Make Monsters Unique

by Mike on 22 June 2026

Describe monsters instead of labelling them so every encounter with a monster is a unique and fresh experience.

Ogres are scary. Even if a player watched previous characters battle ogres twenty times before, the first time they face an ogre with a new character, that character would be right to be terrified. We lose this terror if we simply call it an "ogre" and jump to rolling the dice.

Instead, use flavorful and distinctive descriptions to bring back the terror of facing such a foe. Ogres are big. Ogres are powerful. They might have gory scars or terrifying tattoos or chipped tusks. Their weapon may be a runed femur with a spiked skull on the end. They might have filed their teeth into points or shaped their mohawk out of the dried blood of their enemies.

With the right description, every creature in our RPGs can be unique among all others. Every monster can be scary again, even if our players faced them dozens of times before. We don't have to make such monsters unique with mechanics. We can use our words to make monsters unique.

The fantastic book Monster Overhaul by Skerples has seven tables worth of customization for ogres (just one of hundreds of monsters covered in Monster Overhaul). If you find yourself having trouble coming up with unique descriptions, you can go far with some random tables. Write some tables up yourself to help shore up the areas you have trouble with. Here's a quick one of unique appearances:

Scarred
Tattooed
Painted
Pierced
Furred
Mohawk
Glyphed
Glowing eyes
Fanged
Spiked
Artificial limb
Blinded in one eye
Hooded
Bladed
Fiend-touched
Oozing
Diseased
Burned
Hairy
Rotten

Write your own table to suit your game or use one of the many appearance generators out there to spawn some ideas. Connect monsters to factions or gods unique to your world through symbology on equipment or body art.

These characteristics can also help you identify monsters in combat and you can work with your player-driven monster characteristics to make monsters even more unique.

RPGs are a blend of fiction and mechanics. Sometimes we lean too heavily on the mechanics side and forget that it's the fiction that makes our games unique from one session to the next.

Every ogre can be scary if you describe it in an interesting way.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Running Great Campaign endings and Mindsplinter – Dragon Empire Prep Session 69.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Spread the threat of monsters to all characters.
Use turn order out of combat to ensure everyone gets their time in the spotlight.
Have each player vote on two of three possible future quests. Their top vote counts as 2 and their second as 1. Add up all votes to see which one comes up on top.
Write down your combat encounter benchmark so you can easily improvise combat encounters and know the rough difficulty of the encounters they face.
Reward relics tied to themes and factions with a single use of a powerful spell effect.
Introduce several factions and let the players forge alliances with the ones they choose.
Ask players to describe their new abilities when they level up so you and the other players know what they’re excited about.

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