Let’s be clear: I LOVE dragons.
But there will also be NO dragons in Here Be Monsters. Ever.
“But Carson, that’s crazy”, you might be saying, “dragons are awesome”. And you would be right. Dragons are awesome. I’ve always been a big fan of Charizard and Dragonite. Red-Eyes Black Dragon is the coolest. And my secret weapon in Magic the Gathering for years was the Furnace Dragon (although in hindsight I don’t actually know how good it was). I love dragons so much that one of the first trading cards I ever made, back in 1st grade, on a white index card, was called DRAGON X. And he was awesome. A bajillion power on that guy. Unstoppable.
So why no dragons?
It comes down to two things: FIRST, when we started up on Here Be Monsters, I dove back into all kinds of exciting fandoms and hobbies that I’d been absent from for years. Yu-Gi-Oh was the biggest offender: Greedy Venom Fusion Dragon. Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End. Cyber Dragon. Cyber End Dragon. Cyberdarkness Dragon. Cyberdark End Dragon. They were everywhere.
And each one felt like it was the last card you will ever need. The ultimate chase card. The final form. The big boss monster.… but when everything’s a big boss monster, are any of them? Pokemon too had a new dragon each generation and MTG was filled to the brim with all kinds of dragons. They were just everywhere. And none of them felt very important. Not like Charizard did when I was a kid.
Over the years an unspoken hierarchy had appeared in all of these games and fandoms, where dragons were at the top and everything else was below. There was always a new dragon and it always had to be bigger, cooler, scarier than the previous one. The rest of the monsters in a game were really interesting... but never quite measured up.
Additionally, that feeling of awesome and epic that so many of these dragons inspired was… well… not very pirate-like. Think of the best pirates that spring to mind… they’re not perfect. They can be cool, sure. But even the best of them are a little… odd (Jack Sparrow is a lot odd). And I wanted to make sure I wasn’t chasing the goal of perfection or awesomeness. I wanted even the coolest of these pirates to be just a little… odd.
After all, for everyone who liked Dragonite, there was someone who like Arcanine, or Horsea, or Mr. Mime (okay, maybe not Mr. Mime). The point is there are all different kinds of people who like games like this and I wanted to explore not only cool pirates, but silly ones and scary ones and goofy ones and odd ones too.
And SECOND (this is the more important thing), well… there are just so many gosh darn other things out there besides dragons!!! I love dragons, but they’ve been put on a pedestal. When was the last time you flipped through a D&D Monster Manual? That thing’s full of the weirdest kinds of creatures.
I have a very distinct memory from childhood of going to the local library with my sister and finding a book called the A-Z Guide to Monsters, or at least I think that was the title (I haven't actually been able to find another copy of it in the interceding years and sometimes I think maybe I made the whole thing up)! In that book they had the coolest illustrations of monsters for each letter of the alphabet. And I remember how amazed I was that dragon was on page four and then never mentioned again. How dare they only include dragons on one page! And yet, ironically, I don't even remember what the illustration for dragon was. But I remember the illustration of a kraken pulling a ship underwater or of a roc, carrying off a full grown elephant and even a wyvern, perched precariously on the ramparts of a castle!
All that is to say that there are an infinite amount of things that could be turned into a pirate-monster, and I wanted to make sure we weren't boxing ourselves in by too many tried-and-true archetypes. I first became aware of this feeling only a month or two into the design process of Here Be Monsters. I'd only done the artwork for 10-15 pirates at that point. And I remember a specific moment where I thought to myself, "Okay, now I need to draw X". And I stopped myself and thought about that phrase. "I need to draw X". Where was that coming from? It was coming from a desire to emulate my favorite games and fandoms and hobbies. The things that brought me so much joy when I was younger because of how fresh they felt. It came from a desire to be just like them.
Which is fine. Honestly, copy your heroes. But that wasn't why Phil and I started HBM in the first place. We wanted to create something that we hadn't seen before. And all of our favorite games back in the day had been groundbreaking because... well... they were treading new ground. Like Digimon, which created a giant dinosaur with a cybernetic arm and strange wings with holes in them. Like... what the heck is that?! Whatever it was, it was original. And I loved that.
While starting on HBM, I realized that there was inspiration everywhere! Heck, I could go to the zoo and have ideas for 500 pirates! Orangutan-pirate? Check. Squirrel-pirate? Check. Flamingo-pirate? Sure (with some hydra thrown in for fun)!
What about a potato or a Don Quixote-knight? Dinosaurs and Sailor Moon-esque magical girls? Goblins and gladiators? Popcorn and piranhas? Tanks and calculators? For years now it has been a game to challenge myself to turn something completely normal and banal into an exciting pirate. Some are successes and some... not so much. But it's always pushing the definition of what can be one of our pirate-monsters and it always keeps things fresh.
It's important to have rules and guidelines to operate by and this is one of my rules to help define the world of the Monster Coast. While there won't be any dragons, the rule actually extends beyond that. It's a gentle reminder not to fall into what the game 'should be' and instead help it discover what it 'can be'.
So no dragons, sorry.
But I can guarantee plenty more of the other weird, strange and wonderful things out there in the world. Because truly only the horizon is the limit.
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