OSR: The Monster Overhaul: Limes and the Art of Categorization

Let's pretend you're at one of those hellish Silicon Valley lateral-thinking job interviews.

The interviewer gives you 3 categories: A: Yellow, B: Green, C: Fruit

And 6 items: 1: School Busses, 2: Grass, 3: Strawberries, 4. Lemons, 5. Limes, 6. Bananas

And tells you to sort them. Each category must contain exactly 2 items.
A: Yellow gets 1: School Busses
B: Green gets 2: Grass
C: Fruit gets 3: Strawberries

That much is trivial. The objects fit in no other category (OK, some School Busses aren't yellow, Strawberries might start off green or white, and pedants might argue that they're not fruits, but it'll do).

Lemons are Yellow and Fruits.
Limes are Green and Fruits.
And then we get to Bananas. They are Yellow and Fruits, and start off distinctly and Green. So one of the last 3 items will need to not be in Fruit, despite being a fruit. A compromise will need to be made. "Lime Green" and "Lemon Yellow" are common enough colours in English, so they might fit in those respective categories.

But if someone was told, without knowing the contents of any category, to locate Lemons or Bananas, would their first guess be correct?

Anyway, this is the problem facing the Monster Overhaul. Initial categorization is easy, but as categories are filled, the remaining categories encounter problems and compromises, far more serious compromises than Lemons and Bananas.

Art from the Hostile Forests chapter by Nadhir.

Monster Overhaul Progress Update

If you've missed previous updates, the Monster Overhaul is my next book. It's a generic, systemless monster manual designed for use at the table. It's full of tools, not text. Big fancy PDF and a big fancy hardcover... assuming everything works.

All entries in black are complete (or very nearly complete; the Dungeon chapter will be posted this week). They're available on my Patreon. You can see previews here or on twitter.

Entries in grey have some sort of draft or sketch, even if it's only a few words. The names aren't finalized. In fact, nothing about the incomplete chapters is finalized, even the titles.

9/20 chapters complete is good, but there's still a long way to go. The Dungeon chapter was the hardest one yet. It's only 23 pages long, but those pages are completely full of useful tools.

Various artists are hammering away at their respective chapters. I think giving each artist their own chapter has lead to some excellent results, but it does induce moderate anxiety; if I need to switch out a monster later, I may also need to get new art.

If you don't see a monster on this list and think it's absolutely vital I include it, leave a comment. I might already have a plan, but as the chapter fill in, the consequences of missing something critical become more dire. Monsters I'm not entirely sure about haven't been included; most chapters with grey entries have a list of 5-20 potential candidates.

	1	2	3	4	5
	People	Sci-Fi	Dungeon	Dragon	Primeval
1	Adventurer	Alien Invader	Giant Spider	Kobolds	Cave People
2	Barbarian	Alien Visitor	Goblin	Wyvern	Flying Dinosaur
3	Cultist	Alpha Brain	Lich	Young Dragon	Herd Dinosaur
4	Knight	Doppleganger	Mimic	Ancient Dragon	Lizard People
5	Mercenary	Giant Insect	Monstrous Vermin		Tyrant Lizard
6	Peasant	Perfect Predator	Mummy
7	Pilgrim	Robot Hound	Myconid
8	Merchant	Robot Servant	Ooze
9	Townsfolk	Robot Titan	Orc
10	Wizard	Veggie-Mite	Skeleton
	6	7	8	9	10
	Elemental	Spring	Summer	Fall	Winter
1	Elemental	Centaur	Beithir	Dark Fair	Blizzard Eel
2	Elemental Spirit	Faun / Satyr	Ccoa / Raithu	Dullahan	Snow Golem
3	Elemental Tyrant	Hateful Goose		Harvest Avatar
4	Firebat			Iron Fulmination
5	Gargoyle			Leaflings
6	Grue			Murderous Crows
7	Living Gem			Polevik
8	Sandwalker			Scarecrow
9	Spitling			Shofar Ram
10	Will-o-the-Wisp			Tempest Hag
	11	12	13	14	15
	Hot Plains	Hostile Forests	Mysterious Mountains	Thinking Beasts	Heraldic Beasts
1	Baboon	Bear	Ape	Harpy	Basilisk
2	Crocodile	Boar	Couatl	Kappa	Catoblepas
3	Elephant	Dryad	Giant	Lamia	Chimera
4	Flightless  Bird	Fairy	Ki-rin	Lammasu	Cockatrice
5	Hive Insects	Giant Snake	Panther	Manticore	Griffon
6	Hippopotamus	Tiger	Roc	Medusa	Hydra
7	Hyena	Treeant		Minotaur	Owlbear
8	Jinn	Troll		Naga	Questing Beast
9	Lion	Unicorn		Peryton	Strong Toad
10	Rhinoceros	Wolf		Sphinx	Wurm
	16	17	18	19	20
	Dark and Malign	A Wizard Did It	Water	Strange Water	Divine
1	Ghost	Beholder	Evil Icelandic Whale	Tardigrade	Angel
2	Ghoul	Blink Dog	Merfolk		Beast of Creation
3	Hag	Brain Mole	Pirate		Cherub
4	Ogre	Dispacer Beast	Sea Hag		Demon
5	Vampire	Golem	Shark		Dybuk
6	Werewolf	Homunculus			Greater Angel
7	Wight	Rust Monster			Hell Hound
8	Zombie				Imp
9					Prophet / Saint
10

Art for the Hot Plains chapter by Lil_Tachyon

Table of Contents and the Index

There will be a "normal" Table of Contents: each chapter and entry, in order, with a page number. A useful tool to see the book at a glance, but potentially not the best tool to find a given monster (given the Lemons and Limes problem).

If you need a specific monster, the Index will be your friend. In this list, every monster in the book will appear in alphabetical order, plus every monster I can think of that could use the stats in the book. Synonyms and overlapping concepts. Ways you could potentially reflavour an entry. Obscure names, alternative spellings. I'll try to avoid setting-specific monsters, but the real world is fair game.

Art from the Thinking Beasts chapter by Lucas Roussel.

Lumpers and Splitters

Should Ape and Gorilla have separate entries? Should Sasquatch? White Four-Armed Ape of Mars? Yeti?

Or what about the dozens of half-horse-half-bird-type things. Griffons, Hippogriffs, etc. Should they get separate entries, or should they be condensed into one? I've gone with the second option.

I have to decide at what point are two creatures sufficiently different mechanically or conceptually to warrant an entirely separate entry. Just being bigger or smaller or in a different environment isn't necessarily enough. What do they do that's sufficiently different? Do they require separate tools?

The Index and other tools should help GMs find any monsters that are "missing".

Art for the Sci-Fi chapter by Frenden

Cross-References Encounters

Each chapter has 20 monsters. Each chapter also has a d10 table of "combined encounters"; a random encounter with 1 monster from the chapter and 1 monster from a different chapter. So half the monsters in each chapter will appear in their own chapter with a visting monster, the other half will visit another chapter. This lets me combine interesting ideas (Angel + Lamassu), allies or enemies (Harpy + Wind Elemental), or reflavour monsters (putting Storm Giants into the Sci-Fi chapter's combined encounter table as biomechanical war-titans).

Outside of the combined encounter tables, I've tried to minimize cross-referencing and page flipping. If a table is referenced, it's ideally on the same page, acceptably on the facing page, less optimally on the next page, or, if all else fails, elsewhere in the book. The entry for "Goblin" won't tell you to reference Treasure Table 14 on pg. 209, it'll contain a highly flavourful Goblin-specific loot table.
 

Tactics

I'm also going to include a very compressed section on general tactics for different kinds of creatures, split into categories. Ambush Predators. Armed Warriors. etc. Including a "Tactics" section in each entry would pad the book unnecessarily, because many creatures share similar tactics.

It will probably go in the back of the book, along with a Phylogenetic Tree, The Origin of Species, alternative ways to categorize monsters, and other useful tools.