Monsters in Dungeons & Dragons

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the term monster refers to a variety of creatures, some adapted from folklore and legends and others invented specifically for the game. Included are traditional monsters such as dragons, supernatural creatures such as ghosts, and mundane or fantastic animals. A defining feature of the game is that monsters are typically obstacles that players must overcome to progress through the game. Beginning with the first edition in 1974, a catalog of game monsters (bestiary) was included along with other game manuals, first called Monsters & Treasure and now called the Monster Manual. As an essential part of Dungeons & Dragons, many of its monsters have become iconic and recognizable even outside D&D, becoming influential in video games, fiction, and popular culture.

Origins

While many "bizarre and grotesque creatures" are original creations of Dungeons & Dragons, the inspiration for others includes real-world fauna, mythology, "bestiaries of the later Middle Ages", science-fiction, fantasy literature, and film. Mauricio Rangel Jiménez goes so far to say that a basic knowledge of mythology, religion and fantasy is required to keep pace with the game, although the "creatures were unbound by time or place" of their original sources and co-creator Gary Gygax "made them coexist in a single aggregate world". With regard to pre-modern sources, scholar Laurent Di Filippo remarked that game creators often do not rely directly on original texts. Rather the material undergoes "cultural processes of transmission which go from medieval sources to the productions of contemporary cultural industries [...]. These transformations may be the result of translations or adaptations.