Just Use Bears

Preorder Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster! Find a simple stat block you can reuse and reskin into just about any monster you want. Keep the stat block handy to help you improvise monsters during your game. I first ran into the quote and idea behind "just use bears" in Knock issue 1 by the Merry Mushmen – a fantastic zine for OSR RPGs. First written by Jack Shear in 2016 as far as I can tell, the concept of “Just Use Bears” is simple. When you need a monster and don't have one handy, use the stat block for a bear and you'll probably be ok. Add some flavor if you want. Improvise a feature if you need. But the base stat block likely works just fine. What Is the Bear Of Your System? Different systems handle the idea of "just use bears" in different ways. In old-school systems, the flat math of the system means a bear can be a solid threat to characters across several character levels. One or more bears can likely threaten a group of characters. A single bear stat block may not provide a good…

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