D&D General The Imaginary Bestiary Vol VI: A Table of Contents for an Imaginary 80s Monster Book

[Doug McCrae]

The Imaginary Bestiary isn’t a real monster book—it exists only as a table of contents. Its purpose is to entertain and amuse. The Bestiary parodies D&D’s thesaurus use, repetitiveness, and weirdness.

Volumes I–VI have been provided as attached pdfs.

 

[Bitbrain]

Bimetallic Dragons, Duergargoyle, Green Slime-dwelling Fish, Time-Splintered Human, King of Limbs, Mandragorilla…

I love this!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Bimetallic Dragons, Duergargoyle, Green Slime-dwelling Fish, Time-Splintered Human, King of Limbs, Mandragorilla…

I love this!

Thank you. The King of Limbs is the name of a famous tree here in the UK, which I think looks pretty monster-y:

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

We need to make these!

I'll give it a shot tonight.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not going to lie, but this feels like a great challenge to turn these into a real bestiary for Shadowdark. Even some of the sillier ones (Just-A-Mouth, for instance), are pretty darn evocative.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, I see at least 20 things on this list that are genuinely compelling ideas.

What's up with the goblin horologist and what sort of time-based or clockwork-based mischief can he cause?

Time travelers getting their own category, like dragons or demons do, is also great.

And I suspect that looking up all of the words used here would inspire even more of these.

More of these lists, please!

 

[Doug McCrae]

Yeah, I see at least 20 things on this list that are genuinely compelling ideas.

What it up with the goblin horologist and what sort of time-based or clockwork-based mischief can he cause?

Time travelers getting their own category, like dragons or demons do, is also great.

And I suspect that looking up all of the words used here would inspire even more of these.

More of these lists, please!

I'm glad you liked them. All the words in the later Bestiaries are real or are derived from real (or D&D) words. For example in Volume VI "grobian" means a "clownish, slovenly person" according to the OED and "leptorrhinian" means possessing a long, thin nose. I used resources such as Phrontistery, The Historical Thesaurus of English, and the Wordsworth Dictionary of Difficult Words.

Currently I'm at work on Volume VII!