Fantasy creatures.

[Nomaken]

I wanna make a list(or if you guys know links i'll be happy to look there and research it myself) of all fantasy creatures.  And when i say creatures I include anything which is sentient and at least a little bit of sapience(preferably more).  I'd like to include angels, zombies and strange rock creatures that are seemingly unrelatable and impossible to communicate with but actually experiance shit and make decisions.  There are a lot of monsters in fantasy which it is implied they are intelligent enough to have civil discourse with but never ever do anything but destory shit and kill and eat people.

[Pyraxis]

Here's one game system, to start with:

http://www.wcug.wwu.edu/~randyman/ROLEPLAY/creatures/monsterindex.htm

[McGiver]

Shit Pyraxis, what were you thinking?

Well i guess its his fault for voluntering to do the research.


Ahem, ahey there Namo, did you know that here on intensity, we honor the person who means what they say.  When can we expect a copy of the detailed report?

[Hypnotica_Gaze]

Am i on the list?

[Nomaken]

In a long fuckin' time.  There are quite a few as you could probably guess.

But half the reason I wanted to complete the list is gone.  I was originally interested in every major class of fantasy creature, and then describe sub classes, and exceptions and oddities, and such, in the interest of using them to create a master mythos.  And why did i want to create a master mythos?  To use it for a mud me and some of my nerd friends are planning to create. (Text based, piece of shit, old online nerd RPG, like everquest but without pictures or funding)  We wanted to make a good mud because we enjoy roleplaying but the muds we've had experiance with were not inspiring enough.  So we were going to make an inspiring one.  I was going to create the mythos so that I could fill up the history of the world in that mud, but also so that we could have a catalog of playable character types.  I was going to make every kind of creature a playable creature.  And I am still interested in creating a catalog of all those creatures.  But i've realized a method to better construct the history of the world.  So I don't need the list as badly.

[McGiver]

i think i can, i think i can, toot, toot.

don't give up on your dream.  you can do it.


hypnotica you are on our list for the fantasy ball crusher extraordinaire.

[Pyraxis]

Nomaken - what are you going to do to make it more inspiring?

[Nomaken]

Well instead of name every creature that there is, i am thinking of identifying a number of fundamental characteristics that make up all fantasy creatures.
Because after doing some research I quickly realized that putting all the fancy names and histories aside, tons of the creatures were just combinations of a certain number of elements and then it is almost like their history and abilities were tacked on.
So far i've decided on 4 "elements".  But keep in mind, this is all just shit i've been thinking up, and you all might feel there are more or less components.
Human, Animal, Inanimate, and Supernatural.  I've been looking for good words for the last 2, i don't feel theyre perfect, especially supernatural, but what i mean by those 2 i feel are exactly what i'm looking for.

Every fantasy creature is a combination of those 4 elements.  Some creatures are combinations of animals, some are humans and animals, some are combinations of humans, animals, and inanimate components (think elemental animals or humans), and supernatural + human can be a ghost, or an angel, angel could also be seen as animal + human + supernatural, or just supernatural depending on what legend of angel you are talking about.  There are animal spirits, which are a combination of supernatural and animal.  And there are some creatures which are purely animal, purely human, purely inanimate, and purely supernatural.
I don't like the word inanimate, because i am including in the inanimate category those creatures which don't talk, don't interact with people, but are obviously alive, but they are also made of solid or liquid material, not flesh.  An elemental with no human or animal characteristics.

There are creatures which are purely any of the 4, however in most fantasy stories they have like... hints of some of the other 3.  Like i would classify dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, and what have you as all human.  Some legends of dwarves have them also have some inanimate in them.  And the particulars of what exactly tolkien-esq creatures are, are probably things tolkien fans would like to debate with me on, and quite frankly i'd rather run my hand through with a good sturdy steak knife.
But there still leaves the question of magic, and its various forms.  Seems to me that fantasy does not differentiate that much between psionics and magicians.  I could say all magic, from psionics, to magicians, to the vaguely pagan powers of druids are all a touch of supernatural, but i feel like that would make like 4/5ths of all fantasy creatures be classified as supernatural in part, so that seems like somewhat of a bad idea.
I am thinking about making 1 mix be their inherent makeup, but also have a second mix for socially learned things.  Like in some stories, humans in general are unmagical, but they can learn magic.  And some societies are mage societies and they have a complex almost art-like organization of learned magic.  But illithid societies are inherently psionic, they dont learn how to be psionic, they are from birth.

Those are some ideas, nothing is set in stone.  And also it isn't even organized that well.

[Pyraxis]

Well considering a good two thirds of these creatures are derived from the myths of various cultures, I think if you're going to distill them down to their essence it might help to look at for what reasons they were originally formed.

I don't get what falls under your "supernatural" category yet - anything involved with magic/psionic/clerical/druidic powers? Anything not found on Earth? What exactly counts as "human" - something humanoid (except many elementals are)? Something with human-derived thoughts and emotions (which might include previously human creatures like the lich)?

If you look at previous cultures that first dreamed up the concepts of creatures like the couatl, the sphinx, the minotaur, the ki-rin, their current forms in computer games are pretty bastardized and stripped of the original intent. (I remember having a GM tossing a hostile couatl my way once, and me sitting there having just come out of a central American mythology and culture class, pissed off that my tribal character was expected to kill the thing when I knew it was one of the most sacred things in the culture I was drawing my inspiration from). If you're making a D&D-derived world, that probably doesn't matter, but if you're starting from scratch, I think it would be cooler to strip away some of the crap the modern game systems have piled on to these creatures. It doesn't make sense for the history of the world to be derived from an amalgamation of existing histories... better (I think) to tie it to the essence of the land it's built on. A tribal society might have gods and monsters that follow the egalitarian nature of tribal life, like First Nations animal spirits, or a city-state nation like the Greeks has warring heroes and mascots that mirror the political structure of that society. Even before politics became such a big deal, you've got types of creatures that reflect how people see their place in the cosmos - is it harsh and entropy-filled like Scandinavian mythology, mothering/nurturing like Cro-Magnon religious artifacts, ruthless and warlike like the Aztec gods, etc....?

Sorry if this seems incoherent, I know I'm rambling... just hoping that there might be some decent ideas buried in there somewhere.

What kind of history are you thinking of making for your world? Is it going to fit into the existing D&D mythos somehow - the planes, the elements, the crystal spheres etc - or are you going for something totally new? I just realized I can't remember if you've ever actually mentioned it's tied to D&D or not so sorry if I'm making too many assumptions.