Revisiting Iconic Monsters: Kobolds
Posted: March 12, 2011 Filed under: monsters 1 CommentIn his recent post, “Creating Another Bandwagon,” James of Grognardia has challenged us to compare our earlier impressions of classic D&D monsters before we saw the complete illustrations or descriptions with the ‘official’ images or descriptions we may have seen later. James talked about how his conception of what an ‘orc’ looked like was very different from what he eventually saw in the AD&D Monster Manual. I wanted to jump on that bandwagon by advancing the claim that I had a similar experience with kobolds.
The first D&D book I owned was the ‘Holmes’ edition of basic D&D which had very brief monster descriptions and fewer monster illustrations than the AD&D Monster Manual I bought later. In Holmes, kobolds were described as small and evil and ‘dwarf like,’ so I was surprised and a little put off when I later saw them illustrated as little lizard dog people. I just hadn’t imagined them like that.


*The original tale is as follows: In the past, no one in the City of Cologne had to work because each night the work seemed to ‘do itself’ (actually the heinzelmännchen did all the work at night. Their only stipulation was that no one look at them. There might have also been a bribe in the form of fresh cream or something). The people were, naturally, happy with this arrangement and just lay around all day drinking beer and playing cards. However, one woman (it’s always a woman in these stories, isn’t it? Eve? Pandora? Why can’t women leave shit alone?) was consumed by curiosity and threw dried peas on the steps of her house. When the little heinzelmännchen arrived to work, they slipped on the peas and fell down the stairs, making a racket, and she awoke and grabbed a lamp and came running to see them. This pissed the little people off so much that they never came back and from then on the big people of Cologne had to work like everyone else. As a result, there are now references to these little gnomes on signs, statues, etc., all over Cologne. They were even in cartoons on TV in Germany when I was a kid. In Cologne there is also a statue of the woman with a lamp.
Yes! I remember those little shorts! I stll have a toy one of those guys made of wood where you pull a string and he waggles his arms. During the 1970s, those little fuckers (and Max and Moritz) seemed to be everywhere.