There is one gnoll in my world who is able to coexist among humans, and that is due to his human mom. No, its not his Human genetics Which make him able to coexist with humans, its because his mom taught him biting stangers was bad. Exept if the crew is trying to plunder said strangers. His mom is a pirate captain.
“Remember dear, humans are a sometimes food. Now is that ‘sometimes’.”
There is one gnoll in my world who is able to coexist among humans, and that is due to his human mom. No, its not his Human genetics Which make him able to coexist with humans, its because his mom taught him biting stangers was bad. Exept if the crew is trying to plunder said strangers. His mom is a pirate captain.
“Remember dear, humans are a sometimes food. Now is that ‘sometimes’.”
That's a funny line, mind if I use it if my players meet them?
There is one gnoll in my world who is able to coexist among humans, and that is due to his human mom. No, its not his Human genetics Which make him able to coexist with humans, its because his mom taught him biting stangers was bad. Exept if the crew is trying to plunder said strangers. His mom is a pirate captain.
“Remember dear, humans are a sometimes food. Now is that ‘sometimes’.”
That's a funny line, mind if I use it if my players meet them?
The point is that 5th edition Gnoll Lore is simply wrong. In Eberron Gnolls are an important humanoid race. Changing the nature of Gnolls was a design mistake.
Eberron is explicitly different from other settings in this respect, though. At the time it debuted, Goblinoids and Orcs not being mostly or entirely evil was also unique to, or at least distinctive of, Eberron. I personally find default Gnolls really uninteresting even by the standards of other "generically evil fodder"-type monsters, and I love Eberron, but Eberron is so deliberately different from "vanilla" settings that I don't think contradicting it can be called a "mistake" per se.
Yes, but what I meant is that 3.5 Gnolls had potential to tell a different story, Eberron being an example. 5 ed Gnolls are a waste of potential.
Because of course you have no agency whatsoever to tell your own story, nor does WotC have any ability to recontextualize creatures in different settings.
Because of course you have no agency whatsoever to tell your own story, nor does WotC have any ability to recontextualize creatures in different settings.
Well - you must admit it's possible to feel that the earlier version of gnolls felt like it provided more of a choice than the new one does. I mean, I made this entire thread because I think gnolls are dumb and dull in their most recent iteration. But then, I admit I'm overly fond of stitching togeter what I consider to be workable societies for all sentients. Which is also a from of ... 'blandness' or perhaps sameness is a better word.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
At the end of the day, this is a sword and sorcery adventure game. That means that 99 times in 100 the adventure will at some point- typically many points- involve the PC's venturing out and killing stuff. To facilitate designing this process, the game provides various creatures/beings/etc. that can be uncritically engaged and killed, in keeping with some very foundational tropes. Gnolls are one option that fills that niche in the larger writings, particularly with their move to Monstrosity/Fiend (if what I've heard about the upcoming MM is correct), and really at this point the niche might need some additional filler since more typically humanoid coded races like orcs and goblinoids are being moved out of it. Eberron is not a great reference point for the larger writings because it was pretty specifically written as a "hey, take all the assumptions baseline D&D makes about where things stand on the morality axis and toss them out the window" setting. Thus I give how it handles gnolls about as much over-narrative weight as Dark Sun's cannibalistic halflings- it's something you can use if you want in your story/setting/etc., but it's a shift from the general "this is what D&D is like" paradigm. Not a bad thing; the beauty of D&D is that it can accommodate this kind of compartmentalized lore. I just see why "gnolls as just another strain of humanoids" ended up in a secondary compartment rather than a primary in the overarching 5e iterations.
That can all be true (or debatable), and I can still disagree enough to make a thread about how I consider it dull and unappealing.
I like Eberron for throwing assumptions out the window. I like for sentient races to have basic stuff like self-preservation and the desire to build societies that work. I like telling the stories I tell within that framework - and not within the framework of 'these enemies are just here to die, and you needn't concern yourself with trying to understand them or their society.'
In the games I play, there are no cannon fodder races. None. There isn't a single race that I didn't work on to try and make it unique and interesting. Even humans! Even humans get their own unique culture, background, how their society works. How they became dominant.
It takes time. More often than not, the players only scratch the surface of all the work that went into creating it. But it doesn't matter - it's there to be found, I don't have to improvise. And I'm happy with it.
I'm not saying it's better or anything, nor that anyone need do the same. But it's how I roll. And I like it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
That is not what I meant. What I mean is that if you change the base rules a creature works on ( and making an humanoid species s fiend makes exactly that) base rules which are identical in every settings, you are harmstringing people to make heavier changes then they would like.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
“Remember dear, humans are a sometimes food. Now is that ‘sometimes’.”
That's a funny line, mind if I use it if my players meet them?
Go ahead
The point is that 5th edition Gnoll Lore is simply wrong. In Eberron Gnolls are an important humanoid race. Changing the nature of Gnolls was a design mistake.
Eberron is explicitly different from other settings in this respect, though. At the time it debuted, Goblinoids and Orcs not being mostly or entirely evil was also unique to, or at least distinctive of, Eberron. I personally find default Gnolls really uninteresting even by the standards of other "generically evil fodder"-type monsters, and I love Eberron, but Eberron is so deliberately different from "vanilla" settings that I don't think contradicting it can be called a "mistake" per se.
Medium humanoid (human), lawful neutral
Yes, but what I meant is that 3.5 Gnolls had potential to tell a different story, Eberron being an example. 5 ed Gnolls are a waste of potential.
Because of course you have no agency whatsoever to tell your own story, nor does WotC have any ability to recontextualize creatures in different settings.
Well - you must admit it's possible to feel that the earlier version of gnolls felt like it provided more of a choice than the new one does. I mean, I made this entire thread because I think gnolls are dumb and dull in their most recent iteration. But then, I admit I'm overly fond of stitching togeter what I consider to be workable societies for all sentients. Which is also a from of ... 'blandness' or perhaps sameness is a better word.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
At the end of the day, this is a sword and sorcery adventure game. That means that 99 times in 100 the adventure will at some point- typically many points- involve the PC's venturing out and killing stuff. To facilitate designing this process, the game provides various creatures/beings/etc. that can be uncritically engaged and killed, in keeping with some very foundational tropes. Gnolls are one option that fills that niche in the larger writings, particularly with their move to Monstrosity/Fiend (if what I've heard about the upcoming MM is correct), and really at this point the niche might need some additional filler since more typically humanoid coded races like orcs and goblinoids are being moved out of it. Eberron is not a great reference point for the larger writings because it was pretty specifically written as a "hey, take all the assumptions baseline D&D makes about where things stand on the morality axis and toss them out the window" setting. Thus I give how it handles gnolls about as much over-narrative weight as Dark Sun's cannibalistic halflings- it's something you can use if you want in your story/setting/etc., but it's a shift from the general "this is what D&D is like" paradigm. Not a bad thing; the beauty of D&D is that it can accommodate this kind of compartmentalized lore. I just see why "gnolls as just another strain of humanoids" ended up in a secondary compartment rather than a primary in the overarching 5e iterations.
That can all be true (or debatable), and I can still disagree enough to make a thread about how I consider it dull and unappealing.
I like Eberron for throwing assumptions out the window. I like for sentient races to have basic stuff like self-preservation and the desire to build societies that work. I like telling the stories I tell within that framework - and not within the framework of 'these enemies are just here to die, and you needn't concern yourself with trying to understand them or their society.'
In the games I play, there are no cannon fodder races. None. There isn't a single race that I didn't work on to try and make it unique and interesting. Even humans! Even humans get their own unique culture, background, how their society works. How they became dominant.
It takes time. More often than not, the players only scratch the surface of all the work that went into creating it. But it doesn't matter - it's there to be found, I don't have to improvise. And I'm happy with it.
I'm not saying it's better or anything, nor that anyone need do the same. But it's how I roll. And I like it.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
That is not what I meant. What I mean is that if you change the base rules a creature works on ( and making an humanoid species s fiend makes exactly that) base rules which are identical in every settings, you are harmstringing people to make heavier changes then they would like.