White Dwarf #17 - My Life as a Werebear

By Lew Pulsipher

"I traveled the road many times, sat on the porch, played the games, been the dog, everything. I was even the scarecrow for a while."

After running AD&D for years I think all DMs have gone down this path and let their players run monsters. This is an early incarnation of that idea with some interesting twists such as a player running a Blink Dog pack or the example of the Lammasu as a player race/class, The general thrust of the article is that any 'monster' could be run by players and the special abilities of certain monsters only gained through experience which for some would also equate to age.

The examples provided are a good mix of monster types with the Stone Giant shown as perhaps the easiest to convert to a leveled race/class and the Werebear and Blink Dog pack more involved. I'd add more racial abilities to the Stone Giant and deal with the Werebear as a normal character with a specific class that is simply afflicted with lycanthropy.