How many people play from the "monsters" side? Not EVIL but, as a being that the majority in the world think as a monster.
Obviously there is the bog standard werewolf and vampire focused game but what else?
Of the ones you have played or seen played, were they always excuses to do EVIL? Do they end in disgust? Reskinned "Murder Hobos"?
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Paizo has a series of free modules where you play Goblins.
PDFs are free, starts here - http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j5w?Pathfinder-Module-We-Be-Goblins
There's the original: Monsters, Monsters, Monsters by Flying Buffalo. Runequest and GURPS and HERO all are capable of it even if they don't have active campaign support for it.
D&D had the Complete Book of Humanoids and Orcs of Thar. There's also Orc World, Ork!, Troll Babe, and a Skaven book for WFRP 2e.
I did run a goblin game in 2e D&D, they were tasked by their evil wizard master to go into the forest of the kindly druid, to beat him up and shave his beard. The faced pixies and satyrs and so on. Some of the players would have done that and nothing else for the rest of their gaming careers and others would have quit the group straight up. So mixed results.
Reincarnation in AD&D ended with my as a Gnoll bard.
Reincarnation in AD&D ended with me as a otter... with fireball.
Complete Guide to Humanoids lets you play quite a range of "monsters".
Various Dragon articles.
Red Steel setting allowed Clockworks, Rakasta, Areana, Lupin and Tortles.
Council of Wyrms has you playing a dragon.
etc.
For non TSR games.
Dragon Storm has most of the PCs as effectively people-weres. Monsters who turn into people because dragons in that setting were banging anything that moved. Dragons, natch, Werewolves, Unicorns, Pegasus, Gargoyles, Winged Tigers, Griffons, Phoenixes, etc.
White Wolf made a business out of this. Werewolves, Vampyres, Wraiths, Mummies, etc.
Rifts is of course the poster child for this.
"Orcs of Thar" was the absolute best for this, IMO.
Quote from: RPGPundit;767937"Orcs of Thar" was the absolute best for this, IMO.
I forgot about this. Seconded.
Monsters! Monsters! was actually my introduction to Tunnels & Trolls -- great fun raiding human towns with all sorts of beasties and baddies!
A couple years back, I created 2 adventures (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/89767/X1-Wrath-of-the-Goblinoids) where you play the "bad" guys, even though you aren't really bad. Just from the perspective of the humanoids. For example, this is one of the illustrations that pretty much sums up that perspective:
(http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g141/rajzwaibel/Evil_party_attack_finals_zps8286b58a.jpg)
Something I haven't done, but might be fun: a scenario like Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction, with PCs as Possessors. Choose your favorite historical villain and bring him back from the dead, with fantastic energistic powers, in far future galactic milieu as strange to the character as it is to a player who hasn't read the books (ideally the state of all the players).
Quote from: David Johansen;765190There's the original: Monsters, Monsters, Monsters by Flying Buffalo. Runequest and GURPS and HERO all are capable of it even if they don't have active campaign support for it.
In fact RQ did have campaign support with one of the best non-human supplements produced, the 1982 Trollpak.
(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/trollpak.jpg?t=1405160544)
Great info. More option than I thought.
How many times has the game been just an excuse to be disgusting instead of "you aren't really bad, just are not sun loving humanoids"?
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I used Castles and Crusades to make a homebrew campaign where the players were goblins, kobolds (Palladium style), and orcs.
It was played exactly the same as it would regular; humans and their allies were the monsters invading the player-character's valley. The humans' food looked and smelled terrible to the PCs. Soap was seen as filth. etc.
At one point, the PCs had to build defensive fortifications for a goblin village in the path of a human adventuring group. So, they built a single level dungeon full of traps, populated by flail snails and other wild critters.
It was fun, no one did anything "evil," since the PCs were defending themselves and their people from armed parties of human thugs.
Quote from: David Johansen;765190D&D had the Complete Book of Humanoids and Orcs of Thar.
Let's not forget the
Creature Crucible (http://www.waynesbooks.com/CreatureCrucible.html) line.
- Tall Tales of the Wee Folk
- Top Ballista
- The Sea People
- Night Howlers