Gnoll Thread

Yes I did.

to be honest?

they are anthro's that aren't 'furry' ---at least in cannon.
they are savage anti-human who overemphasize the hyena features, such a laughing at blood and savagely tearing into prey. there is nothign cute or wide eyed about them, and they are covered in coarse stinking fur...

look into their eyes, and you will see black empty staring back at you...

LOOK AT ME, i'm a gnoll, very true true! trust me you should do! i am very doggo!

Related to this, anybody got the Playing Gnolls article from Dragon #367? Hands down the best fluff gnolls have ever gotten in all their four editions of being playable.

Gnolls, if you take the D&D interpretation, are absolutely furry.
>there is nothign cute or wide eyed about them,
Hyenas are extremely cute.

>Hyenas are extremely cute

This.

The Pantheon is a bit tunnel visioned for my taste. I'd use the hedonism themes as the gods personalities (because their people are hedonists) and not as their portfolios.

A reasonable statement. Honestly, I have a huge amount of difficulty coming up with deities of any stripe, so I just went for a more generalized approach. They're essentially softcore(? less super Chaotic Evil, more Chaotic Neutral) Slaanesh-as-a-pantheon worshippers.

Pic spoilered due to what looks like one exposed breast.

fuck, i'm back in /fur/ again....

>mfw people keep thinking tiny lizardmen are kobolds

Anons? Simple query for you; since gnolls are basically "furry orcs" in traditional D&D lore, would you make "half-gnolls" a thing?

If yes, what would they be like?

Hard mode version: they can't be hideously deformed, unspeakably disgusting brutes, ala their appearance in Green Ronin's Bastards & Bloodlines.

I welcome this change, there already are dozens upon dozens of mythological creatures that only amount to person with caricature like facial features.

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Would gnolls basically be hedonistic dog people?

I prefer my gnolls as an all-female nomad race that have prehensile dong-clitoris things. They go around raping people to reproduce.

Yiff in hell furry

please go and stay go, user

I don't know why I keep going on these threads, because I say the same thing every time: blah blah, I like my gnolls to be still the bad guys overall but with a little more variance and just enough room for PCs, blah blah, reviving Gorellik and adding in a few other nature spirits or minor dieties to round out an actual pantheon, blah blah.

5e's depiction is not really what I wanted out of them, though I do appreciate some of the extra details that came along with it, such as undead gnolls. I'm a faggot who still likes the idea of gnolls being created as not necessarily demonic entities, but being turned demonic by worship of a new deity. Them being pseudo-mortal demons or whatever just bothers me, since only tieflings also have that claim of descent, and why doesn't that show up anywhere else? One unique case, I'll live, but two cases and I start getting worried.

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Why do people have kobold threads or goblin threads? Because there are a couple of monstrous races that people have latched onto as potential PC material - these are something that people are interested in and think it's possible to play as.

It's also why you don't see threads for most monsters, except as a general monster thread. They aren't usually considered PC material. Even when a few get jokingly made PCs, like perhaps a slime adventurer, it's not enough to break the mold.

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3 best gnoll.

Because the less human it is, the more Veeky Forums wants to fuck it.

> is 5e's depiction of them pretty much everything you wanted out of them?

yes

Goblins are already a popular player race. You just need to look beyond D&D.

I'm honestly not sure what system they're a popular PC race for. Only thing I can think of is World of Warcraft, and in that case you have to also include undead, minotaurs, pandas, and wolf people.

LotR, Harry Potter

It's all I ever wanted. I adore hordes of pure evil monsters ravaging the country side, only being stopped by the combined might of all the Kingdom's armies. Settings need at least some unrelenting evil, gives a reason for all those holy or militant knightly orders to exist.

>have you ever changed gnolls from the bog-standard "ravening hordes of mindless demon worshippers"

Yes, though they still occupy the same sort of niche as goblins, kobolds, etc.

Basically it's a similar situation to All those races fill in a strata of society that isn't quite slave, but not quite full citizenship. Each city is run by a collection of ruling families, and each one is a patron to a clan of gnolls, goblins, orcs, whatever. These clans send their strongest to the family in the hopes that they'll enter service in their private armies. Service guarantees they'll see land ownership and the same rights as first class citizens in the Empire, so it's something they all strive for. They're just as barbaric as ever, but the savagery is tempered by discipline.

my bro.

i specifically had a Gnoll PC in an evil campaign that went around raping pale skinned elves. with the sole purpose of getting them preggos with abominations

whist the mezoberranite women would sex just to get their fur fetish off...

the fuck? really?
where are Gnolls in their setting? i call utter bullshit on LOTR

>i specifically had a Gnoll PC in an evil campaign that went around raping pale skinned elves. with the sole purpose of getting them preggos with abominations

GNOLL'D

>tfw you will never play a cleric of the god of excess decoration

I don't think this is magical realm, but I also think you should work on just describing things as they are rather than describing how they fit into a pop-fantasy stereotype TVTropes mold. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is gonna enjoy reading about what "hat" they wear or that they're from "not!Africa" or whatever.

Basically, you should ditch the cliches. Your ideas are strong enough to stand without them.

The topic had turned to goblins as a PC race, not gnolls.

Spotted, Striped, or Aardwolf?

>have you ever changed gnolls from the bog-standard "ravening hordes of mindless demon worshippers" mold?
Yes, though it was easy since they weren't exactly ravening hordes of mindless demon worshippers since I based them off PFs and earlier editions of D&Ds version where they are demon worshippers but actually people instead of some weird demonic hivemind dedicated to destruction and hunger.
>Or is 5e's depiction of them pretty much everything you wanted out of them?
Hell no, and its utter shite.

I expanded their role from simple monster that you kill because it's a furry orc, into a PC race that still retains the elements of their previous role. The gnoll people are a hardy race of hunters, slavers, and craftsmen that hail from lands far to the east of Avistan (notEurope). The western and southern borders of their lands are the territories of their exiles and those deemed unfit for civlization. Nearly all are worshippers of evil gods or demon lords. They subsist on raiding into human territories looking to scavenge materials and slaves for their altars or to simply eat. Some of these groups are infected with the gnoll form of kuru due to feeding on humanoids and gnolls, leaving them a laughing, jerky mess. Tieflings are common.

In the proper gnoll lands, they are a civilized people who engage in craftsmanship, making fine woven materials, forging metals they have dug up, and using advanced animal husbandry. Matriarchal, the most important positions of leadership are filled by the women, who are much bigger and taller than the males. In their halls of worship they honor First Tribe, the group of gnoll gods who first inhabited these lands. Led by O'Istidir, First Tribe opposes the evil gods: the Nameless, Yeenoghu, and Lamashtu.

Gnolls tend to be a naturally wary people, disliking new situations or things until they have properly acclimated to them.

All four. Spotted can take on a more traditional gnoll role, with the other variants having their own unique traditions and societies. Like aardwolves being much less aggressive than a spotted gnoll and who tend to get along better with other intelligent races.

Cuteness overload.

I prefer a single race is physiologically based on the Spotted but fur patterns can be from all the various hyenas including painted dogs, and they can even be mix and match, like striped torso and spotted legs. I use the spotted for the base because spotted hyenas are the smartest, and they are seriously smart, and most social of the hyenas, pretty much all others are solitary or paired and kind of dumb.

I dare you to look at these kittens and repeat all this daft bullshit that gnolls must always be chaotic evil monstrosities.

They look pretty evil to me. Just look at those eyes, glistening with hate and the urge to kill.

I don't know if aardwolves do it, but I know spotted hyenas are born with fully developed jaws and canine teeth, and siblings will fight each other for access to mother's milk, sometimes causing the weaker sibling to starve and die.

They are surprisingly cute, and hyenas are surprisingly smart, but they are not cuddly bunnies.

This behaviour also exists in domestic cats. Are they monsters too?

Gnolls used to be a fairly underdeveloped enemy race, only being fleshed out by WotC and other known fantasy to a degree to expand upon their creativity of being assholes.

As is often the case, when trying to make a race into a playable race, evening out the character of that race is crucial, really driving home the fact that a whole race dedicated to EEEVILLLLLL!!! is outright retarded, thus leading to the first gnoll threads.

The various gnollbuilding threads have only further sensitised Veeky Forums to the idea of occult hyenapeople, while having a fair amount of contributions actually justifiying the threads outside of a "We like the same thing" circlejerk.

This overall investment on behalf of Veeky Forums has led to a high sympathy. We have taken bog-standard gnolls, have made them more than "Lol feminine penis for feminine raping!" and thus preserved them from one-trick ponyism, instead having a great opportunity to possibly influence the future fantasy landscape by sheer amount of creative diffusion.

In short: Gnolls are our collective brainchild now and we'll make them great... Er! Greater!

Obligatory

>a whole race dedicated to EEEVILLLLLL!!! is outright retarded
I dunno, it sounds like exactly the kind of antiquated crap that the local grognards get off on.

Yes.

Honestly I've felt it's become quite the opposite: WotC's attempts at making their properties like D&D more accessible to "a wider audience" means they've had to both simplify and sterilize their products. Half orcs the product of rape? Nah nah, that won't fly in today's market. They're obviously born from consensual matrimony, just ignore the fact that all the full-blooded orcs in the Monster Manuel are evil aligned.

Need some fodder for your players to kill to make them feel like badasses? Throw some gnolls at them! It's alright to slaughter them because now they're irredeemably evil, and if our focus groups have told us one thing it's that today's "gamers" love to rationalize all moral dilemmas as black-and-white so they won't feel guilty about their actions.

If an irredeemably evil race has to exist at all, I'd much prefer for this niche to be filled by orcs, who were explicitly created with this purpose in mind, rather than a race based on lovable animals.

>hyenas are cute
They also smell like shit.

I understand why WotC is doing it, and in some ways it makes sense. It's hard to explain every half-orc as being products of rape, and I feel like they've been shifting away from that since 3rd edition.

But it is still an awkward role to thrust gnolls into, especially since most people will only know them from WoW if not D&D. They don't have the same weight as orcs do, in a sense. And while a GM might appreciate being able to surprise his players with a foe that makes them go 'a who?' I feel like they could have pushed hobgoblins or bugbears into that spotlight much more easily, since those are at least more popular and familiar and can be explained about everywhere.

If I recall from my 5th grade field trip, I think Aardwolves have stink glands like a civit. So would Aardwolf Gnolls be social and friendly, but ostracized for their smell?

>Ofcoursedeviantarthasrelaventpicture.

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Eh, I like them better as spirit/demon tribal monsters than mindlessly evil

>Related query; would you consider this interpretation of gnolls to be "magical realm"?
Not really, why do you think it might be?

>No nips
Probably okay
>They're essentially softcore(? less super Chaotic Evil, more Chaotic Neutral) Slaanesh-as-a-pantheon worshippers.
But I actually think that's a good interpretation of them, savage, wild, and hedonistic, they're better served as monsters that are often (but not always) antagonistic but more due to a "Non tribe members aren't people" mentality than "HA HA TIME FOR EVIL"

I wouldn't, if only cause they're not humanoid enough (or magical enough) for them to seem like they could breed with humanoids to me
Maybe if it was a darker game or an ERP one I'd let them breed with humanoids but the result would be a gnoll for the most part

Too magical
Plus they work better as a race of femdomy musclegirls than not!Segrals

I'd prefer something halfway between 3 and 4 myself, 3 looks too top heavy

Spotted

Gnoll posting is leaking

Holy shit this artist is fucking amazing

Hyenas?
Does that mean that female Gnolls are huge, aggressive and have a pseudo-dick?

I love that this is usually the topic of all Gnoll threads.

Also when they find a male they like they bully him gently

I think it's either the same person making them, or it's just a change that a lot of people who like gnolls feel strongly about.

Mostly because, y'know: matriarchy, drug use, hedonists, slavery... Really, the whole "will lay around partying all day if they can but will fuck you up if you try and spoil their fun-times" characterization thing.

I'm sorry, what? Where the hell is this coming from?

And, traditionally, no, gnoll females are nothing like that. In fact, if you go by the pre-5e fluff, gnolls are bog-standard patriarchal tribals, with males being the "big, strong, nasty leader sex".

Anyone else feel like the fact that Gnolls are apparently able to perfectly mimic voices and noises goes underutilized?

I like gnolls, think I may have made a thread or two myself but for my part I think it's the later, the official fluff just makes them bland and I think there's at least a few anons who want something better

>I'm sorry, what? Where the hell is this coming from?
Those are traits of spotted hyenas, which Veeky Forums sometimes assumes gnolls are based on

I honestly didn't know they could do that but that would be a cool power

That weird idea came from the fact that spotted hyenas are like this IRL.
The females are larger, more aggressive than the males and have so much testosterone that they develop a pseudo-penis.

>"The Voice in the Darkness: Folktales say that
gnolls can mimic voices to lure enemies into danger. "
straight from the Wizards of the Coast "How to play Gnolls" PDF

That second reason is the primary issue. Gnolls ave been playable literally since the days of Mystara in 1e (The Orcs of Thar), and our last sighting of them was... well, see attached. Compare this to their writeup in Volo's Guide, and the 4e version has just so much more going for it, whether you want to use them as monsters or a cool race to shake-up the traditional lineup in your homebrew setting.

In 4e, they had the ability to get Ghost Sound as an at-will spell-like ability via a feat to represent just how good they were at mimicry.

Oh, I know what they're referencing, I was wondering what the pretext for bringing it up was, since I didn't even mention gnolls and the hyena connection in my opening post.

I really enjoyed a lot of the content we got in the Volo's Guide but I was really disappointed that Gnolls were not included with the other playable monster races, I just wish they didn't double down on the always chaotic evil fluff.

Yeah, unfortunately, some brilliant writer decided (apparently based on some poll they were running early into 5e) that despite having been playable as long as orcs had, the best way to distinguish gnolls from orcs was to double-down on gnollish chaotic evilness and completely remove any of the nuance they cooked up in the past edition.

Gods, I miss a lot of 4e's fluff...

bump

It's probably because 4e was met with so much criticism, anything good about it had to be thrown out with the bad (I know some people support it, but it obviously did not perform well). And perhaps gnolls were the perfect race to throw under the bus.

5e is pretty cool, I'll admit. The whole demonic hivemind thing is nice, and I've used to really give my players a sense of horror and dread by playing it up.
Gnolls as an all evil race aren't something I usually agree with, but it does help drive home the whole 'worshipping demons, not even once' thing and get players to realise fiends are beings of PURE evil and can make other races such. Would have been nice if 5e had made it so Gnolls were 'stolen' from their original god, but it is still neat.
For one homebrew setting, I used Gnolls as a basis for one of the 'Races of the Night' but made them more wolf-like and stuff.

I wrote up some Gnolls prior to 5e's rewrite of them. My players are too invested in their mystery now for me to go back.

The Gnolls of my setting are closer to Wolves in some ways, but are traditionally brutal and savage monsters. That is, until about 50 years ago, when they started acting...better? Adventurers would find themselves cornered by a Zombie horde, when out of nowhere, Gnollish Paladins and Clerics following a "Bright Lord" would swoop in and save the day. They show up at churches and city gates proselytizing about how they've come to save civilization from Evil, and that they've been reborn as servants of the Bright Lord, although they refuse to speak more about this guy.

They actually have been converted to "Good" by an Angel they found, a Solar trapped in an ancient Angel-Prison by the resident Fallen Empire of Magic and Evil (tm). While they take his words to heart and try to be "Good" despite it being fuckoff difficult for them, the Solar has gone mad waiting for rescue for the last 9,001 years. His prison is shielded from ALL forms of scrying and teleportation, so he's effectively been declared KIA by Heaven, so no one's coming to save him. He keeps sending the Gnolls on insane and foolhardy Crusades to recover holy artifacts because he thinks he can use enough of them to hack his prison and escape.

And once he does, he's gonna BURN the fucking planet to cinders. Hopefully, the Players will be able to rally the Gnolls to their side when they inevitably have to put him out of his misery.

>The creature described as the gnole first appeared in 1912, in Lord Dunsany's 1912 story "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles", and reappeared in Margaret St. Clair's "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles".

>Lord Dunsany's story gives little or nothing in the way of physical description of the gnoles, but they live on the edge of a sinister wood and watch intruders through holes bored in trees. They are said to own emeralds of very large size. In St. Clair's story they also live on the edge of a wood, watch through holes bored in trees and prize emeralds, but a "senior gnole" is described as looking "like a Jerusalem artichoke" and, although he has feet, has tentacles rather than arms and no ears. His eyes are small, red and faceted like a gemstone.

>The gnoll, as introduced in the earliest edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game, is the literary descendant of Lord Dunsany's "gnoles", who were clever, evil and nonhuman. In the Dungeons & Dragons "white box" set (1974), gnolls are described thusly: "A cross between gnomes and trolls (...perhaps, Lord Dunsany did not really make it all that clear) with +2 morale. Otherwise they are similar to hobgoblins..."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnoll#Original_conceptions

Pic is a illustration by Sydney Sime that accompanied Lord Dunsany's story.

The modern D&D conception of the gnoll seems to have more in common with the Cynocephali, a race of savage dog-headed men said to have lived in the Africa or India in ancient and medieval writing.

>After traversing the Egyptian oasis one is confronted for seven whole days with utter desert. Beyond this live the Cynocephali along the road that leads to Ethiopia. It seems that these creatures live by hunting gazelles and antelopes; further, they are black in appearance, and they have the head and teeth of a dog. And since they resemble this animal, it is very natural that I should mention them here. They are however not endowed with speech, but utter a shrill squeal. Beneath their chin hangs down a beard; we may compare it with the beards of dragons, and strong and very sharp nails cover their hands. Their whole body is covered with hair--another respect in which they resemble dogs. They are very swift of foot and know the regions that are inaccessible: that is why they appear so hard to capture.
- Aelian

>Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race. They live on flesh and rice and milk, and have fruits different from any of ours.
-Marco Polo

theoi.com/Phylos/Kunokephaloi.html
ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/cynocephaly-and-mythological-dog-headed-human-002577
en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_3/Chapter_13
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly

page 47

>Cynocephali
Wasn't one of them sainted or something?

>game designers run polls to determine what most people want from the lore
>how dare they want what I don't want!
Learn to live with democracy. I bet you also protested Trump's election.

Yes, St. Christopher. There are a lot of other medieval Christian stories about cynocephali. Here's some further reading if you're interested.

orthodoxartsjournal.org/the-icon-of-st-christopher/

Saint Christopher. He was disneyfied by the Catholic church who were worried that the plebs wouldn't worship a dog-headed monster and turned into a regular human. However, the Orthodox church still worships him in his original Cynocephalus form.

The fact that Gnolls are a rather obscure piece of fantasy trivia is probably another point why Veeky Forums loves to add their own inspiration into them.

Someone asked me why I don't protest Trump even though I hate the guy due to his sheer inexperience, ego, and ineptitude. To which I say "He is qualified according to the constitution, is lawfully elected, and a peaceful transfer of office took place."

I had to file a police report due to death threats on my answering machine.

The local gnoll tribe in my game became professional undead-slaying mercenaries. This was more a consequence of environment than anything else. The gnolls were attacked by hordes of skeletons nightly thanks to a curse they carelessly invoked, forcing their warriors to hold them off until dawn broke. When the players broke the curse it left a lot of gnoll veterans with no use for their now quite specialized undead-slaying skills, so they hired themselves out. There's always a zombie infestation somewhere after all, and gnolls are nothing if not opportunists.

>have you ever changed gnolls from the bog-standard "ravening hordes of mindless demon worshippers" mold?

No, because they're the only ones that occupy that design space in my world. If I want clever monsters, I have kobolds and goblins. If I want honorable monster men, I have hobgoblins. If I want Mongolian hordes, I have orcs.

Demon-worshipping mass-murderers who have an innate fear of starvation helps keep them distinct from the other monstrous races.

How come kobolds are considered smart now?

>half-celestial template

They're good with traps and stuff - not smart, but clever.

Tuckers kobolds.

Still, goblins as a PC race in LotR is utter bullshit.
Much less a popular one.