Blink dog
Encyclopedia
The blink dog is a fictional magical beast
from the Dungeons & Dragons
role-playing game
, an intelligent dog
that has a limited teleportation ability known as Blinking. The blink dog was created for D&D, and appeared in every edition from the first supplement to version 4.0. The concept has also been used in other games; however, in D&D, blink dogs are Good or Lawful, and therefore can be allies of the players. In other games, blink dogs have sometimes been designed to be opponents.
supplement (1975) by Gary Gygax
and Robert Kuntz
, shortly after the original rules booklet for D&D had been published. Unlike many D&D monsters that had been inspired by creatures from mythology or fantasy literature such as dragons, lycanthropes and harpies, blink dogs were an original creation. They were originally described as closely resembling African wild dog
s, except they are highly intelligent. They travel in packs and attack enemies from all sides in a coordinated manner. Their ability to randomly teleport during combat was called "blinking"; in game terms, this enabled the pack to materialize around an opponent; then each dog was able to "blink", disappearing and instantly reappearing in a different spot, attacking again as soon as it rematerialized. An inborn instinct prevented it from blinking into a solid object. If an opponent seriously threatened the entire pack, the pack would flee by blinking out and not reappearing. The blink dog was a natural enemy of displacer beast
s. In this edition, its alignment was Lawful; Evil/Good descriptors did not exist in this edition.
. The description from the Greyhawk supplement remained essentially the same, but was edited into a shorter paragraph. The only substantive changes were that now a pack "will always attack a displacer beast"; and the blink dog's alignment was changed to Lawful Good, meaning that they would often be natural allies of players rather than opponents. In the original rules, very few creatures' abilities other than speed had been given hard numbers. In this edition, weapon or claw/bite damage was quantified as a die roll; the damage inflicted by a blink dog's bite was a single 6-sided die roll, comparable to the damage inflicted by a short sword.
In the D&D Expert Set
, published in 1981 and reprinted in 1983, the blink dog's appearance was now compared to an Australian dingo
. Its combat strategy was further refined so that now the blink dog appeared beside an enemy, attacked, and then blinked away before the opponent could react, reappearing anywhere from 10–40 feet away. It continuously repeated this strategy, blinking in beside the enemy for an attack before retreating to a safe distance.
This description was reprinted in the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia
in 1991.
. The illustration that accompanied its entry looked neither like an African wild dog or a dingo, but rather like a small terrier with a badger's head and a short stiff tufted tail. For the first time, the blink dog's coloration was described as a mixture of brown and yellow. The pack now had a complex language of "barks, yaps, whines and growls." And, possibly to give players a reason for confronting a good-aligned blink dog pack, blink dog pups were said to be worth a lot of money, since they could be tamed and trained if taken from the pack at a young age.
Although the AD&D rules stated that players could only create characters using the original races listed in the AD&D Players Handbook (humans, elves, dwarves,etc.), several variants started to appear in non-TSR sources. Some of these suggested using "monster" races to create AD&D characters, and in Issue #17 of White Dwarf
, Lewis Pulsipher
took this a step further when he suggested using an entire pack of blink dogs as a single character, a unique concept at that time.
The blink dog appeared in set 3 of the Monster Cards series in 1982.
Because of third edition's use of 1-inch grids to define character movement and monster sizes, the blink dog's size was listed as "Medium" (equal to an area of 1 inch x 1 inch, or 5 feet x 5 feet in game scale.) The third edition of D&D also included a game mechanic called Challenge Rating, an attempt to quantify the combat ability of each creature versus an average party of four adventurers. The blink dog was given a Challenge Rating of 2, meaning one single dog was an appropriate challenge for a party of 2nd-level characters. (In comparison, a ghoul
was rated a 1, and a mummy
was rated an 3.)
In the Eberron
campaign setting, the House Ghallanda—a House of halflings
bearing the dragonmark of Hospitality—use the blink dog as their heraldic beast. Their coat-of-arms displays the head of a snarling blink dog on a green field, supported by scythes, adorned with four bunches of grapes, and crowned with a wheat sheaf surrounded by six separate stalks of wheat.
In the German roguelike
game Ancient Domains of Mystery
(ADOM), blink dogs are monsters that can be killed, and eaten if needed, or used as companions. They are valued by optimizers
as a low-level creature that can summon more of its kind, providing the opportunity for farming.
Blink dogs appear in the roguelike
game Angband as monsters that can both teleport themselves and teleport the player to them.
In The Geeks' Guide to World Domination, blink dogs are characterized as one of fantasy's signature creatures.
In an episode of The Littlest Hobo
called Dragonslayer, several young children playing a live action version of Dungeons & Dragons refer to the title character as a blink dog.
Magical beast (Dungeons & Dragons)
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, magical beast is a type of creature, or "creature type". Magical beasts are similar to animals in many ways, but usually have a higher intelligence, and possess supernatural or extraordinary abilities....
from the Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
, an intelligent dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
that has a limited teleportation ability known as Blinking. The blink dog was created for D&D, and appeared in every edition from the first supplement to version 4.0. The concept has also been used in other games; however, in D&D, blink dogs are Good or Lawful, and therefore can be allies of the players. In other games, blink dogs have sometimes been designed to be opponents.
Original rules
Blink dogs first appeared in the original GreyhawkGreyhawk (supplement)
Greyhawk is a supplementary rulebook written by Gary Gygax and Robert J. Kuntz for the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game...
supplement (1975) by Gary Gygax
Gary Gygax
Ernest Gary Gygax was an American writer and game designer best known for co-creating the pioneering role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Dave Arneson. Gygax is generally acknowledged as the father of role-playing games....
and Robert Kuntz
Robert J. Kuntz
Robert J. Kuntz is a game designer and author of role-playing game publications. He is most famous for his contributions to various Dungeons & Dragons-related materials.-Works:...
, shortly after the original rules booklet for D&D had been published. Unlike many D&D monsters that had been inspired by creatures from mythology or fantasy literature such as dragons, lycanthropes and harpies, blink dogs were an original creation. They were originally described as closely resembling African wild dog
African Wild Dog
Lycaon pictus is a large canid found only in Africa, especially in savannas and lightly wooded areas. It is variously called the African wild dog, African hunting dog, Cape hunting dog, painted dog, painted wolf, painted hunting dog, spotted dog, or ornate wolf...
s, except they are highly intelligent. They travel in packs and attack enemies from all sides in a coordinated manner. Their ability to randomly teleport during combat was called "blinking"; in game terms, this enabled the pack to materialize around an opponent; then each dog was able to "blink", disappearing and instantly reappearing in a different spot, attacking again as soon as it rematerialized. An inborn instinct prevented it from blinking into a solid object. If an opponent seriously threatened the entire pack, the pack would flee by blinking out and not reappearing. The blink dog was a natural enemy of displacer beast
Displacer beast
A displacer beast is a fictional creature from the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.-Publication history:The displacer beast was inspired by the coeurl, a feline-like creature from the 1939 science fiction story "Black Destroyer" by A. E...
s. In this edition, its alignment was Lawful; Evil/Good descriptors did not exist in this edition.
Basic Set
Although blink dogs did not appear in the condensed rules of the D&D "white box" set published the following year, they reappeared in 1977 in the D&D Basic SetDungeons & Dragons Basic Set
The original Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set boxed set was first published by TSR, Inc. in 1977, and comprised a separate edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, distinct from the first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, which was initially published in the same...
. The description from the Greyhawk supplement remained essentially the same, but was edited into a shorter paragraph. The only substantive changes were that now a pack "will always attack a displacer beast"; and the blink dog's alignment was changed to Lawful Good, meaning that they would often be natural allies of players rather than opponents. In the original rules, very few creatures' abilities other than speed had been given hard numbers. In this edition, weapon or claw/bite damage was quantified as a die roll; the damage inflicted by a blink dog's bite was a single 6-sided die roll, comparable to the damage inflicted by a short sword.
In the D&D Expert Set
Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set
The Expert Set is an expansion boxed set for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It was first published in 1981 as an expansion to the Basic Set.-1981 printing:The D&D Basic Set saw a major revision in 1981 by Tom Moldvay...
, published in 1981 and reprinted in 1983, the blink dog's appearance was now compared to an Australian dingo
Dingo
The Australian Dingo or Warrigal is a free-roaming wild dog unique to the continent of Australia, mainly found in the outback. Its original ancestors are thought to have arrived with humans from southeast Asia thousands of years ago, when dogs were still relatively undomesticated and closer to...
. Its combat strategy was further refined so that now the blink dog appeared beside an enemy, attacked, and then blinked away before the opponent could react, reappearing anywhere from 10–40 feet away. It continuously repeated this strategy, blinking in beside the enemy for an attack before retreating to a safe distance.
This description was reprinted in the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia
Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia
The Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia was published by TSR, Inc. in 1991, as a continuation of the basic edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, which ran concurrently with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Its product designation was TSR 1071...
in 1991.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition (1977-1988)
In 1977, the blink dog appeared in the original AD&D Monster ManualMonster Manual
The Monster Manual is the primary bestiary sourcebook for monsters in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It includes monsters derived from mythology, and folklore, as well as creatures created for D&D specifically...
. The illustration that accompanied its entry looked neither like an African wild dog or a dingo, but rather like a small terrier with a badger's head and a short stiff tufted tail. For the first time, the blink dog's coloration was described as a mixture of brown and yellow. The pack now had a complex language of "barks, yaps, whines and growls." And, possibly to give players a reason for confronting a good-aligned blink dog pack, blink dog pups were said to be worth a lot of money, since they could be tamed and trained if taken from the pack at a young age.
Although the AD&D rules stated that players could only create characters using the original races listed in the AD&D Players Handbook (humans, elves, dwarves,etc.), several variants started to appear in non-TSR sources. Some of these suggested using "monster" races to create AD&D characters, and in Issue #17 of White Dwarf
White Dwarf (magazine)
White Dwarf is a magazine published by British games manufacturer Games Workshop. Initially covering a wide variety of fantasy and science-fiction role-playing and board games, particularly the role playing games Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest and Traveller...
, Lewis Pulsipher
Lewis Pulsipher
Lewis Errol Pulsipher is a teacher, game designer, and author, whose subject is role playing games, board games, card games, and video games. He was the first person in the North Carolina community college system to teach game design classes...
took this a step further when he suggested using an entire pack of blink dogs as a single character, a unique concept at that time.
The blink dog appeared in set 3 of the Monster Cards series in 1982.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition (1989-1999)
For the second edition of AD&D, the blink dog was listed in the Monstrous Compendium Volume One (1989) under "Dogs" (along with wild dogs, war dogs, and death dogs.) The text from the earlier Monster Manual was repeated in slightly condensed form, the only change being that the blink dog was now described as being stockier and more muscular than other wild dogs. This text was reprinted in the Monstrous Manual in 1993.Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (2000-2007)
With the advent of D&D's third edition in 2000, the blink dog took on a much different appearance in the new Monster Manual. Gone was the small stiff-tailed terrier of the 1977 edition. Instead, the full color illustration showed a large yellowish wolf-like creature lying at ease, its front feet crossed. The text drew heavily upon previous editions but there were a few substantive changes:- blink dogs were now omnivoreOmnivoreOmnivores are species that eat both plants and animals as their primary food source...
s, eating both meat and plants - the blink dog's fast speed was reduced to that of a typical human character, making it a moderately slow creature
- they were highly protective of their young because of thefts by outsiders
- they were now larger and stockier than other wild dogs. (In second edition D&D, blink dogs were more muscular and stockier than other wild dogs)
- both 1st- and 2nd-edition D&D had included a complex and precise game mechanic so the Dungeon MasterDungeon MasterIn the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, the Dungeon Master is the game organizer and participant in charge of creating the details and challenges of a given adventure, while maintaining a realistic continuity of events...
could determine each blink dog's random location during combat; in this edition, the Dungeon Master was simply told that the pack teleported "in a seemingly random fashion until they surround their prey", leaving the exact mechanism to determine their location up to each Dungeon Master.
Because of third edition's use of 1-inch grids to define character movement and monster sizes, the blink dog's size was listed as "Medium" (equal to an area of 1 inch x 1 inch, or 5 feet x 5 feet in game scale.) The third edition of D&D also included a game mechanic called Challenge Rating, an attempt to quantify the combat ability of each creature versus an average party of four adventurers. The blink dog was given a Challenge Rating of 2, meaning one single dog was an appropriate challenge for a party of 2nd-level characters. (In comparison, a ghoul
Ghoul (Dungeons & Dragons)
For the generic mythological creature, see Ghoul.In the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, ghouls are monstrous, undead humans who reek of carrion.-Dungeons & Dragons :...
was rated a 1, and a mummy
Mummy (Dungeons & Dragons)
A mummy, in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, is an undead creature whose corpse has been mummified and animated, often through the power of an evil god of the Egyptian pantheon such as Set.-Publication history:...
was rated an 3.)
Version 3.5
In the upgrade of Dungeons & Dragons to version 3.5 in 2003, the new Monster Manuals illustration was changed to show a snarling blink dog attacking an unseen foe. Although the illustration showed a brown dog, the text still described their fur as yellowish-brown. For the first time, their ears were described as large. The only substantive changes from 3rd edition to v3.5 were:- the blink dog's speed was restored to its original value, making it a fairly fast creature again
- their alignment was changed from "always lawful good" to "usually lawful good". (This allowed dungeon masters to create blink dogs of any alignment, making confrontations with Good players more credible.)
In the Eberron
Eberron
Eberron is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, set in a period after a vast destructive war on the continent of Khorvaire...
campaign setting, the House Ghallanda—a House of halflings
Halfling (Dungeons & Dragons)
The halfling is a fictional race found in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Halflings are similar to humans except about half the size...
bearing the dragonmark of Hospitality—use the blink dog as their heraldic beast. Their coat-of-arms displays the head of a snarling blink dog on a green field, supported by scythes, adorned with four bunches of grapes, and crowned with a wheat sheaf surrounded by six separate stalks of wheat.
In popular culture
Blink Dogs appear, in name only, in the fiction novel The Guardian of Hope by Tamara Rivers. The creature is described: "A blink dog is a canine that is able to teleport rapidly, literally in the 'blink of an eye'".In the German roguelike
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
game Ancient Domains of Mystery
Ancient Domains of Mystery
Ancient Domains of Mystery, or ADOM, is a roguelike game by Thomas Biskup first released in . The player's aim is to stop the forces of Chaos that invade the world of Ancardia....
(ADOM), blink dogs are monsters that can be killed, and eaten if needed, or used as companions. They are valued by optimizers
Optimization (role-playing games)
Optimization, in computer and table-top role-playing games, is a term intended to describe a play style or set of play styles alternately referred to by the terms munchkin gaming, powergaming, min-maxing, "roll-playing", or twinking, but without the pejorative connotation of those terms...
as a low-level creature that can summon more of its kind, providing the opportunity for farming.
Blink dogs appear in the roguelike
Roguelike
The roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by randomization for replayability, permanent death, and turn-based movement. Most roguelikes feature ASCII graphics, with newer ones increasingly offering tile-based graphics. Games are typically dungeon crawls, with many...
game Angband as monsters that can both teleport themselves and teleport the player to them.
In The Geeks' Guide to World Domination, blink dogs are characterized as one of fantasy's signature creatures.
In an episode of The Littlest Hobo
The Littlest Hobo
The Littlest Hobo is a Canadian television series based upon a 1958 American film of the same name directed by Charles R. Rondeau. The series first aired from 1963 to 1965 in syndication, and was revived for a popular second run on CTV from October 11, 1979 to March 7, 1985.All three productions...
called Dragonslayer, several young children playing a live action version of Dungeons & Dragons refer to the title character as a blink dog.