Hellhounds and other fantastic canines

In this post, I will direct my attention briefly to the numerous varieties of fantastic canines in fantasy gaming.

Giants that aren't physically large?

In Norse mythology, a jötunn was not necessarily gigantic. They could be excessively beautiful or ugly. For that matter, they did not have to be humanoid. Norse mythology includes giants with multiple heads or the forms of freakish or giant animals like Sleipnir, Fenris, and Jormungandr. Other mythologies didn't limit themselves either. Greek giants had weird features like snakes for legs and the heads of lions, among other things. The size of single giants wasn't consistent either: they didn't change their size, it just never seemed to impede them.

I touched upon these topics in previous posts. In this post, I want to imagine some kind of comprehensible taxonomic distinctions for giants that accounts for all these diverse depictions. Groups referred to as "giants" or "titans" in world mythology include the Greek titans and gigantes, the Norse jotnar and vanir, the Hindu asuras, the Persian daevas, the Arabic jinn, and the Irish fomorians and firbholg. Generally, giants in world mythology are distinguished by great stature (literal or metaphorical), a primordial origin, and an enmity with the gods.

So the D&D definition is just needless pigeonholing, as D&D is wont. Instead, as I previously did with trolls, I propose a list of criteria that may be used to define giants. A giant will not necessarily have all the traits on this list, but they should have several of them to avoid excessive debates about what qualifies as a giant.

1. Great stature. Often literally referring to great (albeit inconsistent) size, but other times referring to incredible beauty or ugliness, or multiple such traits. Anything of great physical size will not necessarily be a mythical giant, even if that is otherwise the literal definition of the word giant.
2. Chaotic. Often, but not always, acted in opposition to the gods, as with the Norse jotunn, Hindu asuras, Irish fomorians, and Greek gigantes. Where the gods represent order and civilization, the giants/titans represent chaos and disaster. May be composed of or descended from a prior pantheon that was overthrown, even related to the current pantheon.
3. Primordial. Often the first race to come into existence or be spawned/created by the primordial gods, predating the world itself even. Thus, they are typically considered to have a divine lineage even if they are not otherwise considered gods (the definition of god is fuzzy in myth). For example, the jotuns were the first beings to arise in Norse myth, and the jinn were the first race created by God in Arabic folklore. 
4. Elemental. An elemental affinity is common too. Giants in fantasy gaming almost always have some kind of association with an elemental environment like the clouds or the mountains. The Norse jotuns come in several varieties including frost giants and fire giants, and the Arabic jinn were created from "smokeless fire" and "scorching wind." Various thunder gods in some Native American cultures may also qualify under this criteria.
5. Not necessarily humanoid. Often have some humanoid features like the Greek gigantes having snakes for legs or the Norse Hel being literally half-alive and half-corpse, but other times appear in the forms of gigantic animals like the Norse's eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the giant wolf Fenris, the world-encircling serpent Jormungandr, and the giant eagle Hræsvelgr (the Villains Wiki labels them "Beast Jötunn" or beast giants), or wholly monstrous freaks like the Greek Typhon being an amalgamation of monstrous features. (Other monsters like the biblical Behemoth and Leviathan would also qualify under this criterion. Indeed, their names are used as improper nouns and synonymous with giant.) Addendum 9/27/2019: Also note the wechuge from Dane-zaa folklore. 
6. Intelligent. This is just an addition I made myself to keep from including any and all kaiju under the giant umbrella. Giants are generally intelligent beings, or at least intelligent enough to speak and do various menial tasks on their own initiative. (This is unrelated to the D&D Intelligence score.) So the various other monsters of Greek mythology like Cerberus, Chimera and Hydra are not considered giants despite their size since they aren't intelligent: they're just vicious beasts with great destructive potential.
7. May (or may not) be dragons. There is a fair amount of conceptual overlap between giants and dragons. In world mythologies, they are both generally primordial beings of chaos that oppose the gods of order. They are generally considered distinct entities... except when they are not. The Greek she-dragons, even though depicted as nymph-dragon-centaurs, are not labeled giantesses. The Greek giant Typhon is not labeled a dragon despite possessing similar dragon features to the she-dragon. The Norse Jormungandr is labeled both a giant and a dragon, born to giant parents in the form of a dragon.

Of course since we are dealing with mythology and myths are notoriously fluid, I doubt these criteria are perfect. I fully acknowledge that, and I believe the real problem is that fantasy gaming tries to impose arbitrary taxonomies on fictitious concepts. However, having multiple criteria to select from should make it easier to justify labeling Hræsvelgr a giant but not all giant eagles: in that case, Hræsvelgr is still a primordial being of chaos whereas the giant eagles are not. Unlike a lot of gaming taxonomies I could name, that distinction does not feel wholly arbitrary. Although this ambiguity problem vanishes if you allow a monster to be labeled as multiple types. So Hræsvelgr would be [giant] type because of his lineage, size, and sky powers, and [beast] because of his form. Hence, beast giants!

Speaking of beast giants, I wonder how they contrast with the beast lords and elder beasts I mentioned in other posts. Would they be distinct, or different titles for the same beings? For example, the Norse Garm is considered the exemplar of canines, yet elsewhere the race of Moongarm's are labeled giants. In the interest of simplicity and reducing confusion, I would happily consider them synonymous.

Additional links

Addendum 10/29/2019

• http://mentalfloss.com/article/84109/10-mythical-giants-around-world
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/giant-mythology
• http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Fi-Go/Giants.html
• https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/giants.html
• https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/Human-Giants-in-Lore-Myth-and-Life
• https://www.crystalinks.com/giants.html
• https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/giants/

Beast lords and associates

The beast lords are a group of deities from the Stormbringer universe that were copied by Dungeons & Dragons. The beast lords have appeared in official Dungeons & Dragons supplements and a number of third party publications.

Non-humanoid giants

In mythology, there is typically little or no distinction between giants and giant monsters.

Fantastical animals are not literally patchwork hybrids

I have already said my piece about the illogical and inconsistent treatment of fictional animals in fantasy gaming and the lack of consistent criteria for determining what constitutes a beast or monstrosity. In this post, I will explain the place of real and fictional animals (or beasts in the D&D rules) within my cosmology.

Monster intelligence, part 1: beasts

As an exercise, I decided to look up and compare the intelligence scores of the monsters in the MM. I was aided in this by a brief analysis of what intelligence scores supposedly measure and a spreadsheet listing the ability scores of all the monsters in the MM (see the links below). Thus, I decided to make a series outlining my findings. For my first post, I decided to look at beasts.

Beasts versus monstrosities, part deux

In past posts I explained my disagreement with the questionable logic behind the "beast" and "monstrosity" types. In this post I will explain some possible alternatives in greater detail.

Elemental Lords and Beast Lords

The material world is composed of four elements: air, earth, fire and water. These elements occurs in both their raw forms and in more complex forms within living creatures. The elements not only form the basis of the four humors, but the temperaments of living creatures.

The elemental planes have multiple governing bodies, just like the material plane. These governing bodies act as a series of checks and balances on one another’s power, preventing any one party from overwhelming the interests of the others.

Beasts versus monstrosities

Many tabletop games treat magic as separate and self-contained from the "normal" physics of fantasyland. I believe that settings may be enriched by removing such arbitrary distinctions, hence my introduction of magical background fields underpinning reality. Continuing that line of thought, I would tackle the magic versus mundane argument as it applies to animals.
UPDATED 10/20/2017

Mundane versus magical beasts

Fantasy often makes a distinction between mundane and magical or supernatural beasts, which is often arbitrary and illogical. This distinction doesn't exist in 13th Age, which relegates all such things to Beasts. However, this sort of thinking still permeates the fluff to a much lesser degree. For example, the druid's beast form power states "Stick to four-legged natural predators, not creatures with supernatural abilities or the ability to fly." One of the listed aspects is the owlbear, which in other fantasy (outside Avatar: The Last Airbender) is considered a magical or supernatural creature. (The form itself is cosmetic, so even if this was ignored the druid still couldn't fly as a bird or petrify with a gaze as a basilisk.) How could this be explained from an in-character point of view without sounding silly?

The beast type and associated keywords

As I mentioned in my post on fantasy taxonomy, I kept my taxonomy deliberately as simple and clear-cut as possible from the outset so that it would be easy to build on later, rather than trying force square pegs into round holes. In this post I introduce the keywords mechanic, using the beast type as an example.

Keywords are applied to types to further detail a given creature. Keywords are relevant for the purposes of other rules which specifically reference them. I am not relying on a specific set of rules, so for my purposes keywords will be relevant mainly for in-character rather than out-of-character purposes. This makes it easier to distinguish player and character knowledge rather than making a monster knowledge check because a monster's type is unintuitive.

The beast type refers to creatures of any level of intelligence which have little or no capacity for even the most basic civilization (the minimum threshold is pre-industrial indigenous cultures). Apes are considered beasts because while they have opposable thumbs, use simple tools and live in family groups, they do not have language or build shelters. Dolphins are considered beasts because they lack opposable thumbs, even though they are otherwise highly intelligent. Ravens are considered beasts because while they may be taught to speak, they lack all but the most basic kinds of tool use. Likewise for fantastical beasts, since I'm not arbitrarily distinguishing magic from nature.

From there, there are several keywords which may be used to further distinguish beasts. These keywords are based primarily on OSR.

• Animals are beasts of subhuman intelligence, usually vertebrates. This includes both animals that existed in the real world and the fantastic animals of myth and legend (which are normal parts of the fantasy ecology). Animals may be taken as animal companions and familiar rather than cohorts or henchmen where applicable. [Optional: Restricted animals are animals with abilities that may be considered game-breaking if they are allowed to be taken as animal companions, such as griffons, owlbears, cockatrices, etc.]
• Vermin are beasts of such low intelligence that they are essentially meat robots. This includes most invertebrates (cephalopods are considered animals due to their higher intelligence). In some cases they may be tamed, such as by mite fey or vermin druids.
• Blobs are beasts of vermin intelligence with amorphous bodies. This includes jellies, oozes, slimes, puddings, jellyfish, gelatinous polyhedrons, etc. Blobs may also fall under the vermin keyword.