“Trust
not too much to appearances.”
– Virgil
I’ve
got a small, module-sized setting in mind to develop, one intended
for that possible day when the pandemic subsides enough so my son can
have friends over and I can tempt them away from Roblox to try some
games, maybe a wargame, and hopefully my homebrew version of
Basic/Expert
Dungeons & Dragons.
To that end I’m sketching out a region with a premise, a moorland
created in an ancient battle to defeat a powerful sorcerer; meaning
lots of magical-type creatures and ruins to explore. I’m even
getting ideas for a town they can use as a base,
in
the manner of
B2 The
Keep on the Borderlands.
With all these ideas swirling in my head – especially considering
monsters created by magic, like gnolls, gelatanous cubes, and, of
course, owl bears – I remembered the dreaded doppelganger from my
earliest days of
D&D.
Re-reading its entry in both the
Basic
D&D
rulebook and the
Advanced
D&D Monster Manual
I was
rather
disappointed in the very shallow presentation...so I embarked to not
only see what subsequent editions did with the monster, but started
concocting ways I could adapt it to my own ends.
