800-lb. Gorilla

Last week's post, Pretenders to the Throne, was occasioned by my frustration about the fact that, in general, posts about Dungeons & Dragons tend to get more views and generate more comments than those about any other RPG. Now, on one level, that's just common sense. Not only is D&D the first and most well-known roleplaying game, but it's also been the most popular one for a half century now. No matter how many players of other games might despair of this fact, it's true. Dungeons & Dragons is and always has been the only roleplaying game whose name is recognizable outside our little hobby – or indeed inside some segments of it. In my experience, there are far more gamers who play only D&D than there are gamers who play a wide variety of them.

As commenter Rick noted the other day, that's the power of branding. By getting to publication first and by having a title that's both evocative and easy to say, Dungeons & Dragons has a number of advantages that make it uniquely well placed to be the leader of the pack. I remember some years ago, back when Hasbro first bought Wizards of the Coast, reading an article in some business magazine that the name Dungeons & Dragons was one of best known in the world, alongside things like Coca-Cola and Kleenex. While most people had no real sense of what D&D actually was – most, I think, believed it to be some kind of video game – they nevertheless had at least heard of D&D, something that could not be said about any other RPG, no matter how successful or celebrated it was within the hobby.

Being the most well-known is not, of course, an indication of quality, a point frequently made by partisans of different, less-known brands, both within and without our hobby. Anyone who prefers Pepsi to Coke or Burger King to McDonald's, to cite just two rather prosaic examples, probably feels this way. Believe me, I'm sympathetic to this point of view. As a fan of Traveller, for example, I wish the game were better known, appreciated, and played than it is at present, but, as the old saying goes, if wishes were credits, beggars wouldn't need to travel by low passage. I make this joke to illustrate my point about just how obscure RPGs other than D&D are, even within the hobby. How many of you reading this post knew what I was talking about? (There's no need to answer that.)

I love lots of roleplaying games. Last year, I did a two-part post about my ten favorites – and I have many more besides. But I know only too well that, if I were to write lots of posts to discussing, say, Pendragon or Gamma World, they'd be among my least read posts and certainly the least commented upon. As you all know, I've been refereeing an Empire of the Petal Throne campaign for the last nine and a half years and, despite that, my posts about that campaign and its setting of Tékumel don't receive a lot of attention or comment. Don't misunderstand me: I completely understand why that is the case. Neither Empire of the Petal Throne nor Tékumel are widely known even within the hobby, so why would I expect posts about them to generate much attention?

And that's really my point. I write so much about Dungeons & Dragons and its history here, because D&D is the single most widely known and played roleplaying game, even in 2024. Those of us who enjoy more than just D&D are very apt to claim that we're presently living in a Golden Age of Roleplaying, with more games and more variety of games than ever before. That might well be true by some metrics, but, on one significant metric – popularity – nothing much has changed. Dungeons & Dragons remains the game most people are playing and that most people, even those of you reading this blog, are interested in reading about. It's not for nothing that I use a version of Trampier's iconic demon idol in my masthead.

What does this all mean? Honestly, I'm not sure. Though it's not my favorite RPG, I still very much like D&D, so I don't think there's any chance I'll stop writing posts about the game and its history. However, my frustration with the fact that it's those posts, with a few exceptions, that tend to generate the most interest is very real. I don't like writing stuff that garners little or no interest. Who, after all, likes to feel as if he's shouting into the void? At the same time, I cannot expect most readers are going to be familiar with all the same obscure things that I am or that they'll share my interest in the same. To some extent, if one is going to write for public consumption, one must write what will attract the most readers and, in my case, that means posts about Dungeons & Dragons. 

C'est la vie. 

Pretenders to the Throne

Like most people involved in the hobby of roleplaying, Dungeons & Dragons was the first RPG I ever played. Furthermore, it's probably the RPG I've played the most over the decades, even though it's not my favorite. I do like it and would even go so far as to say that most versions of it are fun to play. This isn't a controversial opinion. Indeed, if history is any guide, most roleplayers feel similarly, because some version of Dungeons & Dragons has been the most popular, most played, and most profitable roleplaying game pretty much continuously since 1974. 

I say "pretty much," because there have been times and places when this was not case, but most of these instances have been unusual in one way or another. I was thinking about this topic for reasons I'll explain in an upcoming post, but my present point is that, with only a handful of exceptions, D&D has always been the King of Roleplaying Games. That was true in 1974 and it's still true in 2024. That's a truth that a lot of partisans of other RPGs don't like to hear. While I'm sympathetic to their feelings, I'm not going to pretend as if it's not the case that D&D's reign has not been a largely secure one.

There I go again with my quibbling adverbs – largely. I'm old enough to remember several moments in time when it seemed as if the fortunes of Dungeons & Dragons were on the downswing and another roleplaying game was on the ascent. Whether that was actually the case is another matter. For now, though, I'd simply like to focus on three occasions when it seemed to me – perhaps mistakenly – as if D&D was in danger of being pushed aside by a competitor. 

The first time was in the mid-80s, once I had become a subscriber to White Dwarf. One of the things I very quickly noticed was that the magazine frequently carried content for Chaosium's RuneQuest, then in its second edition. This was in stark contrast to Dragon magazine, the gaming periodical with which I was most familiar, which scarcely ever included articles, let alone adventures, for RQ. At that time, AD&D was in its late 1e doldrums, so I took the appearance of so much RuneQuest material in White Dwarf as evidence that its star was on the rise. I would eventually learn that this was mostly a British phenomenon, where RQ's popularity met or even exceeded that of D&D. So far as I know, this never extended to North America, but I still started contemplating the possibility that Dungeons & Dragons might one day be toppled from its position as King of the Hill. 

The next time I saw what I thought was a serious challenger to D&D was about a decade later, in the mid-1990s. That's when White Wolf's "World of Darkness" games were all the rage, particularly the first game in that line, Vampire: the Masquerade. While I didn't get into any of "World of Darkness" games until a few years later – I'd eventually even write for a few of them – I was nevertheless quite familiar with them, thanks in large part to friends who were regular players. What I learned from them was that Vampire and its companion games had proven popular with many people who'd otherwise not played RPGs. The "World of Darkness" was bringing in new players and those players were very devoted to it. It probably helped, too, that Dungeons & Dragons (and indeed TSR itself) was in the midst of another period of doldrums, which made White Wolf's offerings seem even more vital by comparison.

Finally, there was Paizo's Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Pathfinder came out shortly after Wizards of the Coast announced that the next edition of Dungeons & Dragons – Fourth Edition – would not, unlike its immediate predecessor, being an "open" game. Instead, it would use a much more restrictive licensing scheme. Likewise, the new edition's rules would be rather different from those in 3e, making backward compatibility an issue. For a lot of fans of the Third Edition, this was dreadful news and Paizo saw an opportunity to serve them by producing its own version of 3e, which it called Pathfinder. Pathfinder proved quite successful and, for a brief time, appeared to have snatched the RPG crown from Dungeons & Dragons. Ultimately, that proved to have been an illusion, but that doesn't change the fact that, for a brief moment, I felt otherwise.

In the end, none of the aforementioned roleplaying games were truly successful in knocking D&D off its pedestal, at least not for long. In each case, the plausibility of this belief rested on the same thing: the perceived weakness of D&D. Whenever the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons was in its late, decadent phase, disenchantment with the direction of the game or the perception that it was on the wrong track made me feel that some other RPG might have a shot at the Throne of Gygax. That's not to say that none of these games enjoyed a genuine popularity boost when D&D was "weak." In the case of Vampire the Masquerade, I'm pretty sure it did enjoy a period of wild popularity and good sales and that might well have been true of Pathfinder, too (RuneQuest in the UK is more of an edge case). Yet, for all that, D&D always came roaring back, its place as the hobby's top dog secure for another decade or so. 

I can't predict the future, so if another roleplaying game will ever succeed in displacing Dungeons & Dragons, I have no idea. Judging by the past, however, it seems quite unlikely, which is why, for good or ill, in most people's minds, tabletop RPGs will always be synonymous with D&D.

Dungeons & Diplomacy

In light of my theorizing in my earlier post about the influence of Diplomacy on the development of Dungeons & Dragons, there's this paragraph from Jon Peterson's magisterial Playing at the World:

By the end of the 1960s, both Gygax and Arneson had long histories with Diplomacy; some of their exploits receive consideration in the later sections of this chapter. The influence of Diplomacy on Dungeons & Dragons is subtle, but not insignificant. In something of the same matter as Diplomacy, Dungeons & Dragons stipulates the existence of coalitions of players – that is, parties – but without in any way defining how players might ally and cooperate in a party.

Anyone interested in a more thorough examination of this topic should probably check out Peterson's book, which goes into far more detail than I ever could. Still, I think it's worth remembering that Gygax, Arneson, and their contemporaries were playing a wide variety of different wargames in the years leading up to the creation of D&D and all of them probably contributed in some way, often unconsciously, to the game that would ultimately be published in 1974. 

Retrospective: Sabre River

Despite my generally negative feelings toward Frank Mentzer's 1983–1986 revision of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, I have a special place in my heart for the Companion Rules. Indeed, I still consider it one of the best things ever produced for any edition of D&D, largely because it made a serious attempt to provide answers to the question of just what characters do when they reach the lofty heights of level 15 and beyond. While the Companion Rules themselves were only partially successful in this regard, TSR also intended to provide additional ideas and guidance for campaigns at this level of play in the form of the CM-series of adventure modules, of which there were ultimately nine.

Of course, as I mentioned in my Retrospective post about one of the modules in this series, this intention wasn't as easy to fulfill as TSR might have wished. Nearly all of the CM modules were flawed in one way or another, especially when it comes to providing a model for campaigns in which many, if not all, of the player characters have risen to rule their own domains. Despite that, many of them nevertheless include clever ideas and interesting concepts that could, if reworked, be useful to the harried Dungeon Master of a Companion-level campaign.

Take, for example, Sabre River, co-written by Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith and released in 1984. The module begins with the following:

Have all of your characters settled down and started dominions? Have you wondered if they'll ever get the chance to fight their way through an old-fashioned dungeon again? Yes, they will! 

The premise of Sabre River is that a group of four to six characters of levels 18–22 must venture into the Tower of Terror, a dungeon within a volcano, in order to deal with a curse that's been laid upon the land. The land in question is the domain of either an NPC ruler or – preferably – that of one of the player characters. In this respect at least, Sabre River is already an improvement over its immediate predecessor, Death's Ride, which more or less rejected the very idea that a player character's domain should be subjected to the undead invasion depicted in that module. 

The idea of a dungeon capable of challenging a party of 18th–22nd-level characters is intriguing. In the D&D circles with which I was familiar at the time, it was generally assumed that, as a character achieved double-digit levels, he would find his challenges in domain rulership and all that that entailed, like mass combats, power politics, and faction play. I suspect that explain why I so rarely saw anyone continue to play a D&D character at such exalted levels: the implied style of play wasn't very appealing to most players and indeed seemed to be a break from what Dungeons & Dragons was assumed to be about. What most players of my acquaintance wanted instead was more of the same, albeit at a great degree of challenge and, in principle, that's what Sabre River provided.

The Tower of Terror is indeed challenging. It's populated by powerful and deadly monsters, like a red dragon, elementals of various types, a beholder, and swarms or flocks of lesser creatures. There's also a commensurate level of treasure, some of it truly staggering, like a roomful of gold ingots worth 800,000gp in total. That only makes sense, of course, since high-level characters need huge amounts of experience points to advance and treasure is the surest source of such XP. Still, I was quite shocked to see these numbers as I re-read the module. For me, these astronomical sums have long been an impediment to my enjoyment of a D&D campaign of this level. Others may feel differently, of course.

Sabre River's challenges also include a handful of tricks, traps, and unusual tactical situations intended to test the players' skills in combat. There's also the central mystery of the curse, how it can be lifted, and what the characters must do to achieve that. It's all very serviceable but far from outstanding – certainly nothing on par with adventures like White Plume Mountain or The Ghost Tower of Inverness when it comes to imagination (and frustration). Mostly, Sabre River is about everything being BIG, from monsters (and their hit point totals) to treasures, which is a little disappointing, especially because I know that Doug Niles is a good designer who's penned some enjoyable stuff over the years.

Sabre River is not a terrible module; it simply doesn't stand out as anything special. Its worst sin, in my opinion, is that it doesn't deviate too much from the mediocre track record of the CM-series, almost none of which take full advantage of the new opportunities and vistas that the Companion Rules opened up to player characters of levels 15 to 25. A shame!

Level Titles: Clerics and Magic-Users

Yesterday, we looked at the level titles of fighters and thieves, so today we'll turn to the level titles of clerics and magic-users. These are a bit more interesting, in that there's more variability between the different editions of Dungeons & Dragons. In OD&D (1974), clerics have the following level titles:

In the AD&D Players Handbook (1978), we get a similar but not identical list. Levels 1 and 2 are the same, while level 3 is simply "priest" rather than "village priest." The title of "curate" becomes a level 4 title and "vicar" disappears entirely, replaced by "perfect," which may or may not be a misspelling of "prefect." "Bishop" is replaced with "canon" and there's a title above patriarch – high priest.

The 1981 Expert Rules has yet another set of level titles, one that is fairly close to that of OD&D and yet still distinct. There's a new title, elder, that's placed in between curate and bishop, making the latter a 7th-level title rather than a 6th-level one in OD&D.

The strangest thing about all the lists of clerical level titles is how, for the most part, they're all derived from the names of Christian clergy, which says a lot about the origins of the cleric class. The anomalous titles are "adept," which strikes me as being more appropriate to a magic-user of some kind and "lama," which, while religious in character, has nothing to do with Christianity. Why these were both included in the list, I have no idea.

Turning to magic-users, we get this list in OD&D:

AD&D has a similar list, starting at level 3. The first two AD&D level titles are quite different and the titles that were replaced appear nowhere else on the list. They're simply removed. 

The Expert Rules give us yet another list. "Medium" and "seer" are restored to level 1 and 2, while "theurgist" and "thaumaturgist" are both removed entirely, much as "medium" and "seer" were in AD&D. The OD&D level titles that followed, starting with "magician" simply drop down several levels, perhaps so that "wizard" can now be the 9th-level rather than 11th-level title, since the 1981 edition places a great emphasis on level 9 being "name" level for the four human classes. Also of note is that the 1981 rules spell "conjurer" and "sorcerer" as "conjuror" and "sorceror," despite neither OD&D nor AD&D spelling them that way.

Normally, the 1983 Frank Mentzer-edited edition of D&D follows its 1981 predecessor quite closely, but there are some differences worthy of note. In the case of magic-user level titles, it's worth noting that '83 restores the "–er" endings of both "conjurer" and "sorcerer," while everything else remains the same.

I find these changes quite fascinating, but I wish I knew precisely why they were made. I have theories but no proof and I suspect, even if I were to hunt down the people responsible for doing so, they would not remember after so many decades. 

Level Titles: Fighters and Thieves

Level titles first appeared in original (1974) Dungeons & Dragons, seemingly inspired by the various types of figures available in the "Fantasy Supplement" to Chainmail (1971), about which I may make a separate post later. These titles, in themselves, have no mechanical purpose whatsoever, serving solely as a verbal way to distinguish between two characters of the same class but of different levels. Consequently, they disappeared entirely from AD&D's Second Edition (1989), but were present in all editions of D&D until the Rules Cyclopedia (1991), when they disappeared (though they did reappear in the brief and often forgotten The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game in 1994).

Since I've lately become very interested in the degree of continuity between the various editions of D&D, I thought looking at the level titles of the various classes might make for an interesting series of posts. To start, let's look at fighters (fighting men) and thieves. Here's the level title chart for the former from Volume 1 of OD&D:

 In the AD&D Players Handbook (1978), the list is identical.

However, in the 1981 David Cook/Stephen Marsh-edited Expert Rules, we get this list of level titles, which is only nearly identical. The 3rd-level title, Swordsman, becomes Swordmaster, probably for the same reason the 9th-level title, Lord, gains the parenthetical option of Lady. All later editions of D&D (1983, 1991, 1994) use these same level titles.

Thieves first appear in Supplement I to OD&D (1975) and use the following level titles:

In the AD&D Players Handbook, we get a slightly different list for thieves. Most of the titles are the same, but the levels they're associated with are swapped. We also get a couple of new titles, like Filcher at 6th level and Magsman at 8th level, because Gygax loved obscure and archaic words.

The D&D Expert Set much more closely follows the Supplement I level titles than does AD&D, replacing only Master Pilferer at 8th level with Thief instead (and lowering the level at which Master Thief becomes available).

Of the two character classes examined today, it's the thief that shows the most changes in its level titles between their first appearance in Greyhawk and later versions, though, even there, the changes are small. Meanwhile, the fighter changes barely at all. The same cannot be said of clerics and magic-users, as we'll see in the next post in this series.

A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Troglodytes

Since last week we looked at lizard men, I thought it would make sense to examine troglodytes next, since they're both humanoid reptilian monsters. There are, of course, lots of differences between them, starting with their alignment – troglodytes are Chaotic Evil, while lizard men are Neutral – I can nevertheless easily imagine someone confusing the two. With that in mind, how did TSR era Dungeons & Dragons visually distinguish between them?

The earliest illustrations I can find of troglodytes come from the AD&D Monster Manual (1977), both by Dave Sutherland. Sutherland gives trogs a much shorter snout and a large crest on their heads. These are both features that can be found in most of the depictions that follow.

The second illustration from the Monster Manual gives us a better look at these monsters' legs, as well as their scaly skin. Both pieces of art hide the troglodyte's tail in shadow, but it is there, if you look carefully.

Sutherland provides two additional depictions of trogs on the front and back covers of the original 1978 release of the module Descent into the Depths of the Earth. Here's the front cover, which shows them as looking little different from those in the Monster Manual.

The back cover of the module is interesting, because it depicts not only a troglodyte, but also an exceptionally long-nosed troll and a bugbear.

A troglodyte next appears in the Tom Moldvay D&D Basic rulebook (1981), as drawn by Bill Willingham. Willingham's take on the monster is clearly inspired by Sutherland's, but with a few new elements. First, ridges or frills like the head crest also appear on both arms. Also, the monster's face looks a bit more fishy or amphibian, with large, blank eyes and a mouth that reminds me of a catfish's. 

In 1982, as part of the AD&D Monster Cards, we get Jeff Dee's nifty take on troglodytes. Once again, it's broadly consonant with Sutherland's original, but Dee's version has a slightly more dinosaur-like appearance. Coupled with the stone axe it's holding, Dee gives the trogs a kind of Lost World flavor that I really like.

The same year, we get Jeff Easley's version in the AD&D module The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Though recognizable because of their head crests, these troglodytes look a bit fishy in appearance. Take note of their eyes and mouths, not to mention their scales, which strike me as more piscine than reptilian in appearance. 

1982 seems to have been a big year for troglodyte illustrations, because we get one by Jim Holloway in Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Though we don't get to see the entirety of the monster, what we do see suggests that it's closer to Sutherland than any of the other artists we've examined. It's also a return to a more clearly reptilian depiction, as you can see from its mouth and eyes.

In 1985, Citadel Miniatures released a troglodyte miniature that's also very reptilian in appearance. If you look carefully, you can see not only its crocodile-like scales but also its cranial ridges (which are smaller).

Two years later, in 1987, Ral Partha gained the AD&D miniatures license and released its own version of the troglodyte. Here's a trio of them, which, to my eyes anyway, don't look all that different than traditional depictions of lizard men. They do have the cranial ridges at least, though, like Citadel before them, they're much smaller than in previous depictions of them.

AD&D Second Edition's Monstrous Compendium (1989) saved the troglodyte for its second release (MC2), which suggests that TSR didn't see troglodytes as being as important as lizard men, who appeared earlier. True or not, we get this absolutely atrocious illustration of them (by Daniel Horne) that looks like an anthropomorphic horny toad with some serious dental problems. Yikes!

Then, in 1993, Tony DiTerlizzi provides this illustration for the Monstrous Manual. It's something of a break with previous versions. DiTerlizzi opts for a newt-like, amphibian appearance rather than a reptilian one.

Reviewing this sampling of troglodyte artwork from the TSR era of Dungeons & Dragons, I'm struck by two things. First, there is some degree of consistency in the depiction of these monsters, with most artists looking to Dave Sutherland's Monster Manual art as a foundation. Second, each post-Sutherland illustrator (with the possible exception of Holloway) put his own spin on the troglodytes by giving them some fish-like or amphibian characteristics. I can certainly understand why they might do this, since it's a good way to distinguish trogs from lizard men (and other reptile men) visually. At the same time, I think this variability contributes to rather than diminishes the conflation of troglodytes and lizard men, which likely explains why my vision of troglodytes is very close to that of Sutherland.

How about you? How do you view troglodytes?

What Next?

Based on the reader response to the "A (Very Brief) Pictorial History" posts, this has proven to be a very popular series, which pleases me. With the publication of today's post on halflings, I've come to the end of those I'd originally had in mind to examine. However, I'm open to the idea of continuing the series, if there's still interest in my doing so. To do that, though, I need suggestions. About which Dungeons & Dragons monsters would you like to see pictorial history posts? 

As a reminder, here are the posts I've done so far:

• Bugbears
• Drow
• Elves
• Gnolls
• Goblins
• Halflings
• Kobolds
• Orcs
• Trolls

As you can see, there aren't even ten posts in this series, so there is plenty of scope for additional ones. My interest thus far has been in humanoid monsters and races, since they're often the ones whose appearances have varied the most over the years and that's fascinating. Of course, when their appearances don't vary, that's equally interesting and also worthy of examination. 

Before making any suggestions of possible additions, keep one thing in mind: the monster in question has to be commonplace enough to have appeared in multiple illustrations over the course of the TSR era of D&D. That means you won't be seeing "A (Very) Pictorial History of the Water Weird" or "A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of the Brain Mole" anytime soon – unless there really is some vast store of illustrations I've somehow overlooked. Stick to well used and iconic monsters and there's a better chance I can be swayed to write about them.

No – don't even ask.

A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Halflings

For today's look at the art of TSR era Dungeons & Dragons, I've decided to step away from monsters and instead focus on something a little different: halflings. Halflings, as everyone knows, originate in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and have little or no antecedents in real world myth or legend. Despite Gary Gygax's well-known dislike of The Lord of the Rings, he was, however, a fan of The Hobbit, which introduced halflings – or, rather, hobbits – to the world. Both books were very popular among fantasy aficionados during the early 1970s, when D&D was born, so it's not at all surprising that Tolkien's diminutive creations should find their way into the game (along with several of his monsters). Of course, this usage was completely unauthorized and legally dubious. Saul Zaentz's Middle-earth Enterprises threatened legal actions against TSR for its usage of "hobbit" (and "ent" and "Nazgûl," I believe) in OD&D. Subsequent printings of the game, such as the one I own, changed "hobbit" to "halfling" and that term then became the common one in Dungeons & Dragons. 

There are no clearly identified illustrations of halflings in OD&D. However, there is this piece of Greg Bell artwork that I think is supposed to be a halfling:

As you can see, the illustration is crude and looks more like the common depiction of a leprechaun – note the hat – than what we now expect of a hobbit or halfling. However, there are no leprechauns in OD&D, playable or otherwise. Further, if you look carefully, you can see the figure above is using a sling in his right hand, a signature weapon of halflings in both OD&D and the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail. 

The earliest unambiguous illustration of a halfling comes in the AD&D Monster Manual by David Sutherland. Sutherland's depiction is broadly consonant with Tolkien's descriptions of hobbits, including their hairy feet.

The next year, in 1978, Sutherland illustrated module B1, In Search of the Unknown. One such illustration shows a short figure I assume is meant to be a halfling. Because he has no beard, I don't think he's supposed to be a dwarf, but there's no way of knowing for certain.

Next up is Bill Willingham's take on a halfling from the 1980 reprint of White Plume Mountain – even though it actually depicts a polymorphed efreeti masquerading as a halfling. Once again, furry feet à la Tolkien are visible.

1980 also saw the release of Slave Pits of the Undercity, whose cover features this towheaded halfling by Jeff Dee.

The Tom Moldvay D&D Basic Set (1981) includes this depiction of several different character classes by Dave LaForce. In the bottom right-hand corner, you can see a halfling, armed with a bow. 

The Cook-Marsh Expert Set (1981) includes one of my favorite depictions of a D&D halfling (by Jeff Dee). 

Frank Mentzer's 1983 revisions of the Basic and Expert Sets include many illustrations of halflings, probably the most of any TSR edition of Dungeons & Dragons. For the purposes of space, I'm including only a single example (by Larry Elmore), though there are many other excellent options to choose from.

The same year saw the release of The Shady Dragon Inn, a supplement filled with artistic renderings of every conceivable D&D character type, including halflings. It also features portraits of characters based on the LJN D&D toy line, such as Figgen the Halfling Thief (whose toy, ironically, was never actually produced as far as I know). This is Timothy Truman's version of Figgen:

In the third episode of the first season of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series (also 1983), we're introduced to a character called Hector the Halfling (who's actually bad guy Venger disguised by magic). He's the only halfling to appear in the series of looks quite different than all previous depictions of the race. He lacks hairy feet, but he wears peculiar pants that cover half of his oversized feet, leaving the toes visible. He also has pointed ears, an inconsistently portrayed aspect of D&D halflings.

The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set (1987) presents us with another slightly anomalous vision of halflings. Jeff Easley's halflings are skinny, goofy-looking little people with mildly larcenous demeanors. They still have big, slightly hairy feet, but otherwise strike me as quite unique.

Jim Holloway's version of halflings from 1989's Monstrous Compendium is, in my opinion, a little creepy, with his heavy eyebrows, half-lidded eyes, and languorous pose. He also boasts a veritable mane of hair that starts at his ankles and then drapes over the tops of his feet. To my eyes, the overall effect is suggestive of a satyr rather than a hobbit and I can't say I'm keen on it.

Tony DiTerlizzi's piece from the 1993 Monstrous Manual is better, exuding a kind of scrappy heroism that works well for halflings. 

As you can see from just this small sampling of illustrations, there's never been a fully consistent conception of halflings. I wouldn't be surprised if this was driven, at least in part, by a desire to legally distinguish D&D's diminutive race from Tolkien's hobbits. At the same time, there can be no question that, at base, halflings are hobbits in all but name. The presence of hairy feet – a characteristic derived from Tolkien – in nearly all of the above pieces of artwork demonstrates that. If the intention were to avoid comparisons to the denizens of Middle-earth, you'd think removing that feature would have been at the top of the art director's list. (Interestingly, the kender of Dragonlance pointedly wear shoes – take that, Saul Zaentz!).

There's a lot more to be said on this topic, I think, but I'll leave that to another day. For now, I'm interested in your thoughts about both the art and the place of halflings in your own D&D campaigns. Do you use them? Do you, like me, replace them with another race? Or you omit them entirely? 

A (Very) Partial Pictorial History of Gnolls

There's no use in fighting it. You'll be seeing more entries in what has inadvertently become a series for a few more weeks at least, perhaps longer. After last week's post on bugbears, which are a uniquely D&D monstrous humanoid, I knew I'd have to turn to gnolls this week, as they, too, are unique to the game. Perhaps I should clarify that a little. There is no precedent, mythological or literary, for the spelling "gnoll." However, the spelling "gnole" appears in "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles" from Lord Dunsany's 1912 short story collection, The Book of Wonder (as well as in Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles"). 

There can be no doubt that Dunsany's story served as the seeds for the gnolls of D&D. In their description in Book 1 of OD&D, gnolls are described as "a cross between Gnomes and Trolls (. . . perhaps, Lord Sunsany [sic] did not really make it all that clear." The original short story contains no description of the titular creature, leaving Gygax to advance his theory of gnolls being a weird hybrid monster. Artist Greg Bell interprets them thusly:

Sometime in the three years between their first appearance in OD&D (1974) and the publication of the Monster Manual (1977), someone at TSR decided that gnolls were, in fact, "low intelligence beings like hyena-men." That's how they're described in J. Eric Holmes's Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, which is where I first encountered them, courtesy of this delightful illustration by Tom Wham:

Meanwhile, the Monster Manual itself, published the same year, gives us this illustration by Dave Sutherland.

The Monster Manual also includes another Sutherland gnoll-related piece, this time of Yeenoghu, the demon lord of gnolls. To my eyes, Yeenoghu looks a lot more hyena-like than does the illustration above, but, even so, they're still broadly similar.

Speaking of Yeenoghu, he reappears in the pages of Deities & Demigods, this time depicted by Dave LaForce. I've always found this version of the demon lord a bit goofy. I'm not sure if it's his grin or the strangeness of the arm that holds his infamous triple flail. 

The AD&D Monster Cards sets are a good source of unusual takes on many monsters and that's especially so in the case of gnolls. Artist Harry Quinn depicts them in a way that, to my eyes, looks decidedly feline. To anyone familiar with the weird phylogenetics of hyenas, that's inappropriate, but it still feels off somehow. Perhaps it's simply the weight of all the previous depictions that makes me think so. In any case, Quinn's version of the gnoll is quite distinctive.

The 2e Monstrous Compendium features what is probably the most hyena-like of all versions of the gnoll, courtesy of James Holloway.

Tony DiTerlizzi provides an even more hyena-like version of the gnoll in the Monstrous Manual, right down the spots on its fur. 

I feel like I have probably overlooked some illustrations of gnolls from the TSR era of D&D, but, if so, they must be fairly obscure, as these are the only ones I could easily find in my collection. What's most notable about the ones I did find is how closely they hew to the post-OD&D notion that gnolls are hyena-men. I'd chalk up most of the differences to artist skill and choice rather than a fundamental disagreement about this fact. In this respect, they're quite similar to bugbears, another distinctly D&D monster whose look stayed largely the same during TSR's stewardship of Dungeons & Dragons.