I need help sorting the MM by real world culture

[Nellisir]

Placing each D&D monster (most of which are at best adaptations and amalgamations of mythical creatures) in the exact setting they're derived from 3,500 years ago is going to rule out most D&D monsters. Genies, for instance (aka jin, djinn, ifrit, efreet, ghul, etc, etc) were broadly distributed via Islam -- you could probably have genies, but rule out anything based on them.

MOST cultures have cannibal giants, serpent creatures, and bird creatures. They're pretty much universal.

 

[Shadowdragon]

Placing each D&D monster (most of which are at best adaptations and amalgamations of mythical creatures) in the exact setting they're derived from 3,500 years ago is going to rule out most D&D monsters. Genies, for instance (aka jin, djinn, ifrit, efreet, ghul, etc, etc) were broadly distributed via Islam -- you could probably have genies, but rule out anything based on them.

MOST cultures have cannibal giants, serpent creatures, and bird creatures. They're pretty much universal.

At the moment I just want to try to sort out the creatures that exist in real world mythology. If a creature exusts in several cultures mythology then list them all. Once that's done I'll try to place creatures that don't exist in real world mythology where I think they should go (suggestions would be most welcome). Actually, I don't know if I'll limit myself to creatures up to 1000-500BC. It will be too difficult pinning down the date at which many of the creatures were created. I think it may be best to throw in later creatures just to make things easier. Creatures that shouldn't, or couldn't, exist in ancient time will still be left out.

 

[Dogbrain]

There are probably no "Celtic" creatures that fit your bill, in that case, at all. Very little to nothing survives of Gaulish legends that can be distinguished as such. As for the Irish material, most of it is folkloric rather than epic, and it wasn't recorded until AD1600, much of it later. A word of advice: Trust NOTHING that cites "The Ossian Cycle". This work was a forgery from the modern era.

 

[Shadowdragon]

There are probably no "Celtic" creatures that fit your bill, in that case, at all. Very little to nothing survives of Gaulish legends that can be distinguished as such. As for the Irish material, most of it is folkloric rather than epic, and it wasn't recorded until AD1600, much of it later. A word of advice: Trust NOTHING that cites "The Ossian Cycle". This work was a forgery from the modern era.

So maybe I should stick with Irish, Scottish, and British mythology and pawn it off as Celtic? The campaign doesn't have to be 100% accurate

 

[Nellisir]

So maybe I should stick with Irish, Scottish, and British mythology and pawn it off as Celtic? The campaign doesn't have to be 100% accurate

Good - no way it will be! Someone else can (and will, I'm sure) correct my timeline, but wasn't the great westward migration/push that populated most of western europe with the tribes we know and love only 2000 years ago? There simply aren't accurate mythological records from 3500 years ago for Germany, or anywhere north of Greece.

One source you might be able to use, though, are Indian myths (India, not Native American). Once you filter out some of the later religions, the Indian mythos are pretty well preserved.

Russia and the Slavic nations, btw, have a great collection of folklore involving multi-headed giants. Not ettins, per se -- most of these guys would only have two heads if their other ten had been lopped off -- but multi-headed giants. And dragons.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Stirge and Erinyes are Greek in origin; one is a type of vampire, the second are another name for The Furies, the Greek spirits of retributive justice. Obviously, sometimes the MM just uses the 'cool name' and drops everything else, adding to the confusion (The name for the aquatic Ogre is a case in point; the merrow is an Irish water fairy). Gorgons, for instance, are nothing like the original Greek monsters (of which Medusa was just one of three). Lamia (which is really more like the Greater Lamia than the horse/dog thing pictured) and harpies are also Greek.

Yet, oddly enough, I did come across a medieval (?) reference to the gorgon that one finds in the MM once. This was some years ago, but I probably still have the book in my (voluminous) library. Let me say, it floored me. I had fully believed that Gygax had "used the name, but not the content".

RC

 

[tarchon]

These lists were created using various web sites and D&D books, far too many to list here. The lists were created for an OGL Ancients campaign I'm going to be running, set about 1500 BC. If anything is wrong or missing please let me know.

Hmm... well, for 1500 BC you'd have to jettison nearly all of them, but I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Sylphs, BTW, are technically Swiss - it's Paracelsus' name for an air elemental. Sylph=air, Undine=water, Gnome=Earth, Salamander=fire

Dire wolves are Pleistocene and dire anything else is a recent invention.

 

[Shadowdragon]

How about this, if you can pick out the D&D creatures that are based on real world mythology (mostly from the MM and the MM2, but creatures from the Fiend Folio, Epic Level Handbook, and other sources are good too) please post lists sorted by location. Forget about time period. If I try to limit myself to just those creatures around before 500BC I wouldn't have enough creatures. But try to limit the lists to creatures from Norse, Celtic (Irish, Scottish, English, whatever), Greek, Egyptian (and/or Assyrian), Arabian, and Persian (although from what I found there are only one or two Persian creatures) mythology. Other cultures can be included if you really want to include them . This way we can compare lists and hopefully end up with a single complete list. All this piecemeal stuff is getting confusing and it's hard to keep it all straight. My list is up, although I'm sure I ended up forgetting about, or misplacing, several creatures.

 

[Shadowdragon]

Hasn't anyone got a list of their own that they would like to share?

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

Well...
Greek
Kraken
Medusa
Pegasus
Hydra
Minotaur
Nymph
Dire Lion
Dire Boar

Norse
Dragon
Ogre (least I think Grendal is an ogre)
Dire Wolf
England
Dragon
WereWolf (I think)

so thats all I can think of right now. Hope it helps. 'night