AuldDragon's AD&D Blog

Many unique or nearly-unique creatures from Greco-Roman myth have become standard D&D creatures. This presents something of a problem when adapting the gods from those myths into D&D. For example, medusae and harpies are a whole host of individual creatures rather than the named individuals in mythology. Of course, with some of these, they can be described as descendants from those creatures (and Planescape gave us a template to use for some of those named individuals: the Monster of Legend). Centaurs, satyrs, and dryads are all fine as-is, but the nymphs of Greek myth are slightly different; they can still be the descendants of the nymphs of the myths. I plan to avoid that term for those characters to avoid confusion.

However, possibly the most problematic of the creatures are the ones known as Titans. There really weren’t more than a handful of “generic” Titans in the Greek myths. That’s fine, though; the issue is with the gods known as the Titans. There’s two soft divisions in the Titans of Greek Myth: The original 12 (Kronos, Hyperion, Iapetos, Koios, Krieos, Okeanos, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Rhea, Tethys, Theia, and Themis), mostly created to match the 12 Olympians, and then some (but not all!) of their offspring, namely those of Iapetos, Hyperion, and Koios. These offspring are Titans, but not members of the 12 Titans. Therefore there should be a sparation. However, the AD&D Titan creature is divided into the standard Lesser Titans, and then the nebulous Greater Titans. In 1e Deities & Demigods (and the revised Legends & Lore published a few years later) made the Titans of myth these Greater Titans, but this two-tiered distinction offers some problems, and so I propose a four-tiered distinction.

In this four-tiered distinction, we have Major True Titans, specifically the original 12 Titans; we have the Minor True Titans, specifically their offspring who are included in their number (technically all of the Olympians are these as well, but that’s neither here nor there); we had the Greater Titans, who are the vast majority of immortal divine figures throughout Greek myth who are not truly gods (such as the majority of the Okeanides and Potamoi, as well as other spouses, children, and figures who figure into myth but were never worshiped and existed to create lineages), and then the Lesser Titans, who are the standard AD&D Titans and represent the many generations of descendants of the various gods of Greek Myth (and represent relations with giantish gods too) and now inhabit both Arborea and  Carceri. In this way, the Greater Titans are the equivalent in power of Abyssal Lords/Princes and the Dukes of the Nine Hells. This seems to be a good way to represent the inherent divisions of figures of myth, merged with the existing AD&D material.

In addition, there are some creatures that figure into Greek art or myth that have been left out of the game. While I don’t want to get too deep into every possible ancient Greek creature that never made it into the game (it would be too much work), there is one creature that is common in art and statuary that I will want to write up: The Ichthyocentaur. There are two named ichthyocentaurs who are siblings of Kheiron, but I wouldn’t make them gods themselves, just the progenitors of a race.

I haven’t made a complete survey yet, but if anyone has any other suggestions of creatures I should keep in mind that might need writeups, feel free to say so!