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Tell Us About Your Gnolls! [+]
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<blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 9204482" data-attributes="member: 54364"><p>I've been meaning to reply to this for a week. But I've been away from my computer and I'd be buggered if I was going to do all this typing on my phone.</p><p></p><p>I suppose the first thing I should say is I have no truck with that nonsense about gnolls being demons or whatever. #Gnolls Are People!</p><p></p><p>So I recently(ish) ran a campaign in which the group had a lot of interaction with gnolls. It was the sort of campaign with a not-Egypt, a not-Sumer. The game went to not-North Africa and they met a bunch of gnoll tribes there. </p><p></p><p>The tribes are matriarchal - the leadership of the various tribes are almost all female. Tribal units are smallish - a thousand or so members. Each with it's own territory. The gnolls consider themselves a nation and act in concert against outside threats. But they still war among themselves. And indeed it was into the middle of one such inter-tribal war that the PCs wandered. </p><p></p><p>The tribes all share a religion and have a sense of shared history. The tribes share a space for the disposal of the dead (by exposure.) I didn't define the religion very closely but it has aspects of nature spirit and ancestral veneration. The main nature spirit is a mother goddess figure called Heeyihee. Oh, and at a funeral they say "The wind in the grass will speak their name." (Something I came up with spur of the moment at a PC's funeral.)</p><p></p><p>In terms of economics they're herders (cattle and goats) and hunters with a little light farming. They're not exclusive carnivores, hence the farming. Their local booze was a fermented milk thing. They trade with the settled human kingdoms on the coast. The gnolls trade leather, and cured meat and dairy for metal tools and weapons. Speaking of, their preferred weapons are re-curve bows. Wood is rare so the bows use a lot of bone in their construction.</p><p></p><p>One thing I did, because I wanted the gnoll's names to have a similar sound, was I created a little matrix of sounds - vowels across the top, consonants down the side. I did six examples for each. This gave me 36 phonemes that I could then string together for names. Had pretty good results even if I do say so myself.</p><p></p><p>That's my first bunch of gnolls.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DrunkonDuty, post: 9204482, member: 54364"] I've been meaning to reply to this for a week. But I've been away from my computer and I'd be buggered if I was going to do all this typing on my phone. I suppose the first thing I should say is I have no truck with that nonsense about gnolls being demons or whatever. #Gnolls Are People! So I recently(ish) ran a campaign in which the group had a lot of interaction with gnolls. It was the sort of campaign with a not-Egypt, a not-Sumer. The game went to not-North Africa and they met a bunch of gnoll tribes there. The tribes are matriarchal - the leadership of the various tribes are almost all female. Tribal units are smallish - a thousand or so members. Each with it's own territory. The gnolls consider themselves a nation and act in concert against outside threats. But they still war among themselves. And indeed it was into the middle of one such inter-tribal war that the PCs wandered. The tribes all share a religion and have a sense of shared history. The tribes share a space for the disposal of the dead (by exposure.) I didn't define the religion very closely but it has aspects of nature spirit and ancestral veneration. The main nature spirit is a mother goddess figure called Heeyihee. Oh, and at a funeral they say "The wind in the grass will speak their name." (Something I came up with spur of the moment at a PC's funeral.) In terms of economics they're herders (cattle and goats) and hunters with a little light farming. They're not exclusive carnivores, hence the farming. Their local booze was a fermented milk thing. They trade with the settled human kingdoms on the coast. The gnolls trade leather, and cured meat and dairy for metal tools and weapons. Speaking of, their preferred weapons are re-curve bows. Wood is rare so the bows use a lot of bone in their construction. One thing I did, because I wanted the gnoll's names to have a similar sound, was I created a little matrix of sounds - vowels across the top, consonants down the side. I did six examples for each. This gave me 36 phonemes that I could then string together for names. Had pretty good results even if I do say so myself. That's my first bunch of gnolls. [/QUOTE]
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