When did ghouls become undead?

[Ulrick]

What if ghouls weren't undead?

That would be a surprise to the experienced gamer playing a cleric, particularly a high level cleric.

DM: You hear slavering sounds behind you. Turning, you see about a dozen hunched humans with yellow eyes and blood encrusted claws. They grin, revealing black teeth that long to bite your flesh.

PC Cleric: I raise my holy symbol and say, "The sun of Pelor shall destroy thee!" (rolls turning check dice). I turn 18 HD of undead at +3 above my level, so that makes it 12. Because their only ghouls, they'll be destroyed.

DM: They pause for a moment and laugh. Then they amble toward you, reaching out to your flesh with blood encrusted claws.

PC Cleric: What the hell???

 

[Pyrex]

Ghouls=Reavers=The Hills Have Eyes Mutants

I tend to support the 'living, degenerate humans' idea if I can, it's much more horrific if they're intelligent but alien and blasphemous people corrupted by some evil contagion.

Other than 'omg, undead with paralyses!'

The Feral template makes for a pretty decent Wendigo.

I pondered a short-term game that had the party hunting "ghouls" where they'd subsequently be trapped outside civilisation for weeks whereupon they'd be faced with the temptation of cannibalism and potentially begin the change into Wendigos if they succumb ala the movie Ravenous.

Then there'd be the part where the wendigo's who'd been slain would rise a night later as true ghouls.

 

[GreatLemur]

What if ghouls weren't undead?

That would be a surprise to the experienced gamer playing a cleric, particularly a high level cleric.

Yeah, I basically sprang essentially that situation on my players, with that result. I had these ghoul-like-but-entirely-alive creatures show up, and from the fact that they were in a graveyard and looked like crap warmed over, the Cleric naturally assumed they were undead.

But, after the turn attempt failed, the party beat the hell out of the poor, feral wretches--which, after all, basically had the stats of unarmed goblins--so nobody took the bait-and-switch too hard. In fact, I kind of wish I'd given the "ghouls" something on the order of that paralysis power, so they could at least have ended up halfway scary.

 

[Desdichado]

One might also question when "undead" became a meaningful and prevalent categorization in fantastic fiction and horror. Further, many spins on vampires or zombies have them not as "undead" creatures as D&D would call it, but the result of some strange physiology or disease.

Indeed. Ghouls seem to have always been associated with a tradition that we would today call undead, but it wasn't always called undead.

I don't know about when it became common, but I know Bram Stoker used the word undead, and Renfrew was a pretty solid prototype of a guy on his way towards becoming a "modern" ghoul.

In any case, I believe I read somewhere that Stoker coined the term undead, so considering ghouls undead before the coining of the term undead would be an exercise in futility. Right off the bat after the term was coined, ghouls seem to (more often than not) been associated with undead, if not outright members of that particular social club.