creatures caused me a little bit of a problem for a while.
Most fantasy campaigns have a European flavor, and meeting creatures with
names like "nyah-gwaheh" or "wu kung ching" doesn't
synch very well. In the end, I left the names alone. Anyone who doesn't
like them can go back to a very ancient practice: calling them a "monster
bear" and a "giant centipede," which is what those two monsters
are.
I like this book, and I'm proud of it. I feel it is my best work, at least
until the next one comes out! I hope you enjoy it, and may you stalk the
nyah-gwaheh before it stalks you!
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#20 Table of Contents)