D&D General Should D&D feature fearsome critters and other Americana?

[LuisCarlos17f]

Creatures from folklore and mythology are public domain, they aren't protected by copyright, and Hasbro would rather to use original characters and creatures.

Eberron drinks a lot from pulp fiction.

Wendigo was a monster template in Fiend Folio(3rd).

What creatures do you suggest?

 

[aco175]

What creatures do you suggest?

Champy, the Loch Nest Monster of Lake Champlain. I would likely just use a dragon to make it cooler. I would need to change its name as well, or I might as well call it Puff.

Another cool monster could be made from the armadillos of Florida/Georgia that are infected from leprosy. Apparently a hurricane destroyed a research facility in like the 60s-70s and the research animals escaped, It could be something like a rust monster that infects you with a weakness like the poisoned condition.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Your loss. Your really need that emotional connection to the natural world to understand where these stories come from.

I live in the miserable version of the shire so about as natural as a garden.

 

[Reynard]

You could write an English Literature paper on the topic of "Only the United States could have produced H P Lovecraft: Discuss".

Lovecraft and Howard are the heads and tails of the American silver dollar.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Champy, the Loch Nest Monster of Lake Champlain. I would likely just use a dragon to make it cooler. I would need to change its name as well, or I might as well call it Puff.

The lake monster trope used in one of the sidequests in Rime of the Frostmaiden, including the obsessive cryptid hunter. Of course in D&D there are lots of things it could be, and finding out is likely to be the PCs' mission.

I would go for either an enemy miniature submarine, or an alien cybernetic hybrid weapon and food source.

 

[Clint_L]

You could write an English Literature paper on the topic of "Only the United States could have produced H P Lovecraft: Discuss".

I agree with that, yet his style of cosmic horror does not make a D&D plot feel American the way including Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil would.

Edit: As far as that goes, you could write a thesis arguing that the entire style of D&D's polyglot approach to fantasy is quintessentially American, but I don't think that's what the thread was getting at.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I agree with that, yet his style of cosmic horror does not make a D&D plot feel American the way including Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil would.

Sure, that isn't particularly American, there is similar stuff in War of the Worlds and some other British SF.

But a remote isolated town with an inbreeding issue?

 

[Clint_L]

Sure, that isn't particularly American, there is similar stuff in War of the Worlds and some other British SF.

But a remote isolated town with an inbreeding issue?

That is a WAY older trope than America is a country.

 

[Umbran]

But should D&D go all the way and embrace this idea of American fantasy? Should it feature monsters from tall tales like fearsome critters, actual North American myths and legends, cryptids like Bigfoot?

Should someone go ahead and make a monster supplement of them? Sure, why not? Knock yourself out.

Should these become part of the core D&D experience as published by WotC? Meh. While D&D doesn't really stick to Medieval European Fantasy all that well, there's still a notable genre difference between what D&D typically goes for, and the space these critters come from. These would fit well in a Weird West game, for example, but they didn't come from a place in which folks run around with swords and armor and cast magic spells.

Should it draw from distinctly American fantasy works like the Oz novels (the Harry Potter novels of their day)?

I think it already has. The modern Feywild seems influenced by Oz.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You could write an English Literature paper on the topic of "Only the United States could have produced H P Lovecraft: Discuss".

Or, more broadly, on the broad differences between American and British foundational fantasy writers. Lewis and Tolkien would never have written Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, for instance, and no one would want Howard or Leiber to write Narnia and Lord of the Rings.