Playing monsters to potential

[Yora]

I am curious what stories and ideas people have to share.

I've myself been guilty of starting many encounters in the way of "You guys are being attacked. There are seven ogres surrounding you.", but that's really not that much fun, especially for monsters that are supposed to be quirky.
I never even saw Jason and the Argonauts, but you can still clearly see how much effort was put into making the skeletons appear on the scene. Or think of the intro of Diablo 2 being described as "a pillar of flames rises out of the fire and three skeletons jump out of it". That doesn't accurately describe what's going on at all!

I think, there's really a lot you can make with starting an encounter with zombies. Some guy in the distance shuffling toward you with their arms stretched out in front of them isn't suprising or horrifing. It's business as usual.
I remember encountering the first zombie playing Stalker. I just had passed a difficult parcours of fire traps and set out to continue my way on the road, when there was some guy down the road dressed like any others and comming in my direction. As we came closer, I noticed him walking somewhat funny and wanted to take a closer look if that was another game glitch. And then he suddenly went "Wuaaahhh...." and blindly fired his shotgun in my general direction. I was all "holy****zombie!" *shotgunintheface* "diediediedie!!". That was great.
If the PCs encounter zombies, don't tell them they see some zombies ahead of them. Tell them there are some people who don't seem to notice they are having visitors. And then have them try to eat the PCs faces. This will be much more memorable.

[Synovia]

I agree with this. Its an issue of in-character knowledge vs player knowledge.

If you say "there's zombies", the player knows exactly what they are, that they're low level threats, and hes going to have his character act accordingly.

Its a product of all of us having played too many games/seen too many movies/etc. A bunch of humans acting funny? Could be anything.

IMO, its a good idea to avoid telling players things their characters wouldn't know. People try to avoid exploiting OOC knowledge, but its really not possible to do it completely.

[Zombimode]

If the PCs encounter zombies, don't tell them they see some zombies ahead of them. Tell them there are some people who don't seem to notice they are having visitors. And then have them try to eat the PCs faces. This will be much more memorable.

I agree. I almost always do this when setting up encounters. Sometime I even drive it too far into the other extreme:
"Before you stands a large-ish four-legged creature. Its head is stretched and ends in a small mouth filled with dull teeth. It has a mane along its neck, but otherwise short brown fur. It also has a tail that looks like its made of very long loose hair. It appears to be muscular but not very threatening."

[kyoryu]

I agree. I almost always do this when setting up encounters. Sometime I even drive it too far into the other extreme:
"Before you stands a large-ish four-legged creature. Its head is stretched and ends in a small mouth filled with dull teeth. It has a mane along its neck, but otherwise short brown fur. It also has a tail that looks like its made of very long loose hair. It appears to be muscular but not very threatening."

ZOMBIE HORSE!

[CET]

Yeah . . . I'm a big fan of describing monsters rather than naming them, especially the first time the PCs encounter said monster type. A couple of details can go a long way too - a particular odor, or style of weapon, or obscene toothy grin.

Other things:

- What happens before the PCs and the monsters see each other. In many environments, you'll hear your enemies (or see the cloud of dust over the next hill) before you can tell what they are.

- Give the monsters pre-combat tactics. Some of this might already be baked in (kobolds and traps), but add more. Maybe Ogres really like to use dead bodies with some scattered coins as bait for ambushes. Or use 2-3 members as stalking horses ("you hear something loud crashing through the forest towards you") to drive PCs into dead ends or traps.

- Give monsters goals beyond 'killing the PCs.' Maybe the Gnolls are just hungry from the long winter, and they are clearly more interested in the meat roasting over your campfire than in the PCs. Or maybe that horde of goblins can be distracted with a handful of copper coins or some steel weapons. Of course, that only works till the neighboring tribes hear about it and come begging themselves. Even if the PCs are inclined to just kill the monsters - some of the goblins grab shiny things and run, etc.

[Jay R]

1. I once convinced a party of 1st- and 2nd-levels to run away from 5 ordinary rats, just by rolling a meaningless die and taking notes each time the rats bit the characters.

2. Check to see who saw who first. Let the monsters set up the encounter sometimes.

3. By torchlight, you can see only 60 feet. But you can see somebody carrying a torch much further away. The monsters without torches always get surprise on a party with torches in a long corridor.

[Sutremaine]

"Before you stands a large-ish four-legged creature. Its head is stretched and ends in a small mouth filled with dull teeth. It has a mane along its neck, but otherwise short brown fur. It also has a tail that looks like its made of very long loose hair. It appears to be muscular but not very threatening."

"It is eating a mushroom."

Refluffing, class levels, or some sort of global change to a creature (electrohydra? Half-blue dragon if you need an in-game justification) are all good ways of finding a new way to describe a creature.

[Spider_Jerusalem]

I agree with most of what's been said here. I actually prefer describing not only the monsters, but also spells, abilities, effects and other things. For example, when I DM I track the damage on each character myself, and try to describe how bad they are as best as I can. The other people in my gaming group took some time to get used to it, but this has contributed to make our gaming sessions more interesting.

One of the other players is DMing the current story arc in our campaign. In our last session, one spell was described to a player as "As the bugbear utters his curses and points at you, you notice the demonic creatures surrounding you. They are quick and can't be looked upon directly, but you can feel their presence, and you know their master needs only to command for them to devour you".

It worked WAY better than just telling "you are now frightened, take look at the fear stacking rules on page xx" or something like that.

I usually swap to naming instead of describing when the creatures become commonplace. When the PCs are on goblintown for seven consecutive days maybe it's time to stop saying "you see a small, humanoid creature with skin the color of old leaves, its greasy hair as black as night, blah blah blah".

[TheCountAlucard]

I agree with most of what's been said here. I actually prefer describing not only the monsters, but also spells, abilities, effects and other things.

As they say, "familiarity breeds contempt."

I do the same, though: in my Exalted game, the PCs found an island cave guarded by demons; rather than just list off the types of demons present, I described them, how the one had eyes and other sensory organs appearing on his flesh and then sinking back under the skin after a few moments, how the other scuttled like a roach on its grasshopper legs and cried out in a child-like voice as they attempted to kill it.

Also, if the opposition has anything approaching human intelligence, give it the benefit of tactics.