Writober! Stingbat! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Stingbat”.

Stingbats are described in the core Shadowdark book as “Darting, orange insect-bat with four wings and needlelike beak.” And Kelsey has said that it is a renamed stirge.  This is likely a leftover from a brief rewrite Shadowdark had during the WotC OGL fiasco.

There are several other creatures like this that seem to have been done just for fun: strangler = choker; beastman = troglodyte. But others were done for legal reasons–they weren’t part of the SRD.  Brain Eater, Cave Brute, Cave Creeper, Ten-Eyed Oracle, Viperians, and likely a couple others are examples of these.

But what this point brings up is how much just renaming a creature (or not telling the players the name if the characters wouldn’t know–just describing it) brings back that sense of wonder we all had when we first played these games.  It isn’t a “Mind Flayer” where the players know it is a fairly powerful creature specializing in mind attacks.  They have to find that out for themselves–and that can be part of the fun!

What are some other names we could use for common creatures?

• Bulette = Land Shark (but maybe too obvious).
• Grick = Beakworm or Birdworm.
• Harpy = Witch-Vultures or Flying Sirens.
• Hell Hound = Demon Dogs (shout out to Thundarr!).
• Hobgoblin = Pig Soldiers.
• Kobolds = Dragonlings or Pig-Faces, depending on which type you prefer.
• Ogre = Junior Giants.
• Orc = Corrupted Elves. (This might confuse with Drow, but making the players unsure is part of the point.)
• Roper = Cave Mimic.
• Salamander = Fire Kobold.
• Shambling Mound = Swamp Thing.
• Troll = Night Giants.
• Will-o’-wisp = Witch Light.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10.  Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.
13. Death Slug – Looking at the Death Slug’s deadliness and how that’s similar to old-school and low fantasy games.
14. Evil Eye – Various types of “Evil Eyes”: magic items, monsters, or curses.
15. Morzo Moth – A look at the Morzo Moth’s talents/actions makes one see the variety of the Western Reaches book’s monsters.
16. Diamond – Three subtopics: diamonds impacting economy; as spell components for rituals or spells not-yet-accessible; and a enhancements for magic weapons.
17. Slime – Game-able aspects of mundane slime as well as a green slime monster for Shadowdark.
18. Wyrdling – Shows how different and fun Shadowdark can be with this unusual class as an example of how much design freedom a creator of GM has.