Quote from: Opaopajr;1094796Red touch yellow, kill a fellow...

Huh, now that I think about it, that's a pretty awesome RPG gaming tidbit. There should be some neat rhymes with DnD monsters, especially undead, so as to sprinkle in NPC rumors. Maybe use them as children nursery rhymes so as to foreshadow a region's dangers! :eek:

Sounds like a nice topic for a few pages' worth of adapted rhymes for various big bads. I would buy that supplement.

D&D zombies and wights are broadly your coral and king snakes... animate corpses. The primary physical distinctions I can think of are that D&D zombies are traditionally slow, with different editions including such things as "always goes last" or "can take a standard or move action, but not both" to reflect this. Wights, by conservative move as fast as a living man, occasionally even faster.

So maybe something like "if it shambles, take care. Of the swift, beware."

i.e. zombies are dangerous but can generally be handled if you're cautious and can be distinguished from wights by their generally slow and shambling gait. They're often created with specific orders they can't ignore so taking care in handling them can make all the difference... if they had the command "kill everyone who enters this room" they'd not fight back at all if you stayed outside the room and hit them with ranged attacks.

The wights on the hand are swift, intelligent and malicious. You can't use "exact words" commands against them and they're considerably more dangerous. In TSR-era D&D particularly they're dangerous regardless of party level because of their level drain and more constrained AC values (not to mention overbearing... overbearing + level drain... shudder).

Quote from: Pat;1094684That's true, the taxonomies in mythology are limited. That's because storytelling elements are continually repurposed and often lack any clear meaning outside the context of a particular story. The categories are loose, imprecise, and constantly evolve based on a continual series of subjective reinterpretations.

But the taxonomies in natural science are extensive, detailed, and often very precise because they categorize things whose variations can be objectively established. In the worlds of D&D, the animate dead, dragons, and elementals are part of objective reality. It wouldn't make sense for the natural historians of those worlds would use the foggy, imprecise definitions of our literature, they'd instead develop a fantastic version of our traditions of natural history and eventually the natural sciences to classify the monsters they hit with swords and spells.

Quote from: Chris24601;1094691This is a VERY good point.

In the world of D&D your life can hinge on whether the corporeal undead you're facing is a zombie (tough, but nothing special), a ghoul (put the elf warriors up front since they're immune to its paralyzing touch) or a wight (Gah!!! kill it fast!!! It can life/level drain you with just a touch!). You need to know exactly what type of undead it is ASAP and vague descriptors are no one's friend.

If you're bitten by a snake it makes a huge difference whether its a kingsnake (non-venomous) or a coral snake (extremely venomous).

Can you tell the difference? Would you try to learn if your life depended on it?





This is why having in-universe distinctions between zombies, ghouls, wights, etc. makes sense. Because if you picked up the first snake thinking it was a Kingsnake then you'd be on your way to the ER as what is actually a coral snake's neurotoxin causes your lungs to shut down. If your livelihood was clearing out snakes for a living you'd take the time to learn this. If your livelihood is clearing out old tombs, you'd take the time to learn that there's a meaningful difference between a wight and a zombie.

And you think the medieval peasants who believed these creatures existed did not do that?

D&D's naming conventions simply aren't sensible by the standards you proclaim. They're far too arbitrary and use made-up words with no actual meaning, when real taxonomies use names that rather literally describe the animals. Tyrannosaurus rex, for example, is New Latin for "tyrant lizard king."

Furthermore, D&D has a bazillion different types of monsters. The Monstrous Manuals, modules, 3pp, etc. Even then, the same monster may demonstrate broadly different rules by individual (since natural selection favors those that adventurers can't perfectly predict). Van Richten's Guides go into a lot of detail about how easy it is to get killed when you follow stereotypes. It's ridiculous to try giving each one a unique name when it makes more sense to give them military style numbers, especially when adventurers are primarily interested in killing them and the monster in question may be a unique oddity created for that particular dungeon using a random generation table.

Also, who are these "natural historians" keeping track of and applying tortuously unique names to these bazillions of randomly generated monsters? Is this one of those absurd settings with adventurer guilds composed of billions of adventurers that farm dungeons for infinite loot, a setting for literal mythic heroes where monsters are both rare and usually unique, a gritty setting where literacy is a luxury of the church, or one of those logical settings where everybody lives in walled cities to avoid the monsters in the wilderness?

Genuine pseudo-medieval peasants probably wouldn't have any words to describe a high-level undead spellcaster with their soul outside their body, except for the phrase "a high-level undead spellcaster with their soul outside their body." That's assuming that such a creature was common enough that everybody knew what they were, which is unbelievable. Furthermore, that creature would not be equivalent to "a mid-level undead spellcaster with their soul outside their body," "a low-level undead spellcaster with their soul outside their body," "a high-level undead spellcaster with their soul inside their body," "a mid-level undead spellcaster with their soul inside their body," or "a low-level undead spellcaster with their soul inside their body."

For that matter, lots of taxonomists have pointed out that real taxonomies have systemic problems with describing reality because taxonomies are discrete and reality is very much not. Among other names, this is called "post-Linnaean taxonomy." Real life taxonomy is now cataloging species as branches on a cancerous tree, and it's insanely difficult.

Fantasy taxonomy takes place in worlds operating according to Young Earth Creationism in which all things were and are arbitrary created by gods/writers (or some kind of insane troll logic universe where Young Earth Creationism and evolution are simultaneously true because the writers have no idea what they're doing). Eberron and Forgotten Realms acknowledge the changes between rules editions by noting that the laws of physics change at different periods of history. Taxonomy simply doesn't work in a fictional universe subject the arbitrary whims of an ever changing clique of writers.

Quote from: Shasarak;1094702Personally I like the old saying "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" so it would be no point in labeling all undead as "Liches" because that is too simple.  You could perahps create some kind of quasi-scientific naming system calling Lichs "Lich Magicus", Death Knights "Lich Mighticus" and Mummys "Lich Bandagus"

It could be quite fun if you liked categorising creatures, like a fantasy butterfly collector.

That's exactly how monsters were classified by real life storytellers. Their names were literal descriptions of them in the languages telling the story. Yokai.com has a great list of monsters with meaningful names.

Gygax and co's world building when it comes to taxonomy leaves much to be desired.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1094870And you think the medieval peasants who believed these creatures existed did not do that?

They did not. They told stories, that changed from generation to generation.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1094870D&D's naming conventions simply aren't sensible by the standards you proclaim. They're far too arbitrary and use made-up words with no actual meaning, when real taxonomies use names that rather literally describe the animals. Tyrannosaurus rex, for example, is New Latin for "tyrant lizard king."

That's not true.

Tyrannosaurus rex isn't a lizard. Dinosaurs are archosaurs, lizards are lepidosaurs. Completely different. And there's no evidence they were kings who ruled tyrannically. The idea is so ridiculously improbable that we can safely dismiss it, until extraordinary evidence shows up in support of your outlandish thesis.

The purpose of scientific names is to provide stability and reduce ambiguity, not to be descriptive. Plenty of animals are named to honor people (Othnielosaurus and Marshosaurus were both named in honor of the same paleontologist) or even sponsors (Qantassaurus is named after the airline). Others are unabashed pop culture references (Gojirasaurus is named after Godzilla, but it's on the small side even among meat-eating dinosaurs, much less when compared to kaiju, and there's no evidence it breathed radioactive fire), or named based on where they're found (Sinraptor was found in China).

Yes, new species or genera are sometimes named based on anatomical features, but they're usually extremely technical. Diplodocus means "double beam", which describes a feature in the tail bones. Which you'd never see, if you met a living one. Not only that, it's not even a unique characteristic. Lots of other sauropods have double-beamed caudal chevrons. But that's irrelevant, because the important thing is the name Diplodocus is unique. And now that it's taken, the name can never be used for another animal (per the ICZN). That means there's a clear, unambiguous way to refer to the animal. Compare this to any birdwatcher's handbook, which might list dozens or even hundreds of local (non-scientific) names for the same bird.

Sometimes the names even turn out to be wrong. Megaraptor, for instance, was initially named because they thought it was a giant dromaeosaur, like Velociraptor. But that turned out to be incorrect. They thought it was an allosaur for a while, but now it seems to be more closely related to the tyrannosaurs. But none of that matters. Megaraptor will always be Megaraptor, because what the name means is irrelevant. The name is permanently affixed to the specimen, because that's the only way to provide stability and unambiguity.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1094870Also, who are these "natural historians" keeping track of and applying tortuously unique names to these bazillions of randomly generated monsters? Is this one of those absurd settings with adventurer guilds composed of billions of adventurers that farm dungeons for infinite loot, a setting for literal mythic heroes where monsters are both rare and usually unique, a gritty setting where literacy is a luxury of the church, or one of those logical settings where everybody lives in walled cities to avoid the monsters in the wilderness?

Look up "natural history" some time. It's not this medieval guild you're imagining, it's a term for the study of the natural world, before it became formalized into science. It dates to prehistory, and is present in all cultures.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1094797Sounds like a nice topic for a few pages' worth of adapted rhymes for various big bads. I would buy that supplement.

It does sound like a nice new topic (and worthwhile supplement)! Wanna do the honors of starting it? You can copy pasta our posts as a starter prompt.

Quote from: Chris24601;1094841D&D zombies and wights are broadly your coral and king snakes... animate corpses. The primary physical distinctions I can think of are that D&D zombies are traditionally slow, with different editions including such things as "always goes last" or "can take a standard or move action, but not both" to reflect this. Wights, by conservative move as fast as a living man, occasionally even faster.

So maybe something like "if it shambles, take care. Of the swift, beware."

i.e. zombies are dangerous but can generally be handled if you're cautious and can be distinguished from wights by their generally slow and shambling gait. They're often created with specific orders they can't ignore so taking care in handling them can make all the difference... if they had the command "kill everyone who enters this room" they'd not fight back at all if you stayed outside the room and hit them with ranged attacks.

The wights on the hand are swift, intelligent and malicious. You can't use "exact words" commands against them and they're considerably more dangerous. In TSR-era D&D particularly they're dangerous regardless of party level because of their level drain and more constrained AC values (not to mention overbearing... overbearing + level drain... shudder).

See? This is cool! Could we even extrapolate that modern vs. mid-century modern zombie movies have switched from zombie hordes to wight hordes? :eek:

I do remember there are some fun zombie exceptions, like 5e zombies (they won't die unless they fail a CON save). These variations help give a rootedness to setting, and adding little rumor mnemonics would be awesome for variants, homebrew or not. Then players have not only a good chance at reskinned monster-look-alikes, but even more a reason to socialize and explore setting before blithely wandering into combat with their metagame knowledge.

This would really be some ace level detail in a cheap adventure module trying to stand out from the dross.

Quote from: Pat;1094872They did not. They told stories, that changed from generation to generation.


That's not true.

Tyrannosaurus rex isn't a lizard. Dinosaurs are archosaurs, lizards are lepidosaurs. Completely different. And there's no evidence they were kings who ruled tyrannically. The idea is so ridiculously improbable that we can safely dismiss it, until extraordinary evidence shows up in support of your outlandish thesis.

The purpose of scientific names is to provide stability and reduce ambiguity, not to be descriptive. Plenty of animals are named to honor people (Othnielosaurus and Marshosaurus were both named in honor of the same paleontologist) or even sponsors (Qantassaurus is named after the airline). Others are unabashed pop culture references (Gojirasaurus is named after Godzilla, but it's on the small side even among meat-eating dinosaurs, much less when compared to kaiju, and there's no evidence it breathed radioactive fire), or named based on where they're found (Sinraptor was found in China).

Yes, new species or genera are sometimes named based on anatomical features, but they're usually extremely technical. Diplodocus means "double beam", which describes a feature in the tail bones. Which you'd never see, if you met a living one. Not only that, it's not even a unique characteristic. Lots of other sauropods have double-beamed caudal chevrons. But that's irrelevant, because the important thing is the name Diplodocus is unique. And now that it's taken, the name can never be used for another animal (per the ICZN). That means there's a clear, unambiguous way to refer to the animal. Compare this to any birdwatcher's handbook, which might list dozens or even hundreds of local (non-scientific) names for the same bird.

Sometimes the names even turn out to be wrong. Megaraptor, for instance, was initially named because they thought it was a giant dromaeosaur, like Velociraptor. But that turned out to be incorrect. They thought it was an allosaur for a while, but now it seems to be more closely related to the tyrannosaurs. But none of that matters. Megaraptor will always be Megaraptor, because what the name means is irrelevant. The name is permanently affixed to the specimen, because that's the only way to provide stability and unambiguity.


Look up "natural history" some time. It's not this medieval guild you're imagining, it's a term for the study of the natural world, before it became formalized into science. It dates to prehistory, and is present in all cultures.

I know.

My point is that saying lich and wight should only ever refer to highly specific D&D monsters is nonsense. Even without being able to refer to the original meaning in modern dictionaries, natural linguistic drift would shift the meanings to something else.

The words lich means "death" and wight means "thing." As tvtropes attests, people still use them to mean those things and more. Why shouldn't they?

Have you ever heard the story of the Gorgons of Gorgonzola? They're gorgon medusa amazons that raise catoblepas gorgons for their milk to make into Gorgonzola cheese, named for their village of Gorgonzola. (I made that up.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;1094892It does sound like a nice new topic (and worthwhile supplement)! Wanna do the honors of starting it? You can copy pasta our posts as a starter prompt.



See? This is cool! Could we even extrapolate that modern vs. mid-century modern zombie movies have switched from zombie hordes to wight hordes? :eek:

I do remember there are some fun zombie exceptions, like 5e zombies (they won't die unless they fail a CON save). These variations help give a rootedness to setting, and adding little rumor mnemonics would be awesome for variants, homebrew or not. Then players have not only a good chance at reskinned monster-look-alikes, but even more a reason to socialize and explore setting before blithely wandering into combat with their metagame knowledge.

This would really be some ace level detail in a cheap adventure module trying to stand out from the dross.

After reading Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead, I'm further convinced that it makes no sense to apply one-size-fits-all monosyllable names drawn from a hat. Especially not when you're a creative GM who uses random tables for all your monsters specifically to pre-empt metagame knowledge and make your setting feel less of a cardboard assembly line than typical generic fantasy blandness.

When you're dealing with a monster, you'd need to know a lot more than its name to be able to deal with it. Saying that something is a "wight" tells you nothing, since a "wight" could refer to a barrow wight, a forge wight (see Creature Collection), or a house wight (see neo-paganism), to name a few. None of which are related or behave much alike, aside from being tied to specific locations.

Same with saying that something is a dragon, as there are a bazillion kinds of dragons before you bring in random tables. Did you just kill a Chinese dragon? Congratulations, you killed the guy responsible for making it rain! Did you just hand that fallen star to that giant talking snake? Congratulations, it just metamorphosed into a horned dragon and will now destroy the valley! Get married to that cute guy? Turns out he's a horned serpent too, i.e. a dragon!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1094905My point is that saying lich and wight should only ever refer to highly specific D&D monsters is nonsense. Even without being able to refer to the original meaning in modern dictionaries, natural linguistic drift would shift the meanings to something else.

The words lich means "death" and wight means "thing." As tvtropes attests, people still use them to mean those things and more. Why shouldn't they?

Etymology is not meaning. And lich never meant dead, not did wight mean thing. Lich is an old word for corpse, surviving in certain constructions like the "lich gate" though which funeral processions pass. But aside from a few archaic references, it was effectively a dead word, when it was revived by D&D via Clark Ashton Smith to refer to a sorcerer who has archived immortality beyond death. Wight was a term for a human being, which was adopted in the 19th century to refer to barrow-wights, and that became cemented in popular culture by Tolkien. Language is not static, people can continue to repurpose words, including reinvoking older meanings, but when they do so that's not returning to the word's true meaning. The current meaning is the true meaning, and adopting old terms for a modern use is another type of neologism, even if that new use has old roots.

At this point, I'm not even sure what you're arguing about. You've been been making very broad and factually incorrect assertions, what you're saying radically shifts from post to post, and it's all wrapped in verbose digressions that have little semantic content. At first you were arguing that terms used to refer to monsters should be used loosely to refer to a broad class, as they are across mythologies, and against the idea that specific terms would be used to refer to concrete, verifiable differences. That's an argument that holds no water, because from the perspective of someone living in D&Dland they're real creatures, not fables and allegories and folk tales. Now you're arguing for a LotFP-style every-monster-is-unique game. Which isn't fundamentally an argument about naming conventions at all, it's about radically changing the way monsters are handled in D&D. In that case, where every monster is unique, you'd lack group names because groups don't exist. Instead, you'd have specific names, like the singing rat of Fire Peak, or the bug-faced boggum of the Mossy Swamp, or Raphagmortonmok. In that case, name components wouldn't be used in the species/genera sense, they'd be used to describe features, or just poetically. In that case, a lich might be a localized term for refer to anything dead and animate, wight might be the same from a neighboring county, and they might (or might not) be be used when a new monster emerges and needs a name.

Quote from: Pat;1094912Etymology is not meaning. And lich never meant dead, not did wight mean thing. Lich is an old word for corpse, surviving in certain constructions like the "lich gate" though which funeral processions pass. But aside from a few archaic references, it was effectively a dead word, when it was revived by D&D via Clark Ashton Smith to refer to a sorcerer who has archived immortality beyond death. Wight was a term for a human being, which was adopted in the 19th century to refer to barrow-wights, and that became cemented in popular culture by Tolkien. Language is not static, people can continue to repurpose words, including reinvoking older meanings, but when they do so that's not returning to the word's true meaning. The current meaning is the true meaning, and adopting old terms for a modern use is another type of neologism, even if that new use has old roots.

At this point, I'm not even sure what you're arguing about. You've been been making very broad and factually incorrect assertions, what you're saying radically shifts from post to post, and it's all wrapped in verbose digressions that have little semantic content. At first you were arguing that terms used to refer to monsters should be used loosely to refer to a broad class, as they are across mythologies, and against the idea that specific terms would be used to refer to concrete, verifiable differences. That's an argument that holds no water, because from the perspective of someone living in D&Dland they're real creatures, not fables and allegories and folk tales. Now you're arguing for a LotFP-style every-monster-is-unique game. Which isn't fundamentally an argument about naming conventions at all, it's about radically changing the way monsters are handled in D&D. In that case, where every monster is unique, you'd lack group names because groups don't exist. Instead, you'd have specific names, like the singing rat of Fire Peak, or the bug-faced boggum of the Mossy Swamp, or Raphagmortonmok. In that case, name components wouldn't be used in the species/genera sense, they'd be used to describe features, or just poetically. In that case, a lich might be a localized term for refer to anything dead and animate, wight might be the same from a neighboring county, and they might (or might not) be be used when a new monster emerges and needs a name.

You're right. I'm losing my train of thought.

I don't like it when people in real life insist that "lich" and "wight" should only ever refer to the highly specific D&D monsters. Those words have many meanings and I prefer the use of qualifiers to indicate more specific meanings.

The tvtropes page for liches uses the term to refer to undead spellcasters with or without souls, animated corpses in general, living people whose souls have been removed, and a few other things. These usages aren't consistent with one another except in the sense that they all refer to bodies that are dead, undead, or soulless. These are examples of natural language drift that, ironically, bring the word closer to its pre-D&D meaning.

The tvtropes page for wights uses the term to refer to several very different things. Even the monster in Tolkien's own fiction isn't the spirit of the deceased: their nature is an unknown.

And this applies to plenty of other words co-opted by D&D. A ghast, for example, has been used to refer to a monster in Lovecraft's dreamlands, a more powerful form of ghoul in D&D, "night-ghasts" and "cliff-ghasts" in His Dark Materials, etc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1094986I don't like it when people in real life insist that "lich" and "wight" should only ever refer to the highly specific D&D monsters. Those words have many meanings and I prefer the use of qualifiers to indicate more specific meanings.

That's fine. Two caveats:

One, those are both well established meanings, particularly in the RPG world. You can repurpose them, but as is the case when anyone repurposes a reasonably common word, you're swimming against the current. While this can be good for flavor, it hurts immediate comprehension. Many of D&D's tropes, from ability scores to monsters, form a mutually intelligible lingua franca shared widely among the player base. All you have to do is mention the world "lich", and people know what you're talking about. This is especially important in RPGs, because RPGs are not a didactic or even a narrative form of art. More than novels or tutorials, RPGs suffer from long explanatory infodumps, The interactive back and forth makes these kind of shortcuts that briefly convey pre-established meanings particularly important.

Secondly, standard D&D has many monster types, and they all need unique identifiers. This puts a lot of pressure on the wordspace, because there are only so many ways of saying, for instance, "ghost". That's why D&D has borrowed names from so many cultures, and repurposed words that really mean the same thing into separate monsters (e.g. medusa and gorgon). That also limits the creative use of names, because each synonym/variant that's given a specific definition in the monster nomenclature reduces the pool of words you can poetically use to describe other creatures and phenomena. The playstyle where loose and creative use of terms works best (in contrast to the more standard technical and precise usage) happens to be a playstyle you mentioned liking -- games where there are no monster types, and each creature is unique. In that case, go crazy. Though even in that situation, it's unlikely a specific unique creature is going to be called "the lich". More likely, the word lich will be used as an adjective or noun within a portmanteau complex, like the weeping lich of Sassafrass Crick.

Quote from: Pat;1094989Secondly, standard D&D has many monster types, and they all need unique identifiers. This puts a lot of pressure on the wordspace, because there are only so many ways of saying, for instance, "ghost". That's why D&D has borrowed names from so many cultures, and repurposed words that really mean the same thing into separate monsters (e.g. medusa and gorgon). That also limits the creative use of names, because each synonym/variant that's given a specific definition in the monster nomenclature reduces the pool of words you can poetically use to describe other creatures and phenomena.

That is pretty silly. Is it so difficult to use longer and more descriptive names like "ax handle hound," "tree octopus," or "iron bull"?

The Thread that refuses to Die!!!

(A Thread about Undead. Ha!!!)

Quote from: Razor 007;1095010The Thread that refuses to Die!!!

(A Thread about Undead. Ha!!!)

Speaking of undead, someone posted this really cool idea for undead monsters to be a progressive hierarchical. E.g. ghouls evolve into wights evolve into vampires. I think it's a pretty cool idea and the same logic could be applied to all monsters.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1095008That is pretty silly. Is it so difficult to use longer and more descriptive names like "ax handle hound," "tree octopus," or "iron bull"?

What are you arguing? That D&D monster names should be longer, so you can use the shorter names more loosely?

If so, then yes. Very difficult. You'd need to come up with new names for almost ever monster ever published, remember to use those names, and not confuse them with the older shorter names when they're used more casually. It involves not just learning a whole new set, but the even more difficult task of unlearning the old one. It's nearly impossible.

Quote from: Pat;1095019What are you arguing? That D&D monster names should be longer, so you can use the shorter names more loosely?

If so, then yes. Very difficult. You'd need to come up with new names for almost ever monster ever published, remember to use those names, and not confuse them with the older shorter names when they're used more casually. It involves not just learning a whole new set, but the even more difficult task of unlearning the old one. It's nearly impossible.

That's not what I meant.

Local Farmer: "Ah, around these parts we call those little beasties Tree Octopuses"

PC: "You have never seen a Octopus, have you?"

LF: "No, lad.  Now let me tell you about Mountain Oysters"