Least Favorite Monster Overall
I spent the better part of 2 days thinking about my least favorite monster. My wife gave me a better answer than any I had come up with in about 2 seconds. Cliché. That really is my least favorite of any monster. The monster used in the most cliché, tired, unimaginative way. The Orc guarding a chest in the 10 by 10 room. At least put him in a rainbow wig, a grass skirt, something. Mediocre monsters used for attrition of party resources are not fun. This game is all about having fun. Tedium is for real life.
The reason the modules you buy suggest reading the entire thing before running it, is so that a DM can change things that don't make sense to him/her. So maybe next time you intentionally don't make sense. If you look at some of the old adventure modules, they make no sense at all. Some of those are the most fun I've ever had playing D&D. S4 Lost Caverns of the Tsojcanth and WG7 Castle Greyhawk GAWD those are a blast! How about you mix things up and replace the orc with a hooka smoking Carrion Crawler in that 10 by 10 room. Make your players talk him out of the chest. Get weird. Sometimes you need the opium induced Alice in Wonderland dungeon. Hell! Go on a random dungeon generation site get a dungeon map and populate randomly...
Go back to the 1st Edition DMG. The random dungeon generation tables are more than just a way to gain experience. If you give it some thought... ok, wait a minute. Don't give it any thought. Just go with it. Revel in the insanity of putting Salamanders in the room next to Water Elementals.
The trick is keep an open mind, and let the grooviness into your vertebrae. Relax and let go of the control freak tendencies. I realize I'm asking a lot of those of you who consider an RPG a simulationist enterprise, but whimsy is a good thing every once in a while. Not to mention, it keeps your players off balance. If they don't have the wrong irrelevant minutiae to focus on, no plot to derail, no hapless Inn Keeper to murder. The just won't know what to do with themselves.
The point of this whole post is to get you to embrace insanity. Not constantly but just every now and then. Levity is a good thing. Games don't always have to make sense. It is fantasy after all. I'm fairly certain there are dungeons my players walked away from, asking themselves "WTF was he thinking?" Go out and be the chaos.
Happy gaming!
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