Goodman Games

Obviously, I'm not talking about chimera and unicorns and dragons and stuff, since those obviously are in most, if not all, D&D worlds....

But has anyone, from either side of the screen, ever dealt with 'mythical' creatures in D&D? Stuff that is said to exist, but that isn't ever confirmed to exist?

It seems like there could be some story mileage to be had there, but I'm trying to think past players just thinking it's something that does exist and trying to find it and kill it and take it's stuff...

Any thoughts?

In my home game I had a Godzilla-like ice creature called Dommerkaldtadvokat (yup, a mouthful). In 4E parlance it would be an abomination in the vein of the tarrasque, I guess, but it was always unclear whether it showed up to fight horrible threats to The World or if it was a horrible threat to The World...like Godzilla or the WEAPONS from Final Fantasy VII.

D-kat (for short) had a tribe of barbarians named after him, a series of valleys that were his "footprints," and a dark part of the sea where he was supposed to dwell.

Was he real? Dunno. The game never ended up going in that direction. Probably not, though.

One time, however, I ran a super-high-level "past" game in my campaign setting that dealt with an historical event: the slaying of the Mother of Dragons, Hideohohebisel (I like intricate names, especially when elves name things).
In the "modern" time setting of the main game, H-sel was a mythic figure.
In the "Golden Age of Elves" era of the "past" game, however, she was very real and alive. Slaying her ended the war between nature and arcane elves and inadvertently brought about the end of the Elven Golden Age.

(very complicated story)

So yeah, I like using mythic beasts as setting and as catalysts for epic change.

I've created myths which may or may not be true but have never used them in a game. Lost Knowledge of the Spheres of Many Eyes has two myths. One about a beholder that regrows eyestalks like the hydra from mythlogy. The other is about a girl unaffected by eye rays. These came about because I disliked the concentration of "facts" in I, Tyrant (2nd edition AD&D book). I felt it should have more uncertainty and options for DMs. (Really need to read my complete guide to beholders to see if Goodman Games did a better job.)

Master Storyteller Competition #7 on WotC boards had a legend contest although the entries in there aren't quite what your looking for but might give you ideas. My entry has been put on my site and includes a link to the competition.

Y'know, it wasn't what I started out talking about, but you've touched on something that sticks in my craw a little.... The one thing I can't recreate from the time I first started playing D&D (and other RPGs), is that no one knew what anything was! You described some weird thing (or had it described to you) and no one knew what to expect from the beast.

It might be futile, but I keep trying to engineer such an encounter. Sometimes I get halfway there....

And when I play, I try to draw upon a little improv skill and react as if my character has no idea what a basilisk or a rust monster or a wraith can do, whenever he shouldn't! But sometimes this puts me behind the curve on what other people are doing, since most other folks will just say, hey, they're CR 3 -- they can't hurt us!

*sigh*

But thanks for the links.... I'll have to check those out.

To some degree I've gotten that with my 4E game. No one knows much of 4E yet. Additionally I keep creating new monsters. The latest being nicknamed by the players "Evil Mother******* Plant Creature".