Immediately heard this in my head to the tune of Head Like A Hole. Just in case you were wondering how my brain works
Been DMing a 5e game with my nephews - two 10 year olds, one 13 year old - and they’re really enjoying it so far.
They’ve recently befriended a monster, specifically a mimic, and I was curious: Is there anything like a history or culture to monsters in general? Like, motivations and interests beyond food and survival? Would be cool to be able to explore this space, if there’s anything there to explore.
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You may find, as I have, some edification from this podcast (ha, I know, recommending a podcast in the year 2022)
Here’s an episode specifically dealing with Mimics that doesn’t necessarily give them much more depth than food/survival drives but does sort of extrapolate some things about them that are fun to think about
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i don’t think it has a section on mimics, but volo’s guide to monsters goes in depth on a bunch of monster cultures
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I’d ask myself: what defines a mimic? They turn into other things. Maybe they have elaborate philosophies about what it means to mimic something.
Maybe mimicking something is a compliment, if something is good enough to be mimicked, it must be very good indeed.
Maybe they like to play tricks. Maybe they view mimicry as a way of helping others improve themselves by testing to see if they can see through a disguise.
Maybe they aren’t especially intelligent but have weird life cycles. “Most mimics don’t reach their full size but rumor has it that some mimics can mimic buildings, hills, or even small villages”.
Think about what life is like to a mimic and I think you’ll start getting some ideas. Tugging at strings like that leads interesting places.
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The podcast above has an idea I’ll steal for a campaign someday, namely that occasionally mimics spawn young and those young take the form of coins because they’re small and likely to be carried away by humanoids and thus, propagated.
I imagine a scenario where the party has a suspiciously easy score of some treasure in some ruins that should have been thoroughly picked-over, and naturally they go out and do the classic player thing and buy a whole bunch of overpowered gear because Hell Yeah We Have Money but it turns out they’re accidentally victimizing a bunch of shopkeeps by dropping big old handfuls of mimics in all their stores.
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Another possibility is tying them in with dopplegangers – they’re both shape-changers, perhaps they’re related, maybe they have the same origin, be that some sort of cross-dimensional gate, or a Spelljammer ship from a distant world fleeing…something.
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The 2nd edition monster manual has habitat/society and ecology sections for every monster. For mimics it has the following for habitat/society:
Mimics live underground, where they can avoid sunlight. They are solitary creatures; this is to ensure that each mimic has a large grazing area. They have no culture; their primary concerns are survival and food. Common mimics are quite intelligent and will gladly offer information in exchange for food. Killer mimics attack regardless of attempts at communication. Mimics have no moral code and no
interest in culture or religion. Wizards who use them as guardians have sometimes found them to be less than enthusiastic about obeying their commands.
And ecology:
Mimics were originally created by wizards to protect themselves from treasure hunters. A good meal (one or two humans) can sustain them for weeks. They reproduce by fission and grow to full size in several years. Mimics pose as stonework, doors, statues, stairs, chests, or other common items made from stone, wood, and metal. Their skin is covered with optical sensors that are sensitive to heat and light in a 90-foot radius, even in pitch darkness. Any powerful light source can easily blind them, including direct sunlight. Along with glue, they can excrete a liquid that smells like rotting meat; this attracts smaller, more common prey (usually rats). Mimic ichor is useful in the creation of polymorph self potions, and their glue and solvent sacs can be sold to alchemists. Other internal organs are useful in the manufacture of perfumes. The mimic’s internal orcans are considered
tasty delicacies m some cultures.
Some interesting stuff in there.
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An early item featured in No Rangers Allowed was a bag of coin beetles: they looked exactly like gold coins until they woke up and stole anything made of metal on the person who was paid in these coins and returned to the bag from whence they came with the stolen goods.
This is the party’s initial encounter with asshole wizard, jokkmokk, who bought a magic spoon with these coins.
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Jokkmokk really was a transcendent dickbag
one of the players in my call of cthulhu group is a private schoolboy, so we had him translate a latin chant into english for us using his actual real life ability to do so
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this just got advertised to me on facebook. of all the bands to have a ttrpg, faith no more is not one i would ever have guessed
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Yeah, I’m so confused.
I did dig how for Mage: The Ascension, White Wolf ditched all the Mission UK and Bauhaus lyrics starting off each chapter in Vampire: The Masquerade rulebooks for Faith No More and Living Colour. Wizards are funky.
a friend lent me the first volume of fabled lands, a multi-book open-world solo rpg. i just played it for about an hour and a half, and had a pretty good time! early it felt like i was wondering around looking for something to do, but i eventually picked up a few quest hooks, one of which got all my items vaporised by a dragon, and another got me killed by a scorpion-man.
still, i learned a few new things about how progression can be done in a solo rpg, so that’s good, for when i finally get around to writing more of them.
also, i bought the konosuba rpg. i’ve never seen the show, but manga publishers translating japanese rpgs and selling them for the price of a single manga volume is something i’d like to encourage. so far, i’ve only read the replay at the start of the book, so i don’t really have anything to say about it yet
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Wow they actually did it.
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Are the giant space hamsters intact?
They had been hinting at this with hamsters for the last month so I’m guessing yes.
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One of the books is called Boo’s Astral Menagerie so I think they kept the hamsters yeah
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