My Attempt To Explain The Art

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Now I will attempt to explain why I think those pictures are so good.
(all pictures are from here, kudos and gratitude)

Less as individual art works but more how they embody an idea about game material I'm trying to articulate here.

Which ; There is blazing-holy and great window of brilliance flickering in the spectrum of goofiness.

Something which risks being goofy is also standing-out from expectations , and humour is always* surprising; as by definition people have noticed something surprising.


So that works for game content.

The next element of it is for it to not be collapsible into pure humour and/or fail to stoke the emotional energy the players are enjoying.

Generally for this to happen it has then bring something else other than goofiness, something exactly opposite what immediate appeared as goofy.

Doing a weird high pitched voice for a warlord is goofy. Playing him completely serious and making him a serious danger goes against the precedent of the voice, and thus has the potential of being brilliant.

 Has the "potential" though, it's an extreme nebulous window , and it can collapse easily.

"Worm Apocalypse"

The arms are floppy and failing and the idea of walking worms is silly. The feet appear too large like clown shoes. How they stand looks uncomfortable, suggesting a grotesque gait. However the eyes are stretched and narrow , unlike anything in nature , with the head appearing stiff and geometric, unlike a worm or anything. The head's stillness frames the violent energy of the arms by its contrast.

That also suggests intention and purposefulness, ditto with the low stance. They are firmly planted and fixed on flailing. The arms don't appear to have obvious danger to them, except the speed they are moving (the blur and the dynamic perspective gives this) and the still malignancy of  face.

The face looks like it wants to do bad things, and its entire body is focused on whipping these arms at you.

The floppiness of the arms suggests a surplus of destructive energy and crazed unpredictable, again which are potentially goofy, but with the cold regard of the face, are not possible to discount as harmless.

The slightly-odd pauldrons mean a civilisation or at least an intelligence behind them (and possibly solved an art problem where the artist couldn't find a way of joining the arm to the body in way that satisfied them) 

Most Yu gi oh cards have exaggerated perspectives, the small size of the cards benefits from the greater sense of depth , and  here it serves to make the arms flailing pushed at you.

The other aspect here is there's more than one worm , the title of card suggesting an apocalypse of them. This is another thing which acts against it being merely funny. 

One worm warrior would be a weird anomaly , this is too many worm warriors , they are here , there is a lot of them, they stand like clowns taking a painful standing shit, their arms whip through the air like a snapped cable , very little about them appears understandable to you except they deliberately mean you harm and they are here right now

Everliving Underworld Cannon
Less to say about this, but notable: the skull takes up a lot of room which being undetailed giving off the moment of sensory overwhelming of a cannon blast.

Skulls have that goofy smile which is seems inappropriate for a thing of death.

The Chains suggestion a solution to the cannons recoil but also a solution to the cannon possible wanting to wander off like a poorly behavioured aggressive dog.
The artfulness of the skull placement but also sense of jury-rigging and make-do is goo.The title is a great example of the poetic run-on sentences of these cards . The way its an "everliving" rather than an "undying" or "undead" cannon suggests a defiant surplus of life and uncontrollability. They can't kill it or control it they can just point at things as it blasts off chucks of laughingly destructive soul matter at people.

Ritual Raven:

What works here as the more you look at it the more you realise how bad it is as a bird.

The feet grow out of the wings and more akin to frogs than anything avian. It has tiny , unnecessary, child or doll arms. 

The things seen as masks then as eyes then as both are an example of the "surprising twist" which seems to a common element in this kind of brilliance.

However what takes it up a notch is it doesn't stop there, in fact it seems to actively work against this core idea with how shit it is a bird.

There's an uncomfortable of scale here , it looks small but looking at the those arms makes you consider what if those arms were human sized and this thing was fucking massive. Then the smoothness of its surface becomes uncanny, as detail is used to suggest size.

The beak has a weird expression. It's just a peak but it has a almost bureaucratic resignedment to it.

The mask are horrible and the careful white teeth are an apt grossness. An conventionally predatory mouth or a gaping void wouldn't work here as well as these nasty little smirks do.

The contrast between that and the beak is potent. The beak is purely administrative , the smirking cruelty is obviously a necessary element to whatever this thing does. Assholedom as a modular battery.

Statue of Anguish Pattern:

this is a good name. Most of my choice to include this is that name. It has that weird beat to it , sTaTue of AnGuish PaTtern.
Anguish is such a weird word choice, despair or fear or terror would be obvious and external.
Anguish is internal, an anguish pattern suggestive of a forced empathy with something, or an internal summoning of personal pain. 5 stars.
The shape , dunno, hexapod is so-so , the weird flared feet suggestion weight ,conflict with the narrows of the join with the body and plasticity of the bend.
It's not quite magic but its uncomfortable. The sphere that is seemingly turned to look at us But gives no clear vindication for our anthropomorphization (e.g a clear eye or other face feature).

This lack of vindication means we** search for something else , maybe we are mistaken and there is a Clear and Definite Head and Face to be found?
There is a circle behind the sphere, is that an eye, is a blowing a stone bubble?
There is no clear resolve, it is stone being plastic, stone animate with no obvious purpose to it yet it moves.

Door of Destiny
That is a dumb title, the only thing okay about it is looks completely hostile yet it has the usually neutral word "destiny" used.

I think I like this because the purple and yellow work and the chaining suggests the door itself , not what is beyond it , is a problem needing containing.
There is nice depth to the doors surface, a in between state of flatness and relief, suggesting an artisan's craft or its about it resolve itself as 3 dimensional from a flat state (the chains holding it back).
Maybe it only can function as a "destiny door" if it itself is forced to never resolve itself as flattened or fleshed? Opening the door is like opening the quantum box, collapsing you possible paths into just one.

There's some nice grots around the place.

Or sometimes you got appreciate a big old purple demon door

Bite Shoes

The bottom of them is like a exaggerated curve of a snarl or smile , yet the main teeth are above it .
That's good.
The blackness inside the mouth is great suggesting it can keep eating and never be full.

The little teeth thorns below it, I can't explain what they are doing , yet if you imagine them gone, it's not as a good of picture.

This is an evil shoe. However, it's not a shoe to help you do evil ; it's gonna bite the foot off anyone that puts it on.
And yet; it's not a trap shoe. It does not look innocuous . Maybe it started out that way, but something about suggests it's always been a bad shoe.
So this shoe.. what , hops it your face trying to bite it off? hops around on the ground attacking your feet ? This thing is fucked , it knows its fucked and it looks extremely happy about it.
The body of it smiles even as the top is an unfeeling hunger.

Bazzo The Soul Eater.

Okay so the title really pushes this one into next level .
It's  fucked up that something so brutish like this mandrill thug is a soul eater.

Usually a "soul eater" is a term used for something insidious or grandiose.

Not a roided up purple ape.

There's something about its expression that seems like its foremost bestial yet a degeneration into bestialness.

Its bulk and fatness , yet the fatness seems like it doesn't translate into immobility but power.
The delicate texture of the hair , it looks soft , and sweet smelling.

The weird bone growths.. maybe they could go and improve it , but they do add something, a hint of cancerousiness to this thing.

The teeth are incisors , that's great because I get a visceral uncomfortabliness to imaging myself biting down hard with my own on something extremely hard.

Alternatively the teeth will slice through the soul like a soft fruit .

Incisors are for eating passive things and a lot of them. Fruit, leaves , things to be snipped.
That these are for souls is a horror.

Parasitic Ticky. The lack of a face, the equipment carried, the legs like tight clad legs poking out of costume.

All make it not easily resolvable as an obvious thing. It does not seem (though it still could) be a warrior , more of hunter gatherer .

You can see the beak as a blind head, or the chest as a head with the beak as a mouth and then suggesting legs in place of the eyes socket.

Should we think of it as distortion or a naturalness ? The awkwardness of the human calves and knees suggest the first , yet the casualness of its going and presentation suggests the later.

"Gimmick Puppet Egg Head" a example of a run on tile which does not have the magic of Statue Of Anguish Pattern.

The Wig and Expression and the Arms coming out of Ears are the most significant factor its brilliance.

Subtler things are the lines across it, the blood red sclera of the ey,  and the colour of it the facebody.

Also how its carrying its weight is weird. The legs aren't loaded enough , suggestive of a puppets strings (yet the tilt of the head makes it hard to pinpoint where the line of thread would be , indicating  the delicacy of the puppeteers hand and/or an uncanniness).

The wig is silly, puppets are silly, an egg man is silly. Yet it seems charged with a dangerous energy (the colours), that's the twist.

The obvious twist to an evil puppet is contrasting child friendly imagery with obvious evil imagery.

This instead has detached stately-ness to it expression. It is potent and purposeful.

Desertapir. Apparently the pun is better in Japanese. And maybe I'm just overly influenced by the cuteness here.
Yet, how fucking passive and simple these things look (also potentially huge) in a context of war , techno-armour, dragons and superbeasts.

Their ability to be asleep right now (also asleep in a lethal context of a near-noon desert with no shade) suggests an ability for indifference that is absurdly cosmic.

Bubble Breeder.
The title, bubbles being fragile, breeding being base and meat bound, already starts making this interesting.
Is it breeding bubbles inside itself? Can it breed bubbles in you?
The glow is ominous , the asymmetricality alien.

If the view angle was looking down on it  (suggesting it small), the ratio of body parts would merely be part of the lightness smallness would give it.
However this angle suggests person size , so its top heavy-ness is suggestive of the dense shoulder mass of strength .

Alternatively a barely contained strong upward motion , that it has purposefully pulled down .

The contained but considerable movement of either interpretation is suggests if it wants to do things, it definitely has the resources to do them  .

Yet the title is "bubble", not water, or ice , or slime.  Bubbles are temporary and fragile, yet this thing is here and looks like it can definitely do things .
If it were Slime or water or ice , there would be no contrast, slime water and ice do things, they effect change. Bubbles do not.
Because its nature is against it, it comes across as even more potent that we can see its potency immediately.

But what does potent to do ? What is its purpose? It breeds.

A Fortress Whale. It's a whale with a lot of guns. This is good.
There's some fun with the castle to suggest size but then the guns completely over sizing the castle , The anachronistic  clash is good too .
The weird baleen grin (though the head is like a pilot or a sperm whale) seemingly means it likes being a gun castle, it's not a beast of burden.

The castle elements seem to not be signs of occupation , almost like a sarcastic touch by the whale. Look how fucking big I am , I mock the most potent of your houses. I am large and mobile, I am not contained the limits of your securities , even as I out-do their strengths.

Yes the best bit is definitely the whale looking like an active (even maybe the sole origin) participate here. It loves what it does.

Other points of note, a few scars or scratches on its head helping give sense of size and resilience and the horn being ludicrously big as if for destroying things big as or bigger than the whale.
To use such a horn effectively , the whale would need to be highly mobile, and it smugness suggests it confident on having far more than just size to rely on.
The horn also keeps the dynamism of the whale going forward , off the edge of the card.  It's both irresistible force and unassailable object .

Giant Flea.
I mean this shouldn't be a good picture to me, it doesn't sell the flea as particular large (except as fleas go) , it doesn't have a horrible flea mouth knife, yet the colours and the greenness of its eyes give it an overwhelming charm.
There's just something about it resembling a video game playable sprite, one which you find yourself jumping constantly, just because jumping feels really good with it.



* Maybe there is humour that is not surprisingly like when you laugh when someone does something so obviously them that it is funny. Then you could argue the humour is because we are surprised about seeing an expectation that we didn't expect to happen , happened?  whatever, what I can say is "surprise is often a element of humour" and that's fairly objective.

**(as in the critics "we" , as in "I" but doing a possible unreasonable assumption and assuming an objective response) 

Resolving Wizard projects with the tarot

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"My wizard spends the month installing lasers in undead. So that is a thing in your campaign now"

here is a little subsystem the makes use of unwieldy chart and tarot cards.
Well you can use any cards really, just assign them to the various rows in the chart.
Chart is here:
CHART!
It won't make any sense yet(..).
So a wizard wants to make up a new spell or slime or duck hybrid or wand of broiling hair.
You , the g.m and the player shoot the shit about how the mechanics work and that.
I'm not going to try and write a system that does that job. That would be GURPS or rolemaster companions. Also, madness.
Then the g.m picks a large number of moneys and the player blathers on about various monster parts that are cluttering up their character sheet that they are throwing in or exactly what they are sewing to what and how drunk and things are crossed off and this is so campaign variable I will not attempt to write a system for it (also I don't want to)

This is for the next bit , where you want something to happen that will surprise you both, involves an element of risk, chance and meaningful player choices. Also gimmicks!

The player draws 5 cards from the major arcana of the tarot (or pokemon cards if you re-skin the chart) .
 They then play 5 rounds.
The first round is for the cost or resource requirements of the project. A card is drawn from the deck and then the player chooses a card to play against it.
Cards have suits Soul, World, Sun, Night.

 Soul beats Sun, Sun beats Night, Night beats World, World beats Soul.

 In the case of Same vs Same or Sun vs World or Night vs soul, the highest value card wins (the major arcana cards have a value from the Fool with Zero , to the World with 21).

The chart result for that card explains what that means for the project. If you lose against a drawn card , the second "inauspicious"  result (after the / ) is applied.

You then continue to round 2 in which the Potency of the project is determined,
 round 3 the convenience or useability ,
round 4 the danger the project puts you in (if any)
and finally 5 , repeatability , ie if an item can you attempt to make another one? If a spell, is it "worked true"? (ie it may be copied into your spell book and be cast and memorized rather than just a one off ritual) and if the project is a creature will it breed or can you even glue another one together ever?

Alternate1 :all 5 opposing cards can be drawn at once and the player then decides which of their cards to play where ( I would think you want to make the chart results have more arbitrary and nasty results)
Alternate 2: The player has only 3 cards and must randomly draw a card for to play 2 of the rounds

CHART IS HERE

I tried to make the chart results general , yet interesting and somehow applicable to making monsters , new spells and items. Which might of been a mistake. Also 22 fucking cards took me so long I really stopped caring a couple of times.
 I hope if it sees use it your campaign you hack the shit out of it. The 5 rounds thing I feel coulda been simplified down but sometimes an idea is too big to manage to grasp correctly on the first go and you need to just let it go and hope someone sees a better way for it.

Wait those monsters are awesome

Print PDF so someone on tumblr wrote this
"
its 2016 and the d&d franchise has finally run out of new monsters. the creative team looks dejected.
“moss… hog?” says one tremulously. the others perk up.
“crime bird?” says another. there are audible gasps.
“sludge dragon!” another shouts. “lawful good ameobas who only eat copper statues!”
“filthy halfling! like a hobbit but covered in shit and trash.”
“sexy lady made entirely of shields. neutral evil. shield maiden.”
“dinosaur witches” “we’ve done that” “yeah but these ones are called Tyrannosaurus Hexers”
“piss pixies!”
“b… bloblins.”
the gang orders a pizza as jubilation reigns. d&d is back.

"

And it was a merry jibe against the perceived absurditys of game writers.

Which is all well and good EXCEPT IT'S NOT because those monsters are awesome. And damn it better material happens when game writers care not for absurdity*.
And most often they do care so much so, and lo they stick to the accepted fantasy classics because fuck forgive someone has anything unusual in there fantasy setting.
Also it strikes me that people are not aware of how toweringly absurd every day life is.
Like say eggs. Eggs are boring, the word egg is used to mean a loser here in choice-bro island, eggs are incorporated in wide variety of meals what ever eggs eggs eggs.
But imagine you have reached said age that you are now with never seeing an egg or its like. Now put before this hypothetical egg-naive  you (or heny for short). What the fuck is this thing? Think about its smell , it's texture, the unusual hardness and brittleness of its outer coating, the weird viscosity of it, the transparency of the egg white , the unnatural suspension of the yolk in this uncanny medium etc. Now image "heny" asks where to these things come from? And Heny is shown these horrible dinosaur looking things more or less shitting them out of their all purpose vent , both sex organ and waste vector. And the fact that the chicken extrude these things in order to grow more chickens and even if it has no had sex, it will pop out a couple of these things each day anyway. And all this is presented to Heny as the most mundane banal of things.
Piss Pixies are nothing compared to this.


*There is possible an exception to this , but right now all the monster I think are dumb , are dumb because they are boring.

Anyway I drew pictures of the monsters and blathered on about what they are:

Moss Hog

 These are lumbering detrivores that spew forth a powerful digestive enzyme allowing them to slurp up most anything. A astonishing variety of molds, fungus, moss, and lichens sprout all over their weird humped bodies. These are symbiotic , drawing out and feeding on the wide variety of toxins, contaminates and general weirdness present in the mosshogs diet, and can be a potential concentration of the magical or chemical properties in what ever the moss hog feeds on.

Blobbin

 It's like someone dipped up goblin in molten wax and it just made it worse. Not made out of wax, made out of flesh of disturbing viscosity. Attacks by throwing chucks of its self at you until there is enough of it on you to move your arm into stabbing you or you companions. Feed by slurping flesh straight of the bone.

Crime Bird on confused washing line

Crime Birds !

 The Crime bird.  Its beak is prized as a lock pick, it picks pockets, pillages houses and roosts on stolen jewellery, trading up whenever it can, the lesser stuff stashed in obscure nooks. Why is it not long dead? For one , it voids itself on its stolen goods, imparting a stink near impossible to remove, and secondly its beak, originally evolved to pluck deep borrowing rock worms, will take a eye out faster than you would believe. Lastly and most importantly ; it is a complete and utter cunning shit of a bird.

 The copper eating lawful good blob now named  Boolooboo boobooloo

 I started with a blob and started scribbling on it until art happened.  It eats copper because they think they are from a future where advanced technology ruined everything, and so they attempt to destroy all copper to prevent electronics from happening. They are not actually, they are deluded wizard experiments. They have 3 personalitys, one is the pessimist, one the optimist and one the arbiter. They attack with cold waves and static fields. They are nice enough , but sticklers for proper protocol and minimizing risk.

Trash Halflings

 So when a colossal sky whale devours an entire city it takes awhile for the huge masses of rumble and carnage to be broken down. If you are small and good at staying out of the way, you can survive a surprisingly long time. The trash halflings are descendents of halflings who managed to do just that. By constantly cladding themselves in materials resistant to the acids of the whale they manage to survive with only a small amount of insanity ,mutations and partial melding with the trash.
They can be encountered outside the stomach of a colossal sky whale , living in the Sky Whale equivalent of "Owl pellets".  These are 6 story high spheres of tightly compressed stone and metal, that are never the less riddled with tunnels, and of course the Trash Halflings. Each Scat (as is their term for a particular tribe) varies greatly in temperament,  some being zealous cannibals , seeing their expelling from the Sky Whale as a fall from Eden. Other regard it as blessing. All scat seem to have an hard time not seeing the world around them as alien however and all seek more debris to adorn themselves with.

Piss Pixie

 While certainly small, 4 limbed and mostly bipedal , the piss pixie seems named more as a horrible joke than any other resemblance to its name sake. They are appear to have something of a languid intelligence, but little drive other than sucking up sweet, vinegary or alcoholic dregs, and often fond sleeping instead a vessel used for this purpose, their form extremely rubbery and flexible.
 If menaced they defend themselves by squirting forth a horrible smelling stinging yellow fluid into the eyes of the attacker, and then slither off to hide in some  unplausible gap or nook. They lack a jaw and their face resembles a prolasped anus partially dried in the sun.
There is a uncommon poison, that is odorless and tasteless,  and makes the blood of the drinker smell overwhelming attractive to the piss pixie. They will be able to smell the victim from leagues away and wait to the victim is asleep where they will latch on with their horrible snouts and suck the blood right through the skin, like a hickey of the damned. They will not stop until the victim is bleed dry.

Shield Maiden

 Okay there was possible a good way of drawing a lady made from shields but I could not be assed and just drew one great big shield with dire contraptions extended out from it in all directions. I then after scanning decided the red and blue "action is happening" lines looked wack and inverted the whole thing because I'm really fond of that blue.
Shield Maidens are the "job" you are demoted to if you fuck up one too many times as a member of particular order of Knights Templar.
Your soul is trapped in a giant shield , appearing to live on as picture engraved on the shield and will animate the shield and its attached killing blades.
Shield Maidens are used for Sentinels, Body guards, and general "death trap training scenarios" for new recruits.
Despite the order being Lawful Good, Shield Maidens become Neutral Evil quite rapidly as they began hate the shit out of everything. This means that while they are bond to very letter of their orders, they use any leeway in sloppily worded orders to get revenge.
So Shield Maidens that are needed for more complicated missions such as body guarding or dealing with the general public , are those that are freshly minted.
The older and more bitter Shield Maidens are assigned to be Tomb Sentinels, Vault Guards and any other position where the orders can be simple and no-one has to put up with their dirty looks.
Note: If you can find out the exact wording of orders given to an elder Shield Maiden and can give the Shield Maiden a loophole in which to stick it to the Knights Templar, they will definitely take it, being far much interested in revenge than they are in the fleeting satisfaction of killing you.

Sludge Dragon

 I'm not sure what else to do with this, a glowering dripping Leviathan rising from the foul brackish depths of a hellish swamp in order to contemptuously spit ooze elementals at you is perfectly serviceable to me. Okay so the temperaments of dragons , such as avarice, sloth, rage etc. The Sludge Dragon is a paragon of draconic sloth. They do not care for anything other than sleep, and sink to the bottoms of silt choked shallow lakes and the loneliest of bogs to sleep for as long as possible. They can eat and digest near anything and when hunger rouses them just immediately devour all vegetation and animal life with in reach , gorging themselves and then submerging again
They utterly despise exertion and the only thing they despise more than this is anything that provokes them enough to bother with them. Their breathe weapon takes the form of Ooze elementals, but with an additional acid touch (H.D of ooze elemental = twice the damage dice of the Sludge Dragon) They can also effect the surface tension and viscosity of water , ooze , earth and mud, making formally solid ground act as quicksand, and make water impossible to swim in. If they can't drown or suffocate an opponent like this, they are happy to entomb them and let them starve to death

Tyrannosaurus Hex

  You are insane Wizard and you have an excess of enchantments , scar runes, and  magic tattoo designs. Oh and Tyrannous Rex.
Tyrannosaurus Hexes are what happens when you  use more or less laminate every square centimetre of a T-rex in magic wards. They are extremely dangerous , extremely unhappy and disrupt all magic around them in dangerously and unpredictably ways. Have you seen Holy Mountain ? This is your T-rex right here (the one not talking) THE WHOLE THING IS ON YOUTUBE WHAT ARE WAITING FOR? (watch it from the start after though. Well okay watch that scene with the Timothy Leary parody, then watch it from the start). Hmm maybe they are addicted to eating magic? Nah then it just makes them some kind of Disenchanter monster that seems to only exist to take stuff off the p.cs. Thinking...thinking..
Okay Tyrannosaurus Hex have a marauder phase where they just run around screaming at the new colours and eating people. But after that they realize they are intelligent and conscious and driven by the desire to formulate the fantastic new ways of magic  they can  just about grasp. The T-hex then attempts to study magic and experiment, as best as it can do with a wild magic field ( that it can learn to suppress) two dainty forearms , the mind of apex predator and no formal training what so ever.
Like an Outsider artist if art could blow things to pieces and turn those pieces into spider-wolves. And the artist was a giant bipedal killing machine.

Here is a bunch of pictures I drawed NOW WITH NOTES

Print PDF I have drawn pictures. I might come back to this post and elaborate more on , like, "design" decisions, but for now, pictures. NOW WITH NOTES

Aerial Servant
 

I wrote a lyric from "road to nowhere" from talking heads.  It's resentful cloud dude. I like elementals , like they are boring kinda, but because visually "elements" have a real obvious iconic short-hand to them, and it's not that exciting. Like if you picture a picture of waves or flames, it's not that exciting , but if you imagine or are looking at actually flames or a wave , there is a huge amount going on and it's real exciting. Same with storm clouds or earth (if it's moving around, although visible strata and evident geological mayhem makes even still earth interesting).

That brings up a bigger thing with the balancing act between taking the time and energy to describe something versus getting understanding across quickly. With the contested ground between the two ends of the spectrum being the players "what can I do with this?" perspective.
I imagine there are some players that are happy to sit there and immerse themselves passively as listeners, but I notice most seem to be wanting to immerse themselves by interacting with stuff ASAFP.
So if you say "it's a giant worm" it risks being boring because whatever a giant worm, BUT the player instantly has a grasp on what is in front of them and can respond to it.
While "thrusting out of the side of the packed dank earth comes a blind head , insinuating* toward you with vile peristaltic motions , the end of it waving roundly, an idiot motion , but with purpose and most of all hunger" is long to say, slower to grasp that it's a big worm, in some cases might detract from the player understanding what they have to work with, BUT in some cases, giving inspiration for interaction.
For example , in the above example, it might make it more obvious that the worm is slave to base instinct , and can be lured / aimed someone advantageous to the players  if they can figure out how it senses them.

Cloud Giant

A giant on a cloud is a grand fairy tale, but not particular shaped for gritty/and or plausiblesque settings. But weird awkward lost "ancient alien original star trek throw you all in crystal labyrinth because of ancient alien stuff" ? Shit I don't know, maybe?
This was the sketch I was basing the cloud giant off that I made recently, but it wound up being a weird moth owl head thing. I can imagine these guys have glowing organs, translucent skin and glowing eyes and stalk the earth on cloudy nights. Maybe in bestial sleep walking fugue.

Dinosaur

I like Combichrist songs  when he's not bitching about his exes. So that's like 6 songs. The biggest prob about using dinosaurs is trying to say their latin names. Or thinking up alternate names that are not "thunder tail" or "Jump Spiker". Yui Gi Oh might be a good source of possible names. Well names anyway, good names is debatable. Evidence for the For team . Evidence for the Against team

Axebeak

I like birds. Birds monsters can be a great mix of absurd and horrible. There is a bird at the end of Bugz life, Link here , that shows how horrible something the size of a house moving that fast would be. Especially the bird "stop/start" almost stop motion movement. Axebeaks I can never decide to make them highly strung hyper active style skinny birds or bruiser muscular Titanis
birds , horribly belligerent and aggressive. Chokobos do not get a look in.

Giant Toad

I remember as a kid watching a frog eat a smaller frog with air of complete indifference, the smaller frogs legs sticking out from its mouth, and it just holding it there for the longest time, not even bothering to take another bite. And that toads/frogs just seem  to be a hatch straight to their stomach and the burning smothering death there. Fuck those guys. Also what this guy said

Doppelganger

Are Doppelgangers better as cunning Hannibal Lecter types or pitiful semi-mindless except when they think they are some else types?
I don't know. I also don't know if they are cooler as horrible silly putty blank faces or blurry overlayed "can't quite look at it always seems to be something else" faces/

Glabrezu

I think I have mentioned before the contrast fun of the Glaberzus big pincer arms and delicate dog human hands. (shit is it Glaberzu or Glaberzu?) Seems to exemplify the cunning Iagoness of the Glaberzu with barely contained constant violent impulse of a Tanar'ir.

Goblin

"When this is over, when this is over I'M GONNA SLEEP!" "Your Boot in MY face , is what keeps my alive" Goblins as a big black song about the works of Raymond Chandler; discuss.
(also Goblin is a great word , and makes a decent prefix, "goblins spiders etc)

Fire Giant

Lets ignore the mess of perspective happening in the crotch area and focus instead on coal skinned hairless giants with gold body paint.

Hill Giant

Why are their not more giants drawn with Mr Twit beards and beer guts? Beard has a high chance of having treasure and oversized vermin.

Ooze mount

The missing drawing from here

Thought Eater

I gave it filter feeder style teeth. Also continues the idea of "you can tell its magic because it look complete shit from a engineering perspective" mentioned in that wands post.

Stone Giant

Stone Giants are actually inflicted with horrible ossified wart structures that make great protective camouflage if they live in a quarry. Here is a far more horrible human variety 

Peryton

hey I wonder what this looks like with the colour inverted?

Titianothere

Variations on the Rhinoceros. This one is bigger and makes a better battering ram.

Titan

True Ogre was awesome in Tekken 3. Also this

Trapper

Hey these are suddenly improved to me if I give them a face and decide that they pretend to be a floor before killing and eating because its fun.

Rather than "there has been so much dungeons evolution and wizards happened"

Treent

Never trust a tree.

Triton

I think I did a good job on suggesting the tritons a face that looks like  a face by accident, like the under side of a sting ray.

Troglodyte

If you look at how horrible living underground makes things look and apply it to lizardmen, it's a good direction for troglodyte. I think I coulda gone further though, but I just liked this one.

Troll

I like how a d&d troll is hella iconic but is far from the first image other people have of trolls.  (although now it's prob one of those dumb meme faces) Thank Trampier and Three Hearts and  Three Lions for that.

Giant Turtle

Giant turtles are such a wealth of bio-architectural opportunity. I have ignore this in this drawing. But yeah, just saying.

Unicorn

Hey Ian, when are you gonna do that Unicorn post? Unicorns are so iconic loaded it's a thing. I have no idea what kind of thing , but a thing none the less. One could talk about unicorns and porns and their constant subversion and semi-ironic reclaimations in the media and how it reflects a crisis and reshifting of understanding of gender. Not me though because I don't care.

Umberhulk

Umberhulks! I love things with aspects of beetles and aspects of gorillas , especially if they look nothing like either. Those things in the dark crystal did a great job of the terrifying visual noise an insect is with its legs and mouthparts and antenna and how little it fits into a human easy visual reference tag box thing.
Umberhulk is a word that sounds great and makes little sense when you examine it's components. So in other words perfect. 

Giant Wasp

Wasps used to give me the shits as a kid. Now it's just centipedes. Fuck centipedes. "HEY I'M TAPING INTO BOTH THE INSTINCTIVE FEAR OF SNAKES AND MANY LEGGED THINGS ALSO MY LEGS LOOK LIKE FANGS" Although snakes don't hit that fear button for me though. Baby chimpanzees have an instinctive fear response to shadows of hawks (and not other birds) even if raised in captivity. It's likely that humans have similar hard wired responses, and possible mis-wired in the case of phobias.
There is a centipede that penetrates you skin with all its legs, leaving a trail of red dots. If it get bored/freaked out it drops poison and walks it into you skin. I can't find a reference for that right now.  I did find this though
  A 19th century Tibetan poet warned his fellow Buddhists that "if you enjoy frightening others, you will be reborn as a centipede."

Will O Wisp

People always like to link Will o Wisps to other creatures life cycles. How about the entire swamp is alive and generates will o wisps for fun?

Water Weird

Imma water that wants to be inside you

Whale

Splish imma whale

Wind Walker

How much cool would these things be if they were radioactive as well as invisible?

Wolf

That effect is caused either by the paper warping because there is too much ink on it, or biro ink reflecting the light. I like it but really should make more of an effort to control it though

Wolverine

Xorn

Xorn xorn xorn xorn xorn! Xorn , xorn xorn? Xorn.

Wraith

Wraith is cool word. So is a ghost made of hate.

Wyvern

Making wyvern's discount dragons, is missed chance to make another horrible flying steed for your horrible barbarian cult tribes

Yeti

"but human enough that the word cannibalistic still seems to apply" fuck yeah.
Also furry creatures that are filthy with gore is a visual gold mine. Double also the Shammblers from Quake (the first game)


*fuck yeah gormenghast