D&D General Kobolds

[MarkB]

I'm casting my mind back! Did they yip? I can't remember!

They sure did. Most of my memory of the Nashkel mines is of repeatedly hearing that yip-yap-yipping soundbite, combined with the combat music kicking in, that meant we were about to slice through yet another pack of kobolds.

 

[dave2008]

Kobolds are sprites in Germanic myth, usually invisible and able to take the shape of children, small fire elementals, animals and candles. They haunt mines or live in people's houses.

in D&D, they got turned into sneaky, small, dog like critters who are good at trap making. They kept their underground habitats from folklore. They mutated into lizard like critters in 3e, and then started worshipping dragons, with some kobolds being born with wings.

A few years ago, I was tracking down letter tracing sheets for my kindergarten class, and found "K is for kobold," with a picture of a D&D style lizard kobold. Made me smile.

I was talking to @Peter Coffey about dog-kobolds the other day. Here's some art from 1E/2E D&D. Of course, now they look like dragons, rather than dogs, which I think happened round about 3E?

This is an image from DM Word of the Week (Kobold) about the evolution of the Kobold.

I don't know , those first two images (and I remember them well), seem pretty draconic or at least lizard like.

 

[dave2008]

They mutated into lizard like critters in 3e, ...

They are lizard like in 1e, covered in scales (both in the art and discription if I remember correctly). I don't think there is any discription of them begin dog-like in the original MM, but the art did give you that vibe. At some point they drifted to more dog like and now they have drifted to be more lizard like.

EDIT: Correction, I just checked and they are simply described as hairless in the 1e MM. Now I don't know what the art direction was, but I would have assumed that they skin and where bald from that description. However, I like the scaled version better

 

[Charlaquin]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t dog Kobolds initially the result of a miscommunication between EGG and his artist? Along with pig-faced orcs, pumpkin-headed bugbears, and a few other things?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think the connection to dragons was focused on to try and give kobolds some individuality - the name is simply German for goblin, and mechanically they are very similar.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Before the 3rd Edition I used to imagine them like they appeared in the Capcom videogame "Tower of Doom", with a look like the creatures from "Gremlins" movies.

Now I imagine those like a subrace with mixture of dragonblood and feytouched goblinblood, because they were dragon's slaves in the feywild for a lot of time, and victims of some genetic experiments, maybe with some (reptomamals?) werebeast ancestors.

 

[Lanefan]

I've always seen them as primarily reptilian, but nowhere near as graceful or sinuous as most reptiles - so, "scaly two-legged dog-face" works as well as anything to describe one.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Picture from Capcom videogame "D&D: Tower of Doom". With this look there were enough dreadful to be only little humanoids.

But also I imagine kobolds as the creatures from 1987 comedy-horror movie "Munchies", litle reptomammals with very bad fleas.

 

[PJ Coffey]

My first introduction to them was Top trumps and they had a grouchy, squashed looking green fella with a lit candle on their head. That is my first Kobold.

 

[MarkB]

My first introduction to them was Top trumps and they had a grouchy, squashed looking green fella with a lit candle on their head. That is my first Kobold.

That's pretty much the World of Warcraft kobold.