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The Slayers Guide to Gnolls
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<blockquote data-quote="bramadan" data-source="post: 2008376" data-attributes="member: 1064"><p>Slayer’s Guide series sets out to give the cultural and ecological details on frequently used but underdeveloped fantasy races from Monster Manual. </p><p>In the time when monster collections are probably the most prevalent sort of a d20 sourcebook I find this approach both innovative and useful. While I have nothing against a traditional monster encyclopedia their format, and the pressure to include as many monsters as possible on the least amount of pages, makes the very sparse on anything other then the physical description and combat abilities of the monsters. This approach diminishes from the quality of the campaigns as, in many cases, DM is judging appropriateness of a monster for a given adventure by his challenge rating rather then by the believability and internal logic of the adventure. The result is that the whole classes of monsters just blend into each other and that the great diversity that monster encyclopedias purport to create proves illusory.</p><p>Traditionally, one of the principal offenders in this regard have been Gnolls. Orc and Goblin appearances usually have, at least some, story justification, due to their development in fantasy literature. Practically only justification I have ever heard of for including Gnolls in an adventure is their status as 2HD large humanoid – perfect enemy for those parties that “graduated” from Orcs and their ilk. This attitude makes them irrelevant, even a bit comical in the eyes of players and DMs alike and the act of fighting them becomes the XP gathering chore or at best an intermediate step on some mission rather then the heroic adventure of its own. </p><p>This book changes all that – it casts Gnolls vividly as the brutal slavers that the players will love to hate. It gives them a distinctive culture and enables the DM to clearly understand in which situations will the Gnolls be a logical inclusion in the adventure. It also helps immensely in deciding on the most likely behaviour of the Gnolls in the non-combat situations.</p><p>Finally, one thing that definitely makes this book, and the whole Slayers Guide series truly exceptional in my eyes is the quality of prose and artwork. Each of the books reads largely as a novel and at worst as a good “National Geographic” article making them a very pleasant break from rather dry regular sourcebook text. Art is, to my taste, excellent, in particular the covers and the interior cover illustrations which are unusually informative. </p><p>All in all this books are an excellent campaign building supplements, their modularity makes them useful in practically every campaign (except ones that already has well-defined the races in question) and their price makes them some of the best value-for-money d20 products.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="bramadan, post: 2008376, member: 1064"] Slayer’s Guide series sets out to give the cultural and ecological details on frequently used but underdeveloped fantasy races from Monster Manual. In the time when monster collections are probably the most prevalent sort of a d20 sourcebook I find this approach both innovative and useful. While I have nothing against a traditional monster encyclopedia their format, and the pressure to include as many monsters as possible on the least amount of pages, makes the very sparse on anything other then the physical description and combat abilities of the monsters. This approach diminishes from the quality of the campaigns as, in many cases, DM is judging appropriateness of a monster for a given adventure by his challenge rating rather then by the believability and internal logic of the adventure. The result is that the whole classes of monsters just blend into each other and that the great diversity that monster encyclopedias purport to create proves illusory. Traditionally, one of the principal offenders in this regard have been Gnolls. Orc and Goblin appearances usually have, at least some, story justification, due to their development in fantasy literature. Practically only justification I have ever heard of for including Gnolls in an adventure is their status as 2HD large humanoid – perfect enemy for those parties that “graduated” from Orcs and their ilk. This attitude makes them irrelevant, even a bit comical in the eyes of players and DMs alike and the act of fighting them becomes the XP gathering chore or at best an intermediate step on some mission rather then the heroic adventure of its own. This book changes all that – it casts Gnolls vividly as the brutal slavers that the players will love to hate. It gives them a distinctive culture and enables the DM to clearly understand in which situations will the Gnolls be a logical inclusion in the adventure. It also helps immensely in deciding on the most likely behaviour of the Gnolls in the non-combat situations. Finally, one thing that definitely makes this book, and the whole Slayers Guide series truly exceptional in my eyes is the quality of prose and artwork. Each of the books reads largely as a novel and at worst as a good “National Geographic” article making them a very pleasant break from rather dry regular sourcebook text. Art is, to my taste, excellent, in particular the covers and the interior cover illustrations which are unusually informative. All in all this books are an excellent campaign building supplements, their modularity makes them useful in practically every campaign (except ones that already has well-defined the races in question) and their price makes them some of the best value-for-money d20 products. [/QUOTE]
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