Why isn't the capricorn a monster in more games? Or any at all really? I mean, I've seen almost every sort of truly obscure mythological beast repurposed as battle fodder or exotic RP encounters, but this perfectly fresh combi-animal from the well known zodiac imagery just gets forgotten. What's the deal?

Consider this thread a meditation on how we curate our collective fantasy bestiary.

Probably because it's just a symbol, with no stories at all behind it. I always wondered why Capricorn (whose name just means "goat horn") has a fish tail; Wikipedia and its sources say this has to do with the a symbol related to attributes of the Sumerian god Enki. But that could be nonsense.

Most of the monsters in rpgs that aren't outright made up do have at least one narrative myth, story, or fairy tale in which they appear. For example there "really was" a tarrasque--look it up. There are a few without a really strong traditional story behind them, such as the griffin. (But read The Griffin and the Minor Canon, it's a delightful little book.) I suspect the Griffin started as an Assyrian supernatural being whose depiction in sculptural reliefs captured the imagination of the Greeks (probably fired by greed since griffons are supposed to guard treasure, and the Assyrians probably had a lot more than the Hellenes). The hippogriff I think was an outright invention by Ariosto.

EDIT: Eh, I'll partly retract the "story" part. Going through a few other beasties such as the basilisk and cockatrice, I also don't see a singular story. But the fact is whatever their origin they had already gathered mythic characteristics--that is Pliny or whoever had already included them in their "monster manuals" with descriptions that made them out to be real creatures with definite characteristics. Whereas the "Capricorn" is just a picture. That does raise the question why the ancients never made up a bestiary entry for it.

Closest I can find is some discussion of the hippocampus at Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus_(mythology)

My family has an enamel painting showing a bunch of similar sea-horses, sea-lions, etc., as well as tritons with bodies of fishes and even one or two guys that might be described as lobster-centaurs--human torso grafted onto lobster neck.

Because it is a symbol of the Capriconian Order that secretly rules the world and we are trying to keep a low profile. Unlike those self-promoting blowhards called the Free Masons.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876154Why isn't the capricorn a monster in more games? Or any at all really?

Possibly because it lacks any stories behind it. It is just kinda... there.

Pretty much everything else in the MM that isnt original creations pops up at least once in mythology or folk-lore. Capricorn does not.

Cocatrice and Basilisk are from medieval  tales about those beasts.

Quote from: Omega;876177Possibly because it lacks any stories behind it. It is just kinda... there.

Pretty much everything else in the MM that isnt original creations pops up at least once in mythology or folk-lore. Capricorn does not.

Cocatrice and Basilisk are from medieval  tales about those beasts.

How many modern gamers have actually encountered those original basilisk and cocatrice tales, though? They aren't the most complicated, thrilling, or culturally rich stories in any case, and more importantly those two monsters constantly get shallowly reinterpreted all across tabletop and video games. Really they just amount to a name and a power (poison/petrification) in the majority of cases.

Google them in relation to gaming and behold the sheer variety of takes that can be summarized in a single sentence.

In a creative landscape that seems to crave a constant influx of novel beasts, the capricorn being overlooked seems really strange. Its got a clear thematic connection to water magic and and even space and stars if you want it to. It could make a great fantasy mount for watery adventures, sort of like an aqua-unicorn.

So what gives?

If you want more equal representation for Earth mythological creatures, you could play more Dominions. There are capricorns in Dominions, though you'll want to play an aquatic nation that includes them. The thing about capricorns is they tend to stay underwater.

The Fantasy Trip listed Mer Men as a race, and suggested all sorts of things could be going on underwater. However that mainly just ended up becoming fodder for jokes about trying to use enchanted Fresh Air masks to discover underwater worlds, which no one ever actually even started to try.

Once one starts trying to include significant content that's about a whole other environment, not only is it a lot of work to develop the whole thing, but it risks players either going there for curiosity but then getting bored with it and not wanting to go back, or logistical problems of getting anyone to cross the boundary, survive there, and/or the thing about the rest of the world going on on the other side not generally being involved due to the whole most people not being amphibious issue.

Personally I'd rather usually leave most of the undersea underwater and not send air breathers down there, in most (well, all, so far) of my medieval RPGs.

Dominions does a pretty good job of making it interesting and divided yet relevant, though it's a strategy/conquest with RPG elements, not a pen & paper RPG.

Dude if you want capricorns/sea-goats in your game, nobody's going to stop you. There are a bunch of mythological hybrids (look up the term on wikipedia) and I bet there are a few that aren't yet covered by the MM or whatever RPG bestiaries.

I don't think anyone is actively discriminating against capricorns; it's just that without some story or mythic description they haven't really been on anyone's radar--it's just a picture. But you can be a pioneer! Personally I'm more excited by the lobster-centaurs, and/or I'd also use the concept for a scorpion-man. The term exists I believe in the epic of Gilgamesh but I don't know how it's commonly envisioned. (Searches.) Oh, pretty good pictures online, both generic and specifically the Dwayne Johnson version.

About sea beasts, yes, there are probably good reasons they don't get a whole lot of attention unless they're amphibious or the sort to threaten surface vessels. I see nothing wrong with undersea adventures, though.

Quote from: Arminius;876201I'd also use the concept for a scorpion-man. The term exists I believe in the epic of Gilgamesh but I don't know how it's commonly envisioned. (Searches.) Oh, pretty good pictures online, both generic and specifically the Dwayne Johnson version.

Scorpion men are pretty wicked. (In a good way.) Runequest/Glorantha has had them for decades. One of the first Runequest adventures I created was a valley with a tribe of scorpion men led by their giant scorpion woman Queen.  This site shows several of the scorpion man miniatures commercially available.

Quote from: Arminius;876201Dude if you want capricorns/sea-goats in your game, nobody's going to stop you. There are a bunch of mythological hybrids (look up the term on wikipedia) and I bet there are a few that aren't yet covered by the MM or whatever RPG bestiaries.

You misunderstand, I'm not invested in the capricorn. I just find it odd how our collective creativity (as manifested in our mass market fantasy) works sometimes. I'm merely looking for insights. Skarg gave me an interesting one for instance.

Quote from: Arminius;876201I don't think anyone is actively discriminating against capricorns; it's just that without some story or mythic description they haven't really been on anyone's radar--it's just a picture.

I'd argue the capricorn is more on the average person's radar than basilisks, judging by the enduring popularity of the zodiac and its imagery in jewelry, greeting cards, tattoos, t-shirts, etc.

Quote from: Bren;876203Scorpion men are pretty wicked. (In a good way.) Runequest/Glorantha has had them for decades. One of the first Runequest adventures I created was a valley with a tribe of scorpion men led by their giant scorpion woman Queen.  This site shows several of the scorpion man miniatures commercially available.

That site had me thinking I'd broken my laptop screen for a second. Nice minis though.

And yeah, p. 85 of RQII. Obviously I've forgotten a lot of RQ particularly in re: Glorantha. It's great to find these as they fit perfectly with any S&S setting.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876205I'd argue the capricorn is more on the average person's radar than basilisks, judging by the enduring popularity of the zodiac and its imagery in jewelry, greeting cards, tattoos, t-shirts, etc.

We need to change that. #FightBasiliskErasure

Psychologically and mythically, like I said, the capricorn is just a picture. Now you could say the same for any popular shallow sense of mythical creatures. I'd already heard of basilisks before I played D&D because of an article in a children's magazine in the early '70s, but I'm sure most people wouldn't know what they are. Thing is, though, if you're an RPG pioneer and you look for mythologies to raid, you're going to find descriptions of basilisks when you visit the library. For "the" Capricorn, there's no there there. Going back as far as the Carian kingdom apparently, you can find pictures of not-Aphrodite with sea-goats, (see link above) but not only didn't the modern picture of Capricorn inspire Gygax or whoever to create a MM entry, it doesn't look like anybody was particularly interested in fleshing out the concept at any time through the millennia. Whereas they were inspired by griffins, scorpion-men, tarrasques, (the) chimera(s), dragons, etc. So really your question goes back way before RPGs as we know them were invented.

Why do some critters get a story or a bestiary entry? Probably in many cases because people really believed they existed. How did that come about? I think sometimes due to a game of telephone about real creatures, sometimes due to dim memories of totemic animals substituting for actual tribes.

Example of the second mechanism--bear in mind this is my own crackpot theory--the Romans seem to have imported the dragon banner from China sometime in the late imperial period. The barbarian peoples of Europe developed myths about dragons that--to me--seem like memories of encounters with Rome. I.e., miserly fuckers who hoard gold and periodically go out and set fire to villages. (I'm thinking especially of Valentinian I, who from the Germans' perspective was probably worse than Sherman to the people of Atlanta. Or maybe the Merovingian/Carolingian Franks who adopted Roman imperial styles and raised hell against the Saxons in Germany in their efforts to convert them to Christianity.)

And finally, maybe in a few cases, you just have a picture that looks cool and that convinces folks to make up a story about it. But usually it doesn't go in that direction--again, crackpot theory time--unless the people looking at the picture are convinced it's a real thing. Again, the griffin adorning the temples, palaces, and treasuries of Mesopotamian, Iranian, and Levantine kingdoms may have filtered back to the Greeks as a real treasure-guarding beast.*

So in short unless & until there's a substantial concept beyond just a picture, something that looks cool doesn't make it into a bestiary, whether that be a medieval scroll or a modern monster manual.

* Another theory about griffIns is that Scythian gold miners in the Gobi desert also found ceratopsian dinosaur skulls, and somewhere along the way back to Greece, this turned into the idea of an eagle-beaked monster that guards the gold. The author of this theory has academic credentials but I don't know how well-accepted it is; in any case, it makes a good tale and in any case it would be an example of a creature that people really thought existed.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876196How many modern gamers have actually encountered those original basilisk and cocatrice tales, though?

In a creative landscape that seems to crave a constant influx of novel beasts, the capricorn being overlooked seems really strange.

So what gives?

Cockatrices I heard of before D&D from farmers. Why? I have absolutely no clue. The version I knew was the stone gaze type. I've never heard of the stone touch type outside of D&D. Same for the Basilisk. And as of a year or two ago. My Little Pony of all things  has featured the classic stone gaze cockatrice among other mythicals. They pop up in YA fiction now and then too.

Its the complete cypher nature of the Capricorn that is the problem. Theres just nothing there. Its a weird animal with no mythical background and a niche allready covered by the hippocampus. In fact. Just add horns to the hippocampus and go. And the poor hippocampus doesnt even have a 5e entry yet. Id lay good odds that the Capricorn has been statted out in some gaming magazine for D&D at some point. It has been statted out online at least twice.

Two things hold back poor Capricorn. 1: the aformentioned lack of history. 2: its a water creature and those tend to get less entries. But like alot of monsters not yet statted. and there are ALOT! You can make up your own.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;876205I'd argue the capricorn is more on the average person's radar than basilisks, judging by the enduring popularity of the zodiac and its imagery in jewelry, greeting cards, tattoos, t-shirts, etc.

I've always read that the zodiac "Capricorn" is a goat.  Period.  Plain old goat.  Not a mer-goat.  So don't assume that widespread familiarity with zodiac signs represents widespread familiarity with any particular mythological creature.

Yeah, I always thought it was just a plain old goat, like Taurus was a bull or cancer was a crab, or Pisces was a fish.

Some zodiac depictions do use a normal goat.