Characterization of Monsters?

[timfire]

To make the Orcs a palatable choice they "humanized" them to an extent. Does this move at all coincide with the PC-ization trend of orcs/monstrous humanoids in roleplaying games? If not, when did orcs as noble savages first occur in gaming?

Maybe I'm just inserting my own agenda into this thread, but was the original intent to discuss the history of playable monsters, or was it more to discuss the whole "Monsters are People too" movement? I would be interested in finding out when humanoid monsters stopped being Predators and started being People (to use contracycle's terminology from one of the other fantasy race threads).

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Two issues ...

1. I think that we've uncovered the idea that playing monsters as characters and de-monsterizing monsters are two different phenomena.

One can, for instance, play monsters not only in order to have access to better abilities than the player-character options provide (the typical were-bear decision, as far as I can tell), but also do have license to be monster-ish in behavior. "I can't help being such a bastard! I'm a were-rat!!" The T&T supplement Monsters! Monsters! represents a kind of celebration of this approach.

That approach, I think, is very different from playing a monster-character specifically in order to personify and develop it into a person - the orks who turn out to represent the interests of a persecuted minority, for instance. Orkworld represents the end-stage of this idea, which I think goes at least all the way back to the Giants and other Mayfair games supplements for AD&D (these supplements presented the giant-races and orc/goblin-races from AD&D in very tribal, religious, and community-oriented ways). Maybe even before then, if my Dragon-mag fellow scholars can help out with that.

2. Regardless of whatever official or habitual line is currently being taken about the names for early versions of D&D, I suggest that slang terms like "OAD&D" and similar are not going to help us, here, to communicate. Instead, let's use authors and years, which are always going to be fixed.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

That approach, I think, is very different from playing a monster-character specifically in order to personify and develop it into a person - the orks who turn out to represent the interests of a persecuted minority, for instance. Orkworld represents the end-stage of this idea, which I think goes at least all the way back to the Giants and other Mayfair games supplements for AD&D (these supplements presented the giant-races and orc/goblin-races from AD&D in very tribal, religious, and community-oriented ways). Maybe even before then, if my Dragon-mag fellow scholars can help out with that.

I suspect that these were pre-dated by "Trollpak" for RuneQuest (1982, Chaosium), which was an in-depth look at the trolls of Glorantha.  I'm not familiar with the Mayfair "Giants" supplement, but a web page puts it at 1987 (cf  http://drosi.tuts.nu/systeme/role_aids.htm  ).  

I think these two approaches shade into each other.  In many ways, Trollpak is a natural outgrowth of "Monsters! Monsters!" -- just adding more depth to the monsters.

[jrs]

Hi all,

I don't have access to back issues of the Dragon, and I only have the vaguest of recollections reading it in the '80s.  I have found a really cool resource that indexes the entire run.  It's the DragonDex at  http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/index.html

There is an article listed under the topic Player Characters, Monsters as: "Monster PC's: Can I Play a Troll?" by Johnn Four in issue 307.  There is a slew of entries under Races, PC; the earliest I could find is on the half-ogre, "The Half-Ogre: Smiting Him Hip and Thigh" by Gary Gygax issue 29 (circa 1979).  Going by the article title alone, it doesn't seem like it's about the half-ogre as a player character, but I assume it may have been used as a resource to that end.

As an aside, the index has a notation for referencing the various D&D editions.  Here it is lifted directly from the main page:

Where a game system is listed for a particular article or item, "D&D1" indicates the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game; "D&D2" refers to the 2nd edition, and "D&D3" to the 3rd (current) edition. "BD&D" indicates the Basic D&D game (published as a separate system until the mid-1990's), and "OD&D" means Original D&D...the original version of the game published as a series of pamphlets beginning in 1974.

Julie

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, yes, that article about the Half-Ogre did enable people to play them, and play them they did. Right after that came out no fighter that was not a half-ogre appeared for months.

Mike

[Valamir]

The Half Ogre Duellist was a legend in my area.  Right along side the Multi Classed Elven Ranger / Druid as examples of Dragon Twinkage.

[erithromycin]

Nightlife [1990, Stellar Games] and the revised/reprinted Nightlife [1991, Ibid] were interesting because much was made of the politics of being a monster, among other monsters - humans were a resource, and access to them played an important part in day to day existence. Or, rather, night to night. What's interesting is just how similar it is to White Wolf's products - I can't help but think that part of it's trouble is that it came straight out of Swanton, Ohio - while the adventures are all set in New York. It seemed to lack the same edge as 1st edition Vampire too - it consciously identifies itself as 'splatterpunk', but has quite a complex system involving reams of percentile roles. Anyway, as far as I can remember, it doesn't have any rules for playing people, just for eating them.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Well, it seems to me that it worked like this, at least as far as D&D is concerned (and however far the hobby followed its lead) In the begining, the very concept of "character races" wasn't even a fully-formed idea. It was little more than a precident set by the fiction. i.e. "Of course the players will choose either a human, elf, dwarf or hobbit. Those were the heroes of Lords of the Rings. Why on gods green earth would they want to be anything else?"

But there were players who wanted to be various Other THings for a number of reasons, either more power or a strong narrativist bend. Who knows? From the text I quoted, it was originally "allowable, but you'll have to figure it out" to what MJ notes "allowable, but here's how to talk them out of it" as the concept of "character races" solidified.

This suggests to me an early air of "you can do anything" from the early days of roleplaying, before things got nailed down a little better, and the idea of "monster race" pcs came later, perhaps as a rebellion against D&D? Doubtful, but possible. AD&D 2nd ed did provide more solid rules for converting monsters into PCs, I believe.


As far as the D&D editions thing, should we have another thread to nail those down? While providing publication dates, authors and such may be factually accurate, it is cumbersome and difficult to provide (especially if your collection is currently inaccessable at the moment). I hink we should be able to reference AD&D 1st ed PHB without being asked if we mean the original cover or the later Jeff Easley cover (in this case since the interior text is identical). Besides, we'll probably have this side conversaion every single time someone decides to reference an edition of D&D

[Sean]

JSJ wrote: "This suggests to me an early air of "you can do anything" from the early days of roleplaying, before things got nailed down..."

This corresponds to my experience playing D&D prior to the release of AD&D, and constitutes a big part of what I love about roleplaying, the heady air of endless possiibilty you mention. (It's that same love that leads me to hang out here at the Forge, where I see people designing games that bring more of that 'anything' within my reach.) I, and many others who were playing D&D in the seventies, felt betrayed by Gygax' consintent retreat from the 'you can do anything' approach of OD&D to the 'either you're playing the official Advanced Dungeons and Dragons(tm) game system, or you're playing something else' line he took later on.

(An example of my early D&D play: At the public library some crazy kid had taken his first chemistry class and statted up the 115 'true elementals' for us to fight, banning the medieval elements from his game as unrealistic. The later ones, which did radioactive damage every round and blinked in and out of existence, were a total bear. That was where my high-level wizard got killed and reincarnated as a Pit Fiend. That would have been summer 1977, I think, just before the MM hit the streets. There was another guy in that game with a frost giant PC and I think one player was playing something out of Gods, Demi-Gods, and Heroes, but then there were lots of more 'normal' characters too. It worked out and we had fun. What I can't stress enough about this was how normal it all seemed to us then. A few years later this would have been 'monty haul' or 'powergaming' or 'playing it wrong' or whatever, but we all just felt like we were playing D&D. There were arguments and stuff, but no more than there are now, and there were tactical challenges that felt meaningful, and characters died sometimes, and on and on. Lots of people didn't need the extra structure to have the experience, and in fact felt stifled by it.)

But anyway, so as to the original question of the thread: 'Monster' PCs were there from the very beginning. But then they seemed to go out of most games, only coming back later. When they did come back, what led into that, and when did it happen? When did the renaissance of Monster PCs begin? Surely it was before Savage Species. What other games supported Monster PCs, when were they released, and how did they do it?

[Zak Arntson]

But anyway, so as to the original question of the thread: 'Monster' PCs were there from the very beginning. But then they seemed to go out of most games, only coming back later. When they did come back, what led into that, and when did it happen? When did the renaissance of Monster PCs begin? Surely it was before Savage Species. What other games supported Monster PCs, when were they released, and how did they do it?

The idea of a renaissance is interesting. My first introduction to gaming was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Robotech (both Palladium), and the first game I ever owned was the red box Dungeons & Dragons basic set. So my introduction to races in gaming was D&D's method of a pre-approved list. Would I qualify as a "second generation" of roleplayers? In any case, the emphasis was certainly away from any monstrous characters. Until I saw the Complete Book of Humanoids, I thought PC-ized monsters were only homebrew.

[b_bankhead]

My vote is for  the original Runequest (1977?). Generation,advancement, combat,skills,magic, all worked the same for monsters as for characters, the stat blocks looked exactly alike.  Although I don't recall whether it encouraged monster player characters, the fact is it put no mechnical barriers in the way of playing them.

[Mike Holmes]

1978, but yeah, that's an early one.

Mike

[Latigo]

Though this is not as early a game as some of the ones mentioned, let me add "Excursions into the Bizarre! (A rather unusual role-playing game)" to the list.

This was a small press 8 1/2 x 5 1/2, 57 pg. ruleset from 1985 in which players were either anthropomorphic animals or orks and other fantasy races that had been swept up from their home worlds by a "vorpal wind" and stranded on (then) modern day Earth.  They have to survive and find a way home, or at least enjoy Earth.

Best of all,

Latigo

[quozl]

My first introduction to gaming was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....

That's a very interesting example.  In TMNT, you could only play a mutant animal and your adversaries were usually humans, which the book gave no rules for playing.  So, in a sense, the humans were the monsters.