Gygaxian Monsters

[Korgoth]

That's an interesting tidbit. Ever get the official Burmese name/term for the creature?

Chinthe?

 

[The Green Adam]

That's an interesting tidbit. Ever get the official Burmese name/term for the creature? Dragonne by itself sounds rather, well, plain to my ears (presumably by mixing dragon and lion/leonne together) and it's somewhat troublesome mixing up dragonne with dragon (in the more conventional sense of the word). I'm always interested in the origins of words and terms as far as language and history go.

On a somewhat related but side note, I got a chance to handle a real Burmese dha once; very interesting sword. My experience in ancient weaponry lies mostly with Japanese-style swords, but have seen some Chinese- (daos and jians) and Korean-inspired pieces (used for gumdo). Always neat to see how various neighboring cultures influenced one another, not just in language, but also customs, clothing, food, and things like warfare.

On a completely unrelated note, noticed that you're from NYC (what part of the city, by the way?). I'm from Brooklyn, born and raised, before I joined the military. Small world.

I don't recall the exact name but I'll drop my friend an email and see if he remembers.

I too am originally from Brooklyn, the Kensington Area near Prospect Park (End of Ocean Parkway). I live in Manhattan now and have for the last 20 years or so.

Your quite right about cross cultural pollination as it were. Very cool to see those items like look out of place but are in fact native thanks to exposure to other peoples. An interesting bit of color to add to one or more neighboring peoples in a campaign.

AD

 

[rossik]

Sadly, the preliminaries for kobolds slipped past me, as the OAD&D depiction is not correct.

Cheerio,
Gary

gary, i dont get what you mean...

 

[Col_Pladoh]

I have a question, assuming Gary's not get sick of them.

Wings on the chimera and manticore. Did you make them flying, or was there some other source?

Thanks.

I confess it was my decision to give them wings. It was to make them more mobile and thus more dangerous.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Gary, I have a question about how playing with miniatures did (or didn't) affect the choice of monsters in the early D&D games.

We all know by now that you found the rust monster in a bag of toy dinosaurs. I'm wondering, were you using the toy dinosaurs in your game? It that why there are so many different dinosaurs in the original Monster Manual?

What about giant insects and animals? Can we blame any of those on conveniently-available toys? (My understanding is that there weren't a lot of fantasy monsters available in lead during the early D&D years, so you must have improvised a lot, right?)

there were virtually no fantasy figurines being produced when Chainmail Fantasy Supplement tabletop battles were being played, and so that is where the conversion of dime store toys into monsters began. I made a 90mm Elastolin Viking figire into a blue giant with a club, a stegosaurus into a winged red dragon, 60 mm plastic Indians into ogres, etc. Jack Scruby began casting orc, so we had real miniatures for them--the Orcs of the Vile Rune whose symbol was a fist with a raised digit. We had a giant ant, but that's about it.

When play switched over to D&D adventures, we seldom used any figurines at all, not even those for PCs, as dice sufficed to show all the relative positions of antagonists in a battle.

Ths dinosaurs were added bacvause I wanted to ba a paleontologist from the time I was about age 5 on. My cousin, Dr. Charlotte Otten game me a volume of the University of Knowledge books, and it had a few creatures form the Age of Reptiles as well as dinosaurs in it. That hooked me. The Epic of Aerth world setting has all sorts of prehistoric animals, from reptiles to mammals in the hollow center of it

Holler if that doesn't answer fully your questions.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

I'm guessing giant animals/insects/arachnids would have been inspired by movies such as Them, Monster From Green Hell, The Giant Gila Monster, The Black Scorpion, The Deadly Mantis & Tarantula...not to mention various literary sources - Robert E Howard used giant critters as adversaries for Conan in more than one story.

Close

I really liked Them when it came out, and there was a SF story in a pulp zine about huge formarians as well. Of course I read all the Conan books before the D&D game was created. Giant ants were sufficient to stimulate my imagination so as to expand such giganticism to other creatures.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

In one of my earliest campaigns my players encountered a Lurker Above and then later on a few adventures later a Trapper. Not knowing what the latter was called they identified it a Lurker Below. They still call it that to this day.

AD

Why not? I used to call beholders "eye tyrants" because those bloody things were so intimidating.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[Col_Pladoh]

gary, i dont get what you mean...

Ah sure...

Kobolds were not meant to look like canines, nor have some reptillian features. they were patterened after the Teutonic kobolds, forest goblins.

Cheerio,
Gary

 

[JeffB]

Ah sure...

Kobolds were not meant to look like canines, nor have some reptillian features. they were patterened after the Teutonic kobolds, forest goblins.

Cheerio,
Gary

Something along the lines of this, Gary?

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Something along the lines of this, Gary?

Those are great illustrations of goblinesque little fairy folk. Had I had that picture on hand when kobolds were put into the MM, that's is what I'd have passed along to DCSIII.

Thanks,
Gary