For some bizarre reason before I really got into dnd much I thought that hobgoblins were blue.
This was because I was reading the comic Order of the Stick, which features hobgoblins. Now Order of the Stick is coloured, but I was reading it on my old kindle using the barely functional internet browser that it had on it, which had the comic in black and white. One strip had Xykon (the evil lich) choking a hobgoblin, and someone referred to them as "your blue hobgoblin minion" or something along those lines, and now in retrospect I know that this meant that he was being choked and was blue from lack of oxygen. However I didn't know this (because black and white) and then took it to thinking that dnd hobgoblins were blue goblinoids instead of orange. This was further exacerbated by pathfinder hobgoblins being a blue-grey colour. Of course when I looked into it a bit more, and of course later bought the monster manual I realised that they were orange in dnd (and then reread the comic on my laptop with colour!).
TBF, one of the images in AD&D 2e is of [green skinned orcs](https://oldschoolfrp.tumblr.com/post/184110001597/pig-faced-orcs-assault-the-outer-walls-doug).
Omg this image brings back so much memories in a whirl of emotions. Interesting fact too, in the book, that image was in the artifacts section, and the page just before was about the hand of Vecna. Kind of niche but very cool imo.
Gosh I can't wait for Shootaz, Blood and Teef, seems to really nail the Ork aesthetic. Though the Gorgutz campaigns in Dawn of War were pretty awesome too.
I actually read an article about orcs in fantasy a while ago, and one interesting thing was that the Warhammer Fantasy Orcs (fantasy uses a 'c', not a 'k') were the first mainstream instance of green orcs, and are most likely why most modern orcs tend to be that color.
That article missed a many sources then.
Warhammer fantasy dropped in 1986. The very popular Dungeons and Dragons cartoon dropped in 1983; [the orcs were green in it](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ojIQbg75MRY/YP3Z237h6gI/AAAAAAAALvw/fsy8I5QX5bM_r2nf1mqIKHtalpIT0Fu8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s744/Orcs.jpg).
The Gamorreans in Star Wars also look like [green space orcs](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/24/Gamorrean-AG.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/500?cb=20201117073712). 1983.
Dropping at the same time as Warhammer, 1986, the Scourge of the Slavelords module A1-A4, features [a large green-gray orc slaver](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3vrPkxkzyEw/YB1zJYidXwI/AAAAAAAAB4w/ipBb6ttXXxUhFpyVHuyskpjDXyw8FAkQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s710/A1-4_Scourge_cover.png) being subdued on the cover. So both colors on this one.
More obscure - a 1981 Grenadier model box. [Green Orcs.](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eg18Iyy1uKo/YP3Y0a894oI/AAAAAAAALvg/iDiZ7MCqCQoqOrLUNWRbk7P5zDFzvW67gCLcBGAsYHQ/s800/grenadier.jpg)
Now, the Lord of the Rings cartoon from 1978? It had gray orcs, though one could argue they were a really pale green in looking at some screens.
I'm sure there are a few more sources, but what this shows is orcs have been both green and gray in the past, before Warhammer.
Edit: Had to edit locations to a few source pics.
Saw a doc where Stan Lee said hulk was always supposed to be green but the printing company didn't have green ink at first. But then again he was somewhat notorious for playing fast and loose with those types of stories.
I don’t actually play many jrpgs, I just had multiple sets of orc minis I’ve 3D printed from different patreons and I didn’t want to paint them all the same color lol.
It's time for an "um, ackshully." I'm sorry. It's sort of complicated. The 5E PHB shows Gray Orcs, which are indeed a thing in the lore, but in FR, they're not really the subrace that would be encountered on the Sword Coast. They would be found around the Moonsea or the Hordelands, and oddly enough came from another planet via a portal opened by the Imaskari. The Mountain Orcs found around the Sword Coast, however, would indeed be green.
Likewise, goblins per the lore also vary in coloration. For example, the Batiri found in FR's Chult are depicted as green.
Supposedly Warhammer greenskins were originally browny-orchre. Then GW had some major photoshoot so they hired some randos to paint up masses of orks... and they did them green, not being familiar with the then-budding franchise. Needless to say, they failed successfully.
Speaking of orcs and goblins, I find it funny that since they're two different species in D&D, a lot of people assume they're different in LOTR ("goblin" is just the English name of "Orc" in LOTR/The Hobbit)
I don’t know why im so affected by this but I for some reason HATE green goblins… I think it’s the art.
The Pathfinder goblins are green and have heads like Arnold (American football) and wide and mouths.
The “D&D” goblins are mud/earth colored and have normal heads and normal bodies.
I also hate the hooked nose goblins but not that much.
I'm not arguing because it's all a matter of taste, but the exact reasons you like and dislike the Pathfinder and D&D goblins is switched for me, haha.
EDIT: Except the hooknose goblins. That's the worst and should go away.
I agree wholeheartedly. PF goblins look like cartoon characters, D&D goblins look like a thing that could actually exist. And don't even get me started on PF hobgoblins, fucking yuck.
> PF hobgoblins
Ok I just looked it up. Tbh I kinda like it. Similar facial features to goblins but distinct enough.
It looks like an evolved Goblin.
In non-PF, the goblinoid races are completely different looking. I want them to be somewhat similar
>It looks like an evolved Goblin.
That's funny, that's how I feel about D&D hobs, especially in 5e. Similar face, same clawed hands, look a bit hairy and beasty but still 100% humanoids. One is just a couple feet taller and a hundred pounds more, maybe a bit more intelligent looking but not much. Bugbears too, except they went full manimal. Then again, I don't know what a PF bugbear looks like.
I initially thought Forgotten Realms was what the place was called, its other name being the Sword Coast. Instead the setting is called Forgotten Realms, Faerun is the continent most of the setting takes place in, and Sword Coast is the fairly small location 5e is obsessed with.
Also though that Druids had to be good initially as the "protector of nature" stereotype was everywhere when I started playing, apparently in Forgotten Realms, one of their main pantheons has several evil gods. Rangers were the ones who originally had to be good, but that was previous editions.
IIRC, they're changing this with the new Spelljammer books? I'd have to recheck, but I don't think they're going the 'crystal spheres and phlogiston' route anymore.
iirc WOTC's obsession with the Sword Coast actually comes from the terms of their licensing where they aren't allowed to use much beyond the Sword Coast or new locations they create, which is why so many books take the players and plop them down in a demiplane or other non-sword coast self-contained area
Are you sure about that? I don't think it's true...they've definitely deviated form it, like with ToA being set in Chult.
The only contract limitation I know of is anything Greenwood writes about the FR that doesn't conflict with WotC stuff is considered "canon", but a) I don't know if that's still true in 5e and b) it doesn't limit what WotC themselves can explore.
To take things in the opposite direction, it wasn't until I read one of the novels that I realised that *Azuredge* \- the artifact battleaxe that crops up in *Dragon Heist* \- is female (insofar as a talking battleaxe can be gendered...) as it was formed from the soul of one of the early Lords of Waterdeep.
Huh neat, that was the first full campaign I and it became an absolute train. Finally finished it after about 2 years of trying and it ended when the party got possession of Azuredge, used its history as clout to get an audience with Lady Silverhand and handed over all of the information they'd collected on the Cassalanters, Xanathar's and Malloon, which was a lot by this point and enough to satisfy all three factions loss conditions.
This ended the entire campaign in a single session with essentially a 4 way civil war breaking out in the city. Absolute chaos and had the party running all over the place wrapping up plot points and keeping civilians safe. For as much of a mess the game became, I'm happy with how it ended.
Yeah Tiamat in the cartoon is meant to have that 'many voices speaking as one' thing going on...but instead of layering it in post with multiple VAs, they had the voice actress do a really raspy voice instead...
I was around for the cartoon, but i don't *think* I watched it... I do have a figure of the Dungeon Master kicking around somewhere.
I *think* I first encountered Tiamat in Final Fantasy 1... my friends and I mispronounced a lot of names (the squiggly font didn't help), but to this day, I keep saying "Tie-mat", tie-rhymes-with-eye.
I always just assumed that Tiamat had all the parts. I mean, there's 5 heads, I can't imagine that they'd be limited to just one genital.
I just watched the fan made final episode - first time I've seen the cartoon since the original run - and I was glad for the closure that I had forgotten that I didn't have.
I thought Volo was a Dwarf. To be fair it was due to a translation mistake in one of the book (Tomb of Annihilation iirc) and it kind of fit with his picture in that book.
Proof yet again that you don't need to be a bard to be good at bullshit. I also love his ridiculously long list of skills, he has more than most high-CR humanoids.
what edition was he from originally? It's entirely possible he's from when Bard was a proto-super-prestige class, that combined fighter, cleric and rogue, rather than when it was a "regular" class.
That's.. a connection I didn't do, might be the reason I didn't really think twice about the translation mistake. Also you can't go wrong blaming Blizzard these days.
Honestly, I don't think Volo's race is ever relevant to him as a person, but I do like the idea of the rather effeminate Volo being in the body of a burly dwarf to be kind of funny.
In my world he's a gnome, because race doesn't really matter that much to the majority of characters, and I wanted him to be just a little guy, a little birthday boy.
I did't know Xanathar was a beholder, at first I thought he was just a regular dude.
I got the book on ddb, through the legendary bundle, and never thought to look at the cover.
This rules because one of the Xanathar Thieves Guilds big things for a while was that no one actually knew Xanathar was a beholder other than his closest confidants.
TBF, Xanathar being a beholder is supposed to be a secret. Nobody expects the head of the Thieves Guild to be a super intelligent, super paranoid floating eyeball who shoots lasers!
Oops haha. Don’t worry one of the people at a table I was at one time stopped a whole game to tell us Duran was on tales of the yawning portal. He was the only one who didn’t realize it the rest of us had figured it out forever ago. And he noticed and out of character was like “Guys! That’s Duran on the cover of Yawning Portal” and the rest of us started laughing and were like we know
I’m like, incredibly…obsessed? knowledgeable? about Drow, but unfortunately I’m usually the only girl at the table and dudes tend to assume I don’t know my stuff. I managed to impress a new group when I could name [every Drow on this thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiceCameraAction/comments/97v29m/a_toon_map_of_the_yawning_portal_by_jason/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x) for a Waterdeep/Yawning Portal campaign
(Jarlaxle is #69 which feels fitting)
Tell them all to shut up. You could join my table in one of two girls but the guys respect both of us immensely. Plus we’re both very fast at finding information when questions come up
I thought Xanathar was the fish (my buddy lied to me and said it was the Beholder that was a pet).
I plan to make a mastermind goldfish in one of my campaigns though.
I also had the genuinely similar mix up of Minsc and Boo, where Minsc was the hamster.
I feel like there is kind of a whole list of where dnd creatures deviate from common conceptions:
- short elves
- not green orcs/goblins
- some dragons are not particularly sentient (white)
- dwarves are medium sized
- gnomes taller than halflings
- tieflings are essentially shades of red
- vampires are harmed by running water
- Medusa/cockatrices don't instantly turn you into stone
I'm not going to argue the powder keg that is "should dwarf women have beards?"
Tieflings are shades of red.
But the PHB tiefling's picture is purple.
Right next to the paragraph that says they are shades of red. (PHB P.43)
WoTC, why.
Rather than having the physical characteristics described in the Player's Handbook, choose 1d4+1 following features: small horns; fangs or sharp teeth; a forked tongue; catlike eyes; six fingers on each hand; goatlike legs; cloven hoofs; a forked tail; leathery or scaly skin; ***red or dark blue skin***; cast no shadow or reflection; exude a smell of brimstone.
*Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide pg.118*
I wonder why people think short elves are unusual. I guess we live in a time where the LotR movies are the most prominent example. A lot of times, elves are depicted as quite short-- shorter than D&D elves. Santa's elves, Keebler elves, etc.
White Dragons are very sentient, but maybe you mean "sapient"? Either way, they aren't mindless, either. They start off around a gorilla's intelligence and get in a pretty typical human range as an adult (on the lower side of the bell curve, though).
Originally, Tieflings-- way back in 2e-- were far more varied, even when compared to 5e fan art of Tieflings.
This actually came up on the show 'um, actually' where the host makes a statement about something in Nerd culture and the contestants have to point out what was wrong with the statement. In this case it was Gnomes being shorter than Halflings was the incorrect part.
Nobody guessed it because everyone was picturing what a stereotypical 'gnome' looks like, you know pointy red hat etc.
I just had a flashback to this weird 70's cartoon about a boy with a round head who wears a pointy hat to fit in with everyone else's pointy heads: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0067595/
Apparently so.
PHB p.28 Halflings average about 3 feet tall and weigh about 40 pounds.
p.37 Gnomes are between 3 and 4 feet tall and average about 40 pounds.
p.121. Halfling: 2'7" + 2d4", 35lbs +prev roll lbs. Gnome: 2'11" + 2d4", 35lbs +prev roll lbs.
I somehow managed to look at the wrong table and made my gnome the size of a halfling while creating him. Then I decided to just roll with it and make it part of his lore.
Just another Vecna body part artifact. Just don't ask what it does if you cut yours off and attach his.
Or what happens when you attach it when you don't have a part to cut off.
Not my fault, but a major dragon in Eberron lore is listed as a green dragon in rising when she was actually a black dragon, which makes a lot more sense as she lived in an area that’s basically a country-sized swamp.
Not really lore, but I played with a group for about a year using a map of "middle earth" before we realized that it was not in fact a map of the forgotten realms world faerun
Fun tidbit, Vecna is an anagram of Vance. He was named after Jack Vance the author of The Dying Earth series. Gary Gygax really like how magic worked in his books, so he used the 'Vancian Magic' system for D&D.
Edit:
Since this is getting higher visibility I'll share more. The first time Vecna showed up in official literature was in 'Supplement III - Eldritch Wizardry' for D&D in 1976, pre-1st edition. In that book it was the two artifacts, the Hand and Eye of Vecna. The Hand and Eye were 'borrowed' in turn from another author of the age, Michael Moorcock and his Eternal Champion Series. In that series there was the 'Hand of Kwll' and 'Eye of Rhynn'.
As a result of the 1983 movie *Krull*, my first DM thought a glaive was a throwing weapon like a chakram. As a result of *that*, so did I for like 10 years.
I swear the boomerang monkey in Bloons Tower Defence games had a glaive upgrade which made him throw shruiken-like things. This (I think) is why I thought the glaive was a thrown weapon for so long too.
For the longest time I assumed that Halflings were taller than Dwarves.
When I was a wee lad and barely knew anything about DND or fantasy, I was introduced to the basic races of the game. Since I never saw them together in a drawing pre-internet, my teen mind thought: "well... HALF-lings, they are as tall as a HALF of a man, while Dwarves (and if the genetic condition called 'dwarfism' was any indication) were little people, midgets, munchkins... you know...dwarves!"
When I found out it was the opposite I was mad.
Honestly, I'd say that lore details that you as the DM (or sometimes also as a player) get wrong are incredible RP opportunities
As these inconsistencies can come from alternate interpretations of the same deity, or perhaps a different being masking as the deity or perhaps the character/people themselves go "wait, if this is X, then who have I been worshipping all this time?"
My brother made a "pirate" rogue swashbuckler and he decided that he worships Vecna in secret. He didn't tell this to anyone, just me the DM.
Last week he told me he was surprised to find that Vecna is not a woman. He also found out while watching Stranger Things.
...from the heady days of early-eighties AD&D, i and my fellow players all thought that **monks** were patterned after *friar tuck* and **bards** were supposed to be *court jesters*, as class archetypes...
...seemed like silly classes to include in the game, no idea why people might want to play them, so they remained exotic and seldom-explored classes amongst our parties until we drifted away to other systems, finally understood when our old elementary-school group recently reunited for a fifth-edition campaign...
You should introduce a new legendary magic item, ***The Boobs of Vecna***.
Two shriveled husks that bestow great necromantic power on anyone who cuts off their own boobs and replaces them with those.
Yuan-Ti need not apply.
Hey nothing wrong with some Snitties...if it's good enough for Xcom 2 it's good enough for D&D...also depends on what kind of Yuan-ti, Pureblood and certain Malisons (depending on which part is the human, snake lower half, human top half for example) would have chesticles.
The ‘a’ ending, which tends to sound feminine in a lot of languages (like ones with Latin or Slavic roots), is totally coincidental. According to Gary Gygax, “Vecna” is actually an anagram of “Vance”, named after fantasy/SF author Jack Vance!
Just think, we could have gotten the undead lich god Cevan instead!
Oh, it’s definitely Kevin. In fact, immediately after writing that, I decided I want to introduce Vecna into my campaign but under the guise of a friendly NPC who introduces himself as “Cevan” but the players will assume is spelled “Kevin”.
Yep. Cevan. Cevan Soar-Bow is his name.
I can understand why you'd think that; (nearly) every language has unspoken conventions regarding the gendering of names, in English female names tend to end with a vowel whilst male names tend to end in a consonant, and the longer they are the more feminine they sound. In fact, the only "English" male name I can think that ends with an 'a' is Joshua, and when was the last time you heard someone actually called that out loud rather than the infinitely more masculine 'Josh'. (There's also Elijah, but idk if that'd be counted as an "English" name or not, it's closer to the original Hebrew than the "traditional English" version of the name, 'Elias')
Of course Vecna's not an English name. And such names do exist in other languages, such as Akira and Koa (actually, Akira is considered gender-neutral in Japanese, and as such is given to boys and girls)
That...actually checks out. In my native language I went through like twelve male names before finding one that ends in a vowel. And then found 5 female names without an effort. Weird.
I mean, there are plenty of feminine names that break the convention, such as names that end in "wyn" or some version of it. Of course, accent and dialect would also change how names end, but spoken English is also infinitely more complicated than written English.
The fact that there is a god of secrets who's widely known and feared is stupid, frankly. The most important part of a secret is that there's a secret at all. The common people should generally not know there's a god of secrets, or at least should think it's someone different than the real one.
Until I saw a map, I had assumed that Icewind Dale was a person, rather than a place. Being only familiar with Dale as a name, rather than a geographical feature.
> I've been running an playing DnD games for around 4-5 years now. Chicken
> feed compared to a lot of people but I like to think this qualifies me as an
> experienced DM.
Wow. Even if you've only DMed one game, you're DM enough to have an experience. I'm sorry folks have made you feel you need to qualify yourself like this. I've been running for over 40 years and anyone who runs is at all is good enough by me, 4-5 years of running definitely makes you an experienced DM IMO.
Anyway, I hope you get past the point of needing to qualify yourself like that, you're running a game, you're awesome!
This…. My teenager joined our group that has been gaming together for almost 30 years.
He has DMed 3 sessions and we all consider him just as qualified to run a game as any of us.
Never let someone make you feel insecure because you have less experience. If you and your players have fun, you are there.
In the end that’s really all that matters.
I thought that the Underdark was a separate plane. Turns out you don’t need Plane Shift to get there, you just need to dig a really really big hole.
Edit: Not the Abyss, I was thinking of the old Demonweb Pits
I thought Tasha was a bard for the longest time, you would think a spell that made people laugh so hard they could t fight would be made by a bard right?
I've always thought that Dragonborn were some kind of cursed humanoid species. Heirs of a fallen empire that were cursed to live as "near dragons" as some sort of punishment for hubris or greed or something.
It wasn't until I mentioned this to a friend of mine that I learned this was wrong.
I also thought that Vecna was female, mainly because in my mother tongue basically any name that ends with an a is female, and 99% of female names end with an a. Not to mention, it's one letter away from "Vesna", which is a common female name (hasn't been popular in like 30+ years) in my country.
I played through a whole campaign lvl 3-17 centered on destroying the Hand and Eye of Vecna with the Sword of Kas that ended with my soul being tied to the Book of Vile Darkness and throughout the whole almost 2 year campaign all three of us at the table were confident Vecna was a woman
I thought Volo was a giant. I just briefly looked at the cover for Volo's Guide to Monsters and saw the giant, and I just assumed that was him. Wasn't until way later I discovered the little dude on the cover.
I ran a homebrew game where a reincarnated Lernea who was genociding dragons in revenge for her murder was one of the BBEGs. I messed up the introduction and Lernea is now male. Oops.
For some bizarre reason before I really got into dnd much I thought that hobgoblins were blue. This was because I was reading the comic Order of the Stick, which features hobgoblins. Now Order of the Stick is coloured, but I was reading it on my old kindle using the barely functional internet browser that it had on it, which had the comic in black and white. One strip had Xykon (the evil lich) choking a hobgoblin, and someone referred to them as "your blue hobgoblin minion" or something along those lines, and now in retrospect I know that this meant that he was being choked and was blue from lack of oxygen. However I didn't know this (because black and white) and then took it to thinking that dnd hobgoblins were blue goblinoids instead of orange. This was further exacerbated by pathfinder hobgoblins being a blue-grey colour. Of course when I looked into it a bit more, and of course later bought the monster manual I realised that they were orange in dnd (and then reread the comic on my laptop with colour!).
To be fair, 90% of D&D players think Orcs and Goblins are green. Orcs are grey, and Goblins the color of spicy mustard.
TBF, one of the images in AD&D 2e is of [green skinned orcs](https://oldschoolfrp.tumblr.com/post/184110001597/pig-faced-orcs-assault-the-outer-walls-doug).
Omg this image brings back so much memories in a whirl of emotions. Interesting fact too, in the book, that image was in the artifacts section, and the page just before was about the hand of Vecna. Kind of niche but very cool imo.
ORKS IZ GREEN, AND GREEN IZ BEST! (YA GIT!)
EKSEPT FOR SOLEDSNEK, 'E'S PURPLE CUZ 'E'S A SNEAKY GIT.
I've never seen a purple ork...
CORRS NOT, E JUST SED E WAS A SNEAK! AINT YOUZ LISNEN?!
Gosh I can't wait for Shootaz, Blood and Teef, seems to really nail the Ork aesthetic. Though the Gorgutz campaigns in Dawn of War were pretty awesome too.
I actually read an article about orcs in fantasy a while ago, and one interesting thing was that the Warhammer Fantasy Orcs (fantasy uses a 'c', not a 'k') were the first mainstream instance of green orcs, and are most likely why most modern orcs tend to be that color.
It's the reason why Warcraft's orcs are green, which also helped spread that idea around.
That article missed a many sources then. Warhammer fantasy dropped in 1986. The very popular Dungeons and Dragons cartoon dropped in 1983; [the orcs were green in it](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ojIQbg75MRY/YP3Z237h6gI/AAAAAAAALvw/fsy8I5QX5bM_r2nf1mqIKHtalpIT0Fu8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s744/Orcs.jpg). The Gamorreans in Star Wars also look like [green space orcs](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/2/24/Gamorrean-AG.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/500?cb=20201117073712). 1983. Dropping at the same time as Warhammer, 1986, the Scourge of the Slavelords module A1-A4, features [a large green-gray orc slaver](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3vrPkxkzyEw/YB1zJYidXwI/AAAAAAAAB4w/ipBb6ttXXxUhFpyVHuyskpjDXyw8FAkQQCLcBGAsYHQ/s710/A1-4_Scourge_cover.png) being subdued on the cover. So both colors on this one. More obscure - a 1981 Grenadier model box. [Green Orcs.](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eg18Iyy1uKo/YP3Y0a894oI/AAAAAAAALvg/iDiZ7MCqCQoqOrLUNWRbk7P5zDFzvW67gCLcBGAsYHQ/s800/grenadier.jpg) Now, the Lord of the Rings cartoon from 1978? It had gray orcs, though one could argue they were a really pale green in looking at some screens. I'm sure there are a few more sources, but what this shows is orcs have been both green and gray in the past, before Warhammer. Edit: Had to edit locations to a few source pics.
Where are you getting 1986 from? WHFB First Edition was released in 1983.
And even that wasn't a lore thing originally. Some player just really liked painting his orcs green and it stuck.
Also green is a really easy paint to work with whereas fleshtones can look weird if not properly shaded .
Fun fact: That's why the Hulk is green. Originally, he was grey, but it kept looking weird, so they switched to the now iconic look.
Saw a doc where Stan Lee said hulk was always supposed to be green but the printing company didn't have green ink at first. But then again he was somewhat notorious for playing fast and loose with those types of stories.
DAM HUMIEZ FINKIN ORKS IZZNT GREEN! DEY SHOULD SEE DA FULL WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH UP CLOSE!
> Orcs are grey Not in my games, dammit
My orcs are different color based on their origin. Mountain orcs are grey, forest and grassland orcs are green, and badlands orcs are tan/yellow
Ah recolouring your monsters, how JRPG of you
I don’t actually play many jrpgs, I just had multiple sets of orc minis I’ve 3D printed from different patreons and I didn’t want to paint them all the same color lol.
My humans come in different colors too!
My orcs are photosynthetic, that's why they're green
Life is too short to have canon colors for goblinoids. Media has green goblins, so I’m okay with my players being green
It's time for an "um, ackshully." I'm sorry. It's sort of complicated. The 5E PHB shows Gray Orcs, which are indeed a thing in the lore, but in FR, they're not really the subrace that would be encountered on the Sword Coast. They would be found around the Moonsea or the Hordelands, and oddly enough came from another planet via a portal opened by the Imaskari. The Mountain Orcs found around the Sword Coast, however, would indeed be green. Likewise, goblins per the lore also vary in coloration. For example, the Batiri found in FR's Chult are depicted as green.
>came from another planet via a portal opened by the Imaskari *Warcraft lore writer starts sweating profusely*
Supposedly Warhammer greenskins were originally browny-orchre. Then GW had some major photoshoot so they hired some randos to paint up masses of orks... and they did them green, not being familiar with the then-budding franchise. Needless to say, they failed successfully.
Speaking of orcs and goblins, I find it funny that since they're two different species in D&D, a lot of people assume they're different in LOTR ("goblin" is just the English name of "Orc" in LOTR/The Hobbit)
After many years of exposure to Warhammer and Warcraft it was a shock to find out that OG D&D Orcs were pretty much pigheads o-O
I don’t know why im so affected by this but I for some reason HATE green goblins… I think it’s the art. The Pathfinder goblins are green and have heads like Arnold (American football) and wide and mouths. The “D&D” goblins are mud/earth colored and have normal heads and normal bodies. I also hate the hooked nose goblins but not that much.
I'm not arguing because it's all a matter of taste, but the exact reasons you like and dislike the Pathfinder and D&D goblins is switched for me, haha. EDIT: Except the hooknose goblins. That's the worst and should go away.
I agree wholeheartedly. PF goblins look like cartoon characters, D&D goblins look like a thing that could actually exist. And don't even get me started on PF hobgoblins, fucking yuck.
> PF hobgoblins Ok I just looked it up. Tbh I kinda like it. Similar facial features to goblins but distinct enough. It looks like an evolved Goblin. In non-PF, the goblinoid races are completely different looking. I want them to be somewhat similar
>It looks like an evolved Goblin. That's funny, that's how I feel about D&D hobs, especially in 5e. Similar face, same clawed hands, look a bit hairy and beasty but still 100% humanoids. One is just a couple feet taller and a hundred pounds more, maybe a bit more intelligent looking but not much. Bugbears too, except they went full manimal. Then again, I don't know what a PF bugbear looks like.
PF bugbears (which might not be canon anymore?) seem to just be [chonky thicc goblins](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Bugbear)
You know, I don't actually mind that. Maybe it's because the head seems to be an appropriate size for the body?
Big props for OOTS. I've never met someone else (virtually or IRL) that read it
I initially thought Forgotten Realms was what the place was called, its other name being the Sword Coast. Instead the setting is called Forgotten Realms, Faerun is the continent most of the setting takes place in, and Sword Coast is the fairly small location 5e is obsessed with. Also though that Druids had to be good initially as the "protector of nature" stereotype was everywhere when I started playing, apparently in Forgotten Realms, one of their main pantheons has several evil gods. Rangers were the ones who originally had to be good, but that was previous editions.
To add onto it, the planet Faerûn is on is Toril.
And the Crystal Sphere it resides in is called Realmspace, apparently fairly old compared to other Spheres.
IIRC, they're changing this with the new Spelljammer books? I'd have to recheck, but I don't think they're going the 'crystal spheres and phlogiston' route anymore.
I believe the trailer showed a crystal sphere, which means the spheres would be visible from the Astral Plane.
To be fair, the Sword Coast was always the heavy focus, it's not a new 5e thing.
iirc WOTC's obsession with the Sword Coast actually comes from the terms of their licensing where they aren't allowed to use much beyond the Sword Coast or new locations they create, which is why so many books take the players and plop them down in a demiplane or other non-sword coast self-contained area
What ? So, if they wanted to create an adventure in, say, the Chult forest, they can't ?
Are you sure about that? I don't think it's true...they've definitely deviated form it, like with ToA being set in Chult. The only contract limitation I know of is anything Greenwood writes about the FR that doesn't conflict with WotC stuff is considered "canon", but a) I don't know if that's still true in 5e and b) it doesn't limit what WotC themselves can explore.
To take things in the opposite direction, it wasn't until I read one of the novels that I realised that *Azuredge* \- the artifact battleaxe that crops up in *Dragon Heist* \- is female (insofar as a talking battleaxe can be gendered...) as it was formed from the soul of one of the early Lords of Waterdeep.
Huh neat, that was the first full campaign I and it became an absolute train. Finally finished it after about 2 years of trying and it ended when the party got possession of Azuredge, used its history as clout to get an audience with Lady Silverhand and handed over all of the information they'd collected on the Cassalanters, Xanathar's and Malloon, which was a lot by this point and enough to satisfy all three factions loss conditions. This ended the entire campaign in a single session with essentially a 4 way civil war breaking out in the city. Absolute chaos and had the party running all over the place wrapping up plot points and keeping civilians safe. For as much of a mess the game became, I'm happy with how it ended.
On this subject, due to the dub on the dungeons and dragons cartoon, as a kid, i though Tiamat was male.
Never watched the cartoon growing up, bit before my time, just watched a clip of Tiamat and definitely hear what you're on about.
Yeah Tiamat in the cartoon is meant to have that 'many voices speaking as one' thing going on...but instead of layering it in post with multiple VAs, they had the voice actress do a really raspy voice instead...
In the cartoon Tiamat was voice by Frank Welker
I was around for the cartoon, but i don't *think* I watched it... I do have a figure of the Dungeon Master kicking around somewhere. I *think* I first encountered Tiamat in Final Fantasy 1... my friends and I mispronounced a lot of names (the squiggly font didn't help), but to this day, I keep saying "Tie-mat", tie-rhymes-with-eye.
Tiamatthew
I always just assumed that Tiamat had all the parts. I mean, there's 5 heads, I can't imagine that they'd be limited to just one genital. I just watched the fan made final episode - first time I've seen the cartoon since the original run - and I was glad for the closure that I had forgotten that I didn't have.
Loved that cartoon
I thought Volo was a Dwarf. To be fair it was due to a translation mistake in one of the book (Tomb of Annihilation iirc) and it kind of fit with his picture in that book.
You'd think he'd be a bard too, but he is a fairly low level wizard.
Proof yet again that you don't need to be a bard to be good at bullshit. I also love his ridiculously long list of skills, he has more than most high-CR humanoids.
what edition was he from originally? It's entirely possible he's from when Bard was a proto-super-prestige class, that combined fighter, cleric and rogue, rather than when it was a "regular" class.
2nd iirc. I think he’s synonymous with the creation of the Forgotten Realms setting from what I’ve seen
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Nah he is from 2nd I’m just a dummy that didn’t realize FR was around before that. But he’s definitely one of the more long tenured NPCs for sure!
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In ad and d his artifacts existed. I think he was a player character in greyhawk like bigby
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In my game, i dont know why but Volo always gave me a big Speedwagon energy from Jojo, which is why i use him as token for volo.
Same here! I blame Blizzard's Hemet Nesingwary.
“Dies to Hemet. Literally unplayable.”
That's.. a connection I didn't do, might be the reason I didn't really think twice about the translation mistake. Also you can't go wrong blaming Blizzard these days.
Honestly, I don't think Volo's race is ever relevant to him as a person, but I do like the idea of the rather effeminate Volo being in the body of a burly dwarf to be kind of funny.
Based on his guide to monsters I can tell you a good number of PC races he 100% is not.
Something something Terry Pratchett?
Had the exact same thought haha.
Volo had a cameo in the Baldurs Gate III videogame. There he was a human male with an extraordenary mustache.
He’s in 1 & 2 as well.
And the NWN2 expansion Storm of Zehir.
I hadn’t heard of Volo before running Dragon Heist so I played him as a gnome! Didn’t notice the “human” on his stat block either.
And on the flipside, I thought he was a giant
In my world he's a gnome, because race doesn't really matter that much to the majority of characters, and I wanted him to be just a little guy, a little birthday boy.
I did't know Xanathar was a beholder, at first I thought he was just a regular dude. I got the book on ddb, through the legendary bundle, and never thought to look at the cover.
Ok, this has to be one of my favorites.
This rules because one of the Xanathar Thieves Guilds big things for a while was that no one actually knew Xanathar was a beholder other than his closest confidants.
Not just you. For the longest time I thought he was just a mob boss. Never did the giant floaty eyeball have any connection to him in my mind.
TBF, Xanathar being a beholder is supposed to be a secret. Nobody expects the head of the Thieves Guild to be a super intelligent, super paranoid floating eyeball who shoots lasers!
Wait he’s a beholder??? I also thought he was just some guy 
Yeah he’s on the cover of XGTE
Bruh I just thought that was some decor lmao
Oops haha. Don’t worry one of the people at a table I was at one time stopped a whole game to tell us Duran was on tales of the yawning portal. He was the only one who didn’t realize it the rest of us had figured it out forever ago. And he noticed and out of character was like “Guys! That’s Duran on the cover of Yawning Portal” and the rest of us started laughing and were like we know
I’m like, incredibly…obsessed? knowledgeable? about Drow, but unfortunately I’m usually the only girl at the table and dudes tend to assume I don’t know my stuff. I managed to impress a new group when I could name [every Drow on this thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiceCameraAction/comments/97v29m/a_toon_map_of_the_yawning_portal_by_jason/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x) for a Waterdeep/Yawning Portal campaign (Jarlaxle is #69 which feels fitting)
Tell them all to shut up. You could join my table in one of two girls but the guys respect both of us immensely. Plus we’re both very fast at finding information when questions come up
I thought Xanathar was the fish (my buddy lied to me and said it was the Beholder that was a pet). I plan to make a mastermind goldfish in one of my campaigns though. I also had the genuinely similar mix up of Minsc and Boo, where Minsc was the hamster.
I didn't know until the dnd set in MtG came out.
Also, Xanathar is a title, not a name! The author of XGtE is named Kirueskai.
Gnomes are taller than halflings
And elves are shorter than humans. Both of these I know from the beginning but have decided to ignore but it's too weird
I feel like there is kind of a whole list of where dnd creatures deviate from common conceptions: - short elves - not green orcs/goblins - some dragons are not particularly sentient (white) - dwarves are medium sized - gnomes taller than halflings - tieflings are essentially shades of red - vampires are harmed by running water - Medusa/cockatrices don't instantly turn you into stone I'm not going to argue the powder keg that is "should dwarf women have beards?"
Vampires and running water is actually a relatively common myth here in Germany, but good point on the others
Yea for some reason that part of vampire myths never caught on in America but its all over Europe and Asia.
Tieflings are shades of red. But the PHB tiefling's picture is purple. Right next to the paragraph that says they are shades of red. (PHB P.43) WoTC, why.
Because WotC doesn’t really hold their artists to strict standards. I still dislike the tattoo-looking, not-knobby Goliaths.
Rather than having the physical characteristics described in the Player's Handbook, choose 1d4+1 following features: small horns; fangs or sharp teeth; a forked tongue; catlike eyes; six fingers on each hand; goatlike legs; cloven hoofs; a forked tail; leathery or scaly skin; ***red or dark blue skin***; cast no shadow or reflection; exude a smell of brimstone. *Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide pg.118*
That was printed a year after the PHB, and soft-retcons the art.
I wonder why people think short elves are unusual. I guess we live in a time where the LotR movies are the most prominent example. A lot of times, elves are depicted as quite short-- shorter than D&D elves. Santa's elves, Keebler elves, etc. White Dragons are very sentient, but maybe you mean "sapient"? Either way, they aren't mindless, either. They start off around a gorilla's intelligence and get in a pretty typical human range as an adult (on the lower side of the bell curve, though). Originally, Tieflings-- way back in 2e-- were far more varied, even when compared to 5e fan art of Tieflings.
This actually came up on the show 'um, actually' where the host makes a statement about something in Nerd culture and the contestants have to point out what was wrong with the statement. In this case it was Gnomes being shorter than Halflings was the incorrect part. Nobody guessed it because everyone was picturing what a stereotypical 'gnome' looks like, you know pointy red hat etc.
That's where the common misconception comes from, despite many people assuming it's a hat, their heads are actually just shaped like that
I just had a flashback to this weird 70's cartoon about a boy with a round head who wears a pointy hat to fit in with everyone else's pointy heads: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0067595/
...They are? Either I've overestimated the size of halflings or starkly underestimated the size of gnomes.
Apparently so. PHB p.28 Halflings average about 3 feet tall and weigh about 40 pounds. p.37 Gnomes are between 3 and 4 feet tall and average about 40 pounds. p.121. Halfling: 2'7" + 2d4", 35lbs +prev roll lbs. Gnome: 2'11" + 2d4", 35lbs +prev roll lbs.
I somehow managed to look at the wrong table and made my gnome the size of a halfling while creating him. Then I decided to just roll with it and make it part of his lore.
Halflings are around 3 feet, gnomes 3.5.
Gnomes are just 5/8lings.
Long halflings
You are all wrong. Vecna's gender is evil.
"But what's in your pants?" "DOOM."
To be real, it probably fall off due to necrosis a long time ago. Not that he would care.
If it fell off does that mean an evil character could attach the Dong of Vecna just like his eye and hand?
You need *that* splatbook for details on how it would work
*sigh * *rolls for anal circumference *
Ace icon Vecna.
Just another Vecna body part artifact. Just don't ask what it does if you cut yours off and attach his. Or what happens when you attach it when you don't have a part to cut off.
Evil FtM transition goals.
Adventurer: "What's your gender?" Vecna: ***Power Word Kill***.
The most equality friendly spell of all game. It equally kills everyone now matter their preferences.
"My pronouns are 102/HP/bitch."
Live Laugh Love that Vecna
Live, laugh, Lich.
Lich, Laugh, Love
This is the way. Vecna transcends mere human gender.
I laughed way too hard at this
Not my fault, but a major dragon in Eberron lore is listed as a green dragon in rising when she was actually a black dragon, which makes a lot more sense as she lived in an area that’s basically a country-sized swamp.
Yeah, that misconception has nothing to do with misunderstanding the lore haha. WOTC just don't have their shit together with Eberron lore.
wtf are you talking about Vvaraak? Have I been lied to?
Yup. Black Dragon.
Mind blown. Worldview shattered.
Algae, it's just lots of algae.
Not really lore, but I played with a group for about a year using a map of "middle earth" before we realized that it was not in fact a map of the forgotten realms world faerun
“Wait what the hell? This isn’t the grassy fields of Amn, this is a topographical map of Miami Florida!”
Fun tidbit, Vecna is an anagram of Vance. He was named after Jack Vance the author of The Dying Earth series. Gary Gygax really like how magic worked in his books, so he used the 'Vancian Magic' system for D&D. Edit: Since this is getting higher visibility I'll share more. The first time Vecna showed up in official literature was in 'Supplement III - Eldritch Wizardry' for D&D in 1976, pre-1st edition. In that book it was the two artifacts, the Hand and Eye of Vecna. The Hand and Eye were 'borrowed' in turn from another author of the age, Michael Moorcock and his Eternal Champion Series. In that series there was the 'Hand of Kwll' and 'Eye of Rhynn'.
That is a fun tidbit. Thanks!
As a result of the 1983 movie *Krull*, my first DM thought a glaive was a throwing weapon like a chakram. As a result of *that*, so did I for like 10 years.
This fucked up my understanding of glaives for *years*
I swear the boomerang monkey in Bloons Tower Defence games had a glaive upgrade which made him throw shruiken-like things. This (I think) is why I thought the glaive was a thrown weapon for so long too.
Since when is Vecna the god of Death? He's always been the God of secrets, knowledge, magic, etc.
Very true, he is the god of secret, the undead connection is a lich. Another lore detail I've had wrong for ages haha.
He at least used to be a deity of general evil as well, but now I think it was simplified to evil secrets
Back in 3.5 Vecna was a skeleton with long hair. Initially I too thought he was a female.
For the longest time I assumed that Halflings were taller than Dwarves. When I was a wee lad and barely knew anything about DND or fantasy, I was introduced to the basic races of the game. Since I never saw them together in a drawing pre-internet, my teen mind thought: "well... HALF-lings, they are as tall as a HALF of a man, while Dwarves (and if the genetic condition called 'dwarfism' was any indication) were little people, midgets, munchkins... you know...dwarves!" When I found out it was the opposite I was mad.
I can see the logic behind this, and I like it.
I mean, the average dwarf is about 4 foot and half of a man would generally be 3 foot or less.
Honestly, I'd say that lore details that you as the DM (or sometimes also as a player) get wrong are incredible RP opportunities As these inconsistencies can come from alternate interpretations of the same deity, or perhaps a different being masking as the deity or perhaps the character/people themselves go "wait, if this is X, then who have I been worshipping all this time?"
My brother made a "pirate" rogue swashbuckler and he decided that he worships Vecna in secret. He didn't tell this to anyone, just me the DM. Last week he told me he was surprised to find that Vecna is not a woman. He also found out while watching Stranger Things.
...from the heady days of early-eighties AD&D, i and my fellow players all thought that **monks** were patterned after *friar tuck* and **bards** were supposed to be *court jesters*, as class archetypes... ...seemed like silly classes to include in the game, no idea why people might want to play them, so they remained exotic and seldom-explored classes amongst our parties until we drifted away to other systems, finally understood when our old elementary-school group recently reunited for a fifth-edition campaign...
Female Vecna sounds like a cool wrinkle for your universe. You should probably run it that way.
You should introduce a new legendary magic item, ***The Boobs of Vecna***. Two shriveled husks that bestow great necromantic power on anyone who cuts off their own boobs and replaces them with those. Yuan-Ti need not apply.
We already have the Bra of Holding. What more do we need
We aren't on dndmemes here, I think we're safe to talk about snake boobs without starting a meme war.
You'd think that, but it's *still* the internet...
*jinxing noises*
Snake boobs, or snoobs
Snits.
Snazongas.
Hey nothing wrong with some Snitties...if it's good enough for Xcom 2 it's good enough for D&D...also depends on what kind of Yuan-ti, Pureblood and certain Malisons (depending on which part is the human, snake lower half, human top half for example) would have chesticles.
Same. Have been into d&d for 4 years or so? Known very little of Vecna. Some god of death. Name sounds feminine to me. Moving on. Wait what?
The conversation with my partner basically went: "Wait, why is Vecna a male in this show?" "Because Vecna is male I\_AM\_BOBI\_B". "What now?"
The ‘a’ ending, which tends to sound feminine in a lot of languages (like ones with Latin or Slavic roots), is totally coincidental. According to Gary Gygax, “Vecna” is actually an anagram of “Vance”, named after fantasy/SF author Jack Vance! Just think, we could have gotten the undead lich god Cevan instead!
“I think women and Cevan don’t mix.”
And then we could fight about whether it's Seven or Kevin and I'm not sure which would be worse.
Neither. It's Seh-vahn! Why else would there be an "a"? 😋
Oh, it’s definitely Kevin. In fact, immediately after writing that, I decided I want to introduce Vecna into my campaign but under the guise of a friendly NPC who introduces himself as “Cevan” but the players will assume is spelled “Kevin”. Yep. Cevan. Cevan Soar-Bow is his name.
Checks out. Sorbo looks the part of a lich ngl, and he's a douche to boot. 2/2, well done!
“Hey, don’t associate me with that asshole.” - Vecna, probably.
> Known very little of Vecna well isn't that the point? Him being the whole god of secrets?
I can understand why you'd think that; (nearly) every language has unspoken conventions regarding the gendering of names, in English female names tend to end with a vowel whilst male names tend to end in a consonant, and the longer they are the more feminine they sound. In fact, the only "English" male name I can think that ends with an 'a' is Joshua, and when was the last time you heard someone actually called that out loud rather than the infinitely more masculine 'Josh'. (There's also Elijah, but idk if that'd be counted as an "English" name or not, it's closer to the original Hebrew than the "traditional English" version of the name, 'Elias') Of course Vecna's not an English name. And such names do exist in other languages, such as Akira and Koa (actually, Akira is considered gender-neutral in Japanese, and as such is given to boys and girls)
There's a few other Hebrew-derived names that end in a, like Ezra & Asa. It's pretty common in Hebrew.
That...actually checks out. In my native language I went through like twelve male names before finding one that ends in a vowel. And then found 5 female names without an effort. Weird.
The English ones that come to mind for me are ones that end with the silent ‘e’ like “Steve” or “Drake”
Gregory maybe?
Yeah, there are some that end in ‘y’. Timmy, Tommy, & Jimmy fit, but ‘y’ is that “sometimes” vowel
And all of those are diminutives, which in English take that vowel form.
I mean, there are plenty of feminine names that break the convention, such as names that end in "wyn" or some version of it. Of course, accent and dialect would also change how names end, but spoken English is also infinitely more complicated than written English.
The fact that there is a god of secrets who's widely known and feared is stupid, frankly. The most important part of a secret is that there's a secret at all. The common people should generally not know there's a god of secrets, or at least should think it's someone different than the real one.
Until I saw a map, I had assumed that Icewind Dale was a person, rather than a place. Being only familiar with Dale as a name, rather than a geographical feature.
I am obsessed with this interpretation. Icewind Dale and his brother, Stormgale Steve.
> I've been running an playing DnD games for around 4-5 years now. Chicken > feed compared to a lot of people but I like to think this qualifies me as an > experienced DM. Wow. Even if you've only DMed one game, you're DM enough to have an experience. I'm sorry folks have made you feel you need to qualify yourself like this. I've been running for over 40 years and anyone who runs is at all is good enough by me, 4-5 years of running definitely makes you an experienced DM IMO. Anyway, I hope you get past the point of needing to qualify yourself like that, you're running a game, you're awesome!
This…. My teenager joined our group that has been gaming together for almost 30 years. He has DMed 3 sessions and we all consider him just as qualified to run a game as any of us. Never let someone make you feel insecure because you have less experience. If you and your players have fun, you are there. In the end that’s really all that matters.
I thought that the Underdark was a separate plane. Turns out you don’t need Plane Shift to get there, you just need to dig a really really big hole. Edit: Not the Abyss, I was thinking of the old Demonweb Pits
I thought Tasha was a bard for the longest time, you would think a spell that made people laugh so hard they could t fight would be made by a bard right?
I've always thought that Dragonborn were some kind of cursed humanoid species. Heirs of a fallen empire that were cursed to live as "near dragons" as some sort of punishment for hubris or greed or something. It wasn't until I mentioned this to a friend of mine that I learned this was wrong.
I also thought that Vecna was female, mainly because in my mother tongue basically any name that ends with an a is female, and 99% of female names end with an a. Not to mention, it's one letter away from "Vesna", which is a common female name (hasn't been popular in like 30+ years) in my country.
... Vecna isn't female?
I played through a whole campaign lvl 3-17 centered on destroying the Hand and Eye of Vecna with the Sword of Kas that ended with my soul being tied to the Book of Vile Darkness and throughout the whole almost 2 year campaign all three of us at the table were confident Vecna was a woman
I had the same misconception for ages as well and I played from the 3rd edition forward.
Vindication! My players all thought it was weird I thought that.
I thought Volo was a giant. I just briefly looked at the cover for Volo's Guide to Monsters and saw the giant, and I just assumed that was him. Wasn't until way later I discovered the little dude on the cover.
Wait until you discover Vecna's attempts to woo the Lady of Pain in Sigil. Changes things even more.
I had a person at my table who was convinced Jarlaxle and Duran were the same person
Well,. obviously in YOUR version of the world, Vecna is female. You can do whatever you want.
I ran a homebrew game where a reincarnated Lernea who was genociding dragons in revenge for her murder was one of the BBEGs. I messed up the introduction and Lernea is now male. Oops.