Monsters from Monsters and ANimals, other sources

[CombatMedic]

I’ve recently purchased the BtS 1st edition PDF on Drive Thru RPG. I’m looking at maybe running this next year, tabletop.

What follows are some ideas about adapting monsters from PfRPG and other games.

Please feel free to add your own ideas for adaptation and conversion. It doesn’t have to be BtS 1E. 2E would be great. Love it all.

I’ll start off with one of my favorite little critters in Palladium’s bestiary, Monsters and Animals:

Boogie-Men
Boogie-Men possess one additional power: they project a psychic illusion that makes them appear as small children, but only to human adults and older adolescents. Little kids can see these monsters for what they are (making for a bad experience indeed when none of the grown-ups believe…). Psychic powers may pierce this disguise.
Dogs and cats hate Boogie-Men.
Photographs of the creatures do show them in true form. Boogie-Men have figured this out, so they vandalize photographic equipment when the opportunity presents itself. (This behavior may cause investigators to mistake signs of boogie-men for evidence of a poltergeist entity or a gremlin). Some wear motorcycle helmets, big floppy hats, or other disguises to hide their features from surveillance.
Boogie-men who die for whatever reason will quickly decay into a mass of charcoal colored webbing, like dirty gray ‘silly string.’ Testing shows organic traces in the stuff, but nothing that couldn’t be created in a chemistry lab. A faint .P.P.E. trace also remains.
A rare ritual exists that allows an arcanist to resurrect dead Boogie-Men using these nitrous webs. The magic requires the distilled nightmares of a child, poured over the remains while chanting a certain formula on the night of the autumnal equinox. A Boogie-Man so raised must serve its new ‘father’ or ‘mother’ until the next autumnal equinox.
MORE: I haven’t done skills yet, but PFRPG B-Ms are usually thieves or peasants in .O.O.C. That’s pretty easy to set up with some secondary skills and the domestic or criminal skill programs, I think.

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M&A gives H.F. and .P.P.E. for pretty much everything in it, so GMs can use these creatures for BTS. It also gives more specific BTS notes on the following monsters:
• Dragon Wolf
• Flying Turtle
• Kappa
• Kelpie
• Scarecrow
• Sea Serpents
• Sphinx
• Syvan
• Tezcat
• Tree Eel
• Unicorn
• Water bat
• (Werebeasts)
• Yema
• Za

Idea on Tezcat placement:

The name sounds like it might be inspired by Tezcatlipoca. I’m thinking these little savages live in jungles in Mexico and Central America. Some were driven further south by hostile humans, into South America.

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I highly recommend M&A to anyone running BTS and in search of some more monsters.

The animals may also be very useful in games.

[gaby]

Good idea.

[CombatMedic]

Thanks for the encouragement, Gaby.


CLASSIC MONSTERS QUESTIONS:

I'm not sure if the Mummy Immortalus of Palladium Fantasy is different from the mummy found in my (1st ed., not revised) copy of Monsters and Animals, but it sounds as if it could be a good fit. Anybody know more this?

That gives us Wolf-man, Dracula, and the Mummy. To get a horror all-stars line-up, we just need Frankenstein's Monster.
Frankenstein is in the public domain, so there's no need to worry about the conversions policy. Not that I'm necessarily looking for close adaption of the being described in Mary Shelley's novel. Just some similar sort of creature would be cool.

Does anybody know of another already written up monster, OCC, RCC, etc. that would work well for this sort of thing? (It doesn't have to be in BTS; any Palladium game would do.)


I suppose the scarecrow from page 70 of M&A could be altered to make a sort of Frankenstein's monster.


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MORE IDEAS ON USE/PLACEMENT OF MONSTERS & ANIMALS CREATURES

The book gives some info on location/habitat on BTS Earth for the following:
• Flying Turtle
• Kappa
• Kelpie
• Sea Serpents
• Water bat

All the notes for these guys make good sense to me. I'd use that info as is, expanding it if I decided to use one of these creatures in an adventure/investigation.
I like that the turtles and water bats are more or less benevolent species. While I definitely see the great majority of supernatural beings in a BTS game as being evil, occasional exceptions to that rule seem like they could be a lot of fun.


•Dragon Wolf


• Za


• Sphinx

This one looks like an odd fit for BtS. But Kevin Siembieda provided notes, so he obviously considered the possibility...
It's got some pretty rich occult and historical links: Ancient Egypt, Early Modern alchemy, Freemasonry.
Few religions today would venerate sphinxes, unlike several religions in the Palladium World. And a monster like this, which can only become invisible though magic, would probably not openly operate in a human dominated modern world. So I think any BTS sphinxes will act as advisers and oracles for secret societies and seekers after horror.
I see them as being quite rare.



• Syvan

• Tezcat
I gave some suggestions above. Nothing to add just now, except that they might also serve Sowki or even an Alien Intelligence.

• Tree Eel

• Unicorn

• (Werebeasts)

• Yema

•Scarecrow-- The in-universe PFRPG notes describe these monsters as having been created about two centuries ago. If they were about that old on BtS Earth, then an arcanist in some rural part of North America might have developed them in the 1880s (assuming 1980-something minus a couple of centuries---I like the 80s for BTS).

[Damian Magecraft]

The Lizard Mage makes foe great monster in BTS as well...
I paint them up as the humanoids that walked the earth before us "lowly mammals."
They are usually hellbent on bringing back the reign of proper beings (dinosaurs).

[CombatMedic]

The Lizard Mage makes foe great monster in BTS as well...
I paint them up as the humanoids that walked the earth before us "lowly mammals."
They are usually hellbent on bringing back the reign of proper beings (dinosaurs).

Kewl beans!


Prehistoric terrors sound fun to me.

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QUESTION about Dragon wolves

A dragon wolf can assume any humanoid shape, but it can only do so when the moon is full.
According to the text, ''the light of day'' will return the transformed monster to its normal form.
Is that just a poetic way of telling us that when the night of the full moon has ended, the shape-shifted creature will return to dragon wolf shape?
Or does it literally mean that sunlight shining on the monster will return it to its natural shape, and so if the D-W avoids sunlight it could indefinitely remain in humanoid form?

[Glistam]

The answer to your question is also a question: which interpretation would make for a more interesting game?