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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tovec" data-source="post: 6060428" data-attributes="member: 95493">Actually, I was talking about how when you try to do searches for creatures online that it is becoming more and more prevalent to find only information on DnD's version instead of finding an original source. I have spent too much time over this last year and a half doing online research trying to find the roots of dozens, probably hundreds of creatures. Too often the only sources I can find are DnD. In this way DnD has almost replaced or usurped the original tellings. Sometimes that is fine, as the original stories are often very brief, relying on a single line at times, but other times they are larger sources that DnD has completely rebranded. As I am looking for the original source for my own games and my own system I care what that original source is.Reread that full paragraph, I said that when I do research online, that DnD is the default. Not when I research DnD.Except, by your own admission, that isn't where those sources came from. You seem perfectly happy with DnD making things up. By in large I am too I was just wondering what description for Genies would be without DnD's influence, or even where DnD got its direct influence. If DnD had modeled genie hierarchy after a Japanese feudal system it would be equally baffling to me.Never said it did. You need to read and quote the full paragraph to see that I said this exact thing.I guess how you define "late" but it was 1991. What was the justification before this? Another interesting question that I have a hard time finding any answer for. In either case, it seems like the reason a blood war was introduced was the explain this split. Could a blood war type idea be introduced between frost giants and fire giants? I'm sure it could, but it seems unnecessary.Any references from real myth are broad strokes at best. I can't find any reference in Greek myth about Valhalla. But nearly all creatures in DnD, or at least a significant majority, are drawn in one form or another from real myth. Most often these references are as close as the game makers can make them. Medusa still turn you to stone after all, even if she is not a gorgon any longer. Gorgons would be an excellent example about how they often take a name and make something new, but I would argue gorgons aren't part of the "taken from myth" crowd and are instead something entirely fabricated by DnD, with the exception of the name. Baal I supposed would be another example. But Asmodeus is an archdevil because of myth. A good percentage (I haven't actually looked at most of the archdemons) of demon princes come from myth too, in one form or another - ranging from Baal to Asmodeus.  Right, and I have no compunctions that this shouldn't be true. I don't see how you say devils are close enough to demons to all be rolled together. But then decide that genies are different enough from fey (even though you say they are similar in their roles in myth) to be distinct. That is a little odd to me.I'm turning into a bit of a promoter of this page, but I absolutely love it (link below). Until I read it I felt like you did about this split. I didn't understand it or the mindsets associated with the fiends. It seemed alien to me that they should be the way they were, and I didn't get why they never teamed up to destroy good.After reading it I have a very different feeling; which is to say I value this "history" as incredibly rich and detailed. Whenever I can use even minor aspects of what ripvanwormer compiled I do. That is only what I meant about rich history. The fiends (of all stripes) are probably much closer, lending their type to "Fiend" after all.<a href="http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558750/The_History_of_the_Lower_Planes,_revised" target="_blank">http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558750/The_History_of_the_Lower_Planes,_revised</a>To the centuars: What aspects of the man-horse thing are missing?To "most cases" comment: I'm sure there are many examples where they went against or completely made things up for creatures. Did they go with original material for them or make things up? Is it a mix of both, as I assume mummies are? I would find it hard to believe that "most cases" are NOT drawn from myth in one fashion or another. Exclude names that get re-purposed (which happens all the time). Focus only on concepts. I would imagine most of those concepts remain the same. Ghost are still incorporeal, basilisk are still petrification, dragons are still scary and breath-fire, etc.To dragons: European dragons don't fly, except they do. Is that the best argument you could have made? It is an evolution on the creatures that took hundreds of years, but it is clearly one that predates DnD. And as such flying, fire-breathing dragons are not "not drawn from folklore or history". Where else did they get the idea? I would imagine the electricity, cold, acid split was made up. As would most of the mindsets, but the dragons themselves have a source. The dragons still value gold and shiny trinkets even though they have magical powers and should logically have no need or want of such things.Also, chinese dragons always flew, at least as far as I know. But they were much more serpentine. Still doesn't seem like the best example you could have given either way.For all other examples: A lack of concrete of concrete details doesn't mean there are no details. Fire giants revere or outright worship Surtr. They don't have, to my knowledge, a big city of burning brass in the plane of fire. They could, but then I would be similarly asking where that bit of inspiration came from.If you read the other replies to this thread, you can see other people may believe as I do. Make a basic giant "big guy, hits big" or whatever and then add the elements to him. It isn't something simply boiled down to "a hook" as you put it. There are giants in a LOT of myth and a lot of stories I read. I don't get why the DnD ones are categorized by element. I find this categorization fairly boring to be honest. As I find most times that a creature is boring if they are defined by an element. Demons would be boring if they were considered fire elementals. They aren't because they have a lot more written into them, they vie for power and fight devils and have a certain mindset. They have a history and a hunger to destroy. Fire giants.. like Surtr and are jerks. Fire genies.. have sultans.. and are jerks. Ooh the variety!First, I just want to ask, what is EGG? I'm not personally familiar with it; and it doesn't help to Google EGG. Even when I try to rule out food, or reproduction, or the shape, or colour, etc. I'm assuming its short for something but I don't know what.Second, I appreciate the answers. I seek knowledge, you gave knowledge. I accept your reason of "based on Arabian Nights" but I just wish there was more. Or something broader. Or something more in keeping with what I get when I Google non-DnD versions.I would be equally disappointed if the only source you could point me to would be the Bible, if I was searching for information on the devil, demons and angels. There are so many other, better, richer and more .. evolved?.. sources I can find that in many ways contradict or give much fuller information than one book.Especially if the only references for angels I knew of defined them and goodly creatures with wings, but gave no other recurring details. Pointing me to the bible probably wouldn't help me or instruct me on where all the other details, hierarchies and things came from. Or why they look the way they do. Those are evolutions that happened, through myth not by the writers of DnD, over hundreds of years and iterations.What you seem to be saying is that the genies I know of are wish-granters, but that they have so many more details. To learn those details I should look at Arabian Nights, but then you are saying that those details are made up (in this case by the writers of DnD) and are not found in myth. That seems odd to me.The specifics for a setting in DnD make sense, making all creatures of a certain type reflect that one setting seems odd. It would be like saying all minotaurs are sailors, because it is found in a setting. And without giving any mythological "evidence" or reference to back it up.So, with Genies, is it that they are reskinned from something else? Or is it that they are based on that original story?</blockquote>

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