Game News Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand officially announced, coming to Kickstarter soon

[mediocrepoet]

He thinks Kobolds are draconic which is correct, I hate the modern "Kobolds = Dog people" interpretation.

Ah yes, very simple. And like most simple answers to anything, almost certainly wrong.

Quotes from commentary here (with a few typos being corrected if I notice and it bugs me enough): https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/201139/whats-the-story-behind-kobolds-being-little-lizards

In tradition, kobolds were fey creatures associated with mischief, similar in appearance to gnomes or gremlins, often with the ability to become invisible (like the kobold Pumuckl popularized in a German TV-series).

However, for some unfathomable reason, the kobolds of D&D are little, scaly, humanoid lizards with snouts. What is the story behind that, if it is known?

Fairy things, not lizards. Hm. Looks bad for your thoughts here, The Jester.

Gary Gygax initially added the kobolds in the original without much description of their appearance. From a post by Gygax in an ENWorld forum thread:

Well, all i worked from was Germanic folklore about the forest "little people" called kobolds. All the rest of the material in the game I made up to suit what i deemed as the needs of it. In short, the D&D kobolds are mostly the whole cloth of my imagination.

In other words, Gygax made D&D's kobolds up for the purpose of creating some little guys that player characters could fight. Accuracy to folklore was a secondary concern. In the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, Artist Dave Sutherland decided on the kobolds' appearance, which influenced later artists. Gygax mentions it in another forum post:

It was indeed Dave Sutherland that decided to give the kobolds a dog-like visage, likely because I had described gnolls as hyena-like. I had actually originally envisaged them as more impish of countenence, but I went along with the depiction, as it made no difference to the game's play.

D&D started as doglike because of artist's imagination and Master Gygax didn't give a fuck because he just needed a stat block.

The poor old kobold has had an identity crisis that long pre-dates D&D.

In German folklore, the kobold was a house spirit of the 'catch one and it will do the dishes but also play practical jokes on you' type. Like the house-elf, boggart, goblin, or any number of annoying species in the Harry Potter universe.

Or, it's a spirit that lives in silver mines where its practical jokes tend to be more of the 'cause a cave-in that kills everyone' type. Or replace the silver ore with a pretty but useless metal called, naturally enough cobalt. Of course, this was before electricity and batteries where cobalt is not at all useless: which is why today its value is roughly 100 times that of silver.

They might be distant descendants of the kobalos from Greek mythology. Or maybe not - it's a long way in time, space and language from ancient Greece to medieval Germany.

Even in folklore people probably didn't know what a kobold was. Weird.

The transition from fantasy fairy-tale to fantasy wargame came in Chainmail where kobolds are interchangeable with goblins. It actually says "GOBLINS (and Kobolds):" - the only difference is goblins hate dwarves and kobolds hate gnomes. Probably. Garry Gygax had a style of writing that left a lot of the heavy lifting up to the reader.

The early D&D Kobold
Kobold's have appeared in every edition of D&D starting with the white box (D&D0), including Basic.

They did not start out as "little, scaly, humanoid lizards with snouts" - in D&D0 they were "like goblins but weaker". Which, with a certain generosity of spirit, could be referring to the folkloric kobold.

Shitty goblins.

The lizard-dog kobold
In the AD&D (1e) Monster Manual we get:

The hide of kobolds runs from very dark rusty brown to a rusty black. They have no hair. Their eyes are reddish and their small horns are tan to white. They favor red or orange garb. Kobolds live for up to 135 years.

However, the image we have of them gives us a scaley, dog-like humanoid. Perhaps with a suggestion of dragon?

Scaly dog people.

The AD&D 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium gave us:

Kobolds are a cowardly, sadistic race of short humanoids that vigorously contest the human and demi-human races for living space and food. They especially dislike gnomes whom they will attack on sight and in preference to all other enemies. Barely clearing three feet in height, kobolds have scaly hides that range from very dark rusty brown to a rusty black. They smell like a cross between damp dogs and stagnant water. Their eyes glow like a bright red spark and they have two small horns ranging from tan to white. Because of the kobolds' fondness for wearing raggedy garb of red and orange, their non-prehensile rat-like tails and their language (which sounds like small dogs yapping), these fell creatures are often not taken seriously by humans. This is often a fatal mistake, for what they lack in size and strength they make up in ferocity and tenacity.

Scaly dog people.

The draconic kobold
3rd edition has the first explicit link between kobolds and dragons. The description is essentially the same as 2nd edition but it does add "... speak Draconic with voices that sound like yapping dogs." 3.5 edition rearranges the description but provides nothing new.

However, in 2005, Dragon No 332 published the "Ecology of the Kobold" which names them "Brethren of dragons" and tells a creation myth that the kobold god Kurtulmak was the first offspring of Tiamat, hatched early to protect her eggs while Tiamat recovered from wounds sustained battling thieves and that the kobold race was hatched from stolen eggs recovered by the god.

Oh, I see. So the "traditional lizard kobold" is the one that came after for 3E which isn't really D&D at all completely unlike the "modern dog like kobold" which came earlier in D&D and neither of which is the fey folk who knows what traditional kobold. Give back your monocle.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

He thinks Kobolds are draconic which is correct, I hate the modern "Kobolds = Dog people" interpretation.

Kobolds in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual from 1977 were intended to be dog-like humanoids. Unfortunately, Gygax decided they were without hair, and David C. Sutherland III illustrated them in a way that made their hides appear scaly, leading to perpetual confusion over the ensuing decades.

 

[mediocrepoet]

He thinks Kobolds are draconic which is correct, I hate the modern "Kobolds = Dog people" interpretation.

Kobolds in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual from 1977 were intended to be dog-like humanoids. Unfortunately, Gygax decided they were without hair, and David C. Sutherland III illustrated them in a way that made their hides appear scaly, leading to perpetual confusion over the ensuing decades.

Get that modern shit out of here. Kobolds weren't invented until 3E.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The alternative to dog-like kobolds would be to embrace their origin as a creature associated with the element of earth, just as sylphs were associated with air, salamanders with fire, and undines with water.

FAUST

The monster to confront, at first,
The spell of Four must be rehears'd;

Salamander shall kindle,
Writhe nymph of the wave,
In air sylph shall dwindle,
And Kobold shall slave.

Who doth ignore
The primal Four,
Nor knows aright
Their use and might,
O'er spirits will he
Ne'er master be!

Vanish in the fiery glow,
Salamander!
Rushingly together flow.
Undine!
Shimmer in the meteor's gleam,
Sylphide!
Hither bring thine homely aid,
Incubus! Incubus!
Step forth! I do adjure thee thus!

None of the Four
Lurks in the beast:
He grins at me, untroubled as before;
I have not hurt him in the least.

A creature from Dungeon Master (1987) that probably wasn't intended to be a kobold but could serve as a good depiction of the earth-creature interpretation.

 

[Infinitron]

My understanding is that D&D kobolds became distinctly lizardoid in 3E. For CRPG players, this was very noticeable in the transition from Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Aarwolf]

Oh well Luke Scull, I'll bite it and give you my money.

This better be worth it!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

lizardoid

Reptiloid? Sauroid?

 

[Mortmal]

Then you have the pathfinder 2E version... Sharkoid? whatever it is i think their art took a nosedive.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

their art took a nosedive

To be fair that nose is big enough to function as a diving platform.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

The miniature bases in a video game are the same backward poser shit as tabletop dices in video games

Fuckin' posers, man.

 

[Kruyurk]

The miniature bases in a video game are the same backward poser shit as tabletop dices in video games

Fuckin' posers, man.

My comment does not apply to BB. The graphics were obviously constrained by budget. They decided to only do busts and they had to put something underneath to limit the weird look. In this case it is smart to leverage the tabletop aesthetic to make the graphics work.

BB uses uniform distributions for randomness but they did not limit themselves to ranges common in tabletop: 6, 12, 20, etc. If I remember correctly, it is always a uniform distribution on [1, 100], something that is not common in tabletop.

The creators of BB did not do it in a backward way: they took inspiration from tabletop but created something that takes full advantage of being a video game (albeit limited by budget constraint). What I disagree with is developers creating a video game then putting superficial tabletop elements into it, just to make it look cool or to appeal to people watching youtube videos of DnD sessions.

 

[gooseman]

If I remember correctly, it is always a uniform distribution on [1, 100], something that is not common in tabletop.

d100 is not uncommon in rpg systems. chaosium stuff (call of cthulhu, runequest, brp), mythras, warhammer fantasy, rolemaster

as for the bases, they are barely noticeable in bb. it would be a lot less bad if they weren't so fucking massive in this.

 

[The Jester]

He thinks Kobolds are draconic which is correct, I hate the modern "Kobolds = Dog people" interpretation.

Ah yes, very simple. And like most simple answers to anything, almost certainly wrong.

Quotes from commentary here (with a few typos being corrected if I notice and it bugs me enough): https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/201139/whats-the-story-behind-kobolds-being-little-lizards

In tradition, kobolds were fey creatures associated with mischief, similar in appearance to gnomes or gremlins, often with the ability to become invisible (like the kobold Pumuckl popularized in a German TV-series).

However, for some unfathomable reason, the kobolds of D&D are little, scaly, humanoid lizards with snouts. What is the story behind that, if it is known?

Fairy things, not lizards. Hm. Looks bad for your thoughts here, The Jester.

Gary Gygax initially added the kobolds in the original without much description of their appearance. From a post by Gygax in an ENWorld forum thread:

Well, all i worked from was Germanic folklore about the forest "little people" called kobolds. All the rest of the material in the game I made up to suit what i deemed as the needs of it. In short, the D&D kobolds are mostly the whole cloth of my imagination.

In other words, Gygax made D&D's kobolds up for the purpose of creating some little guys that player characters could fight. Accuracy to folklore was a secondary concern. In the AD&D 1e Monster Manual, Artist Dave Sutherland decided on the kobolds' appearance, which influenced later artists. Gygax mentions it in another forum post:

It was indeed Dave Sutherland that decided to give the kobolds a dog-like visage, likely because I had described gnolls as hyena-like. I had actually originally envisaged them as more impish of countenence, but I went along with the depiction, as it made no difference to the game's play.

D&D started as doglike because of artist's imagination and Master Gygax didn't give a fuck because he just needed a stat block.

The poor old kobold has had an identity crisis that long pre-dates D&D.

In German folklore, the kobold was a house spirit of the 'catch one and it will do the dishes but also play practical jokes on you' type. Like the house-elf, boggart, goblin, or any number of annoying species in the Harry Potter universe.

Or, it's a spirit that lives in silver mines where its practical jokes tend to be more of the 'cause a cave-in that kills everyone' type. Or replace the silver ore with a pretty but useless metal called, naturally enough cobalt. Of course, this was before electricity and batteries where cobalt is not at all useless: which is why today its value is roughly 100 times that of silver.

They might be distant descendants of the kobalos from Greek mythology. Or maybe not - it's a long way in time, space and language from ancient Greece to medieval Germany.

Even in folklore people probably didn't know what a kobold was. Weird.

The transition from fantasy fairy-tale to fantasy wargame came in Chainmail where kobolds are interchangeable with goblins. It actually says "GOBLINS (and Kobolds):" - the only difference is goblins hate dwarves and kobolds hate gnomes. Probably. Garry Gygax had a style of writing that left a lot of the heavy lifting up to the reader.

The early D&D Kobold
Kobold's have appeared in every edition of D&D starting with the white box (D&D0), including Basic.

They did not start out as "little, scaly, humanoid lizards with snouts" - in D&D0 they were "like goblins but weaker". Which, with a certain generosity of spirit, could be referring to the folkloric kobold.

Shitty goblins.

The lizard-dog kobold
In the AD&D (1e) Monster Manual we get:

The hide of kobolds runs from very dark rusty brown to a rusty black. They have no hair. Their eyes are reddish and their small horns are tan to white. They favor red or orange garb. Kobolds live for up to 135 years.

However, the image we have of them gives us a scaley, dog-like humanoid. Perhaps with a suggestion of dragon?

Scaly dog people.

The AD&D 2nd edition Monstrous Compendium gave us:

Kobolds are a cowardly, sadistic race of short humanoids that vigorously contest the human and demi-human races for living space and food. They especially dislike gnomes whom they will attack on sight and in preference to all other enemies. Barely clearing three feet in height, kobolds have scaly hides that range from very dark rusty brown to a rusty black. They smell like a cross between damp dogs and stagnant water. Their eyes glow like a bright red spark and they have two small horns ranging from tan to white. Because of the kobolds' fondness for wearing raggedy garb of red and orange, their non-prehensile rat-like tails and their language (which sounds like small dogs yapping), these fell creatures are often not taken seriously by humans. This is often a fatal mistake, for what they lack in size and strength they make up in ferocity and tenacity.

Scaly dog people.

The draconic kobold
3rd edition has the first explicit link between kobolds and dragons. The description is essentially the same as 2nd edition but it does add "... speak Draconic with voices that sound like yapping dogs." 3.5 edition rearranges the description but provides nothing new.

However, in 2005, Dragon No 332 published the "Ecology of the Kobold" which names them "Brethren of dragons" and tells a creation myth that the kobold god Kurtulmak was the first offspring of Tiamat, hatched early to protect her eggs while Tiamat recovered from wounds sustained battling thieves and that the kobold race was hatched from stolen eggs recovered by the god.

Oh, I see. So the "traditional lizard kobold" is the one that came after for 3E which isn't really D&D at all completely unlike the "modern dog like kobold" which came earlier in D&D and neither of which is the fey folk who knows what traditional kobold. Give back your monocle.

He thinks Kobolds are draconic which is correct, I hate the modern "Kobolds = Dog people" interpretation.

Kobolds in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual from 1977 were intended to be dog-like humanoids. Unfortunately, Gygax decided they were without hair, and David C. Sutherland III illustrated them in a way that made their hides appear scaly, leading to perpetual confusion over the ensuing decades.

Get that modern shit out of here. Kobolds weren't invented until 3E.

FUCK OFF FURFAGS, THIS IS A SCALIE FROUM!

 

[The Nameless One]

A low level adventure in a generic forest? About slaying a generic evil dragon? Wow, this is getting too intense...

You should write in so they know to make it epic like BG3 and add in some tranny romances to appeal to modern audiences.

You jest - but BG3, except with Pathfinder and a miniature art style, is the goal. I know some of you won't like the chosen art style, but I suggest you give it a chance.

Art style isn't everything, sure, but it does usually give an accurate first impression on which setting a game is going for or what tone it's supposed to have. And the market is a bit oversaturated with examples of toony rpgs all over, without even mentioning babby's mobile games. Perhaps cartoony can be done in a different way that's not been overused.

We all know that replicating something with BG3's scope using the same level of graphical fidelity is pretty much impossible for any studio, never mind an indie, which is why we're trying something new.

I'm not sure what gave you the impression you had to match or surpass BG3's graphics to make your product shine. If you well remember, by the time BG2 was released its graphics were considered very outdated, yet it didn't draw people because of that.

That doesn't mean we can't seek to match BG3 in the things that truly make a great roleplaying game.

You don't need to be in someone elses' shadow to make things right.

As for modern audiences, I'm a straight white dude in my 40s.

Why do you say this in an apologetic way? This isn't Resetera. We don't care if you're a 200 lbs buffalo that identifies as a polymorphed frog if your product is fine. (Well, not the majority at least)
I don't also see why you have to justify what you do based on audiences, as that's pretty much the issue with VG nowadays as in thinking on what your product's going to reflect or who is it going to "cater to", before thinking about the product in itself the first place and its quality, features, etc.

My fantasy trilogy is officially the 20th most grimdark of all time.

I could say the same of my face every time I wake up after sleeping less than 5 hours and it's official enough for me. Setting and quality however, usually go beyond what any site or blog may publish, even when that has nothing to do with another product.

stories I wrote for Warhammer: Age of Sigmar

Oh boy... Well, it's certainly better than 40k's latest stuff anyway.

Pathfinder is diverse by design - I think it's a strength of the setting, but it doesn't really matter what I think, because my job is to bring the truest representation of Pathfinder to a videogame. That's what you do when you're entrusted with an IP.

Writers usually have more power over settings than they think, even when their creativity is limited by both the IP and reviewers. And most of the quality of what they do is based upon how hard they have worked not just in working with other IPs, but in reading books. Settings may paint a variety of backgrounds, but ultimately the direction of the narrative is up to the writers themselves. You can paint a bright picture in the mind of someone about to die without the audience being aware of what happens. You can paint a nightmare inside a man's head who was having the happiest day of his life. You don't need labels to get something right when you've learned to handle it. It's all about the perspective and how to show where you can get things to go.

 

[mondblut]

Then you have the pathfinder 2E version... Sharkoid?

Canceroid. Like everything when it comes to pathfinder "art".

 

[luj1]

Pathfinder = vomit