I’ve already put WAY too much thought into this, so grab your butts and hold on. I’m about to blow your fucking mind with some truth about Venger you NEVER, EVER thought of before. That glorious Optimus Prime-sounding motherfucker.

First of all, how much do you fucking remember about the Dungeons And Dragons cartoon? Probably just about dick I bet. You remember there being wizards tho, right? Gnarled wrinkly old bald motherfuckers, the lot of them.

Like Merlin:

And this dickhead:

And this shriveled little Yoda motherfucker:

ALL BALD AS A FUCKING CUEBALL. But get this, Venger’s a fucking wizard too. Is he bald? We’ll never fucking know because he’s looking fly in his

But you know, now that we think of it there was a wizard that had hair…

So… there’s still a convincing case that Venger might be bald but who cares because

Now can we talk for a moment about Venger’s eyebrows? BECAUSE HOLY SHIT I COULD TALK ALL DAY ABOUT VENGER’S EYEBROWS.

Alright, but check this out. Pop this into your eyeholes and load it into your brain bucket. Wizards wear robes and shit. Right? WRONG MOTHERFUCKER

Take a good look at some of those pics. THE DUDE WEARS A CAPE EVEN THOUGH HE HAS WINGS. He rides a fire-breathing horse that flies EVEN THOUGH HE HAS WINGS. Motherfucker’s a proud aerodynamic genderqueer male witch badass and if you think he gives a single solitary fuck than you better sit the fuck down and go back to Venger school because YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT VENGER.

The only one in the whole universe that can contend (and if you say Dungeon Master I’ll teleport you away to someplace useless like he does all the time) is Tiamat, but you and I both know Tumblr’s not powerful enough to contain a post with both of them in it. So here’s a pic of Eric the Cavalier looking like an asshat-

Announcing the Creature Codex Art Challenge!

Inspired by a conversation with @doomboy911 . I figure that, with almost 1900 monsters in the Creature Codex, there's enough fodder for a full 30 Day Art Challenge.

The categories are chosen so that they represent a wide variety of monsters, and are relatively easy to find via the Index and the tagging system. I will be following the #codexartchallenge tag, and will be reblogging stuff that people post.

I think we need to appreciate this part of Brennan Lee Mulligan's WIRED interview a lot more:

"The evangelical right in this country needs to manufacture outrage to hold onto its voting block. [The satanic panic about DnD] was arbitrary, as the targets of their outrage always are. Fight the power."

The game Dungeons and Dragons has all sorts of lists of spells and abilities you can use for gameplay. I trained an algorithm called a recurrent neural network to generate more spells - like Barking Sphere, Hold Mouse, and Gland Growth. Then, with a larger set of spells in my training dataset, I trained a better neural net that generated even more - like Song of the Dave, Summon Ass, and Shield of Farts.

It turns out that in addition to spellbooks, Dungeons and Dragons also has monster manuals - books full of the names and descriptions of creatures that adventurers can encounter. Colin Fredricks, who created the RPG Sufficiently Advanced, was kind enough to send me the names of 2,205 creatures from the 2nd edition monster manual. 

As I had hoped, the neural network generated creatures that would probably be pretty awesome.

Owlborn
Cat, Stone
Vampire Bear
Kick Spirit
Hatfright
Purple Bird
Slug, Spectral
Wolf, Chromatic
Golem, Rain
Human, Crystal
Hound, Plant
Fish, Astro-
Wolfworm
Ogre, Space
Dog, Goblin
Serpent Shark
Mommy, Greater
Giant, Dunebat
Cloud of Chaos

It also generated some creatures that you should probably run from until you figure out what they are. (Though Dome Animal might simply be a cool turtle)

Brain, Fire
Horse (Spider, Brain
Undead Lake Man, Fire
Walfablang
Fraithwarp, Giant
Fish, Sun of
Lycanthrope, Wereladoo
Pat, Great, Space
Shadowstaffer
Spectral Woof Greepy
Jabberwont
Animal, Dome
Dwarf, Giant
Burglestar
Pigaloth
Beeple, Desert
Wendless Woll
Memeball
Marraganralleraith

There were 118 dragons in the original dataset, so of course the neural net liked generating new dragons. Some perhaps better-conceived than others.

Dragon, Death Seep
Dragon, Purple Fang
Dragon, Curple Lard
Dragon, Dead
Big Dragon
Will O’Dragon

And it generated new unicorns!

Unicorn, Fumble
Unicorn, Bat
Unicorn, Black Willow
Unicorn, Sith Sheet

These might be possible misses, though.

Man-Can
Barber
Beet
Skull
Feast, Stone
Peg, Brown
Kurt
Durp Snake
Golf
Vampire, Putter

Enter your email here and I’ll send you a few more creatures that wouldn’t fit in the main post. Including the legendary Bung Dragon!

I’m crowdsourcing a couple more D&D-related datasets - see below!

Also, I thought it would be fun to generate D&D character names for a future project. If you go to this form (no email required), you can enter your character’s name, race, and class. Once I have enough of these, I’ll give them to the neural network and see what happens. Edit: wow, over 10,000 responses so far! (Check them out at this link) Keep them coming!

I’m also collecting character backstories! Submit as many as you like. https://goo.gl/forms/ReInNw0Tz0mwzTLO2 I will post some generated character bios as soon as I can figure out a strategy that works better than this:

There was the prince of the sun. He was raised by the arcane arts and accepted him to become a fire work and the pig of the scorpions. He was in the blood of curious by the world to be a part of the church, really with the bartender.

When I was a kid, my mom always hated that Candy Kong was a gorilla, but still had to have curves so you'd know she was the "girl" one. And yeah, fair, that's sexist as hell. But, recently, I got to thinking...

Is it ever explicitly said that Candy Kong is a gorilla?

Sure, she's a Kong, but that also encompasses Diddy and Dixie, who are apparently some kind of monkey and a chimp. To be a Kong, you just need to be a simian resident of Kong Island.

So. She's not a gorilla. She has the simian snout, and body hair, but she also has feet that are halfway between simian and human, long legs, and humanoid breasts...

My God.

Candy Kong is an Australopithecus.

Screenshot from Ultraseven, accessed at the Ultraman Wiki here

[Not that Goron. Alien Goron strikes me as not being very popular. He only appeared in one episode of Ultraseven, and in no later series. There aren’t any good standalone images, which is why I’m using this screenshot (where he’s either about to fire his brain beams or dancing the Whip). But I like Goron. He’s the first (but not last) tokusatsu cash-in on the popularity of Planet of the Apes, and a golden lion tamarin is a creative choice for species instead of the usual gorilla monster. Also, I have to give props to any monster whose MO is taken directly from a 1940s movie mad scientist.]

Goron
CR 18 NE Monstrous Humanoid
This orange-furred giant appears like an anthropomorphic monkey, with a shocking mane and a long furry tail.

Gorons are sinister simian monsters that are obsessed with monkeys, apes and people, especially blurring the lines between them. Gorons use their magical powers to make humans more ape-like and other primates more human-like. They typically disguise themselves as mundane humans or monkeys, using mind-controlled minions to keep up appearances. Although their natural forms are enormous, they usually work in humanoid or ape form, the better to use delicate tools and conceal their activities.

A goron prefers subtlety to violence, but they are more than capable of battle if their plans are discovered or go awry. In combat, gorons tend to stay mobile, using their brain beams and spell-like abilities to lock down enemy movement. A favored combo is to turn invisible and then dimension door a short distance away, in order to confuse foes and give their brain beams a chance to recharge. Most gorons fight to capture, not to kill, at least against humanoid opponents that they might be able to enslave or transform. They rarely fight to the death, abandoning the field of battle if foes are capable of putting up a strong fight.

Gorons are potentially responsible for many of the monstrous simians that exist in the world. A few are religious, and those that are favor powers of nature or bestial demon lords. Most of them venerate only their own genius, however, and even the lowliest goron has a truly staggering ego. Other monsters with an interest in fleshwarping, like zerns and zoanoids, may make temporary alliances with a goron, but the simian giant’s one-track mind often results in these partnerships ending with creative doldrums and a parting of ways.

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