Monster Description Cards PDF

The Monster Description Cards are extensive storytelling tools containing purposely unique flavor text to add realism or memorable characterization to creatures and their subsequent events. The cards provide keywords to spark your imagination and example phrases of their use. Written by novelists and organized by dungeon-masters, the cards are designed for quick on-the-fly use and inherently adds randomization.

There are Four cliché-busting storytelling tools within the
Monster Description Card Deck

1.Descriptions and Introductions: Above all else, the "core descriptions" provide brilliant creature concepts. They share unique ways to introduce or explain distinct physical features to an audience. These "core descriptions" allow writers to stay far away from monsters, terms, phrases, or even ideas that are now unoriginal and thoroughly overused.

2.Combat Descriptions: The second tool in the deck are the Combat Sections. These sections focus on drawing an audience into the sheer violence of monstrous combat. They explore unsettling concepts like great height and length, great strength, even preternatural abilities. They touch on the tension that lingers with the threat of a hero's death. These cards collect these concepts and inherently randomizes them for any writer to literally draw inspiration.

3.LAST STAND Examples: What happens when a monster is cornered, heavily injured, or both? What if the creature is smart enough to be deceitful, proud, or vindictive in its last moments? How can you subtly share that your monster is on its last legs, but there is still a worrisome hint of malice in their eyes? These questions are all answered by the LAST STAND section of the cards. Where examples help illustrate the response of creatures facing overwhelming odds and perhaps displaying heroism, sacrifice, or wickedness of their own.

4.Event Cards: Thanks to extra funding during our Kickstarter, we now have additional event cards in every deck. There are nine different types of Event categories, each category has multiple cards with unique system neutral ideas.

#1 HORNS & FRILLS:

Horns are hard permanent outgrowths, often curved and pointed and typically found in pairs. Frills are upward-curving bony plates typically extending behind the skull.

#2 FANGS & MAWS:

The Fangs category is considered the mouths, jaws, teeth, and maws of large, small, or odd creatures.

#3 CLAWS & PINCERS:

The claws category consists of pincers, paws, talons, and hooks. That is, any style of sharp, usually slender, and curved nail at the end of hands and feet.

#4 PROTRUSIONS & OSTEODERMS:

This category consists of bony deposits that form knots above scales. Protrusions regularly produce sharp structures that can be used offensively, or widen scales and plates that add to the defenses of a monster.

BODILY FORMS:

Creature’s (#5)hides, (#6) eyes, (#7) noses, (#8) ears, or other physical oddities that might distinguish a creature from its nightmarish kin are the focus of this group.

#9: TAILS:

The hindmost part of a monster, such as the flexible extension of the backbone in a vertebrate. Tails can be used to whip, constrict, or trip an opponent.

#10: WINGS:

This category focuses on wings of all shapes and sizes, functional or non-functional: Elliptical wings, high-speed wings, long soaring wings, and more. For the cards combat backside, wings will batter with winds, slice with sharp edges, and stab with spiked ends for a unique description style.

#11: TENTACLES:

The tentacles cards help depict any elongated, boneless, flexible organs, limbs, antenna, or barbels of famed monsters.

#12: WOUNDS:

Depict the The appearance of past and current wounds located on a monster.

“Writers of all levels love the impactful narrative experiences Description Cards add to their works”

There are common composition principles that ask writers to "show and not tell." That is, allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's summarization and cliches. The Monster Description Cards reinforces this principle by providing keywords to spark the imagination and elegant examples chock-full of distinctive story-building concepts. We all know, as a storyteller, having a memorable antagonist is a key ingredient to success.

The cards will melt right into your game, and your players will think you are brilliant. They will provide idea after idea on improving monster encounters. But more importantly, they will also drive you to new, full-blown campaign ideas. The type of campaign that players will reminisce about for years to come. The Monster Description Cards archive these feats by offering up concepts over statistical modeled stat-blocks. The cards narrate one-of-a-kind characteristics that you can easily add to existing monsters, creatures, or oddities.

Start with introducing extraordinary creatures to your players, giving them clear signs of why they might be unique, even among their kin.

Then, improve combat by focusing on the right adjectives associated with the body part landing the blow, such as claws, tails, or fangs. Not only are there specific narrations for specific body parts, but they are also broken down by blunt strikes, slashing strikes, and piercing strikes. With these multiple combinations, you can keep your combat fresh game after game.

Lastly, there are always moments in the game where a GM would like to subtly provide hope to their players by indicating the monster is nearing defeat. These epic final moments are depicted in the LAST STAND sections of the Monster Description Cards.

Familiars and Animal Companions: Your Familiars and Animal Companions are cool as hell. Let me make them sound cool as hell. Select a few cards that match the combat style of your familiar or animal companion and hand them to the Gamemaster to describe their attacks with style. Critical hits made by your Familiars or Animal Companion should be magnificent, and these cards provide that strike description that can be so satisfying. You can even have a LAST STAND card ready for your Familiars or Animal Companion just if things come down to that. Moreover, the cards' descriptions can be the basis of the unique features that make your Familiar or Animal Companion distinctively yours. So let’s build something special with these cards.

Start with introducing extraordinary creatures to your players, giving them clear signs of why they might be unique, even among their kin.

Shapeshifting: In tabletop RPGs, there are thousands of classes/powers/feats/spells that can shapeshift or grow body parts into lethal weapons. Thousands more transform hands to claws, teeth to fangs, arms to tentacles or growing tails, bony protrusions, even wings. Each of these wonderful transformations can benefit from the Monster Description Cards. The Cards will instantly make these transforms unique and unforgettable with clever depictions, separating your character's ability from the crowd of other characters with similar capabilities or sometimes the exact same class ability, power, feats, or spells.

Using the cards to depict transforming spells: Using the Monster description cards to verbally illustrate the results of magical effects that modify a character's body is more than just a way to be unique; it's how you build a legacy. Stylize your character's abilities with these cards, so they are recognized by others, respected, or even feared.

Monster Journal Entries: Commemorate the monsters you've encountered by inserting Monster Description Cards in your monster journal. Flip through cards of unique descriptions to depict the memorable battles along your character's journey. Each card is your personal trophy, a memento of your battle-scars from the most challenging encounters. You can even use these cards to log essential information about certain monsters in your campaign, making every entry a result of your character's meticulous observations during battle. Sing the song better than any bard could with these encounter-defining descriptions.

System Neutral, Writer Friendly

We understand that there are a multitude of genres, points-of-views, worlds, rulesets, and games that writers and tabletop gamers choose. That’s why our ``philosophy dictates the following rules which will ensure our content is system-agonist, narrative Neutral and friendly to writers and GMs at all levels of expertise.

The cards will help you answer question like these:

In a sea of zombies, what makes this one stand out?

In a world of dragons what makes this dragon different? Special? Memorable?

Anime is all about unique characters and ability, so why not use the cards to create singularity among a crowded field?