>(Personally, after doing a few hours' research on the first monster >in the SRD -- the aforementioned aboleth -- I don't think people >recognize the amount of time a project like this will take.)
in addition to being an avid gamer for a couple decades, and a big-time D&D-only player for the first decade of that, i got my degree in folklore, and have spent more time researching myths/tales from cultures all around the world than any other single topic. i'll buy you a cookie if you find a mythological/folkloric source for the aboleth. there might be a literature antecedent, but then it's almost certainly closed, itself. my short (and thus probably not complete) list of D&D-only monsters is: Aboleth, illithid, Otyugh, xorn/xaren, githyanki/githzerai, beholder, flumph. pretty much everything else (except for those things i missed, above), even if not based directly on PD stuff, is pretty obviously derivative of it (frex, Remorhaz--the specific name and/or description may be new, but the general idea of a giant centipede-creature is nothing special, and making it cold-loving is hardly a stretch). so, if you leave out those sorts of monsters, this is a trivial, if time-consuming, task. -- woodelf <*> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://webpages.charter.net/woodelph/ If any religion is right, maybe they all have to be right. Maybe God doesn't care how you say your prayers, just as long as you say them. --Sinclair _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
