I'm Gonna Drink Up All The Potions You Got on the Shelf...

But first, let me introduce myself...

Looking back I realize now that my introduction to D&D was not unlike the cult indoctrination imagined by the concerned 80's parents- there were old tomes at hand filled with inscrutable ramblings of madmen, the gathering of a group, and the smell of burning incense- and I'm not even joking about that last bit.  I was only about 9 or 10 or so when my stepdad reluctantly added me to the gaming group he had played with since childhood.  The game was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition and the setting was the vast and fantastical Forgotten Realms.  We gathered nearly every week to hack n' slash our way through modules with no real overarching or interconnected plots. It was the most fun you could have with polyhedral dice and an overly complicated ruleset (see: THAC0).

My first character was a human cleric of Selune named Vartan. I lifted the name from the D&D comics and my class selection was influenced by one of the group who agreed to take me under his wing. I wish I could recall more about his adventures, but the one thing I'll never forget is the tragedy of his death at the claws, claws, and bites of gods forsaken velociraptors...  I'm sure it made a lot of sense at the time.  

Even more tragic than that was when that gaming group dissolved.  Reality had come down on fantasy with its own claw, claw, bite routine as most of the players married, had children, or just in general had less time for the game. Over the course of the next few years we would try and get together- often when a new Lord of the Rings film would come to theaters and fill our heads with visions of epic adventure and battle, but the fellowship was broken.  If I was going to continue enjoying the hobby, then I was going on without the rest of my party or my Dungeon Master.

That was how it all began for me and over two decades later and I still obsess over this hobby.  I have had the honor of DM'ing for those that got me started in the game and several other groups all across the Midwest.  I own RPG books for games I've never played simply because I like to read them and hope that I'll find the time and the group to get the dice rolling.  I've made the geek's hajj to Indianapolis seven times to walk the aisles and halls of Gencon for hours on end- and I've seen how it compares to some lesser local cons as well. I've spent countless hours thinking, writing, mapping, reading, and talking about fantasy worlds across a myriad of game genres.

After all these years, Critthulhu (crit-thool-hoo) is my attempt at contributing to our culture rather than just rabidly consuming it.  It's a pun that has nothing to do with the works of H.P. Lovecraft or Chaosium's popular RPG line (please don't sue), but it captures the madness of obsession with this hobby and the worship of the twenty-sided polyhedral.   

This will be a blog written by a gamer for his fellow gamers.  It will be a blend of reviews, advice, stories, and miscellany updated at least once a week (hopefully).  You can dialogue with me by emailing Critthulhu@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @Critthulhu for updates and/or the 120 280 character ramblings of a devotee of the unnatural twenty. 

Monstrous Misnomer

While looking over the 5th Edition Monster Manual, I was drawn to the entries of several iconic monsters to see how they appeared in this iteration of the game.  In the past, I was occasionally frustrated when I would search the online 3.5 Edition System Reference Document (SRD) for a monster's stats only to find it didn't have an entry on the site.  It turns out that there are some creatures so iconic of the D&D brand that they are considered the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast and among these are the beholder, the carrion crawler, the mind flayer, and the yuan-ti.

One of the things that struck me as most odd about the yuan-ti's entry was the classification of the three types of snake people your party may encounter.  My observation led me to look into the publication history of these serpentine folk.  These monsters have their origins in the 1981 AD&D module Dwellers of the Forbidden City and were later detailed in the Monster Manual 2 and the November '89 issue of Dragon magazine.

Now (as far as I can tell) there is no explanation of the strange choice in terminology that has been used to describe the three different castes of yuan-ti society: the abominations, the malisons (formerly politically incorrectly known as the half-breeds), and the purebloods.  My concern is that I just named those three castes in descending order of station within their snake society- meaning that this race of snake folk are ruled by those that they call "abominations" while the ones that are called "purebloods" are the bottom rung of the societal ladder.

This game is always teaching me new words.

To confuse the issue even more, the 5th edition Monster Manual describes the abominations as the ones that "most closely resemble the race as the serpent gods intended it" and the purebloods are yuan -ti that "closely resemble humans."  If you closely resemble the god(s) that your society most reveres, then who would call you an abomination?  If you were so unlike all of the other members of your race and in fact almost looked completely like another race entirely, then why would you be called a pureblood?  The only explanation I can come up with is that this reptilian civilization takes the bizarro approach where everything said is the opposite of what is meant...  That ssseems like a great idea.

See what I did there?

Is there something that I'm missing?  Some logic in this design choice that I'm failing to grasp?  Please, let me know on Twitter @critthulhu or by emailing critthulhu@gmail.com.