Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Misspelling

Does anyone have a copy of a second edition AD&D Monstrous Manual (or Compendium) handy? I ask because I just noticed today, seemingly for the first time, that Greyhawk, the Monster Manual, Holmes, and Moldvay all perpetuate the misspelling "doppleganger" rather than the correct "doppelganger." I can tell, from looking at the online D20 SRD, that the misspelling had been corrected by the WotC era, but what I don't know is if that's the first time the monster's name has been spelled correctly or if it had been corrected prior to that point during 2e.

17 comments:

  1. Just checked mine and it is spelled "Doppleganger". Hope that helps!

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  2. Monstrous Manual says Doppleganger.

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  3. Monstrous Compendium (1989) - Doppleganger

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  4. Perhaps they corrected it after Marvel comics introduced a character with the name Doppleganger and probably trademarked the misspelling.

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  5. The misspelling always bugged me, so when they appeared in my games I always wrote doppelganger. Of course that's not correct either; it should really be doppelgänger, with an umlaut.

    Having never looked at anything after 2e for more than five minutes, I didn't know it had ever been "fixed". And for some reason that bugs me too. After all this time, it feels like doppelgänger refers to the supernatural "second self" of folklore, while doppleganger is the name of the (rather different) D&D monster.

    I dunno, maybe I'm just crotchety today.

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    1. You could also write it as "doppelgaenger" if you can't find the umlauts on your keyboard ;)

      As for the misspelling itself, I presume it's written more like how the (english-speaking) reader would pronounce it.

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  6. gamers are never crotchety and fickle

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  7. Well on that note, I'll have to be crotchety! Doppleganger never bugged me, for as ClawCarver pointed out, it didn't bear much resemblance (pun intended) to the German folklore... but my peeve is with "Monstrous Manual." [I have both my Monster Manual and my Monster Manual 2, (and had to look at copyright dates) because I apparently never went to 2nd edition for that.] Why "Monstrous?" That's an adjective and it's modifying "Manual," so I would expect the book to be (in the words of Ren Hoek) 'Repulsively Titanic!" The Monster Manual, on the other hand, was a manual about monsters. Oy!

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    1. I'd never thought about it but you're absolutely right. Gah! Now I'm doubly crotchety - or should that be minimy?

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    2. To be scrupulously fair to 2nd Edition, one of the lesser used meanings of "monstrous" is "full of monsters" or (as the online Webster's dictionary puts it) "teeming with monsters". That seems to be the meaning they intended.

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  8. Wonder if it was an intentional misspelling and attempted correction or just something they blundered into?

    I seem to recall something similar happening with the huecuva/heucuva: started off spelled one way in the original Fiend Folio but somehow got changed to the other spelling and "made official" in a later work, quite possibly accidentally.

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    1. ^ Quite likely a blunder. There are quite a few silly misspellings in Original D&D. (Not that I caught onto this one before today.)

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  9. Rules Cyclopedia ca. 1991 has Doppleganger, if you're curious.

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  10. I have the black hardback edition of the Monstrous Manual and it's "doppleganger" in there.

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  11. dont get it. the correct is doppelganger?

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