Do You Like Gnolls?

[mmadsen]

You. Rock.

You. Rock.

I've been digging for this off and on for about 3 weeks. Thanks for the link!

You're quite welcome, francisca!

Often, you can find cool threads by going to the General RPG Discussion, scrolling to the bottom, and selecting "show threads by thread starter...from the beginning". Then you can hunt around for "mmadsen" (or "SHARK" or whomever).

 

[Hand of Evil]

Not really a fan of the Gnoll. While a interesting monster it is one of my group I do not use in my games.

I try to limit my evil races, orcs, hobs, drow, and a few others in my game. I think a DM can over populate his world with too much of anything and has to think about prey vs predator ratio, landmass, background.

 

[mmadsen]

Background: Gnolls were created by the British writer Lord Dunsany. He made them a manic, capering, nasty mix of gnome and troll. Small of stature, quite insane, and sadistic by any measure.

I've read quite a bit of Dunsany, and I've never come across that. Interesting. It's not a hyena-man though, right?

I decided to make my gnolls advanced hamadryas baboons.

Unusual.

For anyone interested in hamadryas baboons:

The Hamadryas was the sacred baboon of the ancient Egyptians, often pictured on temples and monoliths as the attendant or representative of Thoth, the god of letters and scribe of the gods. Baboons were mummified, entombed and associated with sun-worship. This is the only non-human primate found in Arabia. Also known as the sacred or “mantled” or Arabian baboon.

These animals are very social and are stressed by isolation. A direct stare is a threat. To threaten in return, they will raise their eyebrows, showing their white eyelid and partially open their mouth, displaying formidable canines.

Intensifying the threat ,they may yawn, raise their hair, slap hands and feet on the ground, grind their teeth and scream. Fear is shown by a “grin” with no eyelid threat. They have a number of calls; alarm is given by a dog-like bark.

(From http://www.oaklandzoo.org/atoz/azbaboon.html)

 

[Schmoe]

Gnolls are great and provide a lot of design space for culture building. I've gotten quite a bit of use out of them in my campaign.

Gnolls are:
Feral
Bestial
Savage
Ravenous
Death-worshipping
Nomadic

Eating and devouring are primary foci in gnoll culture - the gnoll language has dozens upon dozens of words that mean "to eat". A truce may be started by the words that mean "I will eat your corpse with reverance." (BTW, thanks to whoever first said "I will eat the contents of your stomach." That was a big inspiration.)

When dealing with gnolls, one can be assured that they will fight savagely if the slightest sign of weakness is shown. Peaceful dealings, although rare, always walk the fine line between diplomacy and bloodshed.

I have some great gnoll NPC's, including a Ranger/Dwarf Hunter/Ghostwalker, called simply "The Scourge", who stalks the Wasted Lands bringing death to all dwarves he finds. There was also the gnoll crone who foretold the PC's fortunes by drawing their blood and drinking it. They have just recently come across some ruins that hold a tribe of half-fiendish gnolls who feast on the regenerating flesh of a planetar.

Gnolls are great!

As far as having too many monstrous races, I find that the key is geographic localization. While it doesn't make sense to have goblins, gnolls, hobgoblins, kobolds, and orcs all sharing and competing for the same territory, it is quite reasonable to have orcs ruling the passes of the Grimspire Peaks, goblins lurking in the shadows of the Nightshade Forest, and gnolls wandering the vast broken terrain of the Wasted Lands.

YMMV

 

[La Bete]

I've always had a soft spot for Gnolls. For some reason, I often have them as bands of mercenaries - not sure why.

Some time ago in a Rolemaster game I had the party workign a lot with a gnoll mercenary company "Baz's Bugbear Bashers" (OK, so I was young).


More seriously though, I've seen frequent mention of the concept of a "monster palette" - i.e. picking and choosing what monsters you use for your world. I personally think that this is very important - especially for humanoid monsters, as too much variety spoils the pot, so to speak.

 

[mmadsen]

More seriously though, I've seen frequent mention of the concept of a "monster palette" - i.e. picking and choosing what monsters you use for your world. I personally think that this is very important - especially for humanoid monsters, as too much variety spoils the pot, so to speak.

Indeed, I started a What's Your Monster Palette? thread awhile ago (and introduced the idea before that in an older version of that thread and in the old Little Changes with Big Flavor thread).

 

[mythusmage]

I've read quite a bit of Dunsany, and I've never come across that. Interesting. It's not a hyena-man though, right?

It's been awhile, but Dunsany only mentioned the beasts in passing. I think it's in The King of Elfland's Daughter. The hyena-man bit was the Col's doing.

Flinds (from the original Fiend Folio) I made advanced mandrills. The drills being close cousins of baboons. This was the same world that had elves, dwarfs, and orcs as sub-species of H. sapiens, though the dwarfs were closer to being a separate species (and a eusocial one at that).