N Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: John Bauer

Already covered previously: Nightmare and Nymph. Probably should have alphabetized this series better. I put "genie" under "D" for Pete's sake.

M Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Joe Sparrow, from Dungeons & Drawings

Strap in, because there are a lot of M monsters. And guess what? Bangers, every one. All killer, no filler.

L Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Mike Mignola

Hey, happy 200th post, Knight at the Opera. Now let's populate this digital megadungeon with some L monsters.

K Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Richard Whitters

K monsters are all plundered from various cultures around the world, perhaps outside the "default" medieval England / France milieu popular high fantasy normally anchors itself within. Anywhere from Japan and China to Germany and Norway to... uh, Atlantis?

Jackalwere at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: this comic

Uhhh... yeah, so I guess this is basically the only major "J" monster in D&D's history. There's a couple other minor ones but only this guy has found his way into the majority of editions. And usually in the core books, too!

I spent literally months with this post sitting in my drafts folder trying to come up with something worthwhile to say about the jackalwere, knowing that it would get an entire post to itself. Unfortunately, I really got nothing.

It's yet another iteration of the classic folklore "stranger danger" monster. It's reminiscent of lycanthropes, it borrows a lot from the Arabian ghul, yet it's not as potent as a Rakshasa or even just a doppelgänger. The art has never been great, and jackals themselves aren't very interesting (even though the word "jackal" is wonderful). Worst of all, I've never used one in a game!

I just started playing The Caverns of Thracia. Guess who guards the entrance. Some gnolls and a jackalwere. You know what that guy ended up doing? Getting sucked into a black hole I opened. Didn't even get a chance to open his mouth or swing a sword or nuthin'. He never stood a chance.

The letter J deserves better.

-Dwiz

I Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Prem (aka Coool Brain)

Been quite a while since the last one of these, huh? Sorry about that, for the three people who found this series interesting. The purpose of this series was to help keep me regularly blogging, but as you may have noticed, I've been busy blogging for the last year. But hey, that's no excuse to leave something unfinished.

Now, where were we?

H Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: my sister, again

No, I haven't forgotten this series. It's a backburner project, remember? Opera-goers have been eating pretty good this year. But alas, we still have half a manual of monsters to get through.

G Monsters at the Opera (Part 3)

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Fret not, my dear Mr. Wasteland. Today's show is brought to you by the letter G. We still have a while before we reach the Puking and Pulling monsters.

G Monsters at the Opera (Part 2)

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Le Pape Formose et Étienne VI ("Pope Formosus and Stephen VI") by Jean-Paul Laurens

Why do you let me do all the talking? Comment below your favorite D&D monster and tell me why. We're here for the long haul, so you may as well have your say. Good gravy just look how many words I've spilled just in this post alone.

G Monsters at the Opera (Part 1)

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Ivan the Terrible and the Souls of his Victims by Mikhail Petrovitch Klodt

Yes, there are that many G monsters. Even splitting this into three parts, each post will be ridiculously long. This letter also has the highest density of "Dwiz's favorite monsters ever" in it, unsurprisingly. Apologies in advance if I get carried away with some of these entries. On the other hand, once I finish up the G's then I reckon I'll be about halfway done with this series (at least in terms of monster entries).

F Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: more sister art

Part of the reason for this series is because it scratches my itch for the kind of content I associate with "the Golden Age of RPG blogging" but also because it's kinda easy to write compared to my normal faire. I don't know if it's nutritious exactly, or even engaging, but I can at least be confident that my readers will find it highly encherining. Which is really all I ever aspire to.

E Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Yoshitaka Amano

Be thankful that this isn't just a 10,000 word overview of everything ever described under the "elf" entry, with all their many, many subraces clogging up the E section of most monster manuals.

Dragons at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: my sister

The first dungeon I ever made was a chapel of a dragon cult that I spent days painstakingly crafting. It was a pastiche of the cult of Set in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie. Every long-running D&D campaign I've ever run since that has been dragon-centered. Even the published adventures I've run that don't have dragons. I'll add a dragon final boss fight if I have to. There is no other fantasy I've spent so much time chasing than the epic climax of heroic adventurers facing off against the ultimate challenge: one big "fuck you"-sized evil dragon.

Demons at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Kentaro Miura

Note: direct Berserk comments towards Ben

The title says "demon" but I'm using this post to cover all the creatures that D&D calls "fiends." Demons, devils, and everything in between. Don't expect me to consistently refer to each thing according to D&D's taxonomy. To me they're all just demons.

I felt this warranted its own post in part because there's so many to talk about, but also because I view demons as a particularly important category of monster. They're one of those special creature types that's nearly universal across human cultures, in some form or another. You could easily throw out all other monster types and still have a rich and strange fantasy setting just by having the heroes face off against demons.

D Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Graphite Prime

Welcome to the D's. Demons and dragons will get their own posts. This one is crowded enough as it is.

C Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Not appearing in this post: charybdis, cerebus, and changeling. Inexplicably appearing: catoblepas. Get your shit together, D&D.

[Next Capsule Game post isn't ready yet so I'm changing up my schedule for this week]

B Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Credit: Paul Carrick

If you haven't seen the previous post, I've started a series where I'm talking about all the classic(ish) D&D monsters with my brother Ben. Welcome to the B monsters.

A Monsters at the Opera

A B C D Demon Dragon E F G1 G2 G3 H I Jackalwere K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

That's right, we're blogging like it's 2014.

Yes, there are plenty of other gaming blogs that have done this. Some of them with much more to offer than I. But it's fun for me to think about and write about and occasionally it's interesting for you to read about.

This isn't a review or critique exactly, and "analysis" makes it sound a bit too substantive. This is basically just observations and opinions. And sometimes artwork.

My brother Ben helped me write this. Most of our opinions overlap, but I'll note when one thought is particular to him or me.

This isn't based on any specific monster manual or bestiary. Each edition of D&D has its own quirks, but I wanted to talk about the general canon of monsters that appear in most versions of the game. If they're newer, they must be distinct. To create this list, we started by combining the monster books from Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials that have been published so far. Some things needed to be added in (they've been saving all demons and devils and whatnot for their own future book, I believe), and some things got cut.

We'll be doing this roughly alphabetically. Some posts will be short, and others will be very, very long.