Welcome to /osrg/ – your center for pre-WotC D&D, retroclones, and all things related.
>Trove: pastebin.com
>Tools & Resources: pastebin.com
>Old School Blogs: pastebin.com
>Previous Thread:
How do you differentiate humanoids? Is it just a matter of smaller and weaker to bigger and stronger, or do you depict their cultures and behaviors in such a way that kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, bugbears and all are distinct beyond their appearances and proportions?
Other urls found in this thread:
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca
en.wikipedia.org
dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca
youtube.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
Come and dream a prophetic dream.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca
>Not even answering the thread question before shilling.
C'mon Skerples, you're better than that.
>How do you differentiate humanoids?
I ask because I find they often end up blurring together. Kobolds are small and weak, but vicious humanoids. Goblins are slightly bigger, slightly stronger vicious humanoids. Orcs are decent-size vicious humanoids. Etc. And as they get bigger, they get tougher and more skilled in combat.
So is there anything you emphasize to set them apart? Is there some defining trait of kobolds you bring out? And goblins?
I mostly use cultural and tactical traits. I don't use black and white good and evil in my setting; everything is mostly people.
Kobolds
1 HD. Sneaky, smart, neurotic. Crocodile babies with too many teeth. Try to eat things bigger than them, but otherwise cunning and mean and well equipped. Of the Tucker variety. Resemble the dragon that created them, both in form and in neuroses.
Goblins
1 HD. Dumb, numerous, and deranged. Swarms of them. A gibbering crowd. Not really malicious, but kind of cruel and impish and crude. Thousands of varieties. See: elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca
Everything small and weird is a goblin until proven otherwise. Goblin is a category. You can catch goblinism.
Orcs
2+ HD. Big and mean and fighty. All muscle. From somewhere foreign and interesting. Crude from one perspective, efficient from another. The mongols, the vikings, the amazons, etc.
Hobgoblins and Bugbears
2+ HD
I always forget which one is which, so they're both a type of big hairy goblin. Like a goblin yeti or a sasquatch. Really properly dumb in everything but violence and warfare. Can forge a decent sword or a siege ladder; couldn't make a soup bowl to save their lives.
Gnolls
2+ HD. Desert raiders, specialized, limited to one environment but pretty good inside it. Hungry.
I most certainly am not.
What do you think is a good level cap? Like ACKS uses 14, and 5e uses 20 (but it's a modern D&D edition). B/X has rules for up to 36 but is that really necessary? Should XP be weighted so that advancement gets slower and slower until you reach a "cap"? It helps plan out how attack progressions, hit points, thief skills, etc. should work. It also is nice to have completionist tables.
Also how do I construct XP tables so that leveling up gets progressively slower? Would a triangular XP / treasure progression versus an exponential (2^x like ACKS roughly has) work?
>How do you differentiate humanoids?
there are two types of humanoid: Humans, and fey.
Elves are fey. They're fairy nobility. Dwarves are fey, they live in grottos and have pots of gold and sing hiho hiho. Halflings are fey, they live under your floorboards and clean your house if you leave a saucer of milk out at night.
Orcs, goblins, trolls and so on are all fey too, if different types. Fairies are all mad by human standards, singlemindedly dedicated to certain ideas.
fey are created by human ideas. Humans conceptualize a little gnome that lives in their attic and, if that belief catches on, those gnomes slowly fade into existence.
I find games are lucky to reach level 10, if anything, before inevitable campaign entropy brings the thing to a halt.