D&D Trolls: Where do they come from?

[Will]

Random idea for trolls in someone's game...

Trolls originated from someone's experiment in immortality. It was, alas, successful.

All subsequent trolls descend from pieces of the original experimenter.

 

[Drew]

Wow. Thanks everyone for the great replies. I now have a few cool ideas, and a book recommendation to boot. Now all I need is more time in a day.

I really appreciate what Mark posted. It was a good read. The other ideas on here are very cool as well. I like the hag thing, and may try to tie that into a hag-like diety of mine. The walking cancer thing is really cool too, though. Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[tkinias]

Actually, the Trolls of Middle Earth were "bred in mockery of the Ents". Morgoth could not create life, only fake it after a fashion, so Trolls in Middle Earth reverted to the stone from which he fashioned them when touched by the sun.

The Orcs were the debased elves.

Personally, I think Ogres are closer to Tolkien's Trolls: big, dumb, hardy, but not regenerative or rubbery.

Don't you mean treants?

You are quite right about ents=>trolls where elves=>orcs. I mistyped.

However, given that treants are of pretty minimal importance in most TSR-derived settings AFAIK -- and that the orcs have no connection with elves and are <em>not</em> immortal -- I think I might still make the `Gygaxian' troll some sort of twisted elf. Will posted the suggestion that the troll is the result of meddling with immortality; this also tends to suggest some kind of elvish connection in my mind. The `walking tumour' aspect of the troll is also in a way a perverse mockery of the elvish immunity to disease.

I like the idea, BTW, of mapping ogres onto Tolkien trolls. I never much liked ogres myself; they really have no basis in mediaeval folklore, and the word only dates to 1697.

 

[T. Foster]

I like the idea, BTW, of mapping ogres onto Tolkien trolls. I never much liked ogres myself; they really have no basis in mediaeval folklore, and the word only dates to 1697.

That Tolkein's trolls = D&D's ogres is actually explicitly stated in Chainmail. I don't have the book in front of me to give the exact quote, but the jist of the description is "those creatures traditionally referred to as trolls in folklore are described as 'ogres' herein. There is also a much more terrible creature, known as a 'true troll'..." and if refers the reader to Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions for more details. (If anyone cares and I think about it when I get home I might try to dig up the exact quote).

First post! (and last?...)

 

[T. Foster]

As promised earlier (and I'm sure you were all holding your collective breath...) here's the direct quote from Chainmail (3rd edition, 1975, p. 34):

TROLLS (and Ogres): What are generally referred to as Trolls are more properly Ogres -- intermediate creatures between men and Giants. They will fight in formations, and have melee capability of six Heavy Foot. Trolls (and Ogres) can see in darkness, but suffer no penalty in full light. True Trolls are much more fearsome beasts (see Poul Anderson's THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS). Ogres are killed when they have taken an accumulation of six missile or melee hits in normal combat. Elves can kill them with a single hit.
True Trolls can only be killed in Fantastic Combat against Hero-types, Elementals and Giants -- magical weapons will also kill True Trolls. Use the combat table below:
[table snipped]
True Trolls always fight alone and need never check morale. They fight as Giants on the Fantasy Combat Table, but only as three Armored Foot when attacking or being attacked by men.

(Not sure how game-history-attuned you guys are or if this goes without saying, but Chainmail was the medieval miniatures game by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, the Fantasy Supplement to which formed the basis for the campaigns (Blackmoor and Greyhawk) that eventually spawned D&D; so that's why the above quote is germane to the origin of trolls in D&D. )

 

[Drew]

As promised earlier (and I'm sure you were all holding your collective breath...) here's the direct quote from Chainmail (3rd edition, 1975, p. 34):
(Not sure how game-history-attuned you guys are or if this goes without saying, but Chainmail was the medieval miniatures game by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, the Fantasy Supplement to which formed the basis for the campaigns (Blackmoor and Greyhawk) that eventually spawned D&D; so that's why the above quote is germane to the origin of trolls in D&D. )

I was waiting for it.

Its funny, but this discussion has followed the same lines as my language work for my world. I originally started revamping the language system because language is so important to a culture's origins. That led me to question where races such as orcs and trolls come from, how they fit with one another and the "big picture."

The monsters and races of D&D are, by necessity, very generic. Making them fit better into the culture and history of your world is one of the most import (and most fun) parts of building a homebrew. That's why I really enjoyed the Kingdoms of Kalamar excerpt above.

So, keeping this to the originally topic, what language should trolls speak if I use the "offspring of hags" idea? Infernal? What if I use the twisted elf idea? Do you think troll deserve their own tongue, or are creatures of such feral and destructive nature unlikely to develope their own language?

 

[tkinias]

So, keeping this to the originally topic, what language should trolls speak if I use the "offspring of hags" idea? Infernal? What if I use the twisted elf idea? Do you think troll deserve their own tongue, or are creatures of such feral and destructive nature unlikely to develope their own language?

I would be inclined to have them speak a perverted form of an elvish tongue. If you're into really messing around with languages, get hold of a Quenya lexicon/grammar from Middle Earth, brutally simplify the grammar (flatten all verb conjugations English-style, for example, get rid of any sophisticated tenses, etc.) and uglify the sound by applying some regular sound changes. How exactly that would work would probably depend on your definition of `ugly' -- maybe replace /k/ with German-style `ch', /t/ with `sh' when followed by a front vowel, whatever.

Or, just say that `they speak a hideously debased dialect of an ancient elvish tongue'...