Gnoll type enemies

[DShomshak]

Well, Volo's Guide to Monsters has it that gnolls all have what sounds like a permanent Mind Link to Yeenoghu, afflicting them with his savagery and hunger. Reading the mind of a gnoll turns out to be hazardous. Not much chance of reforming gnolls through sweet reason and benign social engineering.

 

Looking beyond D&D, here's the Wikipedia page about all manner of dog-headed humanoids in myth and pop culture:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynocephaly

 

Myths if the Dog-Man, by David Gordon White, goes into some of this in more detail, esp. dog-men in Medieval legends about saints and Apostles.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

And oho, Mandeville's Travels includes canine folk!

 

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Thence one travels by sea to another land, called Natumeran [Nicobar Islands]. It is a large and fair island, whose circuit is nearly a thousand miles. Men and women of that isle have heads like dogs, and they are called Cynocephales. These people, despite their shape, are fully reasonable and intelligent. They worship an ox as their god. Each one of them carries an ox made of gold or silver on his brow, as a token that they love their god well. They go quite naked except for a little cloth round their privy parts. They are big in stature and good warriors; they carry a large shield, which covers all their body, and a long spear in their hand, and dressed in this way they go boldly against their enemies. If they capture any man in battle, they eat him. The King of that land is a great and mighty lord, and very devout according to his creed. He has round his neck a cord of silk on which are three hundred precious stones [orient pearls[, like our rosary of amber. And just as we say our Pater Noster and Ave Maria by telling our beads, just so the King says each day on his beads three hundred prayers to his god, before he eats. He wears a splendid ruby round his neck, which is nearly a foot long and and five fingers broad. They give him this ruby when they make him King, to carry in his hand, and so he rides round the city and they all make obeisance to him. After that he always wears it round his neck, for if he did not he would be King no longer. The Great Khan of Cathay has much coveted this ruby, but he could never win itin war or by any other means. This King is very righteous and just according to his law, for he punishes everyone who does another man wrong in his realm. Therefore men can travel safely and securely through his land, and no one is so bold as to annoy them, rob them, or take any kind of goods from them. 

 Dean Shomshak

[Scott Ruggels]

Some background from one of my FH Campaigns. THis one is about "tribal" Lupines (Barbarians

 

Tribal Pagan Lupines

The Tribal Pagans on the frontier live primitive, nomadic lives, following the herds of their preferred meat on the hoof, through the seasons. Each tribal group is generally one large, extended family, with ties to other groups by ancestry. Since they are mobile, rarely do they amass much in the way of property other than what they can carry, and they tend to move seasonally, camping in regular spots year, after year.  The Tribal Lupines do not have a strong hospitality custom, and are quite territorial. They will shadow visitors, and confront them if they feel they are taking too much time to cross their territory, or have taken too much of the local game.  They live on the edge of survival, and are not charitable to those that encroach on their hunting areas. Their large appetites force them to restrict who can breed, thus limiting the number of offspring born each year, and breeding rights tend to go only to the Alpha, and the strongest members of the group. If a tribe shrinks, it may bargain with other tribes to acquire females from which to add to their numbers, therefore creating alliances or agreements through kinship with the offering tribe.

 

Sometimes however, tribes come into open conflict. Those conflicts tend to be resolved in two ways, either single combat, whereupon the losing alpha’s tribes is broken up, with the females added to the winning tribe and the losing tribe’s males scattered (sometimes to be folded into the tribes of close cousins, otherwise left to their own devices), or Single Combat is refused and it’s a short, sharp, war of attrition leaving scattered dead in their wake.  

 

Amongst their own, however the Tribe is a very mutually supporting environment, with the Tribe following the Alpha’s leadership, and the Alpha supporting each tribal member.  Existence in the camp is social and companionable with small hunting parties orbiting in and out to forage for food, while in the camp, chores are done communally around a central fire, and children are watched and instructed. To prevent much conflict, customs have developed between tribes denoting areas where one tribe can, or cannot hunt, or camp, usually based upon the type of tree found in a forest. It is by the names of those trees that the clans are often named, so that the Pine Clan hunts in Pine forests, the Cedar Clan hunts in cedar Forests, the Birch clan in Birch forests, and so on.  The Rules aren’t hard, as trees can intermingle in a forest, but it gives a tribe a place to camp unmolested from the activities of other tribes.  

 

Everyone in the tribe is expected to fight, should it become necessary, with the Alpha’s maintaining their status by besting rivals in fights.  A sort of game/ drill among the Tribals is a day, announced at random by the Alpha, called “stick time” where members of the tribe arm themselves with sticks, and try to surprise or ambush each other and engage in mock battles trying to avoid being hit by their attacker and turn the tables on them if need be. Having an Alpha who enjoys calling stick time often, may result in a somewhat jumpy, but tactically efficient tribe, but it would be disruptive to the harmony of the camp if he calls it too often.
 

[GDShore]

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Posted August 2 (edited)

Demons and devils are good for killing without regret. They exist to be evil. In D&D they come from an environment that embodies evil.

 

But modern morality isn't the only way to play, depending on the attitude of your game group. In past eras women and children were fair game, and killing them was considered good policy. That prevented them from growing up to be enemy warriors, or mothers of warriors. In some societies the women were warriors themselves. Leaving them alive meant they might someday seek revenge.

Edited August 2 by Lord Liaden

I grew up on "Reserves" (a despicable term) and the "nits make lice" concepting results in centuries of resentment and hate. Treating any group as sub-human and therefore "killable indiscrimanently" will have consequences down time. You see some always survive, and that will affect your grandchildren and their children and their children. For historical precedent look to Ireland and the Balkans. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

On the other hand, in a fantasy setting it is perfectly normal to have sub human monsters that are innately evil and always safe to attack and destroy.  Many (most?) players do not want to sit down with the dice and face moral dilemmas and question themselves constantly: was it okay to wipe out that goblin village?

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, GDShore said:

I grew up on "Reserves" (a despicable term) and the "nits make lice" concepting results in centuries of resentment and hate. Treating any group as sub-human and therefore "killable indiscrimanently" will have consequences down time. You see some always survive, and that will affect your grandchildren and their children and their children. For historical precedent look to Ireland and the Balkans. 

 

No argument from me. The real-world examples are legion, and I'm sorry that your life experience is part of one of them. Personally I never enjoyed the "murder hobo" style of gaming. I prefer the heroes of a story to be actual heroes, to stand for something. The kind of game I described above would hold no appeal for me. But I'm not all players, and it's not my place to dictate the sort of game they'd enjoy. As Christopher above me notes, this is fantasy, created for our entertainment, and the rules are what we want them to be.

 

I do have to say that I find the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie an interesting example of how even D&D has evolved beyond simplistic self-interested adventuring. The main protagonists are thieves, but they have standards and care about each other, and when innocents are threatened they put themselves in danger to help them. The main villains, the Thayans, are literal undead monsters, but were transformed and enslaved by a malevolent will. Yet the purest, most moral character in the movie is also a Thayan.

 

I suppose what I'm getting at is, every game group should try to find the tone and balance that will make their game most satisfying for them.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think its useful in a game to have a mix, based on the preferences of your players and what you can effectively handle and enjoy as a GM.  Having a moral dilemma once in a while can be entertaining, but you should balance it out with other, more clear choices; just like life has.

[assault]

These days I focus a lot on "whose fantasy is it anyway?".

 

A lot of historical fantasy writing had a particular target audience, and if you weren't in that, tough luck.

 

It's still possible to write/design for that audience, but there is a noisy fringe of them that objects to anything being written for anyone else. Those people deserve nothing.

Edited August 29, 2023 by assault

[Ninja-Bear]

Here’s a player dilemma which came up in a Fantasy Game once. You defeated the goblins then what? One player wanted to kill them because he feared that they would come back and attack the group. That is a legitimate concern. I knew that the GM wouldn’t have played it that way but you almost need a trope that the world works that way. 

[Doc Democracy]

 

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Here’s a player dilemma which came up in a Fantasy Game once. You defeated the goblins then what? One player wanted to kill them because he feared that they would come back and attack the group. That is a legitimate concern. I knew that the GM wouldn’t have played it that way but you almost need a trope that the world works that way. 

 

I think it depends on the group.  Some groups are entirely task-focussed.  If the in-game authority signs off that the task is complete, then they are happy to take the reward and move to the next task.  Some groups take ownership and begin wanting to go beyond the strict definition of the task to broader societal issues.  That is when it matters what the background of the game is - both the laid down in-game realities and the in-group sensitivities.  The more involved the players are with their world, the more the GM has to layer on the things that are needed to prevent people going to extremely in any one direction.

 

If one, or more, of the players is talking about going full Apocalypse Now on the already defeated village then the GM might remind them that the village is within the realm of Duke Nice who might deprecate the actions of the goblic raiders but would be equally distressed about a defenceless village being massacred and raised to the ground.  It is his decsion on whether residents of his demesne live or die, and his liegeman only gave them rights to deal with the raiders, not the potential of future ones.  He might remind them that it is unlikely there will be no witnesses and while some people might laud their actions, there will be others that would be horrified by the slaughter of women and children of any kind.  You might also indicate that these goblins are part of the Red Claw tribe, one that extends quite broadly across the land and that, should they hear of this atrocity, might prioritise the death of these perpetrators, and their life might be detrimentally affected if they go ahead. The GM, in this kind of situation, needs MUCH more information readily to hand to talk about the broader societal consequences of these kinds of actions.  It will rarely be kill good, mercy bad. Or vice versa.

 

Of course, they might have been tasked with eradicating the village by their superiors.  Then all the variety of different responses still apply with slightly different elements, possibly changing the perspective of the players about their superiors and how they interact with them.  I can see some of the my characters following through on what they have been tasked, whether they agree or not, while others would defiantly refuse to do certain things.  It also might depend on how the GM lays it.  As the warriors are defeated and slain, the GM might fade away with a village in flames, making no reference to dependents, another might have used the fight to give cover to dependents fleeing in a variety of directions.  It would be a real GM decision to choose to present the dependents as a problem for the PCs to consider.

 

Doc

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

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I think it depends on the group.  Some groups are entirely task-focussed.  If the in-game authority signs off that the task is complete, then they are happy to take the reward and move to the next task.

 

This is one of the key lessons from Strike Force: make your game fit what your players and you want.  Don't use a stamp to crank out yet another dungeon crawl or whatever the module you bought says. 

 

If you have players who are just murder hobos, give them appropriate stuff to kill and things to loot.  If you have players who love to explore, give them an are with interesting elements and encounters to enjoy.  If you have players who love to roleplay, give them opportunities to ham it up with their character.  If you have players who love romances and interaction with NPCs, give them ladies and gentlemen to encounter and interact with.

 

What makes the game appealing, memorable, and enjoyable is the ability of the GM to craft a great story, but also to fill the needs and interests of their players.  Everyone shows up for a different reason, and being able to read that in your players is a key GM skill.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor