Sleeper's Artifice

The Sleeper’s Workbooks · No. 1

The Monster Workbook

A six-step method for building a monster that feels like it was there first. The numbers come from a bestiary you already own.

Printable PDF · instant download from Etsy

Cover of The Monster Workbook: over a designer's shoulder as a sketched dragon-like creature climbs up off the page of his workbook

Two of the book’s 14 pages. The rest is in the PDF.

Build the Monster They Remember

Here's a way to build the monster your group will still be bringing up later. It's rarely the one with the biggest numbers. Usually it's the one that seemed to belong to the place before the party ever got there, and this workbook builds that feeling on purpose.

The method takes six steps and fits on one page. Give the creature a body, an origin, a weakness that costs something, a sign it leaves on the land, and ground of its own. Then borrow a stat block from your bestiary and change it in three visible moves. Four d66 tables with 144 prompts back up the method for whenever a blank page is getting in the way.

One of those prompts is The Sign, 64. The creature attends funerals, weddings and the edge of the harvest dance, always at the treeline, and it has never once come closer, so the town has started sending it plates.

The book also runs the method all the way through once, with the Tollgrim, a toll-keeper grown out of an ancient road. Every step is shown, right up to the stat block it ends up borrowing. Three reprintable worksheets cover the monster, its lair and its legend.

WHAT'S INSIDE

  • The method, six steps on one page, numbers last.
  • 4 d66 tables with 144 entries: The Body, The Origin, The Weakness, The Sign.
  • 3 reprintable worksheets: the Monster Page, the Lair Page, the Legend Page.
  • The reskinning page: six roles, three visible changes, and every number left where the playtesters put it.
  • The worked example, the Tollgrim, with every step shown, including the block chosen.
  • Screen edition plus a plain-white print edition, US Letter.
  • All four tables as plain text for VTT decks and house tools.
  • Bookmarked, DRM-free PDF. System-agnostic. No stat blocks.

No stat blocks printed and no SRD text. It borrows from the bestiary you already own, so it fits any fantasy table.

Monster Motives & Tactics (Tables Vol. II) runs the creature once it's built, covering how it fights, what it wants, its tells and its turns. The Toll Road (Foes No. 1) has six finished creatures with their numbers included. Each of those two runs fine without the other, and without this workbook.

We'll Pick Up Next Week, the free letter: sleepersartifice.substack.com

The Monster Workbook, page 2