TSOY: beastie stats?

[anonymouse]

I didn't see any either on the wiki, or in the online rules.

I'm trying to get a feel for what constitutes strong vs weak beasts, as far as their innate abilities go. The rules suggest "assigning points", and mentions that points in pools are very advantageous to the beast, but.. nothing about the abilities themselves.

Clinton, or maybe someone else whose played with this particular bit of the rules, maybe chime in? Semi-random beasties to fight are practically a staple of dungeon crawls, so some guidelines would be nice. ;)

[James_Nostack]

I didn't see any either on the wiki, or in the online rules.

In the Ratkin Crunchy Stuff there are stats for a swarm of rodents, and somewhere on the Wiki there's some half-finished, unplaytested notes for "the Lurker in the Swamp."  But these probably won't help too much...

Actually it's a good question.  I get the impression with TSOY that it's one part Robert E. Howard critters (composite beasts: half crocodile, half lemmings), and one half Gamma World (screwed up mutated things)... and that monsters tend to be rare and dwell far away from civilization.

One note on the Fantasy Heartbreakers: why do so many RPG's give made-up names to critters, like xeethalgons, destrachans, chuuls, or zelekhets?  Made-up names are difficult to pronounce, difficult to remember, and totally opaque to your audience.  IMO name the thing in English.  "Tentacled horror" is better than xeethalgon; "Enormous Goddamn Lobster-Python-Bug" is better than chuul, and so on.  And if the players want to give some crazy creature a name of their own... bingo, that's the name.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

There are no monsters in The Shadow of Yesterday. If I was doing it again, that'd be a selling point: "no gods, no monsters."

There are two beast-type things: animals and humans gone real bad. In both cases, ability ratings should be chosen in relation to the characters' ability ratings. An ability rating equal to the highest in the party + 2 would be pretty rough, for example.

So, to clarify again - there's no lists or common levels of abilities because that should be chosen relative to your characters. Feel free to have a gorilla with 9 in Scrapping while your characters all have around 2-4 in their abilities, but understand that just means they can't play with it.

[sirogit]

I use a system for generating NPCs divergent from Clinton's suggested method.

Decide how important/powerfull in story terms the thing should be:

---------------

Small(1 in Abilities, 1 in Pools, 2 Secrets), someone that doesn't have many outstanding skills to effect the situation. Quite vulnerable and subject to powers over it.

Big(3 in Abiltiies, 2 in Pools, 4 Secrets), someone who has honed their abilities to the point of having a strong effect in everyday life.

Heroic(5 in Abilties, 3 in Pools, 8 Secrets), a powerfull character capabable of crusading for their ideals and having a widespread effect throughout the world.

Epic(7 in Abilties, 4 in Pools, 16 Secrets), The seat of power, an entity who's existence has consequences far and wide.  

----------------------------------------

Give them a +2 to an Abilty or a +1 to a Pool if it's something they're good at, and a -2 to an ability or a -1 to a pool if its something they're not good at.

Through the story, you may think that its time to improve or decrease their importance/power, and don't feel reluctant to do so.

The important thing is to not adjust them according to "How they effect the PCs", so that players can see the change in their standing from the little people who have to worry about what's happening above them to the biggest movers and shakers in the entire story.

[anonymouse]

sirogit:

Thanks, that's exactly the kinda thing I'm looking for (I'm hijacking the TSOY rules and splicing in another setting, so some variety of monster-to-beat-on is necessary). Have you playtested those? They look pretty solid, so I'll give 'em a shot this week.

[sirogit]

Only for the 4 sessions of TSOY that I've run, and for those the rules seemed pretty satisfactory, with no unpredictable results and very little time ever spent deciding on the score range. Not what I'd consider -really- playtested, though.