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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2008503" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.The Slayers Guide To Gnolls is a sourcebook on gnolls. It costs $7.99.Presentation: This sourcebook is softcover and the page-count is 32. The front cover is a decent picture of a gnoll attacking with a bloodied axe with a backdrop of a burning village. The blurring which occurred from the finish on the Hobgoblins sourcebook is no longer present. The back cover has some basic blurb about the book. The front inside cover is an anatomical drawing of a gnoll whilst the back inside cover shows a map and drawing of Edendale from the book. The first page contains credit and contents, the last two pages contain the OGL and D20 licence. Each page is bordered by a drawing of various weapons which takes up nearly 1 and 1/2 inches of an 8 inch wide page. There is still a fair amount of white space throughout the main text and between paragraphs, though not as bad as in 'Hobgoblins'. The black and white internal artwork is good on the whole, and more related directly to the text than 'Hobgoblins'.Whats Inside: The book's one page introduction gives an overview of the purpose of the Slayer's Guides and of gnolls. There is also a piece of flavour text. Three pages on Gnoll physiology follow which include sections on sharpened senses, diet, lifecycle and mindset. A page on Habitat deals with gnoll lairs. Six pages on Gnoll Society deal with family and packs, gnoll's slave economy, attitude to other races, and religion (with a section on gnoll clerics and a sidebar on gnoll druids). Four or so pages on Methods of Warfare look at weapons and armour, ambush, open warfare, and the defence of the lair. There follows a page on Role-playing With Gnolls which deals with portraying gnolls as a DM (particularly in combat) and lair design tips. The next two pages give eight short gnoll-orientated adventure ideas. The next page covers Gnolls as PCs with racial traits and some basic advice on running all-gnoll adventures. Five further pages detail a gnoll lair, Edendale, and its ruling pack, led by a full-statted pack leader. The last two pages are  a Gnoll Reference List, some basic stats for various Gnolls (pack leader, cleric, young, etc.) and some final flavour text.The Good: A definite improvement over 'Hobgoblins' with some imaginative ideas (the slave economy section and the information on sharpened senses in particular) and again, the lair of Edendale was well developed and generic enough to drop into most campaign settings.The Bad: As with 'Hobgoblins', still too lacking in meat for my tastes and again with too much white space and flavour text. Conclusion: Too bland to get any more than an Average rating for me, but definitely shows improvement compared to 'Hobgoblins'. I would have liked the flavour text and white space devoted to expansion of the adventure ideas or Edendale, which both showed promise.</blockquote>

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