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It is another nudge towards me making my own Orc or two, in the C-series Citadel style, without the restrictions of having to cast.
Yes, definitely worth pointing out, I'd say.A good reminder, if one were needed, that in those far-off and indeed near-mythical days AD&D really was the only game in town.
Let us know if you have any further thoughts on the Problem of the Gnolls...
Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest! I used to think it was the same as a ball and chain, then I read it was like a mace but with spiky ball instead of flanges, then I read it could be either! I gave up trying to understand in the end.
Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest!
I'm not sure how widely available Dunsany's stuff was in the late 70s and early 80s; he's one of those authors who was massively famous in his lifetime but whose stuff more or less disappeared for a long time thereafter. I once checked the archive on Google News for the 1920s/30s, and Dunsany cropped up all the time.
So I wonder if it was just a matter of gnome/troll gnolls being demoted to goblinhood once the clash with the Monster Manual became apparent. Or maybe it was a case of models first, naming later - especially as there were about four different takes on goblins floating around in the early Citadel lines.
I've often wondered at the transition from tiny 'Lesser Goblins' (Snotlings in the later GW jargon) through Goblins and Orcs to 'Trolls' and whether they could be described as 'breeds' of Goblinoid instead of separate races, each with distinct traits (physical and mental) evolved to cope in different environments and evolutionary niches.
As far as I can remember, I'm not sure I ever saw anything actually by Dunsany in the 1980s; I knew who he was, of course (and he's mentioned in Appendix N of the 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide amongst the "inspirational reading"), but I'm not sure that any of his stuff was easily available. I spent a lot of my free time in 2nd hand bookshops (and local libraries) and never found him. And before the interweb, that was as far as I could go.
I think that's a good working hypothesis (or hypotheses). I don't remember much caring about the precise appearance of the various monsters in my early games of D&D (which were usually played without miniatures, in fact) or 1st edition Warhammer. Just having some sort of usable figure was the most important thing, and if it called itself a goblin (or gnoll, or whatever) then that's what it was. I suspect a lot of figure ranges were assembled with a similar casualness.