> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> >> << As has already being pointed out, even the cover of "Slayer's Guide to >> Hobgoblins" is in (most likely unwitting) contravention of copyright, by >> clearly building on artwork from the MM, portraying a creature >> from the SRD. > >> > >> >> <LOL> Says who? > >I suggested it, based on a comparison of the artwork in the MM to the >artwork in the Slayer's guide, and gave detailed examples of why I thought >so. There are a thousand ways to draw such a creature, and they chose one >that is remarkably similar to the one in the 3e MM. If anyone cared to push >it, I suspect they'd be ordered to prove that it wasn't derivative. I'm not >saying they can't. > >I find it interesting that Hobgoblins are portrayed as they are anyway...the >English myth for a Hobgoblin is nothing like what appears in D&D. >Hobgoblins in myth are often characterized as benign and mischievous, and >only became vicious if they were righting some wrong. It has been proposed >that the character "Puck" in Shakespeare's Midsummernight's Dream was a >traditional English Hobgoblin.
yeah, that's the part that always irked me the most: when they changed the fundamental nature of the creature. hobgoblins have very little to do with goblins in folklore, personality-wise. hobgoblins are mischievous, while goblins are mean/evil. at least kobolds in folklore were malign critters. >It is extremely common in mythology for creatures to change in form and >temperament over the centuries. The Cockatrice and the Basilisk are >actually the same myth, but told from medieval and Roman times respectively. >Same goes for the Germanic myth of Kobolds, which seem to me to be a lot >more like the "Korred" from 2e than the lizard-like dog-faced things we have >in the MM. I haven't investigated all that many sources yet, so if anybody >knows where the TSR interpretation came from I'm all ears (woodelf?). been puzzling over some of them for years--no clue. i did once find a pre-D&D reference (translation of Greek myth, IIRC) to a "gorgon" as a stone bull--but i don't think it had the power to turn others to stone. and where in [higher power of your choice]'s name did D&D gnomes come from? >So basically somebody converted the Hobgoblin and Kobold to their current >form, and it is not the traditional form. I can't say who did, but it has >some pretty far-reaching implications if it was TSR. i have no idea the origins for the D&D monsters, to the degree that they diverge from folklore, or don't stem from folklore. i can usually recognize when they draw on the folklore, but rarely have any idea where the parts that i don't know came from. (i don't read a lot of fiction, and my fantasy fiction knowledge can pretty much be summed up by Tolkien, Le Guin, Harry Potter, Baum, Watership Down, and Pern (and getting part way through the first book of Narnia and hating it).) frankly, i suspect that it's more of Gygax's (or Arneson's) "scholarship" coming to light. my best guess is that the early creators had poor knowledge of folklore, didn't go to folkloric sources (it's pretty obvious that a lot of stuff came from fantasy novels), or didn't care whether or not their stuff reflected the sources. certainly, their depictions of the various faerie-type races (hobgoblin, elf, kobold, etc.) aren't all that much less accurate than their weights for weapons or sizes of coins or descriptions of armors (or use of Latin conjunctions). throw in a hefty dose of (usually tongue-in-cheek) anachronisms (as in spell material components), and i think it's pretty easy to see how they could have gotten from folklore to D&D. -- 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
