#sword & sorcery

[niksrpgs]

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[a-space-opera]

[prokopetz]

Could I ask where dungeons of the kind in D&D came about? Like they’re a cultural icon now, but I don’t understand their origins very well

The dungeon crawl is a pretty standard trope in 1960s and 1970s sword and sorcery fiction and its near ancestors. A lot of ink has been spilled about how Dungeons & Dragons has become so creatively insular that it's basically emulating itself, and while there's some truth to that, the claim that dungeon crawls are part of that is a misconception. That bit is lifted more or less directly from the contemporary literature which original flavour D&D was inspired by – modern commentators tend to miss that because nobody reads sword and sorcery anymore. If you look at Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Robert Howard, you'll see dungeon crawls aplenty; Conan the Barbarian* went on not a few!

Of course, that just kicks the can down the road a bit: if Dungeons & Dragons got the dungeon crawl from 1960s and 1970s sword and sorcery fiction, where did they get it from? That's a question I'm less qualified to address, since literary history isn't my area. I know there are several students of early to mid 20th Century popular fiction following this blog, though; perhaps a qualified party can weigh in?

* Yes, I'm aware that Conan the Barbarian was 1930s; I'm including him in the "near ancestors" of 1960s sword and sorcery fiction

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Fire and Ice - art by Sanjulián (2020)

[doomreturn]

[emilysdiaryofficial]

Russet ready to be summoned ♡♡♡

[domjordanillustration]

career-ending injury

[swornsword]

[gravemud]

Knight of Eyes

[vorpalfae]

It’s dangerous to go alone, take this

[niksrpgs]

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[a-space-opera]

[vosus]

Ashrahi, of Flame

Mark Jarrell

markjarrellart.com

[prokopetz]

On the origin of oozes:

When googling it seems that ooze type enemies came about with dnd.

Are you aware of earlier origins? It does not seem farfetched to assume that some fantasy book had them before that.

(also, best ooze in your opinion?)

It's broadly correct that the ooze monster in its modern form comes to us via Dungeons & Dragons (with considerable influence from D&D-inspired Japanese console RPGs like Dragon Quest). However, like many other classic D&D tropes, its antecedents were present in the sword and sorcery literature of the 20th Century – ooze monsters just seem like they sprung into existence fully formed in D&D's monster manuals because nobody reads sword and sorcery lit anymore.

While there are no doubt earlier precedents, I'd be inclined to point to early 20th Century cosmic horror fiction as the point where the modern giant-amoeba-like notion of the ooze monster really became a standard trope. We can see a clear prototype of the modern ooze monster in Lovecraft's shoggoths, first described in detail in At the Mountains of Madness (1931), for example; from there, the line to the sword and sorcery literature that would go on to form the basis of Dungeons & Dragons is a short one. This certainly isn't the first example of the type – I just don't have an earlier one at my fingertips.

As for my favourite ooze monster, I've gotta give it to the gelatinous cube, one of the few examples of the type which truly is original to Dungeons & Dragons – in fact, it could only have come from D&D, owing to the peculiarities of its creation. It started out as a sort of dungeon hazard, an "invisible" ooze which concealed itself by being completely transparent and conforming perfectly to the shape of any passage that it occupied; however, since old-school D&D expected players to produce their own dungeon maps as they went, and made their job easier by abstracting dungeon floorplans onto a grid of ten-foot squares, the idea of the gelatinous cube quickly shifted from "ooze which perfectly fills any passage it occupies" to "ooze which evolved to be a perfect ten-foot cube in order to block a standard ten-foot-by-ten-foot dungeon hallway". It's incredibly dumb, and I love it.

[browsethestacks]

Death Dealer

Art by Bill Sienkiewicz

[doomreturn]