DnD Head Canons

[Luccan]

As per the movie Labyrinth some goblins look like David Bowie

As per the movie Spiderman some goblins look like Willem Dafoe

[Adrastos42]

As per the movie Labyrinth some goblins look like David Bowie

Much like a dominant male orangutan developing cheekpads, as a goblin rises in power and authority and becomes a Goblin King, they begin to look more and more Bowielike.

[No brains]

I think Bowie is a goblin in a context outside of the taxonomic context for the word 'goblin' in D&D. I think he's a generalized boogeymanoid being.

However I would support hobgoblins looking exactly like Bowie, Dafoe, or like Creedence Leonore Geigud from Troll 2. I guess hobgoblins look like humans wearing a lot of makeup.

[ideasmith]

The following crosses all result in halflings:

Dwarf/Gnome
Dwarf/Elf
Dwarf/Human
Gnome/Elf
Gnome/Human
A variety of other, generally similar cross-breeds.

That is why they are called halflings.

Given the variety of sizes in sentient beings, it doesn't make sense for the name to refer to their size.

[Luccan]

Given the variety of sizes in sentient beings, it doesn't make sense for the name to refer to their size.

It does if the default assumption is that Common is the human tongue (which it usually seems to be) and that the word for halfling in other languages isn't literally translated as "half person". I think in FR their own name for themselves is hin. In one of my own settings they're called halflings because they're the only humanoid allies humans have had since pre-history. Basically humans introduced them to everyone else as halflings and they rolled with it because they're used to living in a world mostly populated by, relatively speaking, giants. I'm also exclusively using Ghostwise Halflings for that setting, so I just picked "The Ghostwise" for what they call themselves.

I do like your head canon though. But why does it make them all so short? At least two of those pairings are a foot or more taller than tall halflings.

[ebarde]

I wonder if some halflings dislike that name, as they feel it derives from a medium-centric perspective. Some could even as a joke start calling humans doublings or something, while others wonder why gnomes don't receive a similar treatment or something lol

But looking at the real world, I think we can see plenty of examples of naming that isn't really the most accurate and just stuck around cause people got used to it. Ultimately a lot of people don't really care about accuracy, and will just use what get's the information across. Iceland and Greenland are good examples of names that don't really give off the most accurate idea of the place they're trying to convey. I can only assume halflings could have just as well been the names for gnomes or goblins, and it being just a completely arbitrary name that just stuck, maybe at one point the term could have been inclusive of all small races and then it just became exclusive to one as language changed

[No brains]

The word halfling is comes from a mistranslation that attempted to describe them as pastoral farmers.

The intended message was, "We are people of the pitchfork."

It came out as, "Our people are 'hay-flings'."

[Wizard_Lizard]

Celestials are just aberrations that got trapped in the upper planes. Explains biblical angels.

[a_flemish_guy]

The bulette as well. Speaking of, here's my "head canon": it's pronounced bullet. Now, I know some of you will be surprised, as I was, to hear that's not the original pronunciation the guys at TSR intended (for official release). According to Tim Kask, they did call it a bullet at first, but changed the spelling and moreover pronunciation to boo-lay because for whatever reason they thought that would be a funny way to mock the French. Or people's obsession with the French language? Was that a thing in the 70s? Anyway, that's a dumb sounding name which I've also been informed isn't even accurate to how you would pronounce that monster name even if it were French, so we arrive at my head canon that it's just pronounced bullet. And not BOO-let or boo-LET either, which I've also heard.

Slaadi aren't a threat to most planes/people because they usually find the consistency of everywhere that isn't their home plane dull

new headcannon: uplifted landsharks answer their sendings "bulette residence, lady of the house speaking, no not bullet, boulée"

[Bohandas]

The Demiplane of Dread is actually a secret layer of Carceri

[Stattick]

If you go east, off the map of the known continent in the Ravenloft setting, you'll find Westeros.

[Bohandas]

Actually, on further consideration, I think the Plane of Dread may be connected with Sigil somehow. The Lady's absolute control of who can come and go mirrors that of a darklord, as does the fact that she might not be able to leave. Furthermore, Vecna breaking out of one and into the other with the same magic ritual suggests some connection as well

[Spore]

As per the movie Spiderman some goblins look like Willem Dafoe

Much like a dominant male orangutan developing cheekpads, as a goblin rises in power and authority and becomes a Goblin King, they begin to look more and more Bowielike.

The following crosses all result in halflings:

Dwarf/Gnome
Dwarf/Elf
Dwarf/Human
Gnome/Elf
Gnome/Human
A variety of other, generally similar cross-breeds.

That is why they are called halflings.

Given the variety of sizes in sentient beings, it doesn't make sense for the name to refer to their size.

Considering the use of the insult "goblin" in modern languages, it is far more likely that everything not visually pleasing and small is referred to as goblins.

The Demiplane of Dread is actually a secret layer of Carceri

Actually, on further consideration, I think the Plane of Dread may be connected with Sigil somehow. The Lady's absolute control of who can come and go mirrors that of a darklord, as does the fact that she might not be able to leave. Furthermore, Vecna breaking out of one and into the other with the same magic ritual suggests some connection as well

I think the idea behind the Demiplanes of Dread is that they can exist literally in any cosmology, as long as they are - well demiplanes of eternal torment and punishment. I can see them existing in Eberron's nightmare and dream realm of Dal Quor. They basically are ever lasting nightmares.

Though I personally reject the headcanon (or even canon) that all D&D planes are somewhat connected. Especially the weird idea of Elminster having a wizarding pupil from Earth. One can make such connection but should veil their transitions in mist, because interplanar stuff quickly becomes a pissing contest between extremes, where planes just become planets of hats rather than fully fledged worlds each of their own.

[Luccan]

White and Silver Dragons don't expel cold, they suck in heat.

The most common Chromatic and Metallic dragons derive from the same ancient dragons based on element (Reds and Golds, Blues and Bronze, etc. share ancestry). The exception is that Green and Brass dragons share an ancestry, despite having different elemental affinity. However, they're also the most similar of the opposing forces in personality, valuing intelligent "treasures" and trickery as sport and tactics. Academics debate if the sleep breath of Brass dragons is a variation on the Green's poison and their fire breath a mystic adaptation to distance themselves from their cousins. These comparisons are the one area of conversation Brass dragons don't like to entertain.

[Spore]

White and Silver Dragons don't expel cold, they suck in heat.

Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.

[Luccan]

Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.

I'm just fond of the sensory description of it and it's a cool way to make a couple dragons feel distinct. I also like to imagine that's part of how they keep themselves warm in their environments. It's not a hardcore scientific explanation, it's a bending of physics everyone might be familiar with for flavor purposes. These are giant winged lizards we're talking about, I'm not gonna pretend it explains how their breath weapons would be possible in reality when I can't explain most other parts of their existence.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Though I personally reject the headcanon (or even canon) that all D&D planes are somewhat connected. Especially the weird idea of Elminster having a wizarding pupil from Earth. One can make such connection but should veil their transitions in mist, because interplanar stuff quickly becomes a pissing contest between extremes, where planes just become planets of hats rather than fully fledged worlds each of their own.

I assume by "planes" here you mean "Material Plane worlds" given the mention of Elminster and Earth? If so, it's kind of hard to avoid Oerth and Toril having been connected to a bunch of worlds because in the former case there are crashed spaceships and portals to Earth and suchlike in various adventures and in the latter case the elves came from their own world, the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons explicitly came from Earth, and so forth in the setting background, but there's nothing saying that those worlds are still connected to lots of worlds in the modern era, so you can avoid that coming up without ignoring canon at all.

If you really do mean planes, you can't really change the fact that at least the Prime is connected to basically every other plane without breaking lots of things (ghosts, xill, and other Ethereal critters; basically all of Conjuration; mortal-deity connections, both in life and in the afterlife; and much more), but the planes often have a planet of hats feel because the devs only hit the high points in books like MotP due to limited space and to let adventures throw in lots of out-of-the-way adventure sites. The best way to avoid the issue is probably to involve more planar travel to flesh out the planes, just like FR can feel very same-y if you just stick to the Sword Coast and heading to the Lake of Steam, the Moonshaes, Rashemen, and other less-explored places can help counteract that.

Temperature movement (aka heating and chilling) is a purely semantic thing. You move energetic particles somewhere else. I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.

One can't really talk about "D&D seasons" given that every Prime world has its own local physics. Some planetary systems are geocentric, some are heliocentric; some have one sun, some have many; some have a big ball of fire as the sun, some have a vortex to the Plane of Fire or Plane of Radiance; some have a world with an axial tilt to create seasons, some have a sun that grows hotter and colder in a certain pattern.

In general, though, the Prime and the Inner Planes run more on physics while the Outer and some Transitive Planes run more on metaphysics. Summer and winter arising from a conflict between various gods is something you'd see on the Outer Planes, and while Chauntea gaining power relative to Auril might have some knock-on effects on Toril regarding the harshness of winters, it's not like Chauntea falling into a coma would lead to eternal winter or stabbing Lathander in the face would cause the sun to go out (not least because Realmspace has at least 6 other current gods of the sun and at least 2 dead gods of the sun, so you'd have to do lots of divine face-stabbing to put out the sun, but still).

I'm just fond of the sensory description of it and it's a cool way to make a couple dragons feel distinct. I also like to imagine that's part of how they keep themselves warm in their environments. It's not a hardcore scientific explanation, it's a bending of physics everyone might be familiar with for flavor purposes.

Personally, I headcanon that cold-breathing dragons (and other non-elemental creatures with cold breath/gaze/etc. abilities) are literally "cold blooded" in the sense that their metabolisms basically run backwards and they have "body cold" instead of "body heat" and so on. After all, cold in D&D isn't merely an absence of heat but an actual opposing force/substance to fire, with its own Inner Plane and everything, so it makes sense that some critters would have a cold-based biology to better fit their environment.

[Bohandas]

I know physics and D&D mix VERY BADLY, but I am not even sure D&D seasons are linked to the planetary cycle around its central star but rather just fights between divine portfolios. Take Chauntea and Auril from Faerun; summer and winter seems just like an eternal struggle between the two.

I'm not sure there's any primary campaign worlds that have the kind of unpredictable Game of Thrones style seasons that that would imply

[Clistenes]

I wonder if some halflings dislike that name, as they feel it derives from a medium-centric perspective. Some could even as a joke start calling humans doublings or something, while others wonder why gnomes don't receive a similar treatment or something lol

But looking at the real world, I think we can see plenty of examples of naming that isn't really the most accurate and just stuck around cause people got used to it. Ultimately a lot of people don't really care about accuracy, and will just use what get's the information across. Iceland and Greenland are good examples of names that don't really give off the most accurate idea of the place they're trying to convey. I can only assume halflings could have just as well been the names for gnomes or goblins, and it being just a completely arbitrary name that just stuck, maybe at one point the term could have been inclusive of all small races and then it just became exclusive to one as language changed

In the manga Dungeon Meshi "human" is the common name for real world humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, all of which are considered subspecies of the humans species. All of these races can interbreed, but they haven't merged into a single unified race because mixbloods are sterile (that, and differences in lifespan make relationships painful, so most people avoids them...).

Normal humans are called "Tallmen" because they have the greatest average height.

It seems Elves were the ones who gave the other races their names, hence Elves have their own name, that doesn't mean anything in particular, while real world humans are called Tallmen because they are taller than Elves, Dwarves are called so because they are shorter than Elves, and Halflings are called "Half-foot" probably because they are half a foot shorter than Dwarves.

"Gnome" means "Wise One"... I guess Elves respected them (Gnomes are second only to Elves in magical skill and knowledge, and it seems they worked together in many projects in the distant past...).

When a group of foreigners explains that in their country only Tallmen are considered true humans, the listener is shocked...

Halflings are called "Half-foot" because the author didn't want to get into legal trouble and avoided using any race, species or monster that had an origin in D&D or fantasy rather than in real world mythology (hence Cockatrices and Griffons are okay, but Beholders and Mindflayers aren't...).

[Bohandas]

I think dragons may be a bit like bees or ants and that may be why they can breed with everything. Half-dragons fill the roles of sterile workers (even though they're not necessarily sterile, half-dragons don't exactly produce more proper dragons)

[Wizard_Lizard]

Clerics of Bane have their ritual that they do it in the dark as per I was born in the darkness!

[Blackdrop]

Any "curses" that dark elves supposedly suffer at the hands of the other gods, are actually part and parcel of any blessings Lloth bestows on her favored disciples as a means of control and isolation. Much easier to keep the dark elves compliant and worshipping her if they think Correlon/Pelor/etc is out to get them.

[calam]

Other humanoid breeding combinations not covered by races still happen but they don't breed into special mixed races. While human orc hybrids are half orcs orc halfling hybrids either come out full orc or full halfling, possibly with minor aesthetic differences like a halfing with greenish skin or a shorter orc.

Another headcanon is that objects with continual flame is the pottery shards of dungeon crawling, every ancient tomb, lost city and ancient castle is lousy with marbles and burnt out ioun stones that glow. Nearby towns are lit up like New York because of this.

[Beleriphon]

I think Bowie is a goblin in a context outside of the taxonomic context for the word 'goblin' in D&D. I think he's a generalized boogeymanoid being.

However I would support hobgoblins looking exactly like Bowie, Dafoe, or like Creedence Leonore Geigud from Troll 2. I guess hobgoblins look like humans wearing a lot of makeup.

The art already makes them look that way. They really have the alien of the week from Star Trek, or regular guest star Jeffy Coombs.

There's a new one. Hobgoblins all look like some version of Jeffery Coombs.

[Stattick]

Just sayin, Jeffery Coombs should play Green Goblin.

[Luccan]

Hmm, you know, I wouldn't consider this a headcanon, but I had thought years ago that it would be fun for the different D&D races to be the "evolved" versions of different animal groups. For our purposes, humans would be the "advanced ape" and I kind of imagined elves being evolved from some relative of rabbits. Orcs would go back to their snouty Ganon-like appearance as boarfolk. But I was just thinking that WotC gives hobgoblins an ever so slightly feline look, so if I ever do anything with this quarter-baked idea, I think I have my big cat people. This would be a setting without things like half-elves, of course.

[NovenFromTheSun]

The obyrith are the byproduct of a group of beings who tried to separate themselves from their inner evil. The Shard of Ultimate Evil has a similar effect in the current multiverse: it absorbs a little Evil from everywhere and projects it into the Lower Planes. This means that most people outside those planes are slightly more Good than they’d be otherwise, but at the cost of the Lower Planes growing at such a rate that only the Blood War is keeping them in check.

(Might be doing a bit of edition stream crossing here.)

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Hmm, you know, I wouldn't consider this a headcanon, but I had thought years ago that it would be fun for the different D&D races to be the "evolved" versions of different animal groups. For our purposes, humans would be the "advanced ape" and I kind of imagined elves being evolved from some relative of rabbits. Orcs would go back to their snouty Ganon-like appearance as boarfolk. But I was just thinking that WotC gives hobgoblins an ever so slightly feline look, so if I ever do anything with this quarter-baked idea, I think I have my big cat people. This would be a setting without things like half-elves, of course.

I did this in a previous campaign, but didn't restrict myself to mammalian ancestors:

• Elves evolved from sharks, since they have incredibly long lifespan with few signs of aging, little to no body hair, exceptional senses, exceptional skill with blades, reputations as ambush predators and skirmishers over stand-up warriors, aquatic versions that look identical to the land-bound versions as if they'd remained unchanged for eons, etc. They ended up bald with grayish skin and unsettlingly wide grins, and had a penchant for sushi.
• Dwarves evolved from sapient fungi, since they're squat and top-heavy, live underground in concentrated colonies, can survive without access to natural light, feed on fermented and decaying grains with every meal, etc. Their "beards" were actually mycelia (the vegetative tendrils that a fungus absorbs nutrients with), hence why dwarves always seem to spill lots of alcohol on their beards when drinking.
• Goblinoids evolved from dogs and wolves, since they come in large families, love to burrow, have keen senses, rule their lessers through strength and dominance challenges*, have a special bond with canines already, and come in many widely varying breeds from "small and yappy" to "large and scary" while still being the same critter overall. They ended up a lot furrier and more excitable, and with exceptionally large and soulful eyes.
• Gnomes evolved from foxes, since they are inquisitive and elusive, are smaller than the rest, also love to burrow, have good noses, and are viewed as either adorable scamps or irritating pests depending on what they've gotten up to most recently. They ended up having unusually large ears, uniformly red or orange (or rarely white) hair, and a very loud and cheeky laugh.

Meanwhile, halflings evolved from monkeys just like humans evolved from apes, and orcs evolved from boars per their original appearance.

Aside from a few cosmetic details I really didn't have to change much for any of the races since they fit so well already, and it gave me a good jumping-off point when playing around with their cultures and gods and so forth.

* Yes, I know the whole "alpha wolf" thing is only the case for wolves in captivity and the original study that came from was retracted by the author, but it's a fantasy staple for werewolves and other canid races now, so it works.

[Spore]

You do realize about half of your creation myth is straight from Golarion, if you squint a bit. Goblins there are basically just bipedal demonic dogs. Gnomes are not foxes, but the next best mythical thing, fey creatures. Elves are aliens (that started on Golarion but came back), dwarves were forged by a god. Your orcs are spot-on as well, with them being proto-humanoids at the start of recorded history.

[Asmotherion]

-Metalic Dragons are essentially the same species as their Chromatic counterparts. They just mutate depending on the Alignmental Energy they channel. A good Red Dragon will eventually turn into a Gold Dragon, and an Evil Bronze will turn Blue.