D&D 5E Necromancer Games 5E Monster Teaser #2 - The Aranea!

[Johnny Angel]

I do raise an eyebrow a bit that they've taken a generic Latin term for spider and made it the name of a very specific type of monstrous spider. I realize that D&D has a history of nailing down what is meant by some formerly vague mythological terms like kobold or goblin. They even specified the nature of creatures whose names were, I would argue, meant to be construed broadly, like Ghost or Spirit. They re-purposed terms that actually did have more defined referents, like lemures (the angry spirits of the dead, now a kind of demon) manes (formerly the souls of deceased loved ones, now a kind of demon) troglodyte (formerly a word synonymous with caveman, a primitive human, now another type of lizardman). In his eclectic research, clearly Gygax didn't really care what the terms he churned up actually meant to begin with. This is the guy who turned a bunch of historical names for soldiers from various times and cultures and turned them into the names of fighter level ranks.

But let's not continue to plunder the past in only the shallowest way, ripping a word out of its historical and mythological context and slapping it onto just anything we make up. Calling a creature Aranea is tantamount to just calling it Spider. It's an ordinary word that refers to an ordinary thing. Only because it's being used in English, it's suddenly exotic? You know what's even more exotic? A name you just make up. Why reach for the Latin word for spider when your use of it has as much relation to the Latin meaning of the word as if you'd just called it Big Bitey Thingy in English. As long as you care so little what the word actually means, why not call it Incunabula (crib) or Horreum (barn)?

 

[jadrax]

Oh, an Spellcaster monster, I think i'm gonna Cry.

The D&D Next play-test version has Spellcasting as an Variant Rule, which I personally think was much better than having to run a whole race of Wizards.

I must admit, the 3.5 paradigm of always fighting spell-casters is one of the things I will be happy to see the back of.

 

[fireinthedust]

I do raise an eyebrow a bit that they've taken a generic Latin term for spider and made it the name of a very specific type of monstrous spider. I realize that D&D has a history of nailing down what is meant by some formerly vague mythological terms like kobold or goblin. They even specified the nature of creatures whose names were, I would argue, meant to be construed broadly, like Ghost or Spirit. They re-purposed terms that actually did have more defined referents, like lemures (the angry spirits of the dead, now a kind of demon) manes (formerly the souls of deceased loved ones, now a kind of demon) troglodyte (formerly a word synonymous with caveman, a primitive human, now another type of lizardman). In his eclectic research, clearly Gygax didn't really care what the terms he churned up actually meant to begin with. This is the guy who turned a bunch of historical names for soldiers from various times and cultures and turned them into the names of fighter level ranks.

But let's not continue to plunder the past in only the shallowest way, ripping a word out of its historical and mythological context and slapping it onto just anything we make up. Calling a creature Aranea is tantamount to just calling it Spider. It's an ordinary word that refers to an ordinary thing. Only because it's being used in English, it's suddenly exotic? You know what's even more exotic? A name you just make up. Why reach for the Latin word for spider when your use of it has as much relation to the Latin meaning of the word as if you'd just called it Big Bitey Thingy in English. As long as you care so little what the word actually means, why not call it Incunabula (crib) or Horreum (barn)?

Wes Schneider wrote a fantastic blog entry on the origin of the Gorgon, the armored bull-monster that's stolen the proper name for the Medusa (who, as I'm sure you're aware, was the name of a particular gorgon that was beheaded by Perseus, not in fact the species name as claimed by D&D).http://wesschneider.tumblr.com/post/92511929906/so-i-have-a-question-about-pathfinders-bestiary

In short: Gygax was not being lazy, but rather looked up the creature in Edward Topsell's 1607 zoological text, The Historie of Foure Footed Beasts.

There we see the creature better known as the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalkotauroi

I say "better known as" because of my bias that the "gorgon" should be called the Khalkotauroi, and the proper name given once more to what is now the Medusa; although I suppose have "a medusa" is fine, so long as we have some lovin for her sisters as unique monsters of epic level, with the standard race of medusae as the offspring of their mortal sister.

Maybe that should be my home game... and I'm already thinking!


The point is, I'm not going to get hung up about a 3pp with the track record of NG using a monster that WOTC will also use. There is a history to the use of Aranea that predates both, and while I can't point it out myself, I would not be surprised if Gygax (or whoever) had done their research through mythology back in the day.

And, if Wes Schneider or another scholar (or maybe me?) could find the history of the Aranea, I would appreciate it.

 

[Charles Wright]

History of the Aranea in D&D

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons/Monsters/Aranea

 

[Agamon]

Pegasus was the proper name of a specific being, as was Kraken. D&D is full of monsters with names like this.

 

[Johnny Angel]

Wes Schneider wrote a fantastic blog entry on the origin of the Gorgon, the armored bull-monster that's stolen the proper name for the Medusa (who, as I'm sure you're aware, was the name of a particular gorgon that was beheaded by Perseus, not in fact the species name as claimed by D&D).http://wesschneider.tumblr.com/post/92511929906/so-i-have-a-question-about-pathfinders-bestiary

In short: Gygax was not being lazy, but rather looked up the creature in Edward Topsell's 1607 zoological text, The Historie of Foure Footed Beasts.

That is interesting. I don't know that I'd accuse Gygax of being lazy so much as slapdash. He read deeply, really went to the well, which is something you can't say about a lot of people working on RPGs these days. I give him credit for that. But then his own work strangely distorted his sources. In some cases, I think this is a positive development, similar to how scientists try to nail down exactly what counts as a 'berry', which end up including things not normally thought of as berries (like tomatoes) and excluding things that are in fact called 'berries' like strawberries. I'm glad that 'goblin' and 'kobold' now have specific meanings broadly accepted at least in fantasy gaming.

In fact, in my campaign nomenclature is a running gag. The premise is that not using words like 'imp' 'kobold' 'goblin' and even 'gnome' interchangably is the result of relatively recent scholarship, and it's sometimes necessary to remember that. If the party picks up a book that talks about a homunculus, the scholars among them know that the word used to just mean a short guy.

History of the Aranea in D&D

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons/Monsters/Aranea

Ah, I must apologize for rolling my eyes at Necromancer Games. They were true to their source materials. The complaint still stands, but apparently it belongs to Zeb Cook.

Pegasus was the proper name of a specific being, as was Kraken. D&D is full of monsters with names like this.

Those are actually two examples of things I'm not complaining about, though as pointed out above with the case of the Medusa, it does rankle some people. But I'm not so bothered when the word for a specific creature becomes the name of a type of creature, so long as their the same type of creature. It would bug me if Pegasus became the name of a type of dragon.

 

[occam]

I do raise an eyebrow a bit that they've taken a generic Latin term for spider and made it the name of a very specific type of monstrous spider... Calling a creature Aranea is tantamount to just calling it Spider. It's an ordinary word that refers to an ordinary thing. Only because it's being used in English, it's suddenly exotic?

If you think that's bad, look at the names for Japanese-derived monsters. Tanuki is the name for a raccoon dog, and also the name for upright-walking, shoe-wearing talking spirit raccoon dogs. Kitsune refers to foxes, and also to magic-wielding talking multi-tailed fox spirit creatures. Same words in the same language, with only context to differentiate a real animal from a folkloric creature. And that's not D&D doing it!

Using aranea as the term for an intelligent spider-monster? I'm OK with that.