RPG a Day 8

Favorite Character: Oh boy. I am quite fond of Dex the Dormant my current Wizard in 5e.  Fond of sleeping in trees, he is an acrobatic wizard wearing pants not a robe and mostly having stole his instruction in magic by hiding in rafters of wizards as a street urchin. In my background, while an orphan I am somehow related to someone with a symbol of an opinicus dormant.

So of interest on the Opinicus:

Image from wikimedia

From Wikipedia: A type of griffin with the four legs of a lion was distinguished by perhaps only one English herald of later heraldry as the Opinicus where it also had a camel-like neck and a short tail that almost resembles a camel's tail.

From Mythology Wikia: An heraldic opinicus is shown as a male creature, whereas the winged griffin is female.

From Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: An opinicus appears to be a mixture of monkey, camel, lion, and eagle, with prehensile forepaws.

From Me: In my game I would run it as a combination of the above. the description of monkey, camel, lion and eagle. But I would make it the male counterpart of the griffin, where mating happens rarely and most of the time they live apart. While the female griffin are proud warriors, the male opinicus is a creature of magic and perceptive thought. Both speak the same language but only the males have a written language, which is written with their prehensile monkey tails. The griffins have instead a sign language and limited memory transfer abilities.

Another Aside:

Previous to that character, as in back in junior high and early high school. I had created a large family tree of Jedi for a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover adventure using West End Games Star Wars D6 ruleset, of whom I made a pair of twins to play as I was the game master (it is hard to play with only one other player, my brother). While the campaign consisted mostly of making up our own story lines and arguing about stats for ships, the characters were interesting. Even if we changed their names several times.


Favorite Appearance of RPG’s in media: Tough one. Perhaps Dungeons and Dragons in E.T. I didn't even remember it as a salient feature, it was just obvious. Until years later when re watching it and I realized it was an unusual reference.