Stupid Monster Tricks
Thirty Years of Stupid Monsters: A D&D retrospective at Jared von Hindman's Head Injury Theater.
Yup, it's true. The D&D manuals contain some good monsters...and lots of unbelievably stupid ones. In fact, it's not even clear to me that he's got the very stupidest ones here. Just glance through the Monster Manual II (or as we used to call it, The Big Book of Little Men) sometime. It is more-or-less just evil-looking short humanoid after evil-looking short humanoid. All with really stupid names. Like, e.g., the Pestie.
Um...am I really discussing this subject in public? I guess old nerds never die, they just get reincarnated into 4th-level college professors with +10 Tenure of Protection...
Thirty Years of Stupid Monsters: A D&D retrospective at Jared von Hindman's Head Injury Theater.
Yup, it's true. The D&D manuals contain some good monsters...and lots of unbelievably stupid ones. In fact, it's not even clear to me that he's got the very stupidest ones here. Just glance through the Monster Manual II (or as we used to call it, The Big Book of Little Men) sometime. It is more-or-less just evil-looking short humanoid after evil-looking short humanoid. All with really stupid names. Like, e.g., the Pestie.
Um...am I really discussing this subject in public? I guess old nerds never die, they just get reincarnated into 4th-level college professors with +10 Tenure of Protection...
posted by Winston Smith at
11:57 AM
4 Comments:
Ok, for one thing, the Orc with the Ragamoffyn panties on its face, going nuts, is priceless. Priceless.
For another thing, the giant vampire frog is described as a "reptile" in the text next to it. This makes me think it's fake, or possibly even worse than it looks, given that the creature's creator is apparently unaware that frogs are amphibians.
My personal favorites are, aside from the Orc inefested with the POD (Panties Of Doom), the room of death, the flail snail, and the Giant Space Hamster (mostly due to the fact that adding "space" makes it a different creature from the standard issue giant hamster).
Jebus what a game.
Also, they REALLY missed out when they didn't draw the "duck bunny" in such a way so as to represent a Wittgensteinian DuckBunny
You know, a creature whereby the heroes are killed as they argue amongst themselves whether or not the creature is a duck facing up and away from them, backing up to them, or a bunny charging at them.
Fighter: "What's that duck backing away from?"
Wizard: "What? You mean the bunny coming towards us?"
Elf: "It's a duck."
Wizard: "Ducks don't walk backwards!"
Elf: "What kind of bunny has yellow ears!?"
Orc: "I had a bunny with yellow ears.."
Fighter: "Maybe it's a bunny.."
Elf: "With yellow ears!?"
Wizard: "The Orc says he had-"
Elf: "The Orc ALSO calls Vampire Frogs reptiles."
*silence*
Fighter: "I think it's a bunny."
Elf: "WHAT!?"
*DuckBunny eats party*
I know, right? It should be a 4 hit die duck-rabbit, and it's power is to fascinate its victim by Gestalt-shifting back and forth between incommensurable paradigms.
So, like armor class of -2...
See, what we really need to do is revamp these horrendous creatures - not get rid of them. We could make the D&D Monster Manual++.
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