001.944 Monsters and Related Phenomena

05 Nov, 2026

I recently published a baseball inspired dungeon crawl that only used the 2-10 number cards from a deck of playing cards, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the remaining “stack of letters.”

My first idea was to generate NPCs using only surface level details. It uses the Jacks Queens and Kings to answer most of the questions, and has a quirky mechanic for the Ace cards when they are drawn.

That was fun to write, but now I’m motivated to do more with these 16 cards…

Let’s make a MONSTER GENERATOR!

Shuffle the stack of letters, and deal out cards into four piles, sorted by rank. Stop dealing out cards once a pile contains all four suits of a given rank. Which rank reaches a full set first will determine the size of the monster:

*If the Ace set was completed first, finish creating the monster, then decide after the fact if it is Extra Small or Extra Large.

Record the monster’s size, then count the total number of cards dealt [ n ] before shuffling them back into the stack of letters. Deal out [ n ] cards into four new piles, organized by suit.

In JP Coovert’s Dragon Town and the Darkness Below he uses four system neutral stats: Health, Armor, Speed, and Damage.

♥️: The hearts suit will obviously represent the monster’s Health stat.

♦️: The diamonds symbol kind of looks like a shield, so it will represent the monster’s Armor stat.

♣️: The clubs symbol reminds me of a paw print, so it will represent the monster’s Speed stat.

♠️: The spades symbol could easily be an arrow head, so it will represent the monster’s Damage stat

After dealing out [ n ] cards into four piles, each suit will have range of 0-4 cards, which just so happens to also line up with Dragon Town’s system neutral stat range:

Record the monster’s stats, then select the monster’s highest stat and remove all of those monster cards from the game. Now return the rest of the monster cards to the stack of letters.

Now let’s research this monster is by playing 20 Questions with a yes/no oracle.

Shuffle the stack of letters while asking the first yes/no question that comes to mind…

“Can it fly?”
“Is it nocturnal?
“Does it live in water?

…then stop shuffling and look at the bottom card of the stack:

If the monster’s highest stat is ♥️Health or ♦️Armor, then the answers will skew towards ⚫️YES.

If the monster’s highest stat is ♣️Speed or ♠️Damage, then the answers will skew towards 🔴NO.

Don’t think too much about this, and just ask questions as if the stack has a specific monster in mind.

If you’d prefer a more magic eight ball approach, use this oracle:

After asking the stack of letters 20 questions, you will generate a pretty solid idea of what the monster looks like and how it behaves. Now you can use that information to write some narrative focused abilities and or attacks. Once you’ve made your system neutral monster, you can convert to your favorite TTRPG system!