Dragon types? Drakes, dragonets, lindwyrms, wyverns, lyzards, oy vey...

One of the more frustrating aspects of fantasy gaming is the obsessive compulsion to classify things. Like dragons, for instance. Dragons are classified into distinct species by their body plan, size, color, etc. I have said before that my setting has thrown that out the window in favor of depicting dragons as unique mystical entities rather than species. That said, I still take issue with the absurd terminology...

Revising the elemental fauna to be interesting

Let's face it, elementals are boring. When Paracelsus first devised the idea of elementals, he considered them to be analogous to humans and other animals except with elemental affinity and no souls. When Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid, he was referencing Paracelsus when he wrote that mermaids had no souls unless they married a human. This was expanded by later philosophers and fantasy writers, as The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters attests in its entry on elementals. That book states that "Purely amorphous and non-animate representations of elementals are, however, fairly rare" (206), D&D notwithstanding...

Of Beastmen and Beastfolk

World mythology and fantasy gaming is full of creatures and races that may be described as "beastmen" or "beastfolk." Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of beast people: 1) chimerical hybrids of human and animal, and 2) anthropomorphic versions of animals.

Chimerical hybrids of man and animal are commonplace in mythology and fantasy gaming. Centaurs, harpies, satyrs, minotaurs, mermaids and so forth are just a few examples. The famous examples in fantasy gaming of "beastmen" would be the Broo in RuneQuest and the Beastmen in Warhammer.

Anthropomorphic animals, or "furries" in the most reductionist term, seem to be a more recent invention with a loose precursor in the animal-headed deities of some ancient religions. There is actually a continuum of anthropomorphism, ranging from catgirls to animal-headed humans to "beastfolk."

In future posts I will explore how to world build beastmen and beastfolk in fantasy campaigns...

The diversity of kobolds

Kobolds are one of those monsters that changes noticeably in different media.

Revisiting the morality of undeath

In past editions the undead were heavily involved with positive/negative energy and associated planes. These distinctions no longer exist in 5e, being replaced by necrotic and radiant damage which are entirely separate from healing (good riddance!). There are plenty of arguments for non-evil necromancy and non-evil undead, but in the end it depends entirely on the metaphysics the GM has chosen for their campaign. In this post I present a number of "moral options" I have seen proposed...

Three axis alignment, revisited

I have seen a couple different suggestions for adding a third axis to alignment. One suggestion is to add an active/passive axis for how militantly a character pursues their alignment. Another suggestion is to split the lawful/chaotic axis into two axes for internal and external attitudes: a chaotic/orderly axis for a character's behavior and a lawful/lawless axis for whether a character respects the laws of society.

The utility of the planes (and their basis in world mythology)

Something that has bothered me is the question of whether all the planes are necessary. Aside from Planescape, they are either never used or only used for high level adventures. Most of them are boring expanses of so much nothing. Much of this probably has to do with the planes having only limited support in world mythology, where other worlds were described in a much more interesting manner. More below the break...