This weekend Delta came up and gave me the best birthday gift I can ever ask for – a weekend of D&D with my brothers and friends. We played G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King, which Delta ran for us a couple of HelgaCons ago and we failed miserably at. I think we saw all of 2 rooms and ended the game in a TPK. With more time on our hands we hoped to do better this time.
As Dan set up his material he discovered I had left nearby my copy of the AD&D Monster Cards, and started flipping through them to see what might be useful. On getting to the Giants section he discovered the Hill Giants, Frost Giants, and Stone Giants, but no Fire Giants. In fact, we weren’t surprised, both Delta and I have complained in the past of the odd choices in the composition of this set of cards.
At first blush the cards seem really useful – a nice full color picture on the front so you can show your players what the thing looks like, and all the pertinent stats on the back. What a great idea. But who picked these monsters? Goblins and bugbears are here, but no orcs or ogres. We get the Luecrotta and the Mihstu, but no troll or owlbear? What the heck?
So I said to Dan, “we just need to make set 5 that fills in all the weird gaps.” It seemed like such an obvious idea. I grabbed my Monster Manual and the list of what’s in the cards and started my own list of what was missing. I was looking for anything that really shocked me that it wasn’t included. I skipped the weird stuff I tend not to use, and tried to limit myself to just what felt like “classic D&D” and/or that I use myself a lot. Sure, this is pretty subjective, and of course I’m in terrible danger in doing just what the original authors did: leave out something someone else would feel is obvious. But it’s a start. So here’s my list of the cards I’d like to add:
- Chimera
- Dragon, Brass
- Dragon, Bronze
- Dragon, Copper
- Dragon, Blue
- Dragon, Green
- Dragon, White
- Elemental, Air
- Elemental, Earth
- Elemental, Fire
- Elemental, Water
- Gargoyle
- Giant, Fire
- Golem, Clay
- Golem, Flesh
- Golem, Iron
- Griffon
- Green Slime
- Hobgoblin
- Lich
- Lycanthrope, Were-bear
- Lycanthrope, Were-boar
- Lycanthrope, Were-rat
- Manticore
- Minotaur
- Men, Bandit
- Men, Buccaneer
- Ogre
- Orc
- Owlbear
- Pegasus
- Piercer
- Purple Worm
- Roc
- Skeleton
- Stirge
- Spider, Giant
- Toad, Giant
- Troll
- Unicorn
- Wyvern
- Wight
- Wraith
- Zombie
The two that gave us pause were Dragon and Men. Do we really need all the varieties of good dragons? I honestly never used them, but the original set of cards has two good and two evil, so it seems like we should complete the set. And what about Men? There are a ton of sub-types of men in the Monster Manual. It seems crazy to not have any, I mean, players are always being beset by bandits, right? But do I also need Berserkers? Merchants? Pilgrims? Dan suggested the two I listed (Bandit and Buccaneer) as the most useful, so we limited the list to just those.
Looks like we need more than just one extra set. In fact, the original sets were 20 cards, so I kind of feel like I want to trim out 4 entries so we can do sets 5 and 6 and follow the original pattern. Once we have a list I’m sure I can dig up the right font and lay out the cards, but then I’ll need to find some artwork. Do I just swipe scans from the internet or my books and make this a personal pet project? I wouldn’t mind making this publicly available to the world, but then I need artists. We could put the call out for submissions, but I don’t know if between Dan and I we have the pull to get 40 pieces of unique art.
But let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what you think I missed that should really be on the list. Or what you think is most prime for cutting it down to 40. Once I have the list of cards I’m sure I can figure it out.
