I suppose in retrospect it was obvious, but the victor of the Product Identity Tournament of Champions was the Beholder. Mind Flayers were a very distant second.
For me the answer was Carrion Crawler, just because that monster is so bound up in my earliest memories of playing the game - the very first encounter in the very first session of D&D I played was with one, and ever since then I've found it hard not to think of a dungeon delve involving an encounter with a Carrion Crawler as the quintessence of the game.
But the case for the Beholder is compelling. As Jonathan Newell put it in the comments on the last entry, the thing that makes the Beholder so special is that it is sui generis - it is not based in folklore or myth, and nor is it a "this with a this". It is its own thing. There aren't many monsters you can say that about.
Oddly, though, D&D has managed to do that trick a few times - I can think of two other candidates (who weren't in the Tournament of Champions but should probably have been) for that sui generis descriptor: gelatinous cubes and rust monsters. To be able to come up with a monster that has no origin or real antecedents and which is at the same time iconic takes quite a bit of doing. That D&D designers have done it three times at least is a powerful imaginative achievement.
Although the rust monster was based, visually at least, on a toy "dinosaur" Gygax found.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but not the stats or concept though - the model could have represented anything really.
DeleteHmm. While I voted for mind flayers, I can’t say I disagree with the result. Waaaay back in the day, it seemed like every player I ran into had some sort of epic beholder war story. The first true dungeon I ever designed as a kid had a beholder as its centerpiece monster...it was probably the first new creature I added to my B/X game from my (then) brand spanking new Monster Manual.
ReplyDeleteIconic for sure.
Rust monsters were based on some old plastic toys IIRC. Think I had one as a kid. No idea what the toys were inspired by.
ReplyDeleteUltraman, believe it or not. Or, well, some of them. The "Bulette" is Gabora (specifically from the original series with those flower petals closed up), and while it's not quite the same the "Rust Monster" toy bears some resemblance to Kemular. They seem to have moved the tail-feelers to be antennae, but otherwise it's a somewhat close fit.
DeleteThe Owlbear seems to be not Ultraman and instead maybe a very badly modelled Kappa, but honestly it's really hard to tell.
They could look like anything really. The point is the concept is sui generis.
DeleteI had a bunch of small, plastic Ultraman figures from time in Japan when I was a kid, and while I was unaware any of them inspired D&D monsters, I certainly used them as minis at times. They were perfect.
DeleteI feel that beholders were probably the best choice while never having done anything with them either as a GM or player. I just read the comments on the previous blog entry, and the arguments were compelling.
DeleteI can sympathize with carrion crawler as a pick. I started gaming with Moldvay Basic, so the illustration of the carrion crawler in that book is an intrinsic part of the moment I fell in love with RPGs.
I actually had the rust monster plastic toy as a kid. I used it as an insect monster for my toy soldiers to fight in the jungle of my parents' front garden.
DeleteI also have never really used beholders in a game. Grell, yes. They were a big part of one campaign I was involved in.
The gelatinous cube is almost certainly inspired by The Blob, but I wonder if its iconic shape was actually derived from a serving of Jell-o. Gygax grew up in the 40's/50's, and if you look at the culinary trends of that era that shit was EVERYWHERE. Many cookbooks included gelatin meals that even had suspended bits of meat in them. It's pretty easy to imagine a creative youth dreaming up carnivorous gelatin as a result.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Could well be. (There are also lots of jellies you can get with bits of fruit suspended in them.)
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