Gelatinous Icosahedron

 Here's a creature that's been a staple in my dungeons from way, way back: the carrion crawler. Fun fact: Carrion crawlers are considered to be the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast, and thus if included in retroclone games, are usually renamed as "corpse creepers" or something similar. Same critter, though. Creepy, crawly, creepy, crawly... Anyway... Carrion crawlers are basically giant maggots with paralyzing tentacles clustered around their mouths. Oh, and they can crawl equally well on floor, wall, or ceiling. That's something that escaped my notice somehow, and I never used it in play, but how cool would that be to have a carrion crawler drop on an unsuspecting party from the ceiling? At 3+1 Hit Dice, they're fairly tough for Basic-level characters. They don't do any actual damage, but instead have eight (!) separate tentacle attacks per round, each inflicting paralysis if a saving throw is failed. If the crawler is not being attacked, it ...

 Not a terribly exciting entry in the B/X bestiary, nor one that's likely to see much use... unless your game features deserts, of course. Camels are no great shakes in battle, with mediocre AC and Hit Dice and trivial damage. They can bite for a single point of damage or kick for 1d4, and those are probably used more in fits of temper against inept handlers than in deadly combat. Player-characters probably aren't going to fight many camels anyway, unless they happen upon a herd while lost in the desert and desperately need food. They may, however, fight people riding camels, or have occasion to require some camels themselves. As in our real world, camels are the steeds and beasts of burden of choice for desert environments. According to the description, they can survive up to two weeks without water and treat desert or barren terrain as clear for purposes of travel. Since those terrain types normally reduce movement rates to 2/3 normal, and given the difficulty of finding food...

 It's been said, by myself and by many others, that the demihuman races represent particular aspects of humanity: virtues, vices, traits, and viewpoints. But what would humanity represent to the demihumans? Just for fun, let's put ourselves in the shoes of elves, dwarves, and halflings (who don't wear shoes, but it's only a metaphor, after all), and try to imagine what they'd see in us. These are, obviously, my personal takes on the subject; you may have different insights, and if so, please feel free to share them in the comments. To elves , humans might represent mortality and the sense of urgency that comes with it. They are motivated, fired with a sense of the shortness of their time, driven to make something of their limited lives. Where an elf has literally almost all the time in the world, with centuries or millennia both behind and ahead of them, humans are the present, the now , seizing the moment, because they know they may not have many more. Of course, e...

 Now, at last, on to the C section of the monster list! Yeah, I know that pun is totally disassociated from anything remotely relevant. Anyway, the Caecilia, from the Expert Rules... C is for Caecilia. That's good enough for me! This is yet another monster that I cannot recall ever having used in actual play. In our real world, caecilians are a group of legless burrowing amphibians, less well-known relatives of frogs, toads, and salamanders. The D&D caecilia appears to be essentially a ravenous, giant-sized version, though it is described as a giant gray wormlike creature, and not acknowledged as an amphibian. They are around 30 feet long, with "cavernous mouths and sharp teeth."  Though superficially they seem like a junior version of the purple worm, if we assume similarity to their real world analog, they're actually vertebrates, and perhaps slightly more intelligent than a true worm. Their AC of 6 suggests a fairly tough, probably rubbery hide, and their 6 Hit...

 Yesterday, I read this post at DM David, talking about the evolution of the non-human player character races in D&D. (He focuses much more on 5E and modern sensibilities than on anything I'd call old school, but generally has interesting things to say, even if not always directly useful to an old schooler such as myself.) Of course, I have some observations and opinions of my own on this topic. On the one hand, we have D&D's most prominent founder, Gary Gygax, whose preference for a human-centric game prompted him to impose strict limits on the demihuman races. On the other, we have modern games, in which almost anything distinguishing dwarf, elf, halfling, or other fantastic folk from humankind is to be spurned as too restrictive to player freedom, if not somehow a manifestation of real-world racism.  I reject both those views. I can certainly respect Gygax's affection for human-centric fantasy, emulating some of his favorite literary sources (which, as I underst...

 So, I'm doing some thinking about project Unlikely Heroes. Having made the decision to abandon the quixotic quest to create my ideal version of D&D, I'm feeling completely liberated from D&D's rules and mechanics. They may inspire, but the no longer bind me. And what better way to put the exclamation point on that newfound freedom than by jettisoning one of the most iconic features of the game, the sacred Six Ability Scores? It's certainly not a terribly radical idea. Despite ability score generation being the very first step of character creation, mechanically, ability scores aren't a core part of the old school D&D engine. They're a bit of color and flavor; that's all. The game would play just fine without them. It might even play better without them. You wouldn't have to worry about players who roll dismal or mediocre ones, nor those who hit the jackpot with every score above average. You don't have the player of the fighter with 13 ...

 We interrupt this series of classic monsters to bring you a new one. Clockwork Beehive Hive                                                      Bees Armor Class: 5                                  0 Hit Dice: 4                                          1 hp each Move: Nil                                           Fly 180' (60') Attacks: Nil                                    ...