This is split from Are non-humans neccessary in FRPGs?. To keep this thread on topic (the race threads keep diversifying, which is no bad thing, so long as new threads are made), here are the questions:

When, historically, did games turn monsters into playable PCs?
Why was this decision made?

To start, I remember my old 1st Ed. AD&D book had half-orcs as a PC race. This seems like a compromise to playing a monster: "You can't play an orc! They're evil!" "Um, okay, about a half-human, half-orc?"

Again with the orcs (I don't have a grounding in the earlier fantasy RPGs, so I may be totally wrong here), the Warcraft game allowed the player to be either Humans or Orcs. 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?

I'm using the orc here, as I think this was the first occurrence of this phenomenon. In fact, I think humanoid "brute" monsters were the first to be PC-ized, since the other perceived play niches were filled by other existing races. Elves were magic-users, dwarves were civilized warriors, halflings were thieves, but no race filled the "barbarian savage" presented by Howard's Conan.

I don't have much more to add as far as specific games or historical timing. I know the Warhammer games made orcs and chaos playable as armies pretty early on (before Warcraft, if memory serves).

As for why: Almost every OD&D player I've talked to knew how to make any monster into a PC with a little do-it-yourself ingenuity. I have heard stories about people playing gold dragons (because they can morph), ogres, centaurs and minotaurs using house rules for OD&D and AD&D.

Warhammer Fantasy Role-play even gave you a way to roll stats for monsters. They did it in the context of individualizing monsters, but I doubt anyone read the rules without thinking "Ah... this could work for a PC." This was especially true given that WFRP also gave you champion, minor hero and major hero bonuses to further individualize monsters, and those bonuses pretty well matched up to what PCs could earn through their careers. So... once you knew how to roll their stats and learned that monsters advance much like PCs, there's not much imagination required to make anything playable.

Hmmm... T&T and RQ certainly had that option pretty early on, about 1979-1980 at the latest, iirc.

T&T with Youwarkees and Daemon's. Just say no, kids.

Zak Arntson wrote: When, historically, did games turn monsters into playable PCs?
Why was this decision made?

TFT had goblins as an option in ITL in 1980, along with pretty much anything else if you put your mind to it. Prootwaddles were a silly option presented as PC options.

In a lot of ways, the question is really, at what point did games start treating monsters and characters in the same manner mechanically? It's an abberation caused by D&D that monsters were presented in a shorthand, and did not get the treatment that player races did. Meaning that any attempt to play a monster race would have the additional complication of having to figure out how to stat out the monster in the system's terms - which was almost impossible in D&D. What would a dragon's strength have been?

Once you start treating monsters with the same mechanics, then PC monsters are just a step away, even if the text suggests not doing it.

Also, note that Traveller (1978) had aliens as playable races - not precisely monsters, but it at least didn't treat the aliens quite as much as cannon fodder for the PCs to kill (though with Zhodani and Vargr, you saw quite a lot of that behavior anyhow).

Oh, Tekumel (1975) had extrememly non-human creatures as potential player races right off the bat. In that adaptation of D&D, at least you had the notion that even races sometimes inimical to humans could be player races. And that's in the first ever published setting.

Mike

Zak Arntson wrote: When, historically, did games turn monsters into playable PCs?

Dungeons & Dragons original edition Men & Magic page 8 wrote: Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, step being predetermined by the campaign referee.

Hello,

I think it's a given that actual play included "monsters as player-characters" from day one. I bet all of us oldsters remember someone who insisted on playing a werebear. But we're talking about textual rules, right Zak?

John scooped my first reference-in-mind with Monsters! Monsters! I'll qualify Mike's TFT point further, to point out that orcs are listed in the first precursor to TFT, the microgame called Melee, and interestingly, had no mechanical differences from human characters (they were specified in all capitals as EVIL). That was, um, 1977, right?

Jack, when you reference rules-versions of D&D, please give the actual title, year of publication, and author, OK? There was no actual "original D&D."

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Jack, when you reference rules-versions of D&D, please give the actual title, year of publication, and author, OK? There was no actual "original D&D."

Ron Edwards wrote: Jack, when you reference rules-versions of D&D, please give the actual title, year of publication, and author, OK? There was no actual "original D&D."

Somebody already mentioned Monsters! Monsters! I remember another game that came out right before the Storyteller system hit the shelves called Night Life. It was a good game that was ignored for being cheaply done, and sure to be in a WOD heartbreaker category even though I think it may have preceded Vampire. The characters all played modern monsters, like vampires, werewolves, witches, etc. White Wolf took the same idea, focused on one "species" of monster at a time, and made it much more successful.

I know it started for my first AD&D group with reincarnation spells. Death was only an inconvenience, but if you couldn't afford a ressurrection spell from the local clergy, you'd have to get a reincarnation spell cheaper from a Druid or Magic-User. I had one character who was reincarnated twice, once as a bear and once as an orc. So we were kind of forced to figure out a way to deal with monster PCs.

And people have been refering to that edition of late as "Original" or OD&D, of late. As in "I'm such a pure gamer, that I've gone back to the source of RPGs, OD&D." Weird.

Anyhow, yes, Melee was 1977. But I didn't mention it because of the fact that it's a board game. :-P And note that orcs in TFT were different because of the addition of the IQ stat.

It does, however set a precedent for taking a monster character, and may be a first in some ways there (you can see the proto-GURPSness). Again, what I think is seminal about the whole thing is how it decides to treat all monsters with the same rules as characters. That is, you don't bring the monsters over to the special character rules, there is only one set of rules. Even Traveller had "monster" rules now that I think about it with the special rules for "animal encounters".

Interestingly, Chivalry & Sorcery first edition had levels for their orcs about 30 years before D&D did. Full treatment, really, as opposed to Rolemaster which said that specific races could vary in level, but only in a range (not too different than some of the special 1AD&D rules for orcs and hobgoblins, etc).

Mike

Hello,

Mike, you wrote,

Again, what I think is seminal about the whole thing is how it decides to treat all monsters with the same rules as characters. That is, you don't bring the monsters over to the special character rules, there is only one set of rules.

My dragon magazine archive isn't working (some graphics problem - weird) so I can't look that up for you. However, I do remember Phoebus (a lizard man) and Talbot (a centaur) as featured PCs in the Rogues Gallery, published 1980, which was amusing because this supplement was published at the same time the general 'clampdown' on more free-form D&D play and house rules from EGG's bully pulpit in Dragon and elsewhere was going on in full force - 'only officially approved races' and that kind of thing (which actually even contradicts the 1e DMG, which is tighter than OD&D, but at least leaves some flex up to GM option).

The explanations given were that these characters got their races by way of Reincarnation spells, which then became institutionalized as the one approved way to get a weird nonhuman character.

(Enter the Arduin Grimoires, which had a random reincarnation chart with stuff like Star Demons on it. Did I ever tell you folks about my 36th level Pit Fiend magic user? That was a reincarnation job too...)

-------------

By the way, people of my acquaintance use the term OD&D much more consistently than some discussions here (possibly reacting to sloppy usage at rpg.net?) would suggest. 'OD&D', short for "Original Dungeons and Dragons" - meaning the first widely produced version of the game - refers to the 'three brown books' game, sometimes also called 'white box' (though that box only came with the later editions), all of which contained that bit about playing any ol' monster race you wanted (before and after the purge of Tolkienisms). People who use OD&D to refer to the J. Eric Holmes-edited "Blue Book" 'Basic Set' rules or to early AD&D ('1e') are just wrong - I don't know where this usage is the norm, but it's nowhere I've ever been, and not standard among any D&D players of my acquaintance.

As far as "Why was this decision made?"

I think the answer that most easily springs to mind is Exploration - once you've seen Orcs, you've got to wonder what it's like from their point of view.

- James

Ron Edwards wrote: Regarding D&D, it's interesting to me that neither the first boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons (1977, Eric Holmes, not to be confused with "Basic Dungeons & Dragons, which is another game entirely) nor the first versions of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (Gygax, 1978-1979; the first three hardbacks) included rules for monsters for player-characters, as I recall. So that text from the 1974 boxed set just sort of vanished.

So you are virtually on your own with regard to monsters as player characters. You have advice as to why they are not featured, why no details of monster character classes are given herein. The rest is up to you, for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in it with their characters. Be good to yourself as well as them, and everyone concerned will benefit from a well-conceived, well-ordered, fairly-judged campaign built upon the best of imaginative and creative thinking.

Sean wrote: By the way, people of my acquaintance use the term OD&D much more consistently than some discussions here (possibly reacting to sloppy usage at rpg.net?) would suggest. 'OD&D', short for "Original Dungeons and Dragons" - meaning the first widely produced version of the game - refers to the 'three brown books' game, sometimes also called 'white box' (though that box only came with the later editions), all of which contained that bit about playing any ol' monster race you wanted (before and after the purge of Tolkienisms). People who use OD&D to refer to the J. Eric Holmes-edited "Blue Book" 'Basic Set' rules or to early AD&D ('1e') are just wrong - I don't know where this usage is the norm, but it's nowhere I've ever been, and not standard among any D&D players of my acquaintance.

Zak Arntson wrote: 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?

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

Ron Edwards wrote: 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

Sean wrote: 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?

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.

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

Mike

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

Zak Arntson wrote: My first introduction to gaming was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....