The default minotaur in D&D is kind of weird when you analyze it. It is based on the Minotaur of Greek mythology, but in the transition it loses key characteristics of the original. Where the minotaur of myth was trapped in a maze, D&D minotaurs can easily solve mazes and arbitrarily make their lairs in mazes. Where the minotaur of myth was some kind of unique demigod (possibly derived from earlier Minoan bull god traditions), D&D minotaurs are apparently some kind of race or artificial race? (It varies by setting.) Oh, and D&D minotaurs typically worship the demon lord Baphomet who has pretty much nothing in common with the Baphomet of occultism.

I was reading Masters and Minions: Maze of the Minotaur, Mazes & Minotaurs, and "On the Ecology of the Minotaur" when I was suddenly struck by inspiration. Masters and Minions posits a unique take on maze-centric minotaur society I have not seen elsewhere, and Mazes & Minotaurs introduces a lot of colorful minotaur varieties like the noble golden minotaur, the monstrous gorgotaur and the fiery pyrotaur. But the ecology post got me thinking: what if maze and similar spells actually connect to a plane of all mazes and the minotaur curse operates something like Ravenloft's mists and dark lords?

What do you think? Have you done anything different with minotaurs?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1044677The default minotaur in D&D is kind of weird when you analyze it. It is based on the Minotaur of Greek mythology, but in the transition it loses key characteristics of the original. Where the minotaur of myth was trapped in a maze, D&D minotaurs can easily solve mazes and arbitrarily make their lairs in mazes. Where the minotaur of myth was some kind of unique demigod (possibly derived from earlier Minoan bull god traditions), D&D minotaurs are apparently some kind of race or artificial race? (It varies by setting.) Oh, and D&D minotaurs typically worship the demon lord Baphomet who has pretty much nothing in common with the Baphomet of occultism.

I was reading Masters and Minions: Maze of the Minotaur, Mazes & Minotaurs, and "On the Ecology of the Minotaur" when I was suddenly struck by inspiration. Masters and Minions posits a unique take on maze-centric minotaur society I have not seen elsewhere, and Mazes & Minotaurs introduces a lot of colorful minotaur varieties like the noble golden minotaur, the monstrous gorgotaur and the fiery pyrotaur. But the ecology post got me thinking: what if maze and similar spells actually connect to a plane of all mazes and the minotaur curse operates something like Ravenloft's mists and dark lords?

What do you think? Have you done anything different with minotaurs?

I like your ideas.

In my last 2E game, Minotaurs were surface dwellers who chewed shrubs and hacked briers to create green labyrinths with the Tanglewood, a big subtropical jungle region.
They considered humans and similar races to be inferior beings, cursed by the gods with hideous and rather comical apelike heads.

Up through the 2e AD&D Monster Compendium, it was vaguely referenced that Minotaurs were cursed humans. They have the same hand-wavy caveat all D&D monsters that originally were a "a wizard did it" that there were untold numbers of them.  Are they each an individually cursed person or do they have the ability to breed more (with other cursed Minotaurs or with humans)? I don't think it was solidly answered. I think Dragonlance is where the whole discrete race of Minotaurs became a thing. Might be wrong though. I don't know when the Baphomet thing came about either.

I think the 'trapped in a maze' concept is great for a myth, where 'shoved in death trap' is a reasonable place for a hero. In a world where the PCs are skilled adventurers deliberately going into a labyrinth in search of treasure, having the Minotaur in there because it can't find its way out just turns it into an imbecilic villain (and we already have ogres), so I understand why they dropped that.

I like the idea that Minotaurs are cursed humans, driven mad by the change (or by everyone running and screaming at the sight of them or something). We already have ogres for 'Big, Bad, might eat you, and mostly there for muscle,' and gnolls have slowly morphed into WotC's answer for 'irredeemably evil demon-worshipping humanoid.' I think 'angry at the world that rejects them' brute is a decent niche for Minotaurs.

I like your idea. It is a unique perspective. My only reservation is that if you apply the same concept to every monster it would get... disjunctive to my verisimilitude. Not every monster needs to come from a 'planet of hats' where they'd be the normal one and we'd be considered a apified version of them. So: good if this is the only one, bad if you also have whatever catfolk race you use from a feline plane, wolfren and gnolls come from a canid plane (yes, I know Hyenas aren't actually Canines, shut up, fictional pedant!), aarakocra and kenku coming from the avian plane, etc.

Quote from: Ewan;1044681I like your ideas.

I'm glad to hear my ideas are not entirely stupid or crazy. There's a lot of ideas I had about fantasy gaming minotaurs that I have not really codified beyond listing ideas on a notepad.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1044691I like your idea. It is a unique perspective. My only reservation is that if you apply the same concept to every monster it would get... disjunctive to my verisimilitude. Not every monster needs to come from a 'planet of hats' where they'd be the normal one and we'd be considered a apified version of them. So: good if this is the only one, bad if you also have whatever catfolk race you use from a feline plane, wolfren and gnolls come from a canid plane (yes, I know Hyenas aren't actually Canines, shut up, fictional pedant!), aarakocra and kenku coming from the avian plane, etc.

This is a minotaur specific idea to make them more than just dudes with bull heads and an arbitrary affinity for mazes. But speaking of which I do think there is an overabundance of furry races.

The Plane of Maze is based on brief mentions of similar ideas I remember reading elsewhere. I had a bunch of ideas for it: it contains all sorts of mazes including briars, hedges, stonework, etc. It is the home plane of minotaurs. It has the equivalent of dark lords known as labyrinth lords and maze masters. It connects to all mazes everywhere if you can find the right passage. Its patron deities include Asterion (the original Greek minotaur), Baphomet and the Azroi (abstract creatures of law from a Mongoose sourcebook).

My ideas for minotaurs are absurdly complicated, I fear. I thought the self-producing race thing was unnecessary and too mundane (it turns them into furries basically and we have enough of those), so I think making them exclusively the result of a curse is better. While the bloodline of Asterion carries the curse (though it may remain latent for generations), minotaurs that aren't descended from Asterion will only have normal kids. How someone gets cursed is unpredictable: Baphomet somehow created a curse and passed it to his cultists, but other times people turn into minotaurs without any connection to Asterion or Baphomet. Anyone who builds a maze, even an abstract one of paperwork or legal arguments, could transform into a minotaur and become trapped in that maze. (If you break the curse, they become normal.)

Minotaurs themselves, I decided due to influence from M&M, do not have fixed appearances. A minotaur might be completely human save for a bull head (or ram or antelope or something), or have hooves for hands and walk like a gorilla. Different variants have more extreme features, like two heads, a fish tail, fiery breath, psychic powers, swashbuckling skills, etc.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1044677...what if maze and similar spells actually connect to a plane of all mazes and the minotaur curse operates something like Ravenloft's mists and dark lords?.

I bet the Lady of Pain is somehow involved. Now the implications of a spellcaster gaining her attention via maze, pain pods and all.

I always like monsters that have adventure baked into them. Being able to make their lair a maze works. That doesn't stop a GM from making a more mythic style minotaur (either by eliminating the standard D&D minotaur and creating one unique minotaur or by having a minotaur progenitor who is more like the classic figure).

Quote from: Krimson;1044715I bet the Lady of Pain is somehow involved. Now the implications of a spellcaster gaining her attention via maze, pain pods and all.

No tears, please.  It's a waste of good suffering.

Well, D&D does that to most myth. They turn monsters/gods/spirits into living creatures for PCs to kill, since that's kinda the whole point of the game, not exploring mythological concepts and patterns

Make of them what you will. No really. Thats what D&D is all about.

Personally I do not like the new 5e retcon of minotaurs to be demon spawn things like nearly a third of the monsters now are. Same with gnolls, chimera, and a couple of others.

I only recall using minotaurs twice in a game.

One time the minotaur was the sidekick of an evil overlord. He made a good boss fight. Nobody asked him where he came from.

The other time the minotaur was in a maze and had a ring of invisibility and a ring of spider climb. He took the party members one by one.
"Like a hunter," said Billy. Nobody asked him where he came from.

Since in neither case did anyone ask, I didn't worry about where they came from. It's not like they were dating.

Quote from: JeremyR;1044914Well, D&D does that to most myth. They turn monsters/gods/spirits into living creatures for PCs to kill, since that's kinda the whole point of the game, not exploring mythological concepts and patterns

I feel like it loses something when done that way. Sure, D&D is about killing stuff unless you award XP for non-combat stuff a la Planescape Torment, but can't you still have fun telling a fairy tale or something around the adventure?

I don't know about you, but to me it feels more magical when that random encounter hydra is actually a severed head of the original Greek hydra that has grown to monstrous size. Or the whole concept of mythic underworlds and living dungeons. Or griffins lining their nests with gold, laying eggs with agate shells and growing feathers that cure blindness. Or vegetable lambs and barnacle goose trees.

Quote from: Omega;1044934Make of them what you will. No really. Thats what D&D is all about.

Personally I do not like the new 5e retcon of minotaurs to be demon spawn things like nearly a third of the monsters now are. Same with gnolls, chimera, and a couple of others.

5e is iffy about minotaurs. One line claims they are transformed cultists, but the next claims they are a self-reproducing race. A lot of the 5e monsters have unexplained contradictions in their flavor text. This makes it difficult to get a handle on the world building if you care about consistency. 13th Age is a lot better about monster fluff, since many times it gives you multiple self-consistent options.

Having "ecology" is questionable, I think. I think it removes a lot of the magic, and also a lot of the ecologies tend to be pretty silly or impractical.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1044691I like your idea. It is a unique perspective. My only reservation is that if you apply the same concept to every monster it would get... disjunctive to my verisimilitude. Not every monster needs to come from a 'planet of hats' where they'd be the normal one and we'd be considered a apified version of them. So: good if this is the only one, bad if you also have whatever catfolk race you use from a feline plane, wolfren and gnolls come from a canid plane (yes, I know Hyenas aren't actually Canines, shut up, fictional pedant!), aarakocra and kenku coming from the avian plane, etc.

I just remembered that I had a completely different set of ideas for catfolk and ratfolk.

For the catfolk, I decided to mix concepts from Elder Scrolls khajiit, Mythic Races artathi, Outlaw Star c'tarl c'tarl and Thundercats. Essentially, the catfolk have a caste system where each caste corresponds to a variety of big cat such as lion, tiger, snow leopard, etc. Then they have birth signs which affect their degree of anthropomorphism, such as bipedal big cats, Thundercats style cat humanoids, catboys/catgirls who look human aside from tails and ears, shapeshifters who can freely shift between entirely human and big cat, and intelligent cats of any size. Their cultures differ from humans in that they practice group marriage due to the fact that they are not hardwired for monogamy like humans are and female catfolk may become simultaneously pregnant with children by multiple fathers.

For ratfolk, I decided to mix various concepts from Warhammer Fantasy skaven, Ptolus ratmen, Scarred Lands ratmen and a few other sources. The ratfolk come in variable sizes ranging from halfling to ogre, but this is determined randomly rather than hereditary. They have a number of variants with special abilities (due to their ancestors consuming the flesh of demons and fallen deities), such as fins for swimming, transparent skin and organs that makes them look like skeletons, or flying and throwing lightning, etc. They include not just rats, but other rodents and rodent-like species including squirrels and rabbits and bats. They have five-headed rat kings and gigantic predatory rat queens; where things get weird is that the queens do not produce offspring, but impregnate a harem of males seahorse-style.

Make of it what you will.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1045347Make of it what you will.

I would make of it that each one sounds like a neat idea in a separate game world. If they were all together, it could become a menagerie.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1045353I would make of it that each one sounds like a neat idea in a separate game world. If they were all together, it could become a menagerie.

"Menagerie"? Does that not describe typical fantasy settings?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1045358"Menagerie"? Does that not describe typical fantasy settings?

Okay, now I am confused. Given this previous post:

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1044707But speaking of which I do think there is an overabundance of furry races.

Do you do, or do not, want a whole lot of humanoid animals in your game world?