Bugbears. Jack-O-Bears. Same Same?

 I barely manage to make a post a couple of times a month lately. Besides my very casual approach to the blog these days (I make pretty much no attempt to advertise it in any way. If I was I would comment at Grognardia and other popular old school spots on the reg). Plus I work in health care which means often 50 hour weeks on the job. But one of the handful (and yes you could count them on one hand and have change left over) folk who are kind enough to comment on the occasional post had a comment on my post earlier today, and I thought "what the hell" rather than bury my reply in comments I'd make it a short post. Go a little deeper in the weeds on Bugbears. 

Not a bugbear. More
 like a Walktapus

The thing you're calling a "Runequest bugbear" is a jack-o-bear, a Chaotic critter that looks and acts less like a D&D bugbear than the similarly chimerical owlbear does. Just because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related. Doesn't even work as an attempted joke.

I could say "Fair enough," especially when it comes to my weak (I am a gamer after all) attempts at humor. But to the because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related I feel like I have to blow a time out whistle, or at least throw out a less shrill au contraire mon frair. There is a clear connection between the D&D bugbear and the Runequest jack-o-thing. 

Here is the current D&D bugbear.

Here is the 1st edition version.

All good. Now here is the earliest known depiction of a D&D bugbear.

Dang. That thing has a pumpkin for a head! 

OK, the crux of the matter. I am no D&D historian. And I certainly care less about the historical context of gaming things than I did when I started this blog. Though it's fun to walk down memory lane now and again. And it is memory lane, seeing as I pretty much was living it in my early gaming. As an adult I really didn't follow much of what was going on in the decades between my teens and when I first noticed the OSR about 10 years ago or so. But in my early to later teens I was in the thick of it. 

My earliest gaming outside of my friends was at Aero Hobbies, one two hobby shops in Southern California that specialized in D&D stuff and every other new RPG on the scene. I was playing games there starting around 1978 or so. By then the older locals were into Runequest, Traveller, Bushido, Empire of the Petal Throne. Anything but D&D. Some of the folk there would in some OSR circles be considered minor celebrity. And the older folk there certainly had plenty to say about the industry. I mean, we were surrounded by all the new books, and a galaxy of early miniatures. 

So, on bugbears my understanding is this: The artwork of "bugbear, ghoul, and friends" bugbear was a misunderstanding of Gygax's description (an "oval head shaped like a pumpkin") or some such. So there you go. Instead of a big hairy Chewbacca wanna be, you got that monstrosity. 

Mini's were produced before Gaz could get on top of it, like so:

So sometime during the populating of Glorantha, the powers that be suggested they come up with some creatures that already existed as mini's you could find. Things like Griffons were a no-brainer. Plenty of mythical creatures from D&D getting made. And maybe Prax is filled with herds of everything BUT horses because you could find packs of other kinds of hooved animals at the 5 and dime. Antelopes and boars and so forth. 

But this mini, this pumpkin bear thing (or another like it) inspired the creation of the Jack-O-Bear, as seen on the cover of the campaign book below:

Now, bugbears aren't known as spellcasters. But pretty much everything in Runequest is a spell caster. I think Jack's had some paralyzing power or another. They are chaos creatures and therefore are part of a solid ethos/grouping in that setting. And whereas D&D bugbears are fairly oricish/ogreish in general (big thugs who crack your skull for laughs), the Gloranthan ones at least appear (modernly) more bestial in nature. 

Just because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related. Doesn't even work as an attempted joke.

Wellll..., my weak jokes aside, there is a very clear line between the creatures. More than just the word "bear." The similarity to an Owlbear things is fine, but if you look at pics like the one of the Griffin mountain cover, they weren't meant to be four legged animals. I know bears can stand on hind legs, but that thing is blocking a spear and casting a spell. They were literally using the early D&D mini, a two-legged humanoid, as the basis. And the mini does not have a bear body. It looks more to me like they used a shambling mound mold and added the pumpkin. Regardless of what they make them out to be in later edition. That old stuff does still kind of count (if you are anywhere near my age anyway). So the joke, such as it is, has some validity. 

Or not. But fair enough. 

Cheers

Behold, the mighty Kobold!

These kobold guys sure get around. They have had various incarnations in D&D, none of them very much like their legendary “real world” counterparts.

I have not used a kobold (and who could use just one?) in my games for at least 15 years. There came a point in my long-running game world, maybe in the early 90’s, where I just thought there were too many non-human “goblinoids” running around in tunnels and ruins of my lands. Orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, bugbears, kobolds, and others. And of course, if I had used every variation of these creatures that appeared in The Dragon, White Dwarf, or The Dungeoneer, It would be a goddamn overpopulated circus world down there!

I mostly stuck with orcs and goblins throughout the 90’s for my underground grunt troops. Bugbears were pretty much Uruk Hai orcs, except for the brief period I had as a kid. In those very early days I portrayed them like they appeared in a crude original D&D book – a big hairy body with a pumpkin for a head. I still used gnolls very occasionally in the 90’s (with a tendency to inhabit above ground ruined cities), and still thought of them as being in remote parts of my world. But my thinking was that kobolds just don’t exist anymore, at least where players might go in their travels.

But in trying to come up with a quick mini-adventure with a bit of combat for next week, kobolds came to mind. I have a party of mid-level characters in my current campaign, and I am adding a couple of new players into the mix. Hmm, what to throw at the party where 1st level dudes can fight next to the bigger guns. I know…a troop of kobolds! Little goblinoids with 3 hit points each! Everybody kills one when they hit! Nice!

But how to portray them at this point? In the old days, they were pretty much little dog-headed goblins. Before AD&D, the “white box” described them simply as small goblins (as if goblins weren’t small enough). At some point in later D&D evolution, they became non-goblin and somewhat reptilian, their dog heads replaced by lizard heads. I think I read somewhere in the nineties that they were now related to dragons! Wow, I remember that art in the DM’s guide (I think in there) with a bunch of kobolds attacking a dragon. Now they are related to them? Jeez. Third Edition described several kinds of kobold, including aquatic, desert, jungle, etc etc etc.

Who knows what the hell they are in 4th ed?

Although I just need them to be weaker goblins for my encounter (I want to describe all these little pricks running around the village making off with wine barrels and livestock), I sort of want to make them more like the legends as well. In myth, they did actually come in a variety of types. Some helped around the home (in one description I read they sound a lot like house elves from Harry Potter), some lived in troops underground and worked mines just like their D&D counterparts. Folklorists have proposed that the mine kobold derives from the beliefs of the ancient Norse or German tribes. It is suggested that the Proto-Norse based the kobolds on the short-statured Finns, Lapps, and Latvians who fled their invasions and sought shelter in northern European caves and mountains. There they put their skills at smithing to work and, in the beliefs of the proto-Norse, came to be seen as supernatural beings.

Some even snuck aboard sailing vessels to help sailors. That is very unique in legend – not many mystical creatures were helpful towards sailors. The seas were all about the terror.

Although I like the idea of expanding the kobold beyond the barking reptile dogmen of D&D past, I really already have pixies, fairies and boggarts to play these parts. Because I have Scottish parents I have heard a lot about Brownie legends, and use them for needed purposed in games at appropriate times. They can do everything from help an old man repair a shop full of shoes, to making a farmers milk go bad.

But at least I have rediscovered the humble D&D version of thekobold, and will use some in my game next week. I just wish I had about 50 miniatures of kobolds to use. That would spice-up the ol’ greasemat.