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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 9549771" data-attributes="member: 15538">I'm not setting out how "big of a deal" it is. As I said, gnolls don't really closely map to a specific example or trope or representation of a real human group. However, they do overlap considerably with "savage" tropes, and they are factually situated in Africa. There is simply no way of dismissing the association between gnolls and the "cannibal stew pot."If you look at Pathfinder and Golarion, I think the writers came to the conclusion there is no easy to separate the exoticism, savage imagery, and African (specifically) and non-Western (generally) thematics. Gnolls were taking up thematic real estate (literally and figuratively). So they took away the evil-chaotic elements, re-aligned their habits and characterizations with anthropomorphic hyena behavior, adapted actual African (original, not from outside the culture) folklore about hyenas and were-hyenas, and finally changed the name.A different direction would be to make gnolls clearly non-human, by giving them a "fiend" identity, making sure that they aren't the dominant civilization of a region that stands in for Africa, and generally not giving them a natural culture, instead depicting them as the result of magic or specific gods or demons. This direction got some traction in 3e, before some course-reverses here and there, and seems to be more or less the direction they are going in 5e (how well, remains to be seen). Either way, the only way to fix them is to break associations with actual humans and pernicious tropes. And it's worth noting that the name itself was a random word plucked out out of a short Dunsany piece about monsters stalking people from the woods. There is no reason to hold onto the word for any folkloric reason. The gnoll, as we know it, is simply a recognizable type in pop culture, from D&D, and thence into anime, Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc. So essentially everything tying gnolls to the negative prejudices I am talking about is a conscious choice made by the writers. Nothing about what I am criticizing is necessary. You can just, you know, make them less evil, or tie them less to real life people and places, or make them more monstrous, or replace them with another sort of creature with a better thematic focus, or just, you know, not use them. Pathfinder rewrote gnolls as simply anthros, if a little ooky about death and dead bodies, whereas D&D maybe decided to turn them into demons/cambions/tieflings something along those lines, who don't belong to a "primitive" culture but instead represent demonic worship, otherworldly influence, and evil as more like a primal force, not something you can reason with. The two approaches aren't completely opposed, you can put together something that solves the problems in your specific setting, in your stories, but's important to be conscious and careful about what elements you choose and what they represent, suggest, and imply in context.</blockquote>

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