Say hello to some familiar friends

[Automaton]

For those of you unfamiliar with the advanced dungeons and dragons monster manuals 1 and 2 first editions released in the 70's and 80's

Say hello to some familiar friends



































Cheers
Nick K

[jayrshaw]

Hey Nick,

My wife and I both thought the old D&D pictures of enemies appearing in Dungeon Master were really cool! It's funny that it says you could theoretically create a water elemental using barrels of ale/wine as the base....


--Jay

[slickrcbd]

The art was changed slightly in 2nd edition enough that I thought some DM monsters were based on some from AD&D, but changed to avoid copyright.
Those first edition renditions look like DM pulled them right out of the MM.
Although I have to check my book as I don't recall the shrieker or boggle in 2nd edition.

[Sophia]

I was young enough that I came to D&D after having played DM, but I remember noticing this too. Then again it's almost as though the name of the game kind of gives away where they're getting their inspiration from.

[jayrshaw]

The pictures of the adventurers fighting the worm and the scorpion are also really funny (especially the size of the worm relative to the size of the adventurers)....


--Jay

[Ameena]

Ahh yeah, I got into DnD after DM as well (seeing how I was about five or six when I first played DM, I think), and found things like Purple Worms and such (the DnD ones are sliiiightly bigger, though ).
The Shrieker/Screamer is in DnD 2nd Edition, at least - I've played the computer games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, which use ADnD 2nd Edition rules and there is a point in Icewind Dale where you go to the Underdark and there is some guy's mansion house thing, which has Shriekers in the grounds to sound the alarm if intruders approach. You can exploit it to get endless exp as long as you don't kill them, because every time you trigger the alarm a bunch of blade-armed skeletons ("Serrated Skeletons", I think) spawn around you .
Some of the old DnD monsters are very silly - there's at least one website I've been on which has a compiled list of really silly monsters. Like, most people have heard of the Mimic, which tends to take the shape of a treasure chest to lure in unsuspecting adventurers, revealing that lifting its "lid" actually reveals a mouth with very sharp teeth. But there were also monsters that could mimc doors. And walls. And floors. And ceilings. You could literally create a "death room" in which absolutely everything in it, as well as the room itself, was a creature wanting to eat you .
There was another silly creature that resembled a tree stump with a rabbit on it. But the "rabbit" was actually a lure not unlike that used by an angler fish, and the "tree stump" was a creature, once again with a big mouth of sharp teeth it wanted to use to nom you .
I've been running a tabletop DnD campaign but it's been on hold since March - hopefully we'll get back to it at some point. The party consists of a Satyr Warden, Thri-Kreen Ranger, and Genasi Elementalist. Definitely not 2nd Edition though - no THAC0 for me, thanks!

[1040ST]

This is really fascinating. Like some others here, I was a only a kid when I first played this game and had no prior exposure to D&D. It would have been really interesting to have the rust monster actually damage your weapons and armor.

[slickrcbd]

I got into AD&D about a year after I got Dungeon Master when somebody gave me Curse of the Azure Bonds for Christmas. Then after break back at school a bunch of classmates and I were talking about the loot they got. CotAB and the predecessor Pool of Radiance came up along with how good they were. By spring break this somehow led to the formation of an AD&D group focusing on the Forgotten Realms and seven years of fond memories. Alas, the group broke up for good in 1997 when most members went off to colleges around the country and we were unable to resolve scheduling conflicts the next summer.
As hinted, by 1990 2nd edition was all that was being sold in stores, and I did notice that a lot of monsters were similar. However, we assumed they were drawn from mythology and folk lore like skeletons and mummies.

[Gambit37]

It always bothered me that Andy Jaros, FTL artist, didn't create feathered wings for the Couatl. They look more like leathery/scaly dragon wings in the game. Since the Couatl gets its name from the real world Aztec God Quetzalcoatl, it would have been straightforward to research that and draw the correct wings..But since Andy admitted he wasn't a very good artist, I guess he just decided to keep things a bit simpler to make it easier.

As for D&D influence on FTLs monsters, yes they were and Andy freely admits to it, which is why they changed some of the names to avoid any infringement.

[Phoenix]

This is really fascinating. Like some others here, I was a only a kid when I first played this game and had no prior exposure to D&D. It would have been really interesting to have the rust monster actually damage your weapons and armor.

The custom dungeon Conflux has a ruster that can break weapons. Thankfully, there's a method to repair them as well.