Designing an Arnesonian Monster?

[Havard]

Would it be possible to create new Arnesonian Monsters? What would make a new monster feel as if it was made in the spirit of Dave Arneson and his group?

-Havard

[finarvyn]

First, I always had the impression that Dave's favorite monsters were either from classic horror movies or were just something laying around that he turned into a monster mini for a game.

It's not like Dave filled his dungeons with weird tentacled creatures or anything like that.

I would say that a Arnesonian monster would be a standard creature, but with a twist or on steroids. A ten-foot-tall skeleton with 10 HD, that kind of thing. Something much more powerful than expected.

(Frogs? We can fight a few frogs, right?)

[aldarron]

Ditto what Marv said. I created a couple "new" Arsonian monsters in D@D based on a couple bits of thin ice. The Great worm and killer seaweed are mentioned but undetailed in the Blackmoor Dungeon, so I borowed some bits from Supplement two to flesh them out. The was also the charmsnake (or weresnake) and blob derived from Gregs gaming descriptions. I also redid OD&D dragons to conform to Arneson's dragon in GPoD (Sophie) as the top example.

There's more that could be done along those lines - the undead ninja submariners come to mind as a candidate - as do D&D translations of the AiF monster catalog.

However, totally new (as in not derived from something Dave did) would have, I think, to be related to giant or warped versions of existing creatures, otherwise almost anything could be called Arsonian.

[Havard]

I just realized AiF has more unique creature than I remembered... 8)

-Havard