Retrospective: The Ruins of Myth Drannor

I know that, for many fans of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms represents a decisive (and unwelcome) break from the game’s early days, both in content and especially in presentation. I don’t agree with that assessment, though this isn’t the place to rehearse that entire argument. What I will say is that revisiting TSR’s Forgotten Realms products from the late 1980s through the 1990s, I find a body of work that is not the betrayal its detractors claim, but is instead a mixed bag – occasionally frustrating, frequently ambitious, and at times genuinely impressive.

A good case in point is The Ruins of Myth Drannor, a 1993 boxed set detailing the fabled elven “City of Song.” Myth Drannor had long loomed large in the background of the setting. For years prior to this set’s release, Greenwood referenced it repeatedly as a shining example of magical harmony undone by hubris and catastrophe. Consequently, when the boxed set finally appeared, I eagerly snapped it up.

From the first time I read about it, I imagined Myth Drannor as one of the great fallen cities of the Realms. Its destruction defined much of the Forgotten Realms’ melancholy grandeur. The Realms, at least as I understood them, were not a setting on the ascent but a world in decline, a place of fading glories and lingering ruins, closer in spirit to pulp fantasy than to high heroic triumphalism. Myth Drannor is where this comes into sharp focus. 

Transforming such a mythic ruin into a playable location was no doubt a challenge. Myth Drannor is not a megadungeon in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a shattered metropolis sprawled across the forest of Cormanthyr. Its districts, academies, towers, temples, vaults, and magical zones warped by a magic effect that once protected the city. TSR had previously attempted little else on this scale. One might point to Dwellers of the Forbidden City as an early precursor, though the comparison only goes so far. In spirit, its closest analog may be Chaosium’s Big Rubble for RuneQuest, which is still, in my opinion, the gold standard for “ruin crawl” locales.

In many respects, The Ruins of Myth Drannor succeeds admirably in its goals. Greenwood presents the city as an environment. It is effectively a mini-sandbox, a vast urban wilderness suitable for exploration, salvage, factional conflict, and long-term campaigns built around survival amid arcane devastation. The conceptual foundation is solid. The boxed set offers history, factions, current inhabitants, and numerous adventure hooks. This is all good stuff. Where it falters is in execution.

The set does not consistently provide the Dungeon Master with the tools necessary to bring so large a space to life in play. The maps are expansive and the descriptions evocative, but there is surprisingly little in the way of random encounter tables, stocking guidelines, event generators, or even name lists to help a referee improvise within such a vast environment. Instead, we are given several more fully fleshed-out adventures and a handful of small, somewhat uninspired mini-dungeons that can be dropped in as needed. Those adventures are serviceable, but they do not quite match the promise implied by the scale of the city itself. 

This absence of these kinds of referee tools is all the more striking because the physical presentation of the boxed set is impressive. The poster maps are sweeping, delineating districts and geography. They convey scale beautifully. One can easily imagine months of play wandering the overgrown avenues and shattered towers. Yet, that same scale exposes a weakness. Much of the city is described in broad strokes. The maps suggest more than the text delivers or indeed could deliver.

The background material is quintessentially Greenwoodian, dense with names, lineages, magic, and history. For readers invested in the Realms as a setting, this lore is rich and rewarding. For referees seeking immediately usable material, however, it can feel overwhelming. Even as someone who once delighted in “Realmslore,” I occasionally found myself wishing that some of the word count devoted to ancient history had instead gone toward practical game tools.

One element the boxed set gets absolutely right is its intended level range. The Ruins of Myth Drannor is not for novice characters. The ruins teem with formidable threats, like elven and mind flayer liches, demons, devils, magical constructs, and strange, magic-eating abominations. These are adversaries suited to mid and high-level characters. For referees who enjoy high-level play – and who know how difficult it can be to challenge powerful characters – Myth Drannor fills a genuine need. It offers a compelling and dangerous playground for experienced adventurers.

In the end, I think The Ruins of Myth Drannor exemplifies much of TSR’s output during this period. It is ambitious, atmospheric, and lavishly presented. It's also frustrating. It gestures toward an open-ended and exploratory style of play that strongly matches old school sensibilities, but it stops short of fully embracing the procedural support such play demands.

Even so, I still very much like this boxed set. When it was released, I used it and mined it for material to use in my campaign. Its flaws required work on my part as referee, of course, but the raw material was there, waiting to be shaped. Perhaps that is the most old-school aspect of it after all: not a perfectly engineered product, but a rich, uneven trove of ideas demanding engagement.

Myth Drannor, both as a fictional city and as a boxed set, stands as a monument to a fallen age – within the Realms and within TSR itself. Imperfect, excessive, occasionally exasperating, yet grand in conception, it reminds us that decline and greatness are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes they are, in fact, the same thing viewed from different angles.

Retrospective: Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting

Let's begin by making a clarification. This week's Retrospective concerns the AD&D Second Edition boxed set released by TSR in 1993 called the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. This is not to be confused with the AD&D First Edition product released in 1987 called the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, about which I've already written a Retrospective post – though the former is indeed a revision and expansion of the latter. Why the two products have such similar yet still different titles eludes me. I expect the answer is most likely an oversight on the part of TSR's production team.

In any case, the 1993 product is a simultaneously terrific and frustrating product. At the time of its release, I was just beginning a campaign set in the Realms – the last AD&D campaign I would run before more or less abandoning the game for other RPGs – so its appearance was a godsend. Though I already owned (and loved) the 1987 set, it was several years out of date, both with the current AD&D rules and with events in the setting itself, so a more substantial update than the Forgotten Realms Adventures hardback was long overdue.

Say what you will about TSR in the 1990s, but one thing the company did very well was produce boxed RPG products and this one is no different. Coming in a sturdy, deep box, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was positively stuffed with material: a 128-page A Grand Tour of the Realms, 64-page Guide to Running the Realms, a 96-page Shadowdale book (not to be confused with the terrible adventure module of the same name), several Monstrous Compendium pages and cart-apart sheets of cards, and, of course, four large, full-color maps of the Realms. It's a truly impressive collection of softcover books and other accessories.

A Grand Tour of the Realms is the heart of the boxed set, providing an overview of the setting and its locations. It's packed with information – probably too much, to be honest – and that's both a blessing and a curse, as I'll eventually explain. When I was refereeing a Realms campaign, it was probably the book I consulted the most often. By contrast, the Guide to Running the Realms, though seemingly intended as the Dungeon Master's companion book to the setting, is much less useful. More than half of its pages are spent detailing NPCs, large and small, as well as the various deities of the setting. It's not a useless book by any means, but I rarely looked at it.

Shadowdale is better. It's a deep dive into the most famous of the Dalelands, making it a suitable starting point for a new Forgotten Realms campaign, as well as a "home base" for adventurers who want to roam the region between the Moonsea and the Sea of Fallen Stars. The Dale is described in exhaustive detail – a recurring pattern in this boxed set – with almost every location given at least a short paragraph, often more. Several of these locales even have interior maps. Finally, there's a lengthy adventure, "Beneath the Twisted Tower," for beginning characters that not only makes good use of the material already presented but could easily serve as the kick-off to an entire campaign in and around the Dales.

Combined with all the other extras included inside the box, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is a terrific product, one that really does give the Dungeon Master nearly everything he could possibly want for starting a new campaign in Ed Greenwood's storied setting. I know I found it invaluable when I was refereeing my campaign decades ago, especially as I hadn't been keeping up with all the changes TSR wrought on the Realms during the years since the release of the original 1987 boxed set. In terms of simple utility, this is a good candidate for the best setting material TSR produced during the company's existence (though there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from).

At the same time, if you're familiar with both the original boxed set and/or Greenwood's articles about the Realms in the pages of Dragon, it's hard not to be a little frustrated by the 1993 set. I've already noted several times now how much material is found within the three included books – so much that it could be overwhelming. I understand that not everyone is put off by lots of detail and, as a longtime fan of Tékumel, I feel vaguely hypocritical for grousing about the much more modest information found in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Still, I feel as if the nature of the Realms started to change in this era, moving away from a more open-ended, almost sandbox-y setting into something more defined and therefore less flexible, at least when compared to its roots.

A big part of that probably has to do with not merely the Time of Troubles but how many products TSR had already produced for the setting. TSR turned the Forgotten Realms into the default, baseline setting of Second Edition, which meant that it shoehorned all manner of stuff into the setting that didn't really fit with Greenwood's original depictions of it. For example, several regions were made less fantastical and more like analogs of real world cultures and historical periods. This genericized the Realms and bled it of its original flavor. That disappointed me even at the time and does so even more now.

For all that, I still have a lot of affection for this boxed set. I not only made good use of it, but it's a fine example of a style of RPG product that no one really makes anymore – a largely complete description of a setting in a single box. I know there are all sorts of reasons why such a product is no longer as feasible as it was in the early 1990s, but that doesn't change my nostalgia for it. At the end of the day, I feel the only true judge of a gaming product is how much fun it engendered in play. By that standard, I consider the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting a winner.

Retrospective: Forgotten Realms Adventures

After spending last week’s Retrospective criticizing Shadowdale, the product intended to help transition the Forgotten Realms AD&D setting into Second Edition, I thought it might be worthwhile to take a more positive look at another release from shortly thereafter: the 1990 hardback Forgotten Realms Adventures. Written by Jeff Grubb and Ed Greenwood, the same duo behind the original 1987 Forgotten Realms boxed set, Forgotten Realms Adventures (or FRA, as my friends and I called it) functioned as a bridge between that First Edition boxed set and the newly released Second Edition rules. Unlike Shadowdale, I have far more positive associations with this book. While it isn’t without flaws, it’s better written and, more importantly, genuinely useful.

At 154 pages long, Forgotten Realms Adventures is shorter than either the Second Edition Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide, but it still feels much of a piece with them in terms of its layout, art, and graphic design. If you like that sort of presentation, with its cramped three-column text, blue highlights, and Stephen Fabian interior artwork broken up by full-color, full-page illustrations by icons of the Silver Age, like Caldwell, Easley, and Elmore, then you'll in for more of the same. If, like me, you merely tolerate it as an artifact of its era, you'll probably be less happy. (And if you actively dislike it, odds are good you never bought or played any AD&D 2e stuff to begin with.)

Content-wise, the book is, quite literally, a mixed bag. Its first chapter is devoted to updating the Realms to not merely Second Edition but also to the consequences of the Time of Troubles/Avatar Crisis. A whole post (or series of them) could probably be written about the whys and wherefores of TSR's changes to the Forgotten Realms setting (which had already been changed from Greenwood's vision in several ways), but, in the interests of brevity, I'm going to gloss over most of them here. What's most important to understand is that the aforementioned Time of Troubles involved the fall of the gods from their Outer Planar homes to the Realms, thereby throwing the setting into chaos.

That chaos was intended by TSR as cover for introducing changes to the Forgotten Realms. Some of those changes were necessitated by changes in the rules of Second Edition, while others were to make the setting more amenable to the "angry mothers from heck," who'd been plaguing the game almost since its inception. Given that, Forgotten Realms Adventures isn't a completely coherent book. It's written and presented more like one of those annual encyclopedia updates some of us probably remember from our youths. The goal here is to give players and Dungeon Masters involved in Realms campaigns with all the rules and setting information necessary to use it with the newly-released 2e – at least until the release of a natively 2e boxed setting in 1993.

That first chapter is actually pretty good in my opinion, largely delivering on the promise of Second Edition to make AD&D more flexible and receptive to setting-specific changes. So, there's discussion on how, for example, certain classes fit into the Realms and what 2e options for them should be employed. Chapter 2 expands on this approach by focusing on priests, whose powers and abilities depend heavily on the details of the setting. Those first two chapters are nearly forty pages long and, while that might seem like a lot, most of the material is only vital if you're making use of a specific character class in play. That's why I made the comparison with those old encyclopedia updates. Forgotten Realms Adventures is not a book you're meant to read cover to cover but refer to when needed.

As a setting, the Forgotten Realms is known for two things: the prevalence of magic and Ed Greenwood's love of setting detail. The bulk of the book provides both in copious amounts. Chapter 3 offers up many, many new wizard spells, while Chapter 4 describes two dozen settlements, large and small, within the setting. These descriptions include both a high-level map of the location and a key of important places and people within it. These are very useful and something I appreciated at the time, when I was refereeing a Realms campaign. Chapter 5 looks at several important secret societies within the setting and Chapter 6 looks at gems and jewelry, a topic Greenwood had previously covered in issue #72 of Dragon (April 1983).

As I said, FRA is a mixed bag of content. It's not as well presented as, say, Dragonlance Adventures, but neither is it the mess that was Greyhawk Adventures. It's not really a stand-alone book. It's clearly written for people who are already making use of the Forgotten Realms setting and who already know its ins and outs. For those people – and I was one of them – this was a good and useful addition to my AD&D library and I regularly turned to it in play. However, it has minimal to no utility for anyone else. It's completely useless as a primer to the Realms, which is almost assuredly the reason TSR decided a couple of years later to release a new and expanded boxed version of the setting (about which I'll talk next week). Of course, that was never the book's purpose and I think it unfair to judge it on that basis. Viewed as an update to an existing setting, I thought it quite decent and, even after all these years, still have considerable affection for it, warts and all.

Retrospective: Shadowdale

Since I alluded in yesterday’s post to a shift in how TSR approached the Forgotten Realms, it seems worthwhile to examine the point at which that shift became unmistakable: Shadowdale, the 1989 AD&D module by Ed Greenwood. The first of three linked adventures intended to usher the setting into Second Edition, Shadowdale also served to advance the “Time of Troubles” metaplot through which TSR fundamentally reshaped the Realms. Lest anyone think otherwise, let state at the outset that, as an adventure, Shadowdale is deeply flawed. As a historical artifact, however, it is far more compelling, marking a decisive change in how the Forgotten Realms was framed and understood, both by TSR and its audience.

In many respects, Shadowdale is not really an adventure module at all, at least not in the sense that term had traditionally been understood. Rather than presenting a locale to be explored or a problem to be solved, Shadowdale instead serves primarily as a vehicle for presenting unfolding setting events over which the player characters have no control. Certainly, the characters are present during moments of great importance, like the fall of the gods to Toril or the assault on Shadowdale by the Zhentarim, but their role is largely one of observation. Outcomes are predetermined, major NPCs dominate the action, and the larger flow of events proceeds regardless of player choice. The module reads less like an invitation to adventure than as a dramatization of a story someone else has already decided.

This represents a sharp departure from earlier presentations of the Forgotten Realms. In the version of the Realms seen in Greenwood’s many Dragon articles, the 1987 campaign set, and its early supplements, the Realms functioned as a richly detailed backdrop rather than an unfolding narrative. History was largely static, providing a deep reservoir of implications, ruins, and grudges for Dungeon Masters to draw upon. Even powerful NPCs, such as the much-derided Elminster, were framed less as protagonists than as fixtures of the setting. They were figures with their own agendas, but not the only drivers of action within the setting. There was still plenty of scope for the player characters to leave their marks on the world.

Shadowdale signals a shift away from that understanding. With the Time of Troubles, the Realms acquired a timeline with canonical turning points and inevitable outcomes. The fall and return of the gods is more than a bit of background; it's a story to be told and told in a particular way. The module establishes that such events will happen whether or not the players intervene, as well as that future products will assume they have happened exactly as written. In doing so, it subtly but decisively shifts ownership of the setting away from DMs and players and toward the publisher.

This is not simply a matter of railroading, though Shadowdale certainly does that. The deeper issue is one of priority. The module is designed to support novels, sourcebooks, and future adventures rather than to stand on its own as a flexible piece of play material to inspire. The prominence of NPCs makes sense in this context, because they are central to TSR's narrative of the Realms, but their dominance leaves little room for the player characters to matter in any meaningful way. At best, the PCs can assist, but, more often, they will simply, as I said above, observe.

I believe it would be deeply unfair to lay all of this at Ed Greenwood's feet. In retrospect, Shadowdale reads less like an expression of his original conception of the Forgotten Realms than like a compromise between that earlier vision and TSR’s late-80s priorities. Greenwood’s affection for his NPCs and his fondness for intricate lore were always present, but earlier Realms material generally kept these elements in the background. Here, under the pressure to launch Second Edition with a bang and to synchronize the setting with an ever-expanding range of novels, those tendencies are brought to the fore. The result is a Realms that feels less like a setting to be explored and more like a story to be witnessed.

Shadowdale and its sequels offer little opportunity for meaningful choice, improvisation, or emergent play. Encounters are often structured to showcase NPC competence rather than to test player ingenuity. Deviating from the expected course of events is not merely difficult but implicitly discouraged, as doing so threatens the integrity of the metaplot the module exists to establish. This is admittedly not new territory. TSR had been down this path already with Dragonlance, but here it feels even more jarring, at least to me, perhaps because Krynn only ever existed as a vehicle for storytelling whereas the Forgotten Realms was intended as something more open.

For all these shortcomings and more, Shadowdale is nevertheless important. Its influence was profound and long-lasting. It set the template for how the Forgotten Realms would be handled throughout much of the Second Edition era. For players and DMs who enjoyed that approach, the module represented an exciting moment of transformation. For others, especially those of us who valued the older conception of the Realms as a flexible sandbox, it marks the beginning of an estrangement that would only deepen in the years to come.

Seen in retrospect, Shadowdale is, therefore, best understood as a turning point rather than as a mediocre adventure. It is the moment when the Forgotten Realms decisively stopped being merely a place where adventures happened and became, instead, a stage for stories to be told. Whether that change constitutes progress or decline is ultimately a matter of taste. What is beyond dispute is that, after Shadowdale, the Realms would never quite be the same again.

The Articles of Dragon: "Into the Forgotten Realms"

I may be mistaken in this, but I don't believe I've ever featured an adventure in any of my previous entries in The Articles of Dragon series. If I am correct, then that's unfortunate in a certain respect, as Ed Greenwood's "Into the Forgotten Realms," which first appeared in issue #95 of Dragon (March 1985), isn't a very good adventure – or, more charitably, it isn't a particularly notable adventure, except in one way: it's the very first published scenario set in the Realms. That alone is why I’ve chosen to write about it today and why I still remember it more than forty years later.

Now, I know that for many fans of old school Dungeons & Dragons, the Realms are every bit as anathema as Krynn and I can't completely fault them for that opinion, though I don't share it. I'm an unrepentant booster of the Realms or at least the Realms as they were in the pages of Dragon and in the days before the Time of Troubles did irreparable damage to Greenwood's original vision. (Yes, yes, I know TSR made lots of changes to the setting from the very beginning, but there's still a clear dividing line between the Realms before 1989 and after.)

I'd been reading about the Forgotten Realms through Greenwood's many articles since "Pages from the Mages" appeared in the very first issue of Dragon I ever owned. I enjoyed them for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest was their feigned depth. Greenwood sprinkled all his articles with the names of rulers and battles, references to gods and monsters, and allusions to historical events without ever explaining them in depth. He gave the impression that his setting was both broad and deep, filled with detail on which he could draw for his engaging articles. Greenwood's occasional references to his home campaign were similarly intriguing and I often found myself wanting to know more about it.

This is why "Into the Forgotten Realms," for all its flaws as an adventure, was so compelling to me. Here, at last. Greenwood was showing us something a bit more practical, if that's the word, something that showed off how he used all this lore he'd accumulated over the years. We got to see a little bit of the ruined School of Wizardry within haunted Myth Drannor, not to mention a glimpse of the politics of the Dalelands. It wasn't a lot, to be sure, but it was enough of a taste that I felt like I'd been given some additional insight into the Realms as an AD&D setting rather than as fodder for magazine articles. This was the Forgotten Realms as she was played, so to speak, and that was no small thing to my fifteen year-old self.

As I said, the adventure itself is nothing amazing. It's basically just a dungeon crawl through a magical ruin filled with monsters and traps – pretty basic stuff, all things considered. Furthermore, the adventure was originally written for an AD&D tournament held at GenCon XVII (August 1984) and so suffers from some of the same sins as many tournament modules, such as limited scope and a contrived starting situation. None of these bothered me at the time, since a great many of TSR's official modules had the same problems and I'd learned how to adapt them easily enough. 

In truth, the appeal of "Into the Forgotten Realms" wasn't its potential use as a scenario anyway; it was what more it told me about Ed Greenwood's setting. In that, it did not disappoint. Though the focus was on room descriptions, there were enough tidbits scattered throughout that I was satisfied. In addition to historical information about Myth Drannor, there are other fascinating details, such as the suggestion, for example, that spells named for characters associated with the Greyhawk setting (e.g. Bigby, Tenser, etc.) don't exist in the Realms. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a huge difference, to be sure, but it's enough of one that I took note of it.

That's why "Into the Forgotten Realms" made an impression on me: it gave some concrete examples of how Ed Greenwood used the setting he created and how he tried to make it feel just a little bit unique. Whether anyone else enjoyed it as much as I did, I can't say for certain. However, TSR did reprint it in the 1987 boxed set under the title "Lashan's Fall," so I can only assume I'm not alone in liking it. Regardless, by the criteria established when I relaunched this series a year and a half ago, it definitely qualifies as worthy of discussion.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells Revisited"

As a kid, I was endlessly fascinated by AD&D's Gygaxian cosmology of the planes of existence, especially the so-called Lower Planes, populated as they were by the baroque categories and hierarchies of devils, daemons, and demons (not to mention demodands and hordlings). For that reason, I adored Ed Greenwood's two-part series on the Nine Hells, which appeared in issues #75 and #76 of Dragon. They were, in my opinion, one of the best explorations of the Outer Planes in First Edition, not merely for the new information they presented, but also for the way Greenwood succeeded in making the Hells locales where characters might have adventures. Then and now, that's very important to me. Much as I enjoy imaginative "lore dumps," background information is always improved when it supports play. That's why, more four decades later, I still look back with affection on "The Nine Hells," Part I and II.

Apparently, I wasn't the only reader of Dragon who enjoyed those articles, because, a year later, in issue #91 (November 1984), we got "The Nine Hells Revisited." Ay 16 pages long, this article wasn't as long as Part II of the original series, but it was slightly longer than Part I, meaning it was a substantial addition of new material about the Nine Hells. I was overjoyed to see its appearance in the issue and even happier when I'd finally read it. Greenwood had once again written the kind of article I wanted more of and, while it's not quite as groundbreaking as his previous work, it was still quite memorable.

Whereas "The Nine Hells" had been a systematic presentation of the plane of ultimate Lawful Evil, focusing on each layer, its notable features, and denizens, "The Nine Hells Revisited" was more of a grab bag. For example, the article begins with a brief discussion of how mortal can "safely" deal with devils through magic, followed by the proper pronunciation of certain devils' names (important if you want to ensure your summoning rituals work properly). Then, Greenwood gives us six pages of "outcast" devils – greater devils whose offenses against one of Hell's archdevils resulted in their being removed from the plane's hierarchy and left to wander. These devils are quite interesting, because their independent status makes them great antagonists for AD&D characters of mid to high-level without necessarily involving all the legions of Hell in their schemes.

Next up is a discussion of the treasures of Hell and the unique metals to be found there. Though not especially interesting in their own right, these topics are eminently practical for adventures that take place in Hell or involve their inhabitants. Much more fascinating to me was Greenwood's discussion of mortal devil worshipers and agents and "The Lord Who Watches," Gargoth. Gargoth is another unique devil, but, unlike the ones described earlier, he is of immense power, being an exiled archdevil, who was once second only to Asmodeus in power. Exiled to the Prime Material Plane, he now pursues his own goals. Gargoth makes for a great high-level enemy and longtime readers of Dragon will appreciate Greenwood's subtle incorporation of elements of Alex Von Thorn's "The Politics of Hell," which appeared in issue #28 of the magazine (August 1979), reprinted in The Best of Dragon, Volume II.

(As an aside, Alex Von Thorn was the co-owner of a game store here in Toronto that Ed Greenwood would occasionally visit. I got to know Alex, too, and even gamed with him a few times.)

The article wraps up with discussions of the nature of devils, which is to say, how their society operates, traveling the River Styx, and a "note to the DM." The latter is interesting, because Greenwood makes it very clear that devils are very powerful beings and the Dungeon Master should take pains not to overuse them or otherwise diminish them in the minds of players. Even the weakest named devils are dangerous foes and should offer a challenge. The DM needs to keep this in mind when employing them in adventures. This is a fair point, I think, but I wonder what occasioned its inclusion in the article.

 

"The Nine Hells Revisited" was, as I said, nowhere near as revelatory to me as its two predecessor articles. Nevertheless, I found it both enjoyable and information, not to mention practical. This wasn't just background information without any utility in play. Instead, it provided the Dungeon Master with a collection of details and foes he could use to inject a little bit of the infernal into his ongoing campaign. Being a devotee of the Outer Planes in my AD&D campaign at the time, I liked this one a lot. Even now, I think it's one of the more memorable Dragon articles of its era.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells (Part II)"

I was a huge fan of Part I of Ed Greenwood’s “The Nine Hells,” so it was almost inevitable that I’d be just as taken with Part II. Published in issue #76 of Dragon (August 1983), the second half of this magisterial tour of the planes of ultimate Lawful Evil is every bit the equal of the first, perhaps better. It’s longer, for one thing, and delves into the “deepest” layers of the Hells, including Nessus, the domain of Asmodeus. I probably spent even more hours poring over this article than its predecessor – and that’s saying something.

Part II explores the "bottom" four planes of Hell – Malbolge, Maladomini, Caina, and Nessus – ruled by the three most powerful archdevils: Baalzebul, Mephistopheles, and Asmodeus. As the Monster Manual tells us, Baalzebul commands both the sixth and seventh layers, a rare distinction that underscores his power. He rules the seventh directly, while the sixth is governed by his viceroy, Moloch, an archdevil in name, but one who holds power only at Baalzebul's pleasure. I've always wondered why Gary Gygax granted Baalzebul two layers when every other archdevil rules just one. Greenwood’s article doesn’t address this, though I suspect later AD&D material (perhaps Planescape?) might.

Each of the four planes receives a detailed write-up, highlighting notable locations like the capital cities of their ruling archdevils. This is a big part of what made this article and its predecessor so compelling. Greenwood gave each plane a rough geography, filled with distinct locales that made them feel like actual places where adventures could happen. Before these articles, the planes all seemed like vague, featureless expanses that were hard to visualize, let alone use in play. Now, there were cities, fortresses, lakes, places a referee could actually work with. That might seem like a small thing, but it’s not. Believe me.

Each plane also got write-ups for the unique devils who dwelled there, often in service to its archdevil. These included the so-called "dukes of hell," but also the "princesses of hell," the consorts of the archdevils. Even more than the dukes, this was a new concept in AD&D conception of devils, though not an unreasonable one, given their depiction as a court of ever-scheming infernal aristocrats. It also opened up new possibilities for gaming, as the dukes, princesses, and archdevils all had their own agendas, each looking to gain advantage over the others. Characters could easily become enmeshed in such gambits, whether willingly or not.

What truly set Part II apart, however, was its six-page appendix detailing how the Nine Hells distort spells, magic items, and even class abilities. Greenwood didn’t invent this approach, but he uses it to great effect, emphasizing how alien and hostile the Hells are compared to the Prime Material. This matters, especially for high-level play, where such distinctions are needed to pose real challenges. I suspect this is why Gygax became so invested in planar adventures later in his TSR career: the planes offered a new frontier to test powerful characters and keep long-running campaigns exciting.

Taken together, these two articles transformed the Nine Hells from vague backdrops into vivid, dangerous realms ripe for adventure. Greenwood’s work gave referees the tools to turn them into meaningful, playable settings, not just abstract concepts. For high-level campaigns looking for their next stage, the Nine Hells suddenly made a lot more sense. I adored these articles in my youth and still think highly of them today. They're also reminders of just how good Dragon was in the early to mid-1980s. What a time to be a subscriber!

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Nine Hells (Part I)"

(The original post appeared here.)

And so we come, once again, to an excellent article written by Ed Greenwood – "The Nine Hells, Part I," which appeared in issue #75 (July 1983) of Dragon. In retrospect, it's easy to see why Greenwood would enjoy such success; he was not only prolific but also imaginative. Plus, his articles were memorable. Even now, nearly three decades later, I clearly remember the first time I read this issue of Dragon, filled as it was with information about the lower planes, thanks to both Gary Gygax's extensive preview of new devils from the upcoming Monster Manual II and the first part of Ed Greenwood's tour of the first five layers of AD&D's version of Hell. I was absolutely blown away by what I read, much to the chagrin of my players at the time, several of whom found themselves on unexpected visits to the domains of one or more arch-devils.

Like Roger E. Moore's "The Astral Plane," "The Nine Hells, Part I" is a work of remarkable scholarship, mining the entirety of the AD&D corpus available at the time for hints as to what the planes of Hell might be like. Also like "The Astral Plane," this article wasn't content to simply regurgitate what we already knew. Rather, it expanded on that information in clever and sometimes surprising ways, painting a picture of the Nine Hells that was both true to its gaming source material but also evocative of other works of fantasy and myth. Greenwood doesn't present his Nine Hells as canonical for anything other than his own Forgotten Realms campaign, but it wasn't long before it received Gygax's blessing, which gave it a status it enjoyed until comparatively recently, where books as recent as 2006's Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells continued to make use of ideas laid down in 1983. That's a degree of influence that few articles (or authors) can match.

In addition to giving names to each of the Nine Hells and discussing their locales and points of interest, Greenwood also devotes a fair bit of space to their inhabitants, in particular unique devils. Prior to this issue of Dragon, the arch-devils were the only unique devils described in AD&D. Now, both Gygax and Greenwood provided a coterie of such personalities, which, as a referee, I found a terrific boon. Unique devils gave me the opportunity to pit the PCs against powerful devils that weren't rulers of entire planes. This not only gave the PCs a fighting chance to defeat them but, in the event that the PCs did defeat them, the multiverse wouldn't resound with their victory the way it might if they bested Dispater or Geryon. Greenwood also found a way to work Astaroth from "The Politics of Hell" (from issue #28) into his depiction of the Nine Hells, which I know endeared him to many older gamers of my acquaintance who adored Alex von Thorn's article from way back when.

"The Nine Hells, Part I" (and its sequel, which I may well wind up discussing next time) are in a rare class of Dragon article: ones I actually used. Ever since I started playing AD&D, I desperately wanted to run adventures in the Outer Planes, but I rarely did, in large part because the game gave so little information on them. That's why articles like this and "The Astral Plane" were so useful and inspiring to me. And, unlike "The Astral Plane," Greenwood's Nine Hells articles were remarkably concrete, describing people and places one could encounter in addition to providing rules for how magic worked differently in this plane of ultimate Lawful Evil. I liked that a lot; I still do.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Seven Swords"

Like his "Pages from the Mages," Ed Greenwood's "Seven Swords" from issue #74 of Dragon (June 1983) is an article I remember reading for the first time very vividly. Not only was I keen for more information about Greenwood's then-mysterious Forgotten Realms setting, but I had come recognize the man as one of the more clever and imaginative writers to appear in Dragon's pages. A big part of Greenwood's appeal is the way that he could make something as seemingly banal as sword +1 and make it interesting – and he did it without having to introduce a host of new powers or abilities into the game.

What "Seven Swords" does is present seven different magical weapons, none of which is more potent than a sword +3. Each of these swords gets an extensive description of both its physical and magical properties. Amusingly, it's often the physical description that really sets these swords apart from the pack. Whether it's the huge cabochon-cut black sapphire in the grip of Adjatha, the six matched bloodstones set in the bronze blade of Ilbratha, or the rearing serpents who make the guard of Shazzellim, Greenwood makes each of these weapons unique in appearance as well as abilities. This is a small detail that many referees overlook, concentrating instead on game mechanical effects. Greenwood doesn't skimp on these either, but they're only one facet of what makes the titular swords special.

Each weapon also includes a "lore" section, detailing the history of the blade, from its forging to the present day. It's this section that I really ate up as a younger man. Re-reading them in preparation for this post, I can completely understand why that was the case. The lore Greenwood presents isn't extensive – no more than four or five short paragraphs in most cases – but it's evocative. It's suggestive of adventures and, better still, it gives even a lowly sword +1 an air of antiquity and individuality that makes it a weapon worth holding on to even when better weapons come along. That was probably the biggest lesson "Seven Swords" taught me: game mechanics aren't always what make a magic item special. It's a lesson I've kept with me all these years and one I'd like to see adopted more broadly.

Retrospective: Planescape Campaign Setting

When I first acquired the AD&D Players Handbook – this was sometime in early 1980 – one of my favorite sections was Apprendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence. Taking up only a couple of pages, this appendix was the first time I'd ever encountered Gary Gygax's bizarre, mysterious, and wonderfully baroque ideas about the multiverse of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. What made Gygax's vision so weird compelling was its obsessive orderliness, which didn't simply tie the Outer Planes to each of the game's nine alignments, but to every conceivable shade in between. That's why, for example, the Seven Heavens are described as being "of absolute lawful good," while the planes of Elysium are "of neutral good lawfuls." 

Objectively, this is bonkers stuff, but I adored it and spent a lot of time thinking about the Outer (and other) Planes, aided no doubt by my fascination with the demons and devils of the Monster Manual. Despite Gygax's precise distinctions between the alignments of the Planes, AD&D didn't have a lot to say about them for a long time, aside from the occasional article in Dragon, like the ones about the Astral Plane (by Roger E. Moore) and the Nine Hells (by Ed Greenwood). And, of course, we later got Gygax's own developed thoughts about the Inner Planes, which were every bit as eccentric and persnickety as what he wrote in Appendix IV of the PHB all those years ago.

What I always wanted was a better sense of the Planes as a place and, more than that, as an adventuring locale. What sorts of adventures could AD&D characters have among the Planes? What made the Outer Planes different from the Prime Material Plane and how would this impact the kinds of adventures to be had there? The better Dragon articles, like those of Greenwood, did this well, or at least better than did Gygax, whose own ideas, while fascinating, remained largely in the realm of the theoretical. I wanted something more "down to earth," if you'll forgive the phrase. Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes was a good first step in that direction, but I wanted more.

As it turned out, I'd have to wait until 1994 to get that, in the form of the Planescape Campaign Setting – and it was not at all what I had expected. As imagined by David "Zeb" Cook and brought to visual life by Tony DiTerlizzi, the Outer Planes were indeed weird, though quite different from how they'd been previously portrayed. Instead of being presented as primarily the dwelling places of gods and demons, the Planes were instead a battleground between various factions of "philosophers with clubs," each of which hopes to remake reality according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. These factions, each associated (in some cases loosely) with an alignment or Outer Plane, were the driving force behind Cook's vision for Planescape. More than that, they provided an easy buy-in for player characters looking to involve themselves in the cosmic struggles of the setting.

"The setting." That's important. One of the clever things Cook did with Planescape was that he made the Planes a setting. They weren't just a place you could visit for a brief time; they were a place you could stay. Further, they were a place where even novice characters could stay, not merely high-level ones with access to potent magic. Further still, they were a place with its own native inhabitants and players could easily take up the role of one of them. Planescape gave AD&D's Planes a life of their own, divorced from the Prime Material Plane where most campaigns were set. Planescape made it possible to play entire campaigns where characters never once set foot on the World of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, or any other "normal" campaign world. 

This was a bold approach and not at all what I or, I imagine, most AD&D players at the time were expecting. Not everyone warmed to Planescape's vision of the Planes. Indeed, I recall quite a few old hands who scoffed at it as taking too many cues from White Wolf's World of Darkness RPGs, which were very popular at the time. I can certainly appreciate the shock and surprise they probably felt upon reading Planescape and seeing DiTerlizzi's Dr Seuss-like depictions of the denizens of the Planes. This was not Gygax's Planes; it wasn't even Grubb's. It was something quite unique, filled with the strange, the odd, and the occasionally silly, and suffused with a punkish vibe that came through most strongly in its use of Planar Cant drawn from the criminal slang of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Many people, even fans of the setting, loathed the Cant, but there's no denying that it helped give Planescape a distinct flavor of its own.

Me, I enjoyed Planescape. It was not at all what I expected, but I enjoyed it for what it was: a strange, whimsical, wondrous take on world-hopping fantasy, with "worlds" in this case being other Planes of Existence, each with its own individual rules and style. And then there's Sigil, the City of Doors, located at the very center of the multiverse – if a series of infinite planes can truly be said to have a center. Home to the various planar factions and serving as a crossroads of the Planes, Sigil could serve as the basis for an entire campaign in itself, but it was also the perfect "home base" for planar characters whose adventures took them across the realms of the Great Wheel and beyond. Like Planescape itself, I really enjoyed Sigil and had a lot of fun with it.

I have lots of thoughts I could share about Planescape, both positive and negative, but my overall feeling for it is one of affection. I first made use of the setting as an adjunct to an ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign I ran in the mid-1990s. Later, I ran a "native" campaign among the Planes in the early days of Third Edition. Both were very well received by my players. Indeed, we still occasionally talk about some of the adventures they had in the setting. That's my usual measure of whether a gaming product succeeds – did I have fun with it? – and by that standard, Planescape is one of the greats.  

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Pages from the Mages"

Ed Greenwood catches a lot of grief among a certain segment of the old school community, usually for things for which he was not himself responsible. Perhaps these old schoolers associate his Forgotten Realms campaign setting with 2e and 2e with the regime that ousted Gygax or ... something. It's always been rather unclear to me what crimes against gaming Greenwood was supposed to have committed, especially when my earliest memories of his name are indelibly connected to articles like "Pages from the Mages," which appeared in issue #62 (June 1982).

The article presents four "long-lost magical manuals" – the tomes of powerful and famous magic-users, each of which is unique in some way. All four books are given a name, a description, and a history in addition to a list of their contents. Every one of these entries made these librams much more interesting than just a simple catalog of, say, the spells they contained or the magical effect they conferred upon their reader. Thus, we learn that the eponymous author of Mhzentul's Runes was slain at the Battle of the River Rising and that Nchaser's Eiyromancia contains not one but two heretofore unknown spells.

Greenwood's articles always impressed me with their feigned depth. That is, they seemed to be part of a rich and complex setting, whose every little nook and cranny had been detailed beforehand so that he could just pluck them from his mind and present them whenever required to do so. As I learned later, this is a parlor trick, one that I learned to perform in time, too, but it doesn't make me any less fond of "Pages from the Mages" or its later sequels. In the span of comparatively little space, Greenwood provided readers with not only some new magical items to insert into their own games but models for how to make almost any magic item a locus of information about a campaign setting and, by extension, an inspiration for adventure.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: Modern Monsters

When I was a kid, the idea of mixing magic and technology was (largely) blasphemous. For some reason, it offended my youthful sensibilities, which insisted that fantasy and science fiction were two separate genres of literature, the division between which was impermeable. It took my purchase of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (and, later, Blackmoor) to soften my stance on this question, but, even then, I was still instinctively opposed to the notion, despite ample evidence that the older generation of gamers, to whom I looked up, had no such qualms about it.

Consequently, I was equally baffled by both the sections of the Dungeon Masters Guide that included guidelines for converting Gamma World and Boot Hill characters to AD&D (and vice versa) and by articles like "Modern Monsters" in issue #57 (January 1982) of Dragon. I can't be certain, but I think this was the first article I ever read written by Ed Greenwood and I didn't think much of it at the time. Stats for cars and bazookas? Advice and guidelines regarding the functioning of magic in modern, technological worlds? Why? What was the point?

Now, there was no question that Greenwood's article was well presented and made ready use of ideas and suggestions from earlier articles (like James Ward's "Monty and the German High Command," for example). Heck, the article even had footnotes, citing not just previous Dragon material but a host of classic fantasy and SF literature where magic and technology contended. But none of that moved me and I found myself unable -- or unwilling -- to shake off the staid notion that six-guns and sorcery should never appear side by side. It's only been in recent years that I've abandoned my adolescent scruples regarding genre mixing and happily included robots and laser pistols in my fantasy without regret. Live and learn!

(The original version of this post and its comments can be found here.)

A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Beholders

The creation of Terry Kuntz, brother of Rob Kuntz, the beholder first appeared in Supplement I to OD&D, Greyhawk in 1975. Since then, the eye tyrant (as it is sometimes known) has become a very strong contender for title of Most Iconic Monster of Dungeons & Dragons. It's also one of my favorite monsters in the game. The first illustration of a beholder appeared on the cover to Greyhawk and was drawn by Greg Bell. As you'll see from the artwork that follows, Bell's version of the beholder is quite distinctive, having a smooth body, a sleepy-looking central eye, and a comparatively small mouth.

Tom Wham, in the AD&D Monster Manual (1977), takes a slightly different tack. His beholder looks to be armor plated. Its central eye is large and bulbous, while its mouth is huge. This is the first version of the monster I ever saw, so it's my default image of it.

A couple of years later, in 1979, The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album was published by Troubador Press. The book contained this image of the beholder by Greg Irons. In general, I'd say it looks closer to Wham's illustration than Bell's.  

The next year, 1980, was when the first official AD&D miniatures appeared. Here's a beholder as painted by Ray Rubin, from the box art of the "Dwellers Below" set. Its appearance is quite close to that of Wham's illustration.

The actual beholder miniature from the set looks like this:

Issue #76 of Dragon (August 1983) includes the article, "The Ecology of the Beholder" by Ed Greenwood and Roger E. Moore. Accompanying it is this illustration of a beholder by Roger Raupp. Take note of its eye stalks, which looks a bit like the legs of a crab or spider.

A month later, in September 1983, the second episode of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series featured a beholder. Its eye stalks are snaky or wormy in appearance, while its mouth has the largest teeth of any version yet.

Citadel acquired the AD&D miniatures license in 1985 and produced a beholder figure. I don't know the precise year in which it was released. Though it's somewhat hard to tell from this image, the miniature looks pretty close to the Monster Manual depiction, right down to the plated body.

Also released in 1985 were the Dungeons & Dragons Master Rules, which included this picture of a beholder, as imagined by Jeff Easley. This illustration is interesting for its half-lidded appearance, something that's not really present in previous versions.

Toward the end of the 1e period, TSR released Waterdeep and the North (1987) for use with the Forgotten Realms setting. Its cover includes a beholder by Keith Parkinson. His version not only includes segmented eyestalks like Roger Raupp's but also upper and lower eye lids.

The cover to the Monstrous Compendium (1989) features a beholder by Jeff Easley. The armor plates are not present. Instead, the beholder appears to be very fleshy in appearance.

Meanwhile, the MC's interior gives us this illustration by Jim Holloway. The armor plates are back, as are the broad proportions of Wham's Monster Manual illustration (though the eye stalks look unique).

The Monstrous Manual (1993) gives us this very odd illustration by Tony DiTerlizzi, which may have the largest central eye-to-body proportions of any version of the beholder. 

I have intentionally excluded all the artwork of beholders found in the Spelljammer boxed sets and modules, both because there's so much of it and because it's intentionally varied in keeping with its idiosyncratic interpretation of beholders. Consequently, I'm not certain the extent to which they're at all representative of depictions of these monsters during the TSR era of D&D. On the other hand, it's quite possible these depictions were influential on those that followed in the '90s and into the 21st century. If anyone has any thoughts on this particular point, I'd be interested in hearing them.

As usual, I've no doubt left out a lot of illustrations, focusing primarily on those I either remembered clearly from my youth or those appearing in products to which I have ready access. If you feel like there are notable ones I've forgotten, I'd be interested in learning about those, too. 

Retrospective: The Book of Wondrous Inventions

I have a complicated relationship with humor in roleplaying games. I unreservedly celebrate games like Paranoia and Toon that are explicitly humorous in tone and content, having had a lot of fun with them in the past. Likewise, I know very well that even the most "serious" RPG campaigns are likely to include moments of unexpected levity and goofiness and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, even Shakespeare included moments of comic relief in his most harrowing tragedies.

At the same time, I wince at most puns and have a particular dislike of forced attempts humor in roleplaying games. Over the years, I've seen enough well-meaning but ultimately disastrous attempts to "lighten the mood" that my natural inclination is to be suspicious of humor in RPGs. That's not to say I hate it unreservedly, only that I recognize how easy it is for this sort of thing to go badly wrong.

With all that in mind, I hope I can be forgiven for having very mixed feelings about The Book of Wondrous Inventions. Compiled by Bruce Heard from nearly fifty contributions by a wide variety of authors (more on that in a bit) and published in 1987, The Book of Wondrous Inventions is clearly intended to be a companion volume to The Book of Marvelous Magic, right down to its title. But whereas the content of The Book of Marvelous Magic was largely serious in tone – or at least no less serious than the standard lists of (A)D&D magic items – this new book was intentionally written with humor in mind. In his introduction, Bruce Heard writes the following:

These inventions should be viewed with humor. They provide fun and an uncommon change of pace whenever they appear in the game.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, especially if one is sparing in their use within a given campaign. Almost since its inception, D&D has included its fair share of magic items that could well be viewed as silly. The apparatus of Kwalish, anyone? The difference here, I think, is that previous goofy magic items were spice, those included here are the main course – or, at least, they give the impression of being so, because there are so many of them under a single cover. That's not really their fault, but I can't deny that it bugged me a bit in the past and still bugs me a bit even today.

The magic items detailed in this book are all unique and highly idiosyncratic, the products of singular individuals intent on creating something truly unusual. There's Aldryk's Fire Quencher (a magical water sprinkler), Brandon's Bard-in-a-Box (a portable music system), Kruze's Magnificent Missile (self-explanatory), Volospin's Dragonfly of Doom (a magical attack helicopter for hunting dragons), and so on. As you can see, nearly all of the items described reproduce the effects of a post-medieval – and likely modern-day or futuristic – technological device within the idiom of vanilla fantasy. There's not much cleverness on display here. Instead, the entries are all "What would a magical vacuum cleaner be like?" or "Wouldn't a magical pinball machine be funny?" 

The combination of the fundamentally technological framing of these items and their banality results in a very sub-par book, even given Heard's stated intention that they "provide fun" and a "change of pace." It's particularly baffling, because many of the entries are written by talented and imaginative people, like Ed Greenwood, Jeff Grubb, and even Sandy Petersen. I can only assume that they were all specifically instructed to come up with stuff that would feel appropriate in Wile E. Coyote's Acme Catalog – or perhaps from the minds of Dragonlance's tinker gnomes. The end result is not, in my opinion, either useful as a source of ideas for an ongoing D&D campaign or even of mirth. It's dull, predictable, and, above all, forced, which is a great shame, because I admire many of the book's contributors.

Sadly, the book is done no favors by its accompanying illustrations. Much as I adore the work of Jim Holloway, one of the few artists who really understood the humor inherent in typical RPG situations, his artwork here is simply so goofy that it makes it impossible to imagine using any of its inventions with a straight face. Maybe that's the point. Maybe you're not supposed to be able to do so. Maybe I'm just a killjoy lacking in a funny bone. Ultimately, that's not for me to judge. I can only say that, when I bought this back in 1987, I instantly regretted and have never used it, except as a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to inject "humor" into a campaign rather than allowing it to arise organically through play. 

Oh, the pain ... the pain!

Mimic Mysteries

 Among the many monsters whose origins can definitively be linked to Dungeons & Dragons is the shapeshifting mimic, which first appeared in the AD&D Monster Manual (1977). Here's Dave Sutherland's illustration of the creature:

I'm both a fan of mimics in general and of this illustration in particular, because it accurately depicts the mimic punching the nearby adventure. The text of the Monster Manual states plainly that the mimic "lashes out with a pseudopod, delivering 3–12 points of damage per hit." There's no mention, let alone implication, that the mimic can bite its prey. 

The illustration accompanying Ed Greenwood's "The Ecology of the Mimic" in issue #75 of Dragon (July 1983) is similarly accurate to the MM description. Indeed, it also includes another detail from the Monster Manual description that is often forgotten: the glue a mimic's skin secretes and that holds its victim fast, thereby making them an easier target to pummel with its pseudopod.

Unless I have missed another example – and please tell me in the comments if I have – the above illustration (by Roger Raupp) is only the second time this iconic D&D monster had been portrayed in artwork. What strikes me about Raupp's illustration (no pun intended) is that it's completely in keeping with the text of the Monster Manual. If anything, it's even truer to the text than Sutherland's original, since it also highlights the creature's sticky qualities.

The next time we get a mimic illustration – again, unless I am mistaken – is volume 2 of the AD&D Second Edition Monstrous Compendium (1989).

This illustration, by Daniel Horne, interests me for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, this is the first time – if I'm mistaken, you know the drill – a mimic is depicted as having a tooth-filled mouth, though it's notable that the mouth here is not associated with the hinged top of the chest it's mimicking, as is commonplace nowadays. Equally notable are the secondary mouth and clawed finger and foot that also extrude from the monster's body, though I'm not certain what purpose they serve. The 2e written description of the mimic makes no mention of its ability to bite an opponent. Instead, there's still a reference to "lash[ing] out with a pseudopod."

For the sake of completeness, here's the illustration of the mimic found in 1993's Monstrous Manual (by an unknown artist, or at least one I cannot identify easily):

This one looks very similar to and possibly inspired by the one in the 1989 Monstrous Compendium, although it possesses only a single extrusion beyond the tooth-filled mouth. The accompanying text is, so far as I can tell, identical to that of the Monstrous Compendium of a few years previous, right down to its attacking with a pseudopod. 

What fascinates me is how limited our collective imagination of mimics has become over the years. Gary Gygax's original description of them in 1977 notes that "they are able to perfectly mimic stone or wood" and "pose as stonework, door, chests, or any other substance or item they can imitate." Greenwood's ecology article picks up on this, offering an example of a mimic that had assumed the form of a statue in a market square and then preyed on unsuspecting derelicts on dark nights. By contrast, the Monstrous Compendium description, while retaining the original's ability to mimic stone or wood, states only that "they usually appear in the form of treasure chests."

I won't go so far as to lay the blame for the popular conception of mimics as monstrous chests with big teeth solely on the Monstrous Compendium, though I'm sure it played a role. Rather, I think the fault lies with the simple fact every illustration of the monster from the TSR era of Dungeons & Dragons depicts it as a chest and that's proved a difficult image to shake – so difficult that that's what mimics are for most players of the game. They simply cannot imagine them any other way. Needless to say, I think that's a shame, but what can you do?