This is a followup to  Giving Humanoids a Raison d'être , where I cover the Goblins Bugbears, Ogres and trolls. Or simply: Trolls. Let's throw in hill giants, ogre magi (Onis) and hags for good measure. The humanoids discussed in the previous entry were, in a sense, write-ups of  Gygaxian Naturalist  critters. In this article, the remaining ones will be those of a decidedly more mythic  bend. I've compiled them all under the label: Trolls. I've never loved the D&D troll. As a critter, it is a fine piece of work. Everybody fears and loathes regeneration. But trolls, at least as a Scandinavian, has unavoidable mythic connotations to me that Poul Anderson's strange concoction does not meet in any shape or form. The D&D 'troll' is wonderful Chaos Beast no doubt, but it is not mythic. And trolls are mythic. Instead, I've stripped the D&D troll of its rank and title and assigned it to some others critters of mythic origin who could really

Oh, Hit points. Is there any other gaming concept as opaque and contentious over the ages? Maybe Armor Class,  but that is for another day. What are  hit points really? With monsters, it is simple enough to equate hit points to physical damage. But less so for people. Originally, number of Hit dice = the number of hits before you go down. Simple and intuitive option. A normal 1 HD man goes down when struck by a sword. A troll, being of larger and more durable stature than a man, has six hit dice (ie, can take six sword hits before going down). But then the iffy part: A 6th level fighter fighter is the equal of six men - Is his body as tough as a troll? What does his extra hit points represent? The exact answer seems to vary over the years and as significantly - There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus in any point in time as to its exact status. "Wounds + [x], from taking a hit" seems to be the the closest definition people can agree on at any given time.

Today, I stumbled on the excellent  Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque  blog and found this article that any aspiring setting brewer should read: World-Building: When is Enough Too Much? It really spells out and crystalises some of my own thoughts on why 'Brevity is king' In particular this passage: (B) A lot of world-builders are kidding themselves about the uniqueness of the history they've written for their settings. If it fits into the familiar pattern of “In the Age of Fire, the dragons rose and gathered these followers, but were eventually beaten back by the Knights of Gorro, led by the Great King Fajadhul who founded the city of Dahan in the Year 100030” you should realize that the words and dates could be swapped out to create the back story of a million other nondescript fantasy settings. This is sub-Tolkienism. Struck home with me. I have been brutally guilty of this in the past, and still am to a certain extent, though I am trying to condense it on

Erce is most fundamentally a setting where mundane people can leave behind their regular homes and enter a dark and chaotic mythic wilderness. In the human dominions of Law, the gods rule and they have ordered the lands and made them relatively safe. Beyond the divine dominions, in the wilds, Chaos rules and all bets are off. Here one may encounter bloodthirsty elves riding with goblins in wild hunts; troll sorcerers abducting babies for their thaumaturgic rituals; woodlands that are larger on the inside than the outside and paths that can not be retraced. Conversely, one may also meet with an elven champion of life, song and laughter who arrives to save villagers from undead incursion, a cunning giant wizard who will trade ancient spells for a small favour and demonic imps who wish only to show you the true meaning of free will. Hildebrandt captures a lot about the feel of Erce. The champions of humanity who enter these mythic lands are inevitably touched by the gods an

It has been leaked that the forthcoming Volo's Guide to Monsters will have rules for playing Aasimar, Bugbears, Firbolgs, Goblins,Goliaths, hobgoblins, Kenku, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, Orcs, Tabaxi and Tritons. Setting aside my current movement towards even finding elves a bit problematic as a playable race, I can see the case for things like Aasimar, Kenky and Goliaths. But bugbears? Goblins? Hobgoblins? I've even seen complaints that gnolls weren't included. What? These are monsters . I guess it comes out of an assumption that I've grown to wholesale reject - A naturalistic approach to critters. Ie, that gnolls or bugbears are just another intelligent species like any other, albeit one more violent then most.  In other words, they are not really monsters. This approach, populised I suppose by the WoW/Eberron approach to orcs as Noble Savages, to me roundly defeats much of the Raison d'Etre for D&D adventuring - Namely that it is ok to kill these cr