Favorite Monsters

Early on in my time visiting OSR blogs, I noticed several different posts reflecting on favorite monsters.  As I get going on my own humble contributions, I thought I'd throw a few - perhaps 10 - of my favorites.  The list is, of course, subject to change.

1e MM Arch Devils
I think the section on Devils in the 1st Ed. MM is one of the single best sections in any D&D publication.  Ever.  And the Arch-Devils reign supreme.  There are four, and each a unique, singular being.  Two human-like,  one a grotesque insectoid monstrous abomination, and one a great, serpentine giant.  They can grant others' wishes - a temptation to summon  them in my world, where wishes and most high level spells are scarce at best.  And each has something to offer that the others don't.  The MM2 Arch Devils were always, IMHO, a bit 'meh.'  Four guys who looked liked guys.  With horns.  And a tail.  But those in the MM1?  Atmospheric, sinister, diabolical, powerful - everything you want in creatures that should be nothing less than the most powerful forces of evil in any world.

Wight
The first monster I ever faced in a D&D game.  Jim was the DM.  He was taking us through the DMG sample dungeon.  We had just made our way through the secret door at which point the gnome in the DMG meets its demise.  We journeyed into the large corridor, and chose to go to the right. Suddenly, Jim informed us that we saw 'a wight.'  Since I hadn't delved much into medieval lore, folklore or fantasy literature at that point in my life, I had no clue.  In my mind, I conjured an image of a rabid shmoo.  Whatever it was, the other players who knew more of the genre were frightened, and ran until we came to a room that was barred by iron gates.  We got onto the other side, with the Wight trying to reach us.  Then we had to break it up because of bad weather.  But for that reason, in addition to the awesomely evocative picture in MM, the Wight remains a nostalgic favorite.

Fire Giant
I love Trampier's picture.  All of the giant pictures are top notch, but the fire giant strikes an especially intimidating pose.  The use of Hell Hounds helps.  Since their lairs will, by definition, be a location to be reckoned with, it's unlikely that any but the most powerful parties could - or should - be able to survive an encounter.

Ghost
Another monster bolstered by wonderful artwork.  That ghost pic is straight out of classic literature.  Complete with cemetery and lantern.  The pen and ink work is top notch.  And it presents a monster that is more than just fodder for combat.  It's something that should frighten a party beyond worldly harm.  And when you see those stats, it does.  The ghost is there because of its awful badness.  It ages (who read that and didn't think of Scooby-Doo?).  And if you are slain by a ghost, you are forever dead.  No wishes.  No resurrection.  Nothing.  That's power.

Thri-Kreen
The pose works.  The Thri-Kreen in MM2  has attitude.  Arms folded, exotic weapons almost tapping against its chitinous armor.  Though I've never played one, I plan on it someday.  In my world, monsters are regional.  You don't encounter all monsters everywhere.  And so far, the parties we've played haven't been where they would logically be.  I hope to remedy that soon.  For if there was a monster with attitude, it's the Thri-Kreen.

Pixie
Pixie? Am I serious?  Yeah.  Read the description.  Many of the 'faerie folk' are pretty potent.  And pixies, because they aren't particularly good, plus because they have three separate magic arrows they can use, are about as dangerous as you get.  Confined to faerie forts and similar mystical locations, my parties know better than to get anywhere near where these supernatural beings dwell.  If you think of the description, not many parties will come out ahead of an encounter.

Efreeti
I remember the Efreeti from the old Gold Box computer game Curse of the Azure Bonds.  The artwork was lifted straight from the MM.  And it's breathtaking; one of the best pictures in the volume.   Of course they grant wishes, making them another highly sought after commodity.

Clay Golem
Straight out of folklore.  Like most of the original battery of beasties, the Clay Golem can draw a straight line to a literary inspiration.  The picture looks 'clay-ish'.  The iron golem looked iron, and the stone golem, stone.  But making the clay golem look clay was a masterful stroke.  The fact that it is a Cleric, rather than a Magic User, who crafts the creatures only adds to the heavy historical reference.  I particularly like the fact that while the material cost is 20K gps, the cost for the vestments needed for the ceremony are a whopping additional 30K gps!  That's some major cassocks.

Dragon (Small)
It has been said that for a game called Dungeons and Dragons, few people ever get around to playing dragons.  Perhaps because in the 2nd editions onward, the dragons become so massive only the highest level party could play them.  Yes, they have many ages, and the smaller ages aren't that intimidating.  And yet, it's those smaller, younger dragons that can really scare the bejesus out of a low level party.  We've recently encountered one with our 2nd level party.  The presence of a Druid tipped the scales, and it didn't take long to dispatch the dragon without casualties.  But still, just the thought of a dragon when most monsters up to that point were giant centipedes, kobolds and big rats was worth its weight.

Lurker Above
Don't know why, but always loved the concept. A giant, manta-like creature, bending in with stonework, suddenly dropping on your party.  And tough, too.

Then and now

There seems to be quite a flurry over the recent incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, complements of the good folks at Wizards of the Coast.  Much of it focused on the look of the new rule books.  My thoughts some other time.  But here's what I notice.  D&D as a non-electronic pastime is having a difficult go of it fitting into the 21st century.  Why not?  Most things that once were considered the tops are struggling now.  It's almost as if culture, art, and entertainment changed overnight all of a sudden, and those looking back are working to figure out how to fit in.  Even books, time honored books, dating to the earliest form of communication, are scarce able to avoid being swallowed up by the post-digital leviathan. 

So why not D&D?  Why wouldn't it struggle? And I thought of some of what we had in the day when the game first came out, versus what youngsters have today and what the game provides.  Of course for many players of the game in its earliest incarnations, the primary source for imagination and escapism was: 

So when a game pops up that looks like this:

It is going to pique the curiosity of at least a few individuals.  As it expands and grows and develops, you have a game that looks like this:

and this:

And when you consider that, until about 1977, the absolute best you could hope for in the top genre movies out there would be akin to this:

that's still pretty impressive.  Even when computer games and video games began to emerge in the 70s and early 80s, D&D - especially as it developed - gave the available technology a run for the money.  Sure Star Wars had come out, and movie special effects were improving.  But you couldn't spend every day going to a movie, even after VCRs became widely available.  So if you wanted to flex those creative muscles, and be inspired by the new technology, you had this:

and this:

While the good folks at TSR (and other publishers) could produce something as awe-inspiring and promising as this:

and even this:

But now, consider a few quick clips from the here and now:

and:

And compared to that, when people think of D&D as a  non-electronic entertainment source, their minds increasingly see this:

See how that works?  In the late 70s and 80s, as I said in my post about the Monster Manual, things simply weren't as widely available, nor anywhere near as sophisticated and technically brilliant, as they are today.  Holding Ravenloft or Dragonlance or even the Players Handbook in your hands gave you an edge on most of what was available to all but a select group of people in the right markets.  Now, it's like churning butter versus buying it by the tub at the local Kroger's.  Or it's like singing around a campfire versus flying in the latest HD 3D quantum space simulator.  Will it continue to survive?  That's hard to say.  But I have a feeling, like so many other pastimes that lasted for ages longer than D&D, all it will be able to do will be survive.

The Haunted Keep Cutaway

The first actual D&D book I purchased was the Moldvay Basic along with the Cook Expert Set (including the delightful Isle of Dread module).  The boxed Expert set even came with a set of dice that had to be colored in with a black crayon to see the numbers.  Old time stuff.  It was in a Walden Books in the spring of 1983.  I received the Monster Manual the previous Christmas, and had already tried my first crack at playing this game earlier that winter.  Since the Advanced and Expert books said advanced and expert, I figured the best thing to do was start at the beginning.  At the time I had no idea that they were supposed to be separate and competing versions of the same game.  All I knew was start with the Basics. 

There's much to say about the contents of those two books, and in retrospect I admire them more now than I did then.  Back in the day, foolish kid that I was, all I wanted was to get to the Advanced rules since that seemed so much more 'adult.'  

Still, even then, there were a few sections, a couple snippets of text, and some artwork that helped capture the spirit of the game in those hazy days of early computer graphics and video games imagery.  One of the best was the Haunted Keep.  The floorplan was fine enough, but it was that cutaway that caught the eye.  More picture than map. It was a real place.  An actual ruin.  Those towers could be located in southern Wales for all we knew.  And look what was beneath them!  Not very playable, but it sure captured a feel, and in those early days of the hobby, before the great Tech boom of the 90s, before the saturation of anything and everything at your fingertips, having a product of the imagination that actually captured the imagination was worth its weight in platinum pieces.  And nothing from the Basic rules did the job quite as effectively as the cutaway. 

The competition, c. 1982/1983

Stats and chance

I realize that many manuals would be published over the years unpacking just how to handle those non-combat situations that a PC can encounter.  How far can you jump?  How well do you tie that rope?  How well can you buckle that belt?  And on and on.

When I first came back to the game in the early 00s, the prospect of a fully developed non-combat skill system was appealing.  All too often, when I had played D&D in the past, everything eventually became a 10% chance.  Jumping across a 10' wide pit? 10% chance.  Jumping across a flaming gorge between flying arrows in order to grasp a dangling vine?  10% chance.  Trying to tie your shoelaces?  10% chance.  It became ridiculous, and it was just as easy to forgo a roll of the dice and just say 'you do it.' 

Problem is, the game then becomes nothing more than a mutual story telling time of assured success until the only random moments - combat - occur.  So there needed to be something.  Like so many things with the 3rd Editions, what appeared to be a solution became its own problem.  Endless possible combinations of skills and modifiers made a single leap across a chasm into an evening of calculations.  And if you cut corners?  Well, back to the 10%.  Or just Take 10, and you're back at guaranteed success.  So what to do?

Over at Monsters and Manuals, a discussion about how to play out those non-combat moments of play. The preference seems to be reducing things to a d6.  That might work.  I prefer a 10 sided die. But only sometimes.  Occasionally percentage dice.  But as often as not, I try to work in player stats.  After all, those stats should be more than just one use numbers.  They are what makes the character. 

Sure, they can be used for role playing.  My son had a fighter who had a 4 intelligence, and we had quite a bit of fun watching him unpack why he had that.  He didn't have to be stupid, it was determined.  He was just unlearned.  A simple man with common sense (he had a higher wisdom score).  That's one use beyond the standard game benefits.

But why not have those stats mean something when it comes to jumping that chasm?  Or leaping to grab those vines?  If time permits, I might even turn to a survival guide or an article I just read.  But I might have the player roll against the pertinent stat.  There might be two rolls.  Or I might combine two stats and divide, adn make that the score to beat.  In any event, that helps the players be conscientious of their own strengths and weaknesses.

After all, if I were chasing someone across the roofs of a cityscape, and suddenly they jumped over a wide alley, I'd stop.  I know I'm not that strong or fit anymore.  Nor am I that nimble.  Likewise my players - my family - have learned what strengths they have and they use them, or don't use them as the case may be.

Again, I don't adhere religiously to any form, and can mix things up at a moment's notice.  But to not use the stats for determining success?  That leaves a huge hunk of what those numbers mean out of the equation.  And beyond just imagining what the PC looked like to begin with, it also becomes a chance to role play on the spot based on tangible figures, and that's one of the best parts of the game. 

Brevity is the soul of wit

And sometimes the magic behind the written word.  Long does not mean better.  Whether some of the later Harry Potter books, or Peter Jackson's bloated Tolkien films, the fact that more is better is clearly not always the case.  By the 2nd Edition of D&D, descriptions were long and embellished if nothing else.  Entire supplements existed in which barely a paragraph or two seemed able to be used in a practical game setting, and sometimes the flavor text was overblown and, quite frankly, too much. 

That didn't just happen in the 2nd Ed world, and the 3rd Ed. showed that too little could often be just that: too little.  Some of the descriptions in the 3rd and later editions had all the heart and soul of a set of stereo instructions.  Finding that middle ground of just enough and yet not too much isn't easy.  

Nonetheless, it can be done.  And IMHO, it is done in all of the D&D canon, if not the entire world of roleplaying, in few places better than on page 21 of the original Monster Manual.

I've already stated my first round of praise of that book.  There are many reasons, and eventually I'll get there.  And while many complained that the monster texts don't have enough description and too many stats, for me some of the best descriptions written in the game are between those covers.  And the best?  Within that fan favorite section of Devils. 

The entire portion of the book dealing with Devils is atmospheric to say the least.  The artwork evokes the medieval Gothic, with the Horned Devil picture on pg. 22 looking as if it was lifted out of a medieval stone carving or illuminated manuscript.  The section's opening summary text also does well, as do several of the descriptions beneath the individual devils.

But its the one under the Lord of the Flies that is the best, and showed what could have been more common throughout the years, rather than too often the exception.  First the picture itself:

Note it is not a square border, but an arched border, again evoking the idea of a rounded window, in a castle or perhaps lonely monastery.  Medieval.  Then the picture itself.  One of the most original concept pieces of any outer plane creature; certainly one of the most original devil portraits.  And then underneath, specifically the first paragraph, you have this: 

"The sixth and seventh planes of Hell, Malbolge and Maladomini respectively, are ruled by Baalzebul, "Lord of the Flies" ("lies"?)  He is an arch-devil of great power, second only to Asmodeus.  Malbolge is a black stone plane, filled with stinking vapors, smokes, fire pits, and huge cave and caverns.  Maladomini is simliar, but there will be found the moated castles of the malebranche and the great fortress of Baalzebul."

Call me simple or call me sentimental, but there is some power in that terse, crisp and brief description.  Especially of the two planes.  Black stone plane.  Stinking vapors.  Smokes.  Fire pits.  Huge caves and caverns.  A classic picture of Hell.  And then the seventh: similar, but there will be found the 'moated castles' of the malebranche, and the 'great fortress of Baalzebul.'  

Playing off Dante by using the Latin names only helps, and adds to the quick word paints; the feeling is one of spectacular foreboding, of legendary place, of locations known to the heart and soul of the world's inhabitants.  Note that the castles are 'moated', and they are the castles of the malebranche (which, if reading the book for the first time front to back, the reader would not have encountered yet). Why are they moated? Are they the only home of the Malebranche? The imagination takes over.  And like any writer or artist knows, the audience's imagination is always better than the author/painter. 

I'm not saying there was never good descriptive texts elsewhere in the whole of the RPG universe. Of course not.  I've not read but a small portion of all that's been printed, and I've seen some very wonderful cases of painting those mental pictures necessary to breath life into the hobby.  But word for word, I've not found any that pack so many punches, bring to mind so many images, and set such a wonderful stage of real, and historically inspired, supernatural belief.  If there ever was a Hell, this was the result of an eyewitness.  And in a game based upon using the imagination, there is no greater purpose than that for a text.  

My blog

Oh my blog.  What's it for?  Again, to jot down thoughts as I work through a hobby and a pastime that I've never been particularly close to.  I'm not a professional writer.  Dave's my name, and banking's my game.  But when my boys became particularly enamored with all things fantasy - having grown up in the heyday of Jackson's LoTR and Pottermania - I decided to step in and share their memories.  Especially since we've always been a close family who lives by the adage 'the family that plays together, stays together.'

Not that it's always been that way.  On an intellectual level, it was history, not fantasy, that was my first love.  It still is.  First as a child with WWII, largely due to the number of close relatives who served in the war.  I then went through a phase in which I discovered ancient Greek and Roman history and mythology.  That was really where my earliest interest in mythology was born.  By middle school, I was becoming a revolutionary.  Perhaps it's because I always loved autumn, and the Revolutionary War was studied during that time, but I soon found myself gobbling up anything from Colonial America to Napoleonic Europe.

It wasn't until high school, 11th Grade in fact, that I began to show interest in Medieval history.  This interest was spurred on by the number of classmates I had who were, at the time, immersing themselves in this new fad called Dungeons and Dragons.  It was also the result of our 11th Grade English teacher (what we now call Language Arts), and a segment on Beowulf.  I can still see her standing in front of the class, reading a description of the world out of which Beowulf emerged.  The cold, the dark, the small bands of people huddling in their great houses against the outer nighttime - it somehow caught my imagination.  Of course it didn't hurt that she also had a reputation for inviting various male students to her house way out in the country.  But that's another story.  There was enough combining to get my interest in medieval history jump started, and fuse it with at least an underlying interest in fantasy.

This was also during the Great Fantasy Renaissance that began in 1977 with the release of Star Wars, and continued until about the mid-1980s.  That fall semester of my 11th grade year, when I sat listening to the unpacking of Grendel's world (including a rousing account from John Gardner's Grendel), was still part of that period, though arguably toward the waning days of the Fantasy Renaissance.  Return of the Jedi had just come out it's true.  But the Excaliburs and the Conan the Barbarians were giving way to a growing number of Terms of Endearment and Wargames themed movies.

Nonetheless, by that time I had already dipped my first toe in the bubbling stew that was fantasy roleplaying.  I always had a soft spot for movie monsters and mythology.  And now I was being turned on to the particularly beautiful and brutal period of history that has been my primary focus for all the years since.  So when my boys came to me and asked ol'Dad to roll up his sleeves and have a go at the old 20-sided, I had enough interest, just enough experience, and plenty of curiosity to make a go of it.  And that's what this is for.  To sift my ideas out, have a place to put them down, and who knows? Maybe someone with infinitely more knowledge and experience in the hobby will come by and give me an insight or two I've not thought of.  Till then, here's hoping.

I'm back

That was crazy.  But good thing it happened before the blog got started.  Some fine tuning to do.  Just basic life things.  But I'm back.  Will look into things now down the road.  Then start working on getting the blog up and really running.  TTFN.