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I should have made this post a while ago, but in Monster Core I was really hoping and expecting with the move away from the OGL and the presumed removal of the robot dogs called "gorgons" that the "Medusa" creature would finally be renamed to gorgon. The old gorgon is removed, it is very ogl specific after all, but I just have to wonder why the name Medusa was kept given that this is the name of a specific gorgon(this is a pet issue me and my wife have, mostly that some random robot dog is called a gorgon, like... What...?)
I also wanna add the little addition that I'm glad they kept the good and cool Deinonychus art. I love him so much. Less impressed with the t rex having crocodile osteoderms. While crocodilians are very closely related it seems very unlikely from the skin impressions of the t rex that it would have this kind of skin. I know very little new art was commissioned and so I am not criticizing this reuse of art, just throwing this out there for the future hoping for more dinosaurs as animals and less dinosaurs as monsters
Another compliment I'll add is I think the fortune dragon is the coolest heckin' dude around
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They probably stuck with Medusa because it's infinitely more recognizable as "the snake-haired lady that turned people into stone" to most players than gorgon is, even if gorgon is the technically accurate term for the creature.
Never noticed the rex's osteoderms before, but now that I see them, it really does look quite horrible, doesn't it?
All the new dragons are *chef's kiss*.
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Technically Gorgon isn't really a species name either. The creatures of myth were the Gorgon Sisters, three women who received the same curse.
Still I do agree it'd be better to call them Gorgons than Medusas.
They probably stuck with Medusa because it's infinitely more recognizable as "the snake-haired lady that turned people into stone" to most players than gorgon is, even if gorgon is the technically accurate term for the creature.
Never noticed the rex's osteoderms before, but now that I see them, it really does look quite horrible, doesn't it?
All the new dragons are *chef's kiss*.
It doesn't look horrible but it looks off to me personally. Especially cuz of Hank
I did remove the dragon question because I noticed literally right below my post was a question asking favorite monsters and I didn't wanna step on their toes, but I'm mega into these new guys and I wanna see more
Whether or not Medusa is more well known, probably? I would hazard a guess gorgon is actually commonly known because of the myth being taught in middle schools. I have no idea how the metal/robot dog got the name gorgon though in d&d. Just bizarre
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Whether or not Medusa is more well known, probably? I would hazard a guess gorgon is actually commonly known because of the myth being taught in middle schools. I have no idea how the metal/robot dog got the name gorgon though in d&d. Just bizarre
As far as I've observed in my entire life, the Medusa is far more known and the Gorgons themselves are the afternote in most people's knowledge.
On that note, another likely reason that medusa was kept as a term for the creature, rather than changing the name to gorgon, is because there are also creatures named after the other two sisters. A euryale is an incredibly powerful medusa favored by Lamashtu, and a stheno is one of the descendants of a euryale of the same name who Lamashtu struck down for defying her, and whose snake-hair was transformed into a new ancestry by Shelyn, who Stheno worshiped.Technically Gorgon isn't really a species name either. The creatures of myth were the Gorgon Sisters, three women who received the same curse.
Still I do agree it'd be better to call them Gorgons than Medusas.
ooooooohhhhh, I did not know this. This makes some amount of sense, though I think I'd still prefer gorgon as the generic creature name
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As it happens, if you were to ask somebody in the 1500's what they thought a gorgon looked like (assuming they'd heard the term at all), there is a reasonable chance they might describe a 'four-footed beast' from Africa with eyes like a bull and which eats poisonous herbs and expels foul breath at enemies--or perhaps a powerful poison from its eyes. This description is indeed linked to the myth of the gorgon sisters, but as a mythical story relating to history of the beast with the scales of a dragon.
Not to say I wouldn't prefer the name gorgon to apply to the snake-headed petrifying gaze humanoid rather than the weird metal bull, but the historic precedent isn't entirely absent.
I think my favourite part of the description given in the 1607 History of Four-Footed Beasts is the assertion that between alternate accounts of poisonous breath and poisonous eyes, the latter is much more likely since the former is unlike any other known beast.
As it happens, if you were to ask somebody in the 1500's what they thought a gorgon looked like (assuming they'd heard the term at all), there is a reasonable chance they might describe a 'four-footed beast' from Africa with eyes like a bull and which eats poisonous herbs and expels foul breath at enemies--or perhaps a powerful poison from its eyes. This description is indeed linked to the myth of the gorgon sisters, but as a mythical story relating to history of the beast with the scales of a dragon.
Not to say I wouldn't prefer the name gorgon to apply to the snake-headed petrifying gaze humanoid rather than the weird metal bull, but the historic precedent isn't entirely absent.
This somewhat sounds like the whole rakshasa thing where Gygax, or perhaps Arneson, just made a demon cat called that because a TV show used some weird furry beast as a monster of the week and gave it the name Rakshasa. Though in this case it sounds like the story is just some guy wrote down a description of what he thought was a real animal in 1600s
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Give me a big book of dinosaurs I can summon and have as companions, as well as a summoner variant which has an eidolon that can be a Utahraptor (beast eidolon doesn't get there unfortunately)
They can be cheeky too and put a lot of birds in the book since they are literally dinosaurs
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Give me a big book of dinosaurs I can summon and have as companions, as well as a summoner variant which has an eidolon that can be a Utahraptor (beast eidolon doesn't get there unfortunately)
They can be cheeky too and put a lot of birds in the book since they are literally dinosaurs
I definitely want a Lost Omens: Droon book.
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I definitely want a Lost Omens: Droon book.Give me a big book of dinosaurs I can summon and have as companions, as well as a summoner variant which has an eidolon that can be a Utahraptor (beast eidolon doesn't get there unfortunately)
They can be cheeky too and put a lot of birds in the book since they are literally dinosaurs
I'm into it, I would love this, especially if they get the artists to reference paleoart