The Slayers Guide to Trolls

[Messageboard Golem]

Trolls are a staple of fantasy adventures, often used when the player characters have advanced to the point where goblins, orcs, and even bugbears pose little threat to the adventurers. Trolls are poised right at the boundary between goblinoids and giants. While technically classified as giants, they are unquestionably the smallest of such creatures yet, standing some nine feet, tall they easily tower over even the greatest of bugbears. Furthermore, the troll distinctive regenerative abilities make them memorable foes and a much greater challenge than a mere 9-foot goblin.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Publisher: Mongoose Publishing
Author: Johnathan Richards

Pluses
+ Quality professional-level game supplement.
+ Includes some excellent, even surprising ideas about playing trolls.
+ Nice price.

Minuses
None!

Physical Details
This excellent work is 32 pages in length, standard for the Slayer’s Guide series. The glossy front cover is artfully decorated with a frightening armed and partly armored troll, lumbering through a misty swamp. The veins and warts on his skin are grossly evident and his yellow (the text mentions that troll eyes are black) non-human eyes and sharp teeth are spine-chilling. There are two more trolls in the background and anyone whose encountered trolls before knows that whoever they are looking for is in real trouble. The artwork is inspiring, a perfect introduction to the topic. The back cover accurately describes what you will find inside and the price is a mere $9.95 – this is a must buy. The inside cover features an excellent detailed study of troll anatomy. The pencil-style interior art never fails, not even once, to convey the horror inherent in meeting up with these horrible creatures. The interior edges of the guide are bordered by attractive gray-scale art. The text, table, and statistical block layouts are clear and mostly error free and the text is easy to read. The writing style is also exciting and engaging from word one. The arrangement of all elements is simply perfect. This is one of Mongoose’s finest products.

Content Details
The Slayer’s Guide to Trolls is divided into several sections:

The Introduction is brief, jumps right into the topic and is delightfully written. It immediately gives a good sense for where trolls fit in monsterdom. Its final words predict that you may never view trolls the same way again, a prediction which indeed is bound to come true. The short fiction found here also sets the mood quite nicely.

The Troll Physiology section covers all the physical attributes of trolls and there are some real surprises here and not just one or two. Information about the differences between the sexes, posture, skin coloration, habits, hair, language, moods, senses and more are all included. The regeneration subsection is all-inclusive and is particularly informative and inspired. There is a wealth of new information about this most celebrated of troll abilities as well as related immune system and lifespan information, including a rare troll disease. Regeneration is not just about the dry statistical accumulation of lost hit points here. The dietary and lifecycle sections contain even more gruesome and humorous surprises respectively. The short fiction at the end of the section is both demonstrative and poignant.

The Subspecies section is a gift to game masters. Five frightening varieties of troll are expertly provided. These horrid new brutes will undoubtedly terrify your players.

The Habitat section is brief yet enlightening. It provides a lot of good information about how trolls fit into the local ecology, how they lair, how often they move on to other territories and what they value.

The Troll Society section covers the not-so-subtle nuances of troll politics, leadership and religion as well as all the possible exceptions. Some class information is also included. There are some surprises here too that could make for a richer playing experience whether with a single troll, a group of trolls or a troll amongst humanoids. The related fiction ending this section is worth a good chuckle.

The brief Methods of Warfare section covers troll combat tactics, armor and weapon preferences, lair defenses and related practices, building on the information provided in earlier sections.

The Role-Playing With Trolls section puts all the information in the work together and offers succinct suggestions on how to make encounters with trolls a truly terrifying prospect.

The Scenario Hooks and Ideas section offers some great easily-employed suggestions for adventures with trolls at center stage. Again the ending fiction is humorous.

The Trolls as Characters section is great offering, giving you and your players everything you would need to play exceptional trolls as characters. There are 5 ghastly skin-and-bone-play feats provided here too, each utilizing the trolls ability to regenerate. The related fiction paints a good picture of the horrifying possibilites with the matterial firmly in mind. The section closes nicely with a couple of bizzare troll-only spells.

The Azkhak’s Lair section features a detailed ready-made troll lair. Just drop it right into your next game session. Keeping the material in previous sections in mind, the personalities of the trolls too, the encounter is sure to come alive.

The Troll Reference List section is a nice reference, providing you with a spring board for building trolls of all types, from infant to shaman.

Overall Comments
This work was just a shear pleasure to read and reread. The text is just flat out entertaining, possessed of classic wit and style. Putting this work into practice is almost effortless – a single read will spawn so many good ideas that previous troll encounters may very well pale in comparision. Game masters who fail to add this one to their arsenal are clearly missing out.

 

[geoffrey d`glanville]

The Slayer`s Guide to Trolls

This is a little discussion about the contents of Slayer`s Guide #8, To Trolls.
While reviewing the product, I thought it was a much lower number, i.e. an earlier Slayer`s Guide, but I was quite astonished that a book so far into the line was so rather mediocre.

Let us see that in detail.

The Slayer`s Guide to Trolls consists of 11 chapters. The first being the

Introduction (1 page, 2.4 stars out of possible 5.10),
which is rather uninspired and not suited to make the reader hunger for more info on trolls.
(Subchapters: The Slayer`s Guides - Troll - Ravenous Predators)

Troll Physiology (3 pages, 3.6) is definitely better and explains nicely all the well known physical advantages (and for the players that means: disadvantages!) of that race, but nothing knew.
(Heightened Senses - Regeneration - Dietary Considerations - The Troll`s Lifecycle)

Subspecies is the best chapter in the book (4 pages, 4.0). There are some pretty neat variants of the troll, I especially liked the Bicephalous (Two-Headed) Troll and the Megalotroll, although some of the stats can`t be right (e.g. I don`t think it`s correkt that a Huge Size troll makes 2d4 with its Claw Attacks)
(Sandtroll - Polar Troll - Giant Troll - Bicephalous (Two-Headed) Troll - Megalotroll)

Habitat is pretty uninspired and consists only of stereotypes (1 page, 2.0).

Troll Society is again a better chapter in the book. It nicely details the quasi socio-cultural aspects of troll life, 5 pages, 3.8.
(Clan Structure - On the Leadership of Females - The Outcast - Troll Spirituality).

Methods of Warfare sadly is again totally predictable and without new ideas (2 pages, 2.7).

Roleplaying with Trolls only microwaves old ideas. Nothing new. 1 page, 1.6.

The Scenario Hooks and Ideas are absolutely 08/15, sometimes horribly bad, 1 pade, 1.4.

Trolls as Characters is another disappointment in that there are no Prestige Classes (yes, in a racial sourcebook -NO- Prestige Classes associated with that race, that was quite a shock to say in earnest), the Feats are only upgrades of already existing racial advantages of the troll (such as his regeneration abilities), the handfull (much too few) Spells are O.K., 4 pages, 2.0.

Azkhaks Lair is your next uninspired 08/15 troll cave, 2 pages, 1.3.

The Troll Reference List is again rather uninspired and there are no interesting Troll/PrC or Core Class (exept for the super-classic Cleric) combinations, a disappointment, 2 pages, 1.6.

Then the infamous Grey Boxes, which are sometimes a real delight in the Slayer`s Guides. Not so in this one; I do not know which flair the author, Johnathan Richards, wanted to create here, but they can`t be more than your super-mediocre 8th class sessionlogs from somebody`s campaign; an absolutely failed amalgam of Warhammer Frp/Basic D&D mood, that just is horrible to read. Sorry about that, but it is that way. The saddest thing of it all is that the Grey Boxes ate up about 7 pages of this thinly book (32 pages altogether, that makes it 22% of the whole book! A clear filler here), thus finally ruining of what could have been a nice book, 7 pages, 1.2.

Then, the looks.

The overall concept of doing such racial books and thus relieving those races from the status of mere XP shippers is very nice; to do them as relatively flappy 32-page booklets for $ 9.95 each is not that brilliant; mostly they would deserve a much better treatment, as e.g. Kenzer and Co. have recently shown in their Friend & Foe line (224 page+ hardcovers), 3.8.

The Cover by Brent Chumley is mediocre at best, 2.4.

The Troll Study illu on the inside frontcover by Chris Quilliams is good quality, as usual, 3.8.

The Inside Illus are b/w and were made by Phil Renne, clearly to the benefit of the book and myabe rescuing it from going under two stars, 3.4. There are 11 illus (counting that of Chris Quilliams) altogether.

The Map of Azkhaks Lair is also nice to look at, 3.0.

The Inner Layout of the book is a little better than amateur style, the weapons that modelled for the illus on the right and left of the pages were Larp weapons, right?, O.K., 2.6.

The Cover is made from relatively solid, laminated cardboard, 3.2.

Price/Value is not good; it`s a totally mediocre (close to uninspired bad) mostly low quality fluff book that basically only deals in stereotypes, 2.2.

Price/Page is also way bad (although $ 9.95 might not seem that bad for a booklet in the first place), 31.1 cents per page, 0.5.

Paper Quality is O.K., 2.8.

Crunch/Fluff ratio is O.K., but the crunch in that book was not good, and it should have been more, about 30% in my estimation, but it was only about 15%. The fluff was not good either, the Grey Boxes prose something to run away from, 2.7.

Illu/Page ratio is 2.9 pages per illu, not bad, 2.6.

Writing Style is genarally not bad, but the weak prose of the Grey Boxes partly ruins the rest, 2.2.

So, overall a quite mediocre 2.5 value that it largely does not owe to its content (even some of the stats were wrong), but rather its acceptable hardware.
Very sad, because the concept generally is not bad at all and the Trolls would have deserved a much better treatment. Maybe Kenzer and Co. does something with it.

This is a 3.0e product, published in 2002 and of what I can tell from the Mongoose Publishing Website as of 03-09-05, it is out-of-print by now.
Note that the Slayer`s Guide to Trolls is also featured in Mongoose`s hardcover book Slayer`s Guide Compendium I from 11/2004 for $ 34.95 (clearly the better deal, along with definitely better Slayer`s Guides), which is v.3.5, along with Bugbears, Gnolls, Hobgoblins, Orcs and Troglodytes.

I also would like to add that I cannot follow the praise of my forerunner and dub this a book with "superior" quality. Sorry, it clearly isn`t.