Celebrating 2020 - The Year of Blackmoor - 50th Anniversary of Blackmoor and of Role-Playing!
Today is Part 26 of my series of looks at OD&D now moving to Monsters & Treasure Volume 2. The book starts off with a table of Monsters, so I am going to look at the table first and then go on to the descriptions.
So The Monsters:
Of course the % in Liar was supposed to be % in Lair, but that did not get corrected until the 2013 "Premium Edition." In Dave Hargrave's Arduin campaign, they used it as the percentage chance that the monster would lie if you were interacting with them.
A lot has been made about this table not being in alphabetical order by some. However, if you look there it is in order by category of monster and then by Hit Dice within each category.
First up are humanoids, with men being listed first, which is technically out of order because they are a minimum of one Hit Die, but they are the prime actors in OD&D in the Gygax view so of course they go first, I believe Gygax saw men as their own category separate from the rest of the humanoids.
Then the table runs form Kobolds at 1/2 Hit Die and Goblins at One Hit Die -1, up to Giants as the largest Humanoids. You will note that as they get more powerful the number appearing decreases.
Next up are the Undead which is pretty straight forward. You will note under move in inches 12/24, 15/30 and 12/18. In these tables, depending on the monster, the first move given is usually on foot and the second given is riding, flying or swimming. We assumed that Wraiths were riding a Wraith Horses for the higher speed. Since Spectres have no corporeal body, we just assumed that they would use the higher speed if they needed to move faster than your mount to catch you. We did not worry about it beyond that. Of course, vampires can turn into bats and fly.
Now here we have creatures that can turn flesh to stone, but they do not appear to be in order. Why is that? Well you will see later that the first two are noted as not being intelligent, so you really have two groups of two here and that is what is going on. We will be looking at these creatures in more detail later on.
Note that the variable size monster is located between the other two. We will look at these in more detail later as well. Along with most of the monsters in this list.
Next is Wyverns, Dragons (variable size) and Balrogs. These creatures were much used in our games.
The last that we will look at today are each their own category, IMO. Note that Purple Worms are the largest identified monsters in the table at 15 Hit Dice. Also Minotaurs are IMO of animal intelligence only.
Tomorrow we will look at the rest of the table.
Today is Part 26 of my series of looks at OD&D now moving to Monsters & Treasure Volume 2. The book starts off with a table of Monsters, so I am going to look at the table first and then go on to the descriptions.
So The Monsters:
Of course the % in Liar was supposed to be % in Lair, but that did not get corrected until the 2013 "Premium Edition." In Dave Hargrave's Arduin campaign, they used it as the percentage chance that the monster would lie if you were interacting with them.
A lot has been made about this table not being in alphabetical order by some. However, if you look there it is in order by category of monster and then by Hit Dice within each category.
First up are humanoids, with men being listed first, which is technically out of order because they are a minimum of one Hit Die, but they are the prime actors in OD&D in the Gygax view so of course they go first, I believe Gygax saw men as their own category separate from the rest of the humanoids.
Then the table runs form Kobolds at 1/2 Hit Die and Goblins at One Hit Die -1, up to Giants as the largest Humanoids. You will note that as they get more powerful the number appearing decreases.
Next up are the Undead which is pretty straight forward. You will note under move in inches 12/24, 15/30 and 12/18. In these tables, depending on the monster, the first move given is usually on foot and the second given is riding, flying or swimming. We assumed that Wraiths were riding a Wraith Horses for the higher speed. Since Spectres have no corporeal body, we just assumed that they would use the higher speed if they needed to move faster than your mount to catch you. We did not worry about it beyond that. Of course, vampires can turn into bats and fly.
Now here we have creatures that can turn flesh to stone, but they do not appear to be in order. Why is that? Well you will see later that the first two are noted as not being intelligent, so you really have two groups of two here and that is what is going on. We will be looking at these creatures in more detail later on.
Note that the variable size monster is located between the other two. We will look at these in more detail later as well. Along with most of the monsters in this list.
Next is Wyverns, Dragons (variable size) and Balrogs. These creatures were much used in our games.
The last that we will look at today are each their own category, IMO. Note that Purple Worms are the largest identified monsters in the table at 15 Hit Dice. Also Minotaurs are IMO of animal intelligence only.
Tomorrow we will look at the rest of the table.
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