Gelatinous Cube - Creative Origins

Creative Origins

The gelatinous cube is an invention of Gary Gygax, and first appeared in the Monster Manual (1977), rather than being lifted from outside sources and adapted to a roleplaying setting, as were many mythological monsters like the minotaur and dryad.

Being a cube that is a perfect ten feet on each side, it is specifically and perfectly "adapted" to its native environment, the standard, 10-foot (3.0 m) by 10-foot (3.0 m) dungeon corridors which were ubiquitous in the earliest Dungeons & Dragons modules, particularly the randomly-generated ones created using the rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Read more about this topic:  Gelatinous Cube

Famous quotes containing the words creative and/or origins:

    For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.
    Joyce Cary (1888–1957)

    Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.
    W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)