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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8328924" data-attributes="member: 5948">I do remember there being a brief phase in later 2e where gnolls were, to a limited degree, being portrayed as the 'better' humanoid monsters - more redeemable, bit more of the shamanic-tribal-warrior type tropes were in use for them vs orcs etc who were still basically just killing fodder.  There was a major sympathetic gnoll character in Zeb Cook's novel 'Soldiers of Ice', who was heavily implied to become a Harper post-book for instance, and while I don't have references, I vaguely recall bands of relatively reasonable gnolls, or mercenary companies of gnolls etc showing up in a number of supplements around that era.  Yeenoghu was always around, but so was Gorellik, the gnoll hunting/strength deity who some gnolls followed.  Gorellik wasn't exactly nice, but he wasn't a demon lord either.I suspect this attitude started to wane with the 3e PHB re-introducing the half-orc as a playable race, so the 'monster PC' niche was kinda filled.  And orcs in general followed along, because if you don't have orcs who are at least reasonable then the existence of half-orcs leads to Unfortunate Implications, as they say.Then 4e happened along and Gorellik was retconned to have been killed in the Dawn War (or possibly eaten by Yeenoghu), and all gnolls were Yeenoghu-spawn, which neatly meant that they could be killed without qualm of conscience by adventurers far and near.  Basically, they had entirely the opposite narrative trajectory to orcs, who became less Tolkienesque irredeemable evilspawn and more independent sentient beings as time passed.  Gnolls devolved and became more evil.  Which I thought was sad.  Soldiers of Ice remains one of my favourite FR books, and it gave me a lasting soft spot for gnolls, which is hard to maintain with the current lore around them.</blockquote>

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