Quote from: Antiquation!;1114597IIRC there isn't any in-setting questioning of morality over enslaving these intelligent beings either, so that doesn't inspire any elemental-related interest in me either.

If you want your magitech realms, you have to break a few elementals. Don't worry though, humanoids' burden will kick in eventually. Perhaps in the Next War or maybe in Just One More War, Really We Promise?

Quote from: HappyDaze;1114614If you want your magitech realms, you have to break a few elementals. Don't worry though, humanoids' burden will kick in eventually. Perhaps in the Next War or maybe in Just One More War, Really We Promise?

Those humies are gonna be crying once they realize how many furnaces they'll have to build as reparations.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Firstly, the distinction between demons and devils is arbitrary....

The nomenclature might be arbitrary (or more properly, invented for game purposes by Gygax), but the concept is not. The Sumerians made a distinction between demons with whom you could make deals and those with whom you could not, those who followed the mandates of Heaven and those who did whatever they wanted out of malevolence. Stories in our culture where one makes a deal with the Devil (or a devil) are fairly standard (and the central premise of the film Phantom of the Paradise, contemporaneous with OD&D), so LE devils in AD&D are representative of a narrative truth that exists in our culture.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....D&D is the only setting that does it and it doesn't do much with it. Aside from alignment on their statblocks, demons and devils are interchangeable....

This is only true for those DMs who have not read the Monster Manual (1e) and who do not understand alignment.

Quote....The differences in tendencies and philosophies are reflected in the personal involvement of devils and demons in the affairs of the Prime Material Plane. The rulers of the Planes of Hell (devils) will seldom involve themselves in worldly affairs directly. Archdevils operate through their organizations to influence the course of events on the Prime Material Plane. Because of the strict order that devilkind adheres to, intervention of even lesser devils is rare, as the rulers make pacts with, humans and other agents. These arrangements assure that lawful evil is spread upon the Prime Material Plane, even though the Tiers of Hell are smaller than the Layers of the Abyss, for example, and there are far fewer devils than there are demons. While there is rivalry betwixt the Dukes of Hell, it is a prescribed and ordered contest wherein the rivals recognize limits and the need for mutual cooperation in order to insure that their collective realm remains strong and inviolate

The very nature of demonkind, however, dictates a far more direct involvement in activities on the Prime Material Plane. Lacking extensive organizations, each demon lord must become personally active if he or she desires to meddle in the affairs of humankind, etal. It is not making a virtue of necessity on the part of demons to point out that they prefer such personal involvement. Thus, this or that demon lord will be encountered in material form, directing the activities of whatever group of followers he or she has gathered to spread disorder and woe upon the earth. Each powerful demon (and there are scores and scores of them) competes bitterly with all others in a deadly rivalry for supremacy -- both in the Abyss and on the Prime Material Plane. The chaotic nature of demonkind dictates that mutual cooperation is unlikely at best, and any alliance between two demon lords will be one of mistrust and betrayal, doomed to a very short lifespan....

-- Gary Gygax, DRAGON #28

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales....Secondly, the erinyes or furies are taken from Greek myth and don't behave anything like a succubus. They're the daughters of Hades sent to torment the damned. When AD&D decided to turn them into lawful evil succubi to fulfill the autistic obsession with alignment symmetry, this did the original myth a disservice.

This is only true if the objective of AD&D were to present a game based on the Greek mythos, but very clearly the origin of devils in the game is Christianity (which translates a lot of pagan deities into demons for very specific philosophical reasons), not pagan Greek mythology. Therefore AD&D erinyes are first and foremost servants of lawful evil and their objective is to "garner more souls" (MM 1e, p. 22).

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114597Good point. I have always liked minotaurs being a result of curses as well; your idea for the gradual generation of mazes is cool, I like that.

The Hackslashmaster blog has a ton of ideas for making minotaurs more interesting. I got the seed of the idea from there (HSM casually mentions lawyers getting trapped in mazes of their own legalese) and combined it with ideas from elsewhere.

QuoteThe forge wight is an interesting idea. The hearth spirit concept reminds me of the character in Howl's Moving Castle.

Both are based on the ancient pagan concept of hearth spirits. You don't realize how bland modern fantasy has become until you research folklore. To our ancestors, the world was alive with spirits!

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1114624The nomenclature might be arbitrary (or more properly, invented for game purposes by Gygax), but the concept is not. The Sumerians made a distinction between demons with whom you could make deals and those with whom you could not, those who followed the mandates of Heaven and those who did whatever they wanted out of malevolence. Stories in our culture where one makes a deal with the Devil (or a devil) are fairly standard (and the central premise of the film Phantom of the Paradise, contemporaneous with OD&D), so LE devils in AD&D are representative of a narrative truth that exists in our culture.

In ancient myth the definition of demon was pretty fuzzy, so we can't entirely rely on it for a firmly defined game convention. The rules and fluff don't do enough to make that distinction consistent and interesting. Demons and devils are more similar than different.

They need different tactics and different aesthetics. For example, maybe devils could rely on subversive tactics (poison, ranged, AoE, debuff, etc) and demons on brute force (melee, direct damage); the logic being that demons want to destroy mortals, devils want mortals to self-destroy. In terms of aesthetics, devils need a consistent aesthetic to indicate their orderly nature, such as looking like angels or cenobites rather than obvious ugly disordered demons. In terms of behavior, demons could indulge their vices against mortals whereas devils would cultivate vice in mortals. I've read plenty of blog posts with suggestions like these.

QuoteThis is only true for those DMs who have not read the Monster Manual (1e) and who do not understand alignment.

Even so, they behave more similar than different. Their hierarchy has imps at the bottom and balrogs at top. They both have succubi. They both want to corrupt, fight, etc.

QuoteThis is only true if the objective of AD&D were to present a game based on the Greek mythos, but very clearly the origin of devils in the game is Christianity (which translates a lot of pagan deities into demons for very specific philosophical reasons), not pagan Greek mythology. Therefore AD&D erinyes are first and foremost servants of lawful evil and their objective is to "garner more souls" (MM 1e, p. 22).

Then it makes no sense to call them erinyes if they're just lawful evil succubi. Call them incubi, then, if a different name is needed.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569Totally. I've been getting tons of mileage out of introducing concepts from real world mythology that were ignored by D&D.

For example, I took from Greek myth the idea that lamia are the transformed ghosts of women who died in unrequited love or great sorrow.

Yeah, while don't expect a 1/1 representation of real world mythology (it's not like I'm an expert anyways) and taking creative license can be fine--specially if it's setting specific--mythology can be a great source of inspiration. And D&D sometimes mangles things or takes too much artistic license for a game that's supposed to be generic fantasy, rather than a specific setting where things work a certain way as part of a unified theme.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569D&D clerics seem to be partly based on the vampire hunters from Hammer Horror movies. It is pigeonholing. I'd like to see clerics with more variety, like a unarmored unarmed cleric or a cleric who casts spells from a prayerbook.

I would consider going as far as making mystics their own unified class (rather than making clerics & wizards separate classes per se) then turn priesthood into a type of background applicable to any class. And priestly mystics could use religious symbols or paraphernalia (like holy books) as a type of focus for their magic.

IRL priests are supposed to be more like a role or way of life than a specific vocation. Anyone with any skill set could choose to take the mantle of priesthood and lead a life devoted to their faith.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569Agreed. That's why I prefer mechanics like Spheres of Power, which give the player total control over their caster's spheres of influence. Want a vivomancer? There's a whole sourcebook.

That would be along the lines of my preferences as well--give mystics more flexibility and customization over the type of magic they use. I never got around playing Mage The Ascension, but they had a very interesting and flexible magic system. I also like (and probably prefer) effect based systems, where you can create any type of power based on a combination of effects and other characteristics, like range, duration, etc. Been designing one for a while, but keep getting sidetracked.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569Alignment made sense in Moorcock's work as the conflict chaos/order, but adding good and evil destroyed the sense behind it. That's why I like games which either jettison alignment or go back to the original chaos/order conflict.

TBH, I don't even like the Law/Chaos axis cuz what exactly can be considered "lawful" in particular can be relative and subjective, varying from country to country or culture. And rebellious people can still be loyal to their family and friends, for example, which is a "lawful/orderly" trait. I don't enforce alignment in my game and don't think it really helps roleplaying, even though the rules insist it's only a "roleplaying" tool. I think actual personality traits, motivations, personal ethos, factions, allegiances, etc. are more effective tools for defining character interests and behavior.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114569With actual thought behind it the distinction might be interesting, such as the difference between Hellraiser's orderly cenobites and Warhammer's chaos daemons, but D&D utterly fails to take advantage of this. You can't distinguish demons and devils in the game by their behavior or appearance, because they behave the same and used the same random generation tables to determine their appearance. Warhammer's chaos daemons have more unified motifs than D&D's supposedly orderly devils do.

Yeah, there could definitely be ways to make different groups of infernal creatures work, but that would probably work better in a setting-specific fashion. Like, if a setting had different infernal factions with their own distinct looks, styles and approaches that might be interesting (as you mentioned in another post). But I'm not sure you can do that with generic demons/devils that are supposed to blandly and readily fit into any "fantasy" campaign.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114626The Hackslashmaster blog has a ton of ideas for making minotaurs more interesting. I got the seed of the idea from there (HSM casually mentions lawyers getting trapped in mazes of their own legalese) and combined it with ideas from elsewhere.

LOL, that is awesome! As an aside I remember having so much fun with HackMaster back in the day. I will have to check that blog out!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114626Both are based on the ancient pagan concept of hearth spirits. You don't realize how bland modern fantasy has become until you research folklore. To our ancestors, the world was alive with spirits!

I love folklore, it's so much more interesting than the D&D-isms we have now. Trouble is, my knowledge of folklore is patchy at best... I'm pretty much limited to random googling when I hear about an interesting topic (like this one), unless I can find good book recommendations in either English or Spanish.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114637Yeah, while don't expect a 1/1 representation of real world mythology (it's not like I'm an expert anyways) and taking creative license can be fine--specially if it's setting specific--mythology can be a great source of inspiration. And D&D sometimes mangles things or takes too much artistic license for a game that's supposed to be generic fantasy, rather than a specific setting where things work a certain way as part of a unified theme.

As much as I criticize D&D monsters for often becoming exact opposites of the original myths, upon introspection I suspect my real problem is that the D&D monsters are created as a game convention first and a part of in-universe folklore second. I really liked the Creature Collection series because all the monsters had in-universe history and folklore, making them feel more alive than the generic sanitized D&D monsters.

For example: When you strip the minotaur from its original context, then its traits no longer make sense. Why is the D&D minotaur called a "king's bull"? Why are they bovine beastmen? Why do they carry two-headed axes? Why can they solve mazes? These traits feel arbitrary and bizarre. The same logic applies to plenty of other D&D monsters.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114637I would consider going as far as making mystics their own unified class (rather than making clerics & wizards separate classes per se) then turn priesthood into a type of background applicable to any class. And priestly mystics could use religious symbols or paraphernalia (like holy books) as a type of focus for their magic.

IRL priests are supposed to be more like a role or way of life than a specific vocation. Anyone with any skill set could choose to take the mantle of priesthood and lead a life devoted to their faith.

There's a wiki for spheres of power: http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/ It's OGL so you could adapt the general concept for other rules systems.

QuoteThat would be along the lines of my preferences as well--give mystics more flexibility and customization over the type of magic they use. I never got around playing Mage The Ascension, but they had a very interesting and flexible magic system. I also like (and probably prefer) effect based systems, where you can create any type of power based on a combination of effects and other characteristics, like range, duration, etc. Been designing one for a while, but keep getting sidetracked.

This is also called a syntactic magic system. http://pseudoboo.blogspot.com/2016/02/mechanics-syntactic-magic.html IIRC, it was pioneered by Ars Magica in the 80s.

An article I recommend is this: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html

QuoteTBH, I don't even like the Law/Chaos axis cuz what exactly can be considered "lawful" in particular can be relative and subjective, varying from country to country or culture. And rebellious people can still be loyal to their family and friends, for example, which is a "lawful/orderly" trait. I don't enforce alignment in my game and don't think it really helps roleplaying, even though the rules insist it's only a "roleplaying" tool. I think actual personality traits, motivations, personal ethos, factions, allegiances, etc. are more effective tools for defining character interests and behavior.

That's probably why a lot of settings claim humans are neutral since they exhibit both lawful and chaotic traits. In the Stormbringer cosmology, both are needed for life to exist and the extremes are inhospitable.

Even so, law/chaos has a solid foundation in real world mythology. Ma'at and Izfet in Egyptian myth, Marduk and Tiamat in Sumerian myth, the gods and giants in Indo-European myths, the whole "chaoskampf" mytheme, etc. That's probably where Moorcock got the idea in the first place, along with the political spectrum I guess.

QuoteYeah, there could definitely be ways to make different groups of infernal creatures work, but that would probably work better in a setting-specific fashion. Like, if a setting had different infernal factions with their own distinct looks, styles and approaches that might be interesting (as you mentioned in another post). But I'm not sure you can do that with generic demons/devils that are supposed to blandly and readily fit into any "fantasy" campaign.

True. In that case it doesn't make sense to distinguish them on a group basis. 13th Age had a passage on devils and it pointed this out. The Dark•Heritage setting dispenses with the binary demon/devil distinction in favor of making every archfiend's court unique, a la Warhammer's chaos gods. In Creature Collection III, one section explained that you could reskin the statblocks of celestials and fiends with different subtypes to represent allegiance to different deities, since the generic D&D monsters didn't fit the aesthetics of the setting's deities.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114672LOL, that is awesome! As an aside I remember having so much fun with HackMaster back in the day. I will have to check that blog out!

Hackslashmaster is for general D&D, not HackMaster. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1114672I love folklore, it's so much more interesting than the D&D-isms we have now. Trouble is, my knowledge of folklore is patchy at best... I'm pretty much limited to random googling when I hear about an interesting topic (like this one), unless I can find good book recommendations in either English or Spanish.

An article I recommend is this: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/magic/antiscience.html

In my experience, google books is pretty expansive if you don't have access to a library or an online course. Any book that calls itself an encyclopedia of folklore is a good starting point.

If you're working with pure fantasy, then you can invent your own folklore for your fictional cultures. No matter how weird or surreal it might seem, real folklore is probably stranger.

It also helps to study anthropology. For example, a key underlying conceit of much folklore is animism, the belief that everything in the world has a soul. Or in other worlds, anthropomorphism. Humans have a psychological tendency to anthropomorphize everything, and that's how religion is believed to have developed. Combine that with magical thinking, the belief that you cause changes in the world just by thinking about it, and things get crazy.

To the pre-modern person, wishing harm upon someone else has a chance of actually causing harm. Any harm that does befall them this person will attribute to their own evil wish, even if in reality there is no empirical evidence for this. A witch or wizard has trained themselves in this capacity, and can cast curses or blessings with ease. The same logic is applied to animals, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena because they too are attributed souls. Misfortune befalls you? Perhaps someone else cast the evil eye upon you (willfully or not), or perhaps you angered the spirit of your house or the nearby woods.

It's all complete nonsense in reality, but it is a coherent belief system and it formed the foundations of folklore well into the present. Even non-animistic religions, like Christianity, exhibit similarities in thought. Whenever bad things happen you attribute them to Devil, good things to God, and you pray for the latter.

In any case, I wouldn't worry too much about ignorance of real world folklore. If you want to avoid D&Disms, then I suspect it may be as simple as engaging in world building with critical thought and introspection. Why is the world the way it is? Why do these character classes exist? Why do these monsters exist?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114680Hackslashmaster is for general D&D, not HackMaster. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.

Ah I see, no worries! Just so long as it's mine-able for interesting concepts.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114680In any case, I wouldn't worry too much about ignorance of real world folklore. If you want to avoid D&Disms, then I suspect it may be as simple as engaging in world building with critical thought and introspection. Why is the world the way it is? Why do these character classes exist? Why do these monsters exist?

Nice link thanks, very solid breakdown! Embarrassingly I didn't even know Google Books existed, but I think my nearby library system has some good stuff (and an app to read on as well I believe). I'll have to take a look and see if there are any particularly reputable authors. I get a serious kick out of reading Séadna's translation and breakdown of Irish myth over at the RPG Pub, as well as firsthand accounts.

https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/irish-myth.2055/

I never thought about using the anthropological approach, that's a useful thought. I certainly put a lot of thought into my world building but it helps a lot to have inspiration from real-world examples to draw from and make things feel more grounded. I sometimes worry during world building that I am getting lost in the weeds and drawing incorrect conclusions from my assumptions of how things/people work.

There was an interesting setting I read called "Doomed Slayers" which went a long way on its mission statement of logically and coherently explaining the existence and societal need for professional adventurers, although I don't recall it dwelling much if at all on folklore.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/103414/Doomed-Slayers

Since I decided to drop the OGL for my own system, I DID have to go back to original myths instead of the D&D variety (ex. Nightmares aren't horses, they're hags who haunt your dreams).

I don't have a distinction between demons and devils per se, but the demons are all fallen nature spirits who can only enter the world via a tether (a spell, an object [think a genie in a ring/lamp] or by possession). They also conform to more Middle Eastern nomenclature (Ifrit, Jinn, Shedim and Ku'ul are the main types with Moloch, Lilith, Pazuzu and Tiamat as their respective Kings or Queens... and Tiamat is a one-headed sea serpent, not a five-headed dragon) and are generally only humanoid due to whatever vessel they're possessing. Their primary interests lay in indulging in whatever unholy appetites they can because they are incapable of doing so while trapped in the Abyss.

By contrast, many of what in D&D would be devils are the servants of the gods in their more negative aspects. Furies are sent into the Mortal World by the god of laws and rulership to punish oathbreakers. Banshees are harbingers of misfortune sent by the goddess of fate. Succubi test the loyalty of men and women with their seductions. Nightmares/Night Hags are the shadow of the goddess of dreams. Sphinx are sent by the god of knowledge to protect the more dangerous secrets from the unworthy. Basically, they're the enforcers of the gods.

There's a third category of supernatural entities I call Horrors that were birthed by what amounts to an "anti-god" bent on unmaking Creation. Horrors include the undead, living shadows and various other Lovecraftian creatures.

I've actually found having to go back to the actual myths and legends instead of just cribbing off D&D to result in a much more interesting fantasy world overall.

* * * * *

As to my personal player rules, I've found "treat every campaign like you're living in an 'anyone can die' slasher film" has never been a bad call. You may be able to lighten up a bit once you're more familiar with the GM/campaign, but the start point of "avoid all horror movie victim tropes" will make sure your PC lives long enough to make that call.

My other rule is "If all else fails, be entertaining." The more entertaining you can make it for the GM/table in general when something goes badly, the longer the GM will likely let you go on before killing your PC. Use that time to try and find another way out. This is basically weaponizing "taking refuge in audacity."

Quote from: VisionStorm;1114524They should ALL wear robes. In every game (unless they're tribal priests or something, then they should wear medicine men clothes or whatever).

There's a name for armored holy men. They're called paladins.

Except Paladins came later. That's why I always felt the class was redundant; the Cleric was meant to represent not ordinary priests but a militant holy order.


As for your complaint about magic-users, I agree. In Lion & Dragon, magisters can do healing magic, healing magic was always a part of medieval non-religious magic.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1115348Except Paladins came later. That's why I always felt the class was redundant; the Cleric was meant to represent not ordinary priests but a militant holy order.


As for your complaint about magic-users, I agree. In Lion & Dragon, magisters can do healing magic, healing magic was always a part of medieval non-religious magic.

The problem with clerics is that they were still called "clerics" rather than paladins, templars or something more militant sounding, and there was no dedicated non-militant priestly class to make the distinction. And while they had a more focused spell list and were somewhat more limited compared to magic-users in their range of spells they were still pretty comparable in spells per day to mages--just a few spell levels short. So people just used them as "priests", and kept adding to their spell repertoire between editions till they became full blown dedicated spell casters with equal spells per day (technically more, with bonus spells) to wizards, on top of having armor and medium combat abilities--making the need for a genuine non-militant priestly class redundant.

And they were kinda weak in combat abilities compared to full blown fighters, so people still wanted holy crusaders with weak magic that still felt like real warriors, hence, paladins as a separate class.

If they had kept the cleric's magic limited (maybe even reduced) and focused, and maybe beefed up their combat abilities a little bit once they started piling up additional benefits for dedicated warriors, along with including a true dedicated priestly class with full blown magic, clerics could have served their original intended function without the need for paladins. But instead they got morphed into full-blown spell casting priests with mediocre combat abilities and decent armor.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1114680As much as I criticize D&D monsters for often becoming exact opposites of the original myths, upon introspection I suspect my real problem is that the D&D monsters are created as a game convention first and a part of in-universe folklore second.

This has long been clear from a more remote vantage point.

I think OD&D had more problems with monsters being the same (all the goblinoid races seemingly existed just to have different hit dice and armor class, not because there was any deeper distinction; many monsters did not even have any distinctive mechanical feature (e.g., pegasus, hippogriff, griffon, roc). And distinctive monsters were ranked in strength, like the ordering of undead. Yes, a number of later monsters arose purely as dungeon tricks (mimics, ear seekers, rot grubs, shriekers, gas spores, piercers, rust monsters, etc). OD&D also specified too much; villagers complained to PCs about a necromancer (robbed graves, harassed them with zombies) and the players immediately laid plans to face a level 10 magic-user, because evocative names were attached to specific class levels (and why did clearly Christian clerics spend a level being a lama?). But over time D&D has made similar monsters more distinctive and given them more reason to exist, and supports variants of greater or lesser power.

QuoteFor example: When you strip the minotaur from its original context, then its traits no longer make sense. Why is the D&D minotaur called a "king's bull"? Why are they bovine beastmen? Why do they carry two-headed axes? Why can they solve mazes? These traits feel arbitrary and bizarre. The same logic applies to plenty of other D&D monsters.

Why would you assume that the etymology of -taur in a fantasy world indicates "bull" when centaurs are not at all bull-like? (That's a horse body, not a bovine body.) If it does mean bull, I am happy to keep the original context and conclude that in ancient times of whatever D&D world (or just in stories that may have been transplanted from other worlds) there was a king named Minos who had the original or most powerful such creature imprisoned in the most complicated labyrinth ever built, and that all subsequent minotaurs, by sympathetic magic or heredity, have attributes similar to that exemplar. Presumably it would not have been necessary to build such a complicated labyrinth if the original (and therefore all subsequent minotaurs) were not particularly good at solving mazes.

Why are they what they are depicted as? Because if minotaurs were, say, armor plated quadrupeds with a petrification breath weapon, it would confuse players (the way gorgons did). Why an axe? It's got to have some weapon, but no reason you couldn't have a minotaur with a flail or a warhammer or a halberd or unarmed; a minotaur with a rapier would seem a little silly to me, though. Medusas (or medusae if you prefer) all suddenly had bows after the original Clash of the Titans movie, because it was cool and maybe also because not enough monsters had ranged attacks.

Why not invent a random name? Because a random name conveys nothing to the players. Would it be better to make a consistent world in which every monster is named in a language invented by the GM, and have the players spend years learning the languages and world? Maybe, if you were good at such worldbuilding and you had a group stable enough to spend those years in one campaign. But Tolkien, who was very good at worldbuilding and languages, introduced some unfamiliar names of creature races (hobbit, ent, Uruk-hai, orc) while he also stuck with many familiar names (elf, dwarf, goblin, spider, eagle, wizard). I'm frankly annoyed with the somewhat random demon names that supplanted type I demon, type II demon, etc.; pit fiend is evocative, while names that are either made up or come from a mythology I don't know are not evocative and hard to keep track of.

Quote from: rawma;1115423This has long been clear from a more remote vantage point.

I think OD&D had more problems with monsters being the same (all the goblinoid races seemingly existed just to have different hit dice and armor class, not because there was any deeper distinction; many monsters did not even have any distinctive mechanical feature (e.g., pegasus, hippogriff, griffon, roc). And distinctive monsters were ranked in strength, like the ordering of undead. Yes, a number of later monsters arose purely as dungeon tricks (mimics, ear seekers, rot grubs, shriekers, gas spores, piercers, rust monsters, etc). OD&D also specified too much; villagers complained to PCs about a necromancer (robbed graves, harassed them with zombies) and the players immediately laid plans to face a level 10 magic-user, because evocative names were attached to specific class levels (and why did clearly Christian clerics spend a level being a lama?). But over time D&D has made similar monsters more distinctive and given them more reason to exist, and supports variants of greater or lesser power.

Even today a lot of monsters feel redundant. I'd prefer if D&D gave similar monsters identical statblocks with some extra rules explaining the minor differences. In other words, make most monsters easily customizable out of the box. Or use something like FantasyCraft's monster builder, which is pretty much the best I've ever seen in any d20 games.

Quote from: rawma;1115423Why would you assume that the etymology of -taur in a fantasy world indicates "bull" when centaurs are not at all bull-like? (That's a horse body, not a bovine body.)

Taurus is the Latin word for "bull." It has descendants in the romance languages. Minotaur literally translates to "king's bull."

The academic literature on the subject speculates that centaur translates to "bull-killer," but this may be a folk etymology. I saw one suggestion that it is cognate to Latin centuria.

The centaurs were apparently inspired by a real tribe living in ancient Thessaly. Their name could have referred to them being the Ancient Greek equivalent of cowboys, if the folk etymology holds weight.

Quote from: rawma;1115423If it does mean bull, I am happy to keep the original context and conclude that in ancient times of whatever D&D world (or just in stories that may have been transplanted from other worlds) there was a king named Minos who had the original or most powerful such creature imprisoned in the most complicated labyrinth ever built, and that all subsequent minotaurs, by sympathetic magic or heredity, have attributes similar to that exemplar.

The Minotaur may have been inspired by a Cretan king or deity, as his birth name Asterion ("starry one") is shared with a King of Crete and bullfighting was a sport in Crete. Sadly almost nothing of Cretan writing survives so we can only ever speculate.

As far as I can tell, it wasn't until D&D that the Minotaur became an entire race. The most recent explanation of their origin that I know of is an evil ritual concocted by Baphomet, used to transform his cultists and victims into minotaurs.

In my attempts at world building, I use the sympathetic magic explanation exclusively: A minotaur curse that is unique for every minotaur and causes them to develop a maze demiplane that they slowly become unable to leave. Anyone can contradict the curse spontaneously under the right circumstances without being cursed deliberately, and some people are so unlucky that their bloodline carries a latent or active curse. Likewise, minotaurs aren't a race and breaking their curse transforms them back into their normal race. Bovine beastmen and demigods (in the original sense of the child of a god and a mortal, not the weird D&D definition) are not synonymous with minotaurs, but for extra confusion they can contract the minotaur's curse too.

Quote from: rawma;1115423Presumably it would not have been necessary to build such a complicated labyrinth if the original (and therefore all subsequent minotaurs) were not particularly good at solving mazes.

You would think. The myth never gives any explanation of this.

This doesn't explain the game mechanic though, because in game mechanics minotaurs automatically pass rolls to solve mazes rather than having a bonus to solving them so it is impossible in the RAW to create a maze that any minotaur could not solve. In D&D 5e this is replaced by a much vaguer rule that minotaurs can perfectly recall their path, which is basically the same thing unless the maze changes layout randomly.

In fact, the idea of an unsolvable maze is nonsensical since any maze can be solved by simply putting your hand on the wall, maintaining contact and walking around until you reach the opening. The way to stump this is by making a maze so huge that doing so would take long enough to cause death by exposure or dehydration, add a shifting layout, fill it with death traps, etc. The original maze at Crete was simple stone with plans drawn up by Daedalus, who made it so complex that he barely solved it himself after he finished it.

A lot of myths display plot holes if you start to think about them critically. I suspect the myth of the minotaur was stitched together by the Greeks from disparate elements of Cretan myth and culture, like their worship of the celestial bodies, their bullfighting sport, the real life maze build under their palace, etc.

Quote from: rawma;1115423Why are they what they are depicted as? Because if minotaurs were, say, armor plated quadrupeds with a petrification breath weapon, it would confuse players (the way gorgons did). Why an axe? It's got to have some weapon, but no reason you couldn't have a minotaur with a flail or a warhammer or a halberd or unarmed; a minotaur with a rapier would seem a little silly to me, though. Medusas (or medusae if you prefer) all suddenly had bows after the original Clash of the Titans movie, because it was cool and maybe also because not enough monsters had ranged attacks.

I suspect the double-headed axe might be used because the labrys was a real double-headed axe in Ancient Greek culture, and may be a pun on labyrinth.

The indie RPG Mazes & Minotaurs introduces a variety of minotaur variants, including ones with psychic powers, fire breath, two heads, etc. I'm surprised D&D has been so stagnant.

Quote from: rawma;1115423Why not invent a random name? Because a random name conveys nothing to the players. Would it be better to make a consistent world in which every monster is named in a language invented by the GM, and have the players spend years learning the languages and world? Maybe, if you were good at such worldbuilding and you had a group stable enough to spend those years in one campaign. But Tolkien, who was very good at worldbuilding and languages, introduced some unfamiliar names of creature races (hobbit, ent, Uruk-hai, orc) while he also stuck with many familiar names (elf, dwarf, goblin, spider, eagle, wizard). I'm frankly annoyed with the somewhat random demon names that supplanted type I demon, type II demon, etc.; pit fiend is evocative, while names that are either made up or come from a mythology I don't know are not evocative and hard to keep track of.

I agree that it makes more sense to give names composed of real words in the language your audience is reading. This is why I liked a lot of Creature Collection series, since many monsters had names in English roughly describing their shtick or simply evocative sounding like what people in-universe would devise for them. I too dislike the usage of nonsense names for demons and prefer ones that describe the demon in some way; PF2 actually does this and it's a welcome change IMO.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1115792Taurus is the Latin word for "bull." It has descendants in the romance languages. Minotaur literally translates to "king's bull."

The academic literature on the subject speculates that centaur translates to "bull-killer," but this may be a folk etymology. I saw one suggestion that it is cognate to Latin centuria.

The centaurs were apparently inspired by a real tribe living in ancient Thessaly. Their name could have referred to them being the Ancient Greek equivalent of cowboys, if the folk etymology holds weight.

The Minotaur may have been inspired by a Cretan king or deity, as his birth name Asterion ("starry one") is shared with a King of Crete and bullfighting was a sport in Crete. Sadly almost nothing of Cretan writing survives so we can only ever speculate.

As far as I can tell, it wasn't until D&D that the Minotaur became an entire race. The most recent explanation of their origin that I know of is an evil ritual concocted by Baphomet, used to transform his cultists and victims into minotaurs.

In my attempts at world building, I use the sympathetic magic explanation exclusively: A minotaur curse that is unique for every minotaur and causes them to develop a maze demiplane that they slowly become unable to leave. Anyone can contradict the curse spontaneously under the right circumstances without being cursed deliberately, and some people are so unlucky that their bloodline carries a latent or active curse. Likewise, minotaurs aren't a race and breaking their curse transforms them back into their normal race. Bovine beastmen and demigods (in the original sense of the child of a god and a mortal, not the weird D&D definition) are not synonymous with minotaurs, but for extra confusion they can contract the minotaur's curse too.

That's cool; but apparently your range of world building does not include not having Latin exist. In a world in which -taur or taur- does not exist in other words, why would the inhabitants believe that "minotaur" means "king's bull"? I would think it specifically means "Minos' bull" and not "king's bull" unless you also import Cretan into your world.

As to becoming an entire race, almost all unique monsters of Greek mythology became races in D&D because they provide more opponents than a single creature that was already killed by a single Greek hero.

QuoteYou would think. The myth never gives any explanation of this.

You are sometimes very keen on following obscure variants on myths but at other times you don't seem to want to draw inferences from the most consistent elements of a myth. I would take it from the myth that the Minotaur could not be held reliably by ordinary prisons of thick walls and metal bars; it may be that the most difficult maze ever was significant overkill to contain it, and if AD&D 1e had said that minotaurs were particularly susceptible to the maze spell then I would have thought that justified too. But that there is some special significance of mazes and labyrinths for minotaurs would seem to me exactly the sort of thing you want - something that ties the game monster to the mythological monster. Maybe introspection would indicate you like quibbling over whatever choice somebody else made?

QuoteThis doesn't explain the game mechanic though, because in game mechanics minotaurs automatically pass rolls to solve mazes rather than having a bonus to solving them so it is impossible in the RAW to create a maze that any minotaur could not solve. In D&D 5e this is replaced by a much vaguer rule that minotaurs can perfectly recall their path, which is basically the same thing unless the maze changes layout randomly.

The maze created instantly by a casting of the spell is clearly not the same as Daedelus' effort. A D&D Daedelus may have incorporated illusions, confusion spells or other mental effects to confound solution. (Not that D&D is particularly good at representing any number of things from myth or reality.)

QuoteIn fact, the idea of an unsolvable maze is nonsensical since any maze can be solved by simply putting your hand on the wall, maintaining contact and walking around until you reach the opening.

Not if there are cycles within the labyrinth, so that you do not traverse the entire maze by this strategy.

As you note, a maze can be made unsolvable by making it so lengthy you cannot solve it by brute force in a feasible amount of time. Consider a maze constructed as follows - you have to choose left or right a hundred times at distinct junctures, and only after you make all 100 choices do you discover if the path you chose is a dead end or not. A brute force solution would require testing, on average, half of the 2^100 (more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 paths, if I did the calculation correctly); but only one path if you know which path is correct. The maze spell in D&D might thrust you into such a maze for which escaping consists of remembering the path that you took being thrust into it - minotaurs do this automatically, everyone else takes some rounds of real-world time to do this (so probably not as many paths).

So I will also assert that minotaurs make unusually efficient traveling salesmen who cannot distinguish P from NP.

QuoteI suspect the double-headed axe might be used because the labrys was a real double-headed axe in Ancient Greek culture, and may be a pun on labyrinth.

That would be cool if true, but I'm more inclined to think it's because the artwork in the 1e Monster Manual showed the minotaur holding such a weapon. (Dragon 116 asserts that their favored weapon is a double-bladed poleaxe, but that they user other weapons.) 5e gives it a greataxe but also assigns specific weapons to each kind of giant, and I doubt there's some clever pun from ancient Greek behind any of those.

QuoteThe indie RPG Mazes & Minotaurs introduces a variety of minotaur variants, including ones with psychic powers, fire breath, two heads, etc. I'm surprised D&D has been so stagnant.

I expect there will be a 5e supplement or campaign book expanding on them in due course.

QuoteI agree that it makes more sense to give names composed of real words in the language your audience is reading. This is why I liked a lot of Creature Collection series, since many monsters had names in English roughly describing their shtick or simply evocative sounding like what people in-universe would devise for them. I too dislike the usage of nonsense names for demons and prefer ones that describe the demon in some way; PF2 actually does this and it's a welcome change IMO.

One could argue for letting the players choose names, but when we met a grendel from The Legacy of Heorot we called it a Zippopotamus (it's a large creature that lives in a river but moves with astonishing speed on land), to the annoyance of the DM. I like names like "bone devil" and "shambling mound" but I'm not enthused by names like piercer or roper or trapper; some that I wouldn't like if they were new, like beholder, have become evocative over time.

Quote from: rawma;1115927That's cool; but apparently your range of world building does not include not having Latin exist. In a world in which -taur or taur- does not exist in other words, why would the inhabitants believe that "minotaur" means "king's bull"?

It makes no sense to use "minotaur" if Greek never existed in that world. I assumed that we were using a translation convention where the fantasy language is represented as English for our convenience but isn't English in-universe. Therefore, I assumed the fantasy language word being used would be translated into what their language writes as "king's bull."

Quote from: rawma;1115927I would think it specifically means "Minos' bull" and not "king's bull" unless you also import Cretan into your world.

Minos is the Cretan word for "king," not a specific king of Crete except in Greek myth.

Quote from: rawma;1115927I expect there will be a 5e supplement or campaign book expanding on them in due course.

There are plenty of third party books too. Masters & Minions: Maze of the Minotaur, Mazes & Minotaurs, etc.

Quote from: rawma;1115927One could argue for letting the players choose names, but when we met a grendel from The Legacy of Heorot we called it a Zippopotamus (it's a large creature that lives in a river but moves with astonishing speed on land), to the annoyance of the DM.

I would have called the Grendel a "river troll," in accordance with Scandinavian usage anyhow not weird D&Disms based on a single story by Poul Anderson.

Quote from: rawma;1115927I like names like "bone devil" and "shambling mound" but I'm not enthused by names like piercer or roper or trapper;

These are basically mimics that pretend to be a stalactite, stalagmite, and floor, respectively. They aren't even the only monsters that mimic those things, the dark mantle mimics the stalactite and stalagmite, the lurker pretends to be a ceiling, etc. There have been so many articles about how silly this formula is.

Quote from: rawma;1115927some that I wouldn't like if they were new, like beholder, have become evocative over time.

I don't know... "eye tyrant," "vile oculus," "sphere of many eyes" and "evil eyes of Augrah-Ma" still seem more evocative and distinguishing than the dictionary word for someone who beholds. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and all that.