In the first installment we looked at how three undead in Dungeons & Dragons -- the ghast, ghoul, and ghost -- were inspired by literature and co-creator Gary Gygax's experiences with what he believed to be a real life haunting. There are plenty of other undead in D&D of course, and while their backgrounds are not nearly as personal to Gygax, one of the undead foes in D&D co-creator Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign was so ferocious that an entirely new class was created to combat it.
[h=3]I Want My...[/h]Mummies were first described in the original Dungeons & Dragons volume, Monsters & Treasure:
The mummy and its rotting curse was likely inspired by Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr's portrayal of the Universal Studios monster in the 1930s film franchise, itself inspired by tales of a mummy's curse harkening back to the 1800s:
Mummies originally were listed as inflicting "positive energy" damage, which, it turns out, was actually a typo, as per Gygax:
Mummies weren't the only undead that would bedevil players and game masters both in and out of the game.
[h=3]The Wight Way?[/h]Although Gygax frequently downplayed the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's work on D&D, some undead monsters were clearly influenced by Tolkien, including the wight (inspired by barrow-wights) and the wraith (inspired by ringwraiths). Jon Peterson explains in Playing at the World:
Wraiths, as described in Chainmail:
Wights get more detail in Monsters & Treasure:
Gygax visualized wights as corporeal, as opposed to wraiths:
Like the wight and wraith, Peterson posits that shadows are also drawn from Tolkien:
Peterson has a theory for spectre as well:
The non-corporeal undead came from a variety of literature, comics, and movies. But two other monsters at the bottom of the undead hierarchy have a very specific cinematic lineage.
[h=3]Skelezombies![/h]As mentioned in the previous installment, wights and ghouls blurred together in Chainmail...and zombies get a whole one sentence dedicated to them:
It doesn't get much better for the zombie in Monsters & Treasure, who is grouped with yet another undead:
Although it's legendary for launching zombies in mainstream culture, Night of the Living Dead doesn't use the phrase "zombie." Instead, it uses ghoul, a term George Romero prefers:
The popularity since the film's debut in 1968 strongly influence the depiction of zombies in D&D. Perhaps because D&D ghouls already fill that niche, D&D zombies are less flesh-eating monsters and more mindless, indestructible mooks.
The zombie's less-fleshy twin, the skeleton, sees more likely inspired by special effects master Ray Harryhausen. Peterson posits that two films in particular were responsible:
Christian Lindke agrees:
There's one other corporeal undead we haven't touched on, and it's one of the most iconic in D&D.
[h=3]Vamping it Up[/h]The D&D vampire was inspired in part by Peter Cushing films, which birthed both the villain and his counterpart, a cleric in the mode of Van Helsing. Mike Mornard, a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, explains:
Bram Stoker's novel was of course some of the inspiration for the cinematic vampire, but the term was present in other media as well. Peterson elaborates:
Gygax gave the vampire level drain:
The mention of clerics is no accident. The first vampire in D&D, Sir Fang, was played by David Fan--and he tipped the scales in the villains' favor so much that the cleric was invented to counter Sir Fang's power:
This might explain the curiously muddled archetype of the cleric, who in earlier incarnations seems more focused on undead than religion.
[h=3]Undead in Their Entirety[/h]Collectively, the appearance of undead creatures in D&D was a product of its time: Popular horror movies combined with the rise of Tolkien's popularity and Gygax's fondness for Lovecraft's weird works created a mishmash of restless dead that haunts heroes to this day.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, and communicator. You can follow him at Patreon.
[h=3]I Want My...[/h]Mummies were first described in the original Dungeons & Dragons volume, Monsters & Treasure:
MUMMIES: Mummies do not drain life energy as Wights and Wraiths do, but instead their touch causes a rotting disease which makes wounds take ten times the usual time for healing. A Cleric can reduce this to only twice as long with a Cure Disease spell if administered within an hour. Only magic weaponry will hit Mummies, and all hits and bonuses are at one-half value against them. Note, however, that Mummies are vulnerable to fire, including the ordinary kind such as a torch.
The mummy and its rotting curse was likely inspired by Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr's portrayal of the Universal Studios monster in the 1930s film franchise, itself inspired by tales of a mummy's curse harkening back to the 1800s:
The idea of a mummy reviving from the dead, an essential element of many mummy curse tales, was developed in The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, an early work combining science fiction and horror, written by Jane C. Loudon and published anonymously in 1827. Louisa May Alcott was thought by Dominic Montserrat to have been the first to use a fully formed "mummy curse" plot in her 1869 story "Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy's Curse", a hitherto forgotten piece of mummy fiction that he rediscovered in the late 1990s.
Mummies originally were listed as inflicting "positive energy" damage, which, it turns out, was actually a typo, as per Gygax:
It was an error, although I probably could create a rationale for mummies drawing their energy from the positive plane is pressed...
Mummies weren't the only undead that would bedevil players and game masters both in and out of the game.
[h=3]The Wight Way?[/h]Although Gygax frequently downplayed the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien's work on D&D, some undead monsters were clearly influenced by Tolkien, including the wight (inspired by barrow-wights) and the wraith (inspired by ringwraiths). Jon Peterson explains in Playing at the World:
Almost all of the Chainmail monsters had indisputable and often unique originals in Tolkien: goblins, orcs, trolls, wraiths (from Ringwraiths), wights (from barrow-wights as well as the Nazgûl), lycanthropes (here understood to include werebears like Beorn from The Hobbit and the “werewolves” alluded to in the Lord of the Rings), ents, of course dragons and even giants. Of the remaining fantastic beings in Chainmail, many are specified as off-brand clones of Tolkien creatures: gnomes are a subcategory of dwarves, fairies of elves, ghouls of wights, kobolds of goblins, ogres of trolls.
Wraiths, as described in Chainmail:
WRAITHS (Nazgul, etc.): Wraiths can see in darkness, raise the morale of friendly troops as if they were Heroes, cause the enemy to check morale as if they were Super Heroes, and paralyze any enemy man — excluding all mentioned in the Fantasy Supplement — they touch during the course of a move (not flying). Paralyzed troops remain unmoving until touched by a friendly Elf, Hero-type, or Wizard. Touch means either actual contact or coming within 1" of. A wraith can either move normally or fly, remaining in the air for as many turns as desired. They melee as either two Armored Foot or two Medium Horse, and they are impervious to all save magical weapons or combat by other fantastic creatures.
Wights get more detail in Monsters & Treasure:
WIGHTS: Wights are nasty critters who drain away life energy levels when they score a hit in melee, one level per hit. Thus a hit removes both the hit die and the corresponding energy to fight, i.e. a 9th level fighter would drop to 8th level. Wights cannot be affected by normal missile fire, but silver-tipped arrows will score normal damage, and magic arrows will score double hits upon them. Magical weapons will score full hits upon them, and those with a special bonus add the amount of the bonus in hit points to the hits scored. Men-types killed by Wights become Wights. An opponent who is totally drained of life energy by a Wight becomes a Wight.
Gygax visualized wights as corporeal, as opposed to wraiths:
absolutely did have in mind that a wight was a physical being, a wraith mainly immaterial, and I thought that was clear from the get-go in original D&D. Certainly the movement rates for the two creatures reflected that, as I recall. (Heh, you can tell it's been a while since I have delved into the MM—over a year now, in fact.) In fact, as I recall the MM illos of the two showed the wight as a clearly physical, corpse-like monster, while the wraith was shown as spectral, ghostly, no?
Like the wight and wraith, Peterson posits that shadows are also drawn from Tolkien:
We only obliquely see the Dead whom Aragon summons below the Dwimorberg, except as “shadows” making “shadow-sounds,” but Legolas can perceive “shapes of Men and of Horses, and pale banners like shreds of cloud.”
Peterson has a theory for spectre as well:
The preference for a French loan-word like “spectre” over “ghost” may owe something more to James Bond (or even the seminal wargaming club borrowing the name of that conspiracy) than conformity with British English. Doctor Strange would also recognize a “spectre” from the fiends dispatched by Baron Mordo in Strange Tales #141; in the world of comic books, the Spectre had long been familiar as the sobriquet of the vengeful crime-fighting ghost of a deceased police officer.
The non-corporeal undead came from a variety of literature, comics, and movies. But two other monsters at the bottom of the undead hierarchy have a very specific cinematic lineage.
[h=3]Skelezombies![/h]As mentioned in the previous installment, wights and ghouls blurred together in Chainmail...and zombies get a whole one sentence dedicated to them:
WIGHTS (and Ghouls): Although they are foot figures, Wights (and Ghouls) melee as Light Horse and defend as Heavy Horse. They cannot be harmed by normal missile fire. Wights (and Ghouls) can see in darkness, and must subtract 1 from any die roll they roll when in full light. If they touch a normal figure during melee, it becomes paralyzed and remains so for one complete turn. A paralyzed figure is considered to be able to strike a blow at the Wight just prior to paralysis taking effect, so melee can occur but only one round. Zombies are in this class but attack as Orcs and move as Goblins.
It doesn't get much better for the zombie in Monsters & Treasure, who is grouped with yet another undead:
SKELETONS/ZOMBIES: Skeletons and Zombies act only under the instructions of their motivator, be it a Magic-User or Cleric (Chaos). They are usually only found near graveyards, forsaken places, and dungeons; but there is a possibility of their being located elsewhere to guard some item (referee's option). There is never any morale check for these monsters; they will always attack until totally wiped out.
Although it's legendary for launching zombies in mainstream culture, Night of the Living Dead doesn't use the phrase "zombie." Instead, it uses ghoul, a term George Romero prefers:
I never thought of the things as zombies when we made Night of the Living Dead. Never called them zombies. They were ghouls, flesh-eaters. I thought I was coming up with some kind of new creature: neighbours. Dead neighbour walking... When people started to write about the film, they called them zombies. I used the word only in Dawn of the Dead. Haven’t used it since.
The popularity since the film's debut in 1968 strongly influence the depiction of zombies in D&D. Perhaps because D&D ghouls already fill that niche, D&D zombies are less flesh-eating monsters and more mindless, indestructible mooks.
The zombie's less-fleshy twin, the skeleton, sees more likely inspired by special effects master Ray Harryhausen. Peterson posits that two films in particular were responsible:
The spell “Animate Dead” creates “skeletons or zombies” that presumably obey the instructions of their creator; the most memorable instances of animated skeletons prior to the release of Dungeons & Dragons were undoubtedly the claymation film sequences of Ray Harryhausen, especially in the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jason and the Argonauts (1963), both of which prominently feature fighting skeletons.
Christian Lindke agrees:
... Harryhausen’s skeletons are iconic. They are the skeletons to beat all skeletons, and they are what will help us decide whether Jason and the Argonauts or The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is the most D&D movie of all time. Weapon-wielding skeletons aren’t a commonplace feature in a lot of fantasy stories, and according to the recent Osprey book on the Argonautica the classical version of the Children of the Hydra is as “mud men” that are comprised of actual flesh and blood. This leads one to believe that the skeletons of D&D are Harryhausen Skeletons. Another dead giveaway regarding the origins of the D&D Skeleton is the fact that in AD&D, Skeletons only take half-damage from bladed weapons. Only blunt weapons do full damage. Watch these two sword fights and tell me that Gygax and Arneson weren’t thinking about these fights when they made that rule.
There's one other corporeal undead we haven't touched on, and it's one of the most iconic in D&D.
[h=3]Vamping it Up[/h]The D&D vampire was inspired in part by Peter Cushing films, which birthed both the villain and his counterpart, a cleric in the mode of Van Helsing. Mike Mornard, a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, explains:
Then there was Dave Arneson's first miniatures/roleplaying campaign. Some players were 'good guys' and some players were 'bad guys' and Dave was the referee. One of the 'bad guys' wanted to play a Vampire. He was extremely smart and capable, and as he got more and more experience he got tougher and tougher. This was the early 70s, so the model for 'vampire' was Christopher Lee in Hammer films. No deep folklore s**t. Well, after a time, nobody could touch Sir Fang. Yes, that was his name.
Bram Stoker's novel was of course some of the inspiration for the cinematic vampire, but the term was present in other media as well. Peterson elaborates:
Naturally, the last of these drew on the famous 1897 novel by Bram Stoker— which he very nearly titled The Un-Dead— but Stoker wrote after almost two centuries of vampire accounts had intrigued European audiences. Given the prevalence of vampires in films and on television shows like Dark Shadows, we should not be surprised to find them in the Blackmoor setting, nor to see them joined in Dungeons & Dragons by other undead monsters like the mummy and spectre, the latter being defined as monsters with “no corporeal body,” and thus serving for all forms of ghosts.
Gygax gave the vampire level drain:
The vampire's level drain came from me. I decided upon it as a way of simulating that monster's capacity to weaken and make helpless its victims. Once established, the level-draining attack power made all undead so able into most fearsome opponents. Of course magical and clerical means of restoring lost levels were provided—excellent ways for DMs to be rid of wishes and to drain treasure from PCs hoards and into clerical coffers.
The mention of clerics is no accident. The first vampire in D&D, Sir Fang, was played by David Fan--and he tipped the scales in the villains' favor so much that the cleric was invented to counter Sir Fang's power:
To fix the threatened end of the game they came up with a character that was, at first, a 'vampire hunter'. Peter Cushing in the same films. As the rough specs were drawn up, comments about the need for healing and for curing disease came up. Ta da, the "priest" was born. Changed later to 'cleric'.
This might explain the curiously muddled archetype of the cleric, who in earlier incarnations seems more focused on undead than religion.
[h=3]Undead in Their Entirety[/h]Collectively, the appearance of undead creatures in D&D was a product of its time: Popular horror movies combined with the rise of Tolkien's popularity and Gygax's fondness for Lovecraft's weird works created a mishmash of restless dead that haunts heroes to this day.
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, and communicator. You can follow him at Patreon.
