What's a good excuse for having a shitload of giant water monsters in your setting? I love them...

Pretty sure as well, but I like to use generic names.

This right here

Basically this.

Oceans allow for some crazy shit.

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More or less this. Just add a large body of water in your world map, and let your players explore it's wonders and horrors.

Or alternatively, have a underwater race tame/call alot of water monsters and attack coastal towns, would make for a fun adventure Or campaign, whatever you wish to do with it

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The problem with giant see creatures is that there are barely any fun ways to fight them without homebrewing a lot of special rules just for them, or playing some kind of merfolk.

Post apocalyptic water world with mutants and shiz.

The goddess of the ocean is a crazy cat(fish) lady.

Lots of things for them to eat and lots of space for them to live. Plesiosaurs were real things. Also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-sea_gigantism

water levels suck dick

You need a sufficiently large body of water with lots of food. Probably some kind of apex predator that chomps on giant whale-like animals?

COMMENCE Veeky Forums DEEP SEA THREAD
>how to get monsters in my game?
ill help OP

you should have a water based quest hub city that serves to introduce the the problem of the ocean to the players. it could be a harbor or an island or whatever.

maybe there is a merchant shipping company that pays bounties for monsters
maybe there is a tribe of nomadic merfolk that hunts them like indianns hunt buffalo

Large planet = larger ocean = more food = larger creatures.

if you don't have oceans everywhere, just have in the setting's past that certain areas were once covered by water and there were one or more gods of the ocean who were worshipped pretty heavily at the time. have the PCs go to one of their ruined temples, have puzzles based on the fact that traversal through the temple used to be by swimming, throw schools of ghost sharks at them

>ghost sharks

What about an underwater civilization or ancient abandoned facilities?

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Isn't this from a video game?

Just send your players to explore the drowned Atlantis. Stock them up with swim boosts and unlimited water breathing so as not to be distracted by trifling matters.
Remember not to turn it into a dungeon, have them explore open plazas and buildings.
Maybe make Atlanteans giants so as to have room inside.

And then your beloved monsters everywhere.

The party decides to visit an Island, then gets stuck on the boat for 8 years.

You generally need to homebrew in order to have fun with any sort of giant monster anyway. Aquatics just add a bit.

Not every monster needs to be fought. Having a humongous monster living in the ocean can be a wonderful backdrop for a setting, with NPC sea farers performing sacrifces to the Lord of the Seas before voyages so that he won't unleash his watchdog on them for example.

Have the PCs travelling along an ice sheet. Then a horse or reindeer, maybe even a bear they shoot, falls through the ice sheet and a huge sea monster swims up and grabs it. I would use a greenland shark, even though it isn't giant in sea monster terms.

DMing 101: if it's there, the players will want to fight it.

That's not my experience at all.

From what I've learnt of my GM's setting, horrifying sea monsters is basically the reason why the nations we're in are limited to this continent and didn't leave when they started getting fucked by demons.

Since this place also has air travel...that also suggests there are ones out there that either fly or have powerful enough ranged attacks to be a threat. It's the kind of situation where a captain successfully crossing it is notable enough that it's basically his title.

GM: 'You're pretty sure that this thing will kill you if you try anything.'
Players: 'Ah well, if he says that then it must have some very high stats. Best avoid it.'

You lucky sonovabitch.

>GM: 'You're pretty sure that this thing will kill you if you try anything.'
You too if that always worked.

In my experience it depends entirely on the DM.

One of my DMs is known for making wussy encounters. Not because their stats are bad, but because he's playing them to our strengths. Because he will not try to go around the defensiv characters, he won't use the abilities of the enemies to their full extent and so on. But, he's great at giving us the feeling of being awesome, having fun fights with action, fast pace and gruesome violence.

It's basically playing a game with great stats. You feel awesome.

I'm considered the other way around. My players are scared of initiative. They all build ridiculous anti-ambush skillsets. At least one per group, usually everyone, invests a bit. THe fights are few and far between because my enemies are never meeting them in open combat unless they're ogres. If they make themselves known to the enemy and the enemy is a shift fucker there will be hostage situations, there will be assassins coming after them, there will be research done to find their weakness and there will abso-fucking-lutely be an archer or twelve who's entire job is to shoot the wizard and then call a retreat when they're absolutely sure he's dead.

I haven't had a combat encounter for about 15 sessions now. They keep solving all of it with social or possibly stealth.They win everything because they're not bruteforcing it. When they do meet enemies they stack their deck as much as inhumanly possible. Great fun.

Mutations caused by radiation/toxic waste/biological warfare or all of the above.
In the setting i play, in the sea even barnacles are a big threat.
In Miami there are huge aligators and crocodiles pretty much everywhere, and Missisipi is not only pretty much toxic waste stream with water added for flavor, but there's a shitload of murderous creatures.

Someone opened a portal to the plane of water at the bottom of the ocean and things have been traversing over for a few years now.

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In my case, my players would try to tame it just because the ranger wanted a new pet.

Well I'm writing the RP book myself and it has a layered world where the bottom is an infinite lake. So a great reason.

Just add some sort of simic mad scientist who made sea monsters out of boredom...now he needs help containing them....

The planet is flat and infinitely deep. People have used extremely large magical beacons to try and measure the depth before. They make it to around 7 miles before the signal sharply cuts off.

>subsequent tests experienced the cut-off at 6 and 5 miles

>tfw running fully underwater campaign

Guts, please go back to the boat. Your girlfriend is still retarded.

That would be perfect.

Go on please

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I'm just gonna post some, because I support the love for sea monsters.

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If you're looking for an underwater rpg look at Polaris.

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Define 'giant'. The size of whales and small boats? Or 'dwarfs supertankers'?

I really wish there was more art of sea monsters that aren't huge enough to eat whole ships.

Not OP, but with giant I would guess anything noticeably larger than the real life "counterparts", or at least Huge as per D&D size categories.

mfw i see this thread

>ghost sharks

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I'll dump what oceanic monsters I have to offer.

Ghost sharks sound pretty damn horrifying. Might use this one at some point, thanks for the idea.

The possibilities are endless. Bodak squids. Gargantuan hermit crabs with ships instead of shells. Slaad killer whales. Bobbit worm hydras.

kek

You keep that hydra shit to yo damn self

don't forget about psychic box jelly fish.

Too late.
Some user already spawned that thing into the existance.
The tarrasque of the seas.

That was me, sorry. Same campaign as the sword-tailed sharks, crab people, magical jellyfish swarms, and hit-and-run giant gulper eels.

I heard this series was crap, but apparently it's getting a movie?

Does it shoot underwater hornets from its head holes?

More like Bitch-Nigga

>Jump in ocean with knife
>Stab until monster dies

>Ghost Sharks

At least you didn't say Ghost Shark-Men.

Looks...adorable.

Yeah okay Beowulf.

My brother's friend had nightmares once about a ghost shark that could inhabit pretty much any pool of water. Like, you'd be walking by a puddle or a bucket and a full-sized shark would pop out.

That's a really cool encounter idea.
>everyone is drinking and laughing at a banquet
>suddenly, out of every glass/bottle
>GHOST SHARKS

>30 seconds before, ghost pilotfish jump out of the glasses

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>yfw man-eating whales that can move about on land

They're all semi-independent antibodies of Cthulhu which have took control of and mutated normal sea creatures.

Now your setting has Cthulhu, the sea monster based on Hp Lovecraft's own nightmares.

>GREAT OOGIDY BOOGIDY, I'M A SCARY GHOoOoOoOoOST SHARK, AND IF YOU SOLVE THIS RIDDLE
>The answer is food!
>Stupid fucking halfli-
>OoOoOoOoOoOOH YOU GUESSED RIGHT, TINY THING, YOUuUuUuUuU MAY PASS
>Cue party entering the ghostly echo of a shallow sea, complete with crinoids, trilobites, and happy shark couples watching their sharklings play

Just to add to the general discussion, even if this is the case, I would imagine DMing 201 would be "So Your Players Subverted Your Intended Campaign (Probably by Fighting the Setting): How to Roll w/ This"

If the players want to fight a sea-god, roll w/ it, make a fun campaign about fighting the sea-god. Obviously, the fight is gonna be different then "stab til dead" - make a series of quests about it. Get creative. Shit could be fun and memorable.

Because we are playing a game based on monster hunter Tri ultimate?

>leviathan isn't actually aggressive, just playful and extremely large

I'd pay to see a campaign you ran if it's anything like you describe, that sort of gameplay is the shit.

A synopsis for a curious user? I'll be googling it later.

>everyone just assumes one of the magic users was showing off

That's a movie.

Most sea monsters are boring as shit because people just fall back on "olololololololol look how big it is!"

You know that one of the global rules is to not shitpost?

Well, that's an interesting part of the sea. Things can BE big. Hell, even in reality, the size of a blue whale is patently ridiculous. You could crawl through some of its blood vessels. Its tongue weighs three tons. It has an eight foot penis.

Not shitposting, just pointing out the trend that you can see in almost every picture here. People don't bother with interesting sea monsters because they just decide to make them huge and think that covers the deficit.

Well, what else is there to sea monsters besides huge, deadly, and can be under your boat out of view.

>"I'M GIVING OUT FREE HUGS!"

What movie?

Sewer levels are worse