Role-Playing Games and Monster Misfits

In this case, puerile humor radiates not from the creature itself, but from the name. The AD+D Monster Manual II contained a lot of beasties originating from the lower planes (Tarterus, Hades, etc.), so, in order to keep the more corporeal of these fed, it only makes sense that there be a beast of burden specific to underworld settings- like, say, some kind of a cow (Hades knows that devils can't subsist on lost souls alone).

All this makes perfect sense, of course, but why the name "Stench Kow"? Granted, SKs do stink, but this name is distinctly reminiscent of -and almost as awful as- the name "Stinkor" in the old "Masters of the Universe" cartoons, and has to be one of the silliest names for any AD+D monster. I have to wonder if the distinction between "kow" and "cow" is in any way similar to the distinction between "klowns" and "clowns"

Exeggutor-

I know that Pokemon is not technically a role-paying game (at least, I hope, not yet.), but fantasy monsters more screwed up than a bulbous, ambulatory palm tree with multiple independently-willed talking Easter-egg heads for coconuts are just not that easy to come by.

Flumph-

Flumphs are the classic ridiculously misguided monster from AD+D's 1st edition Fiend Folio (the classic Tome of Creatures Ridiculous and Misguided.)

While I do not believe that the volume, which contains good interpretations of a number of Asian mythological creatures and well-designed fictional monsters, wholly deserved this reputation, I have to admit that, even with recent re-working attempts, the flumph is a pretty lame critter.

The levitating, jellyfish-like creatures have unimpressive combat abilities, no intellectual or social skills, and, when originally introduced, had no real reason to exist.

Recent attempts to redeem the flumph has cast it as the dim younger brother of a butt-kicking class of monastic, magic-wielding UberFlumphs, but I'm not buying it.

A popular internet list of "Worst AD+D Deaths" rates "killed by a flumph" as one of the ten stupidest ways for a dungeon delver to die, and, monastic flumphs or none, this statement is probably still valid.

Tirapheg-

This is probably the ultimate "monster as random combination of attributes". The only thing remotely humanoid about this supposedly "human-like" creature is its bilateral symmetry. It could be used in a SF context as a very bizarre alien, but is not of much use anywhere else.

Here's a recent description from "The Codex",

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