Sorry for not going to the generals, but they're edition specific and this is about D&D as a whole.Is there any place that has a comprehensive list of the races and monsters of the various settings and editions that lists their real world origins, like if they're from real mythology and folklore like elves and dwarves or made up for the game like beholders? All the wikis I can find seem to be mostly in-game information and bibliographies of the sourcebooks.
>>96805984The real world origin of the rust monster is a plastic chink toy "dinosaur" that TSR plagiarized 1:1.
There are a couple of threads on Dragonsfoot or K&K, can't remember for sure, but I think the former) that go into the origins of the critters in MM and MMII. If no one points them out, I'll check later today or tomorrow.
>>96806012Yeah, I heard about that. I think it was a Chinese or Korean bootleg of something from Ultraman or some other Japanese kaiju thing. I know the Umber Hulk is the beetle guy from the episode where it turns out Noah from the Bible was one of Ultraman's previous human hosts. It was a very silly show.
>>96805984>comprehensive list of the races and monsters of the various settings and editions that lists their real world origins, like if they're from real mythology and folkloreHoly cow, you want an exhaustive list of the bestiary and to correlate each species with, if any, real world inspirations?Uhhhhh yeah...that's gonna be a tough one considering various cultures probably have some of the same creatures that get rolled into the same D&D creature or one creature gets separated based on different elements/properties into multiple D&D creatures.You should narrow your scope down to the monsters you're interested in, as quite a few will have multiple sources, like Dwarves and Elves. Not only are you going to be looking at the source that D&D was influenced by, but then you'll be chasing down the source of what influenced JRR Tolkein.
