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I just read your Orcs reimagined and I loved it. An origin that I’ve been tossing around for Orcs in my own worlds is kind of stealing the mythological origin of the Klingons from Star Trek - they were created by gods a long time ago, but eventually they realized the gods were more trouble than they were worth and killed them.

I would love to see more Monsters Reimagined style pieces for Gnolls and Goblins and Drow and the ‘monstrous’ player races that are rooted in racism and colonialism

Monsters Reimagined: Gnolls

I wanted to follow up with gnolls specifically because they’re a case study in how d&d has tried to “fix” the issue of “monstrous humanoids” and the ethical concerns of “always chaotic evil” and ended up going the exact opposite direction of what they should have done, doubling down on the justifications for why they’re bad and why it’s alright to kill them rather than addressing 

TLDR: Rather than the psychoic killing machines they’re presented as currently, Gnolls should be the game’s consummate survivalists. Better equipped to live a more naturalistic lifestyle thanks to their numerous animalistic traits, they thrive in the outlands and harsh wilderness. Because living as hunter/scavenger/gatherers has worked out for them so well, Gnolls never really integrated in with the other agrarian-focused cultures, preferring to keep to the safety of the wilds rather than the frequently contested  farmlands, leading to a mutual unease and cultural barrier that both groups have to work to overcome. Gnolls have very few taboos about what is and is not “useful” and have been known to eat the bodies of fallen travelers when food is scarce, or dig up graves for the valuables stored inside. This has given Gnolls the reputation as cannibals and blasphemers, when really it’s only the hyenakin being practical. 

What’s Wrong:   As of 2nd edition, Gnolls were like just about any other monstrous humanoid dnd species, savage primitives who worshiped evil gods and participated in various acts of barbarism. Slavery and cannibalism were the things that typified the gnolls ( not that other monsters weren’t willing to engage in slavery and/or cannibalism) and they were decidedly cruel and lazy, capturing others because they thought work was demeaning ( which is a whole... crockpot of weird stereotypes that I’m not going to get into at the moment). This characterization continued up through 3rd edition and pathfinder, the latter of which substituted the gnoll’s cannibalism god for Lamashtu, “the mother of monsters”, who is said to have birthed most “savage humanoids” in her wretched womb ( again, don’t have time to get into that but YIKES). 

Then 5th edition crept around, and the gnolls took on a new flavor. They were decidedly MORE evil, MORE savage, LESS sapient, than previous versions, driven to endless slaughter by the voice of their demon-god Yeenoghu, practically demons in flesh themselves. They were remorseless killing machines who desired only chaos, to the point where I often saw them referred to as “Jokerlike” by gamer-bros who lacked the media comprehension required to relate them to any greater motivation. 

To explain why they went through this metamorphosis, I’m going to have to explain a little bit of gaming history, as well as d&d’s version of the trolley problem. Buckle in, this is going to get Pedantic...

First The history lesson: Because d&d had its roots in wargaming, enemy creatures in the monster manual were presented with a category called “Organization”, which told you how large the squad sizes of these creatures could/should be. Often these came with the chance to roll for additional troops, or have a leader who had advanced levels and special abilities. Problem was, for savage humanoids, these organization charts almost always included information about the demographics of a “monster” village, including how many non combatants and children there were in relation to how many fighters they had ( anywhere from 5-50%) 

Here’s an excerpt from the 2e monster manual: 

Habitat/Society: Gnolls are most often encountered underground or inside abandoned ruins. When above ground they operate primarily at night. Gnoll society is ruled by the strongest, using fear and intimidation. When found underground, they will have (30% chance) 1-3 trolls as guards and servants. Above ground they keep pets (65% of the time) such as 4-16 hyenas (80%) or 2-12 hyaenodons (20%) which can act as guards.

A gnoll lair will contain between 20 and 200 adult males. For every 20 gnolls, there will be a 3 Hit Die leader. If 100 or more are encountered there will also be a chieftain who has 4 Hit Dice, an Armor Class of 3, and who receives a +3 on his damage rolls due to his great strength. Further, each chieftain will be protected by 2-12 (2d6) elite warrior guards of 3 Hit Dice (AC 4, +2 damage).

In a lair, there will be females equal to half the number of males. Females are equal to males in combat, though not usually as well armed or armored. There will also be twice as many young as there are adults in the lair, but they do not fight. Gnolls always have at least 1 slave for every 10 adults in the lair, and may have many more.

Gnolls will work together with orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, ogres, and trolls. If encountered as a group, there must be a relative equality of strength. Otherwise the gnolls will kill and eat their partners (hunger comes before friendship or fear) or be killed and eaten by them. They dislike goblins, kobolds, giants, humans, demi-humans and any type of manual labor.

Remember, these are specifically the stats for a gnoll LAIR not a village. People build villages, Gnolls ( being not people by default) cram their living space into the dungeon the party is delving, or the living space is itself a target for extermination in order to save the land from the blight of gnollish exitance. 

Skipping right over how the demographics don’t bear any resemblance to an actual hyena pack, lets look at the fact that there are TWICE AS MANY CHILDREN AS THERE ARE ADULTS, meaning that there are fuzzy families standing in the way between the murder-hobos and their treasure, and with each defender cut down, the party is creating scores of orphans. The book can cram in as many excuses as it wants about how these creatures are sadistic and terrible and bad for the environment, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re people, who according to the rules and greater lore of the game a) are capable of feeling pain and fear b) have souls, making them fully willed individuals and not simply animals . How then can their outright slaughter be a good thing? 

Well... lets look at some of d&d’s  inbuilt genocide apologia, and a classic session killing scenario that’s come to be known as the “baby monster dilemma”. 

First lets acknowledge that d&d is fictional, existing separate to but directly inspired by our reality. Lets also acknowledge that fictional events do not hold the same moral weight as events in our world, and that an author writing about a murder does not in any way share the guilt of say... a hitman.  

That said, a fictional work can still be said to express harmful ideas, even if the ideas only exist on a page. A movie is not racist because it has racism in it, it is racist because it reinforces the structures of racism, justifying the bigoted actions of others by helping to reinforce a worldview that directly harms others. 

For most of its history, d&d has said that racism is GOOD, by creating an innumerable number of monstrous “others” to serve as opposition to the heroes, and justifying that opposition both by the moral framework of its universe and by the inherent foulness of those foes.  In the same entry, Gnolls are described as “Evil”, “Preferring to eat sentient humanoids because they scream the most” and “ Hunting exhaustively to the point where the wilderness will take years to recover before they move on.” 

If gnolls are inherently evil and sadistic, the only dead gnoll is a good gnoll, and adventurers (goodguys by default) should not suffer one to live. 

This is how you end up in wild situations like the Baby Monster Dilemma, where characters like the paladin, who are compelled to do good and never allow an evil act ( in the earlier editions atleast) are forced to wrestle with the moral conundrum of what to do with all of those gnoll children they just orphaned. 

Leaving the Gnoll pups alone means that they will either starve to death, or grow up to do more evil in the future, 

Because like most monstrous humanoids, gnolls have inherently evil souls, and so adopting them and nurturing them to be good is doomed invariably to fail ( there are plenty of examples of this “call to evil” throughout d&d lore) 

Therefore the best answer is to slaughter them all on the spot, which lays somewhere between an act of genocide and Cruella D’Ville level of puppy murder, depending on your conception of gnoll sapience. 

This is why I say that d&d has genocide apologia baked into it. In the case of fighting a very common enemy the way the game wanted you to fight them, the mass murder of children is a morally sound decision that leaves the world a better place. The game creates a scenario where enacting genocide is good and makes “Kill the monsters, take their stuff” a primary progression mechanic. 

I don’t want to play a game that constructs elaborate setups to justify why it thinks genocide is ok, much less one that uses the same arguments that were used to justify IRL genocides within the past century. Because D&D happens to be the world’s most popular roleplaying game, and because I like the underlying mechanics so much, the lore is going to have to change quite a lot before I’m comfortable using it, and by the way things look ... it seems like a lot of other people are in the same position. 

Now with that in mind, lets look at how  WOTC tried to fix this and where they went wrong:

In order to make purging gnolls from the world justified, the writers of 4th and 5th edition tried to double down on gnoll’s evil traits, saying that they don’t have emotions, and even making them constantly demon possessed, under a species wide curse that compels them to ruin and rend and destroy with no thought for others.  By turning that monstrosity dial up all the way to 11 ( They’re so evil that not actively hunting them to extinction is a moral failing) the writers are trying to bulldoze past the baby monster conundrum by giving an objective answer,  Problem is, the gnolls are still, technically, people,  in possession of souls, families, and the ability to think and reason... the writers have just gone out of their way to create them in such a way that their evil invalidates all of that. 

I wouldn’t have a problem with it if gnolls were literally beasts, or monsters spat out of the pits of hell, or manifesting spontaneously from nature, but the problem is that they REMAIN intelligent humanoids. The current Monster manual describes them as a plague that descend without warning on civilized lands to slaughter and pillage and wander elsewhere looking for new places to raise, making nothing of lasting value and instead taking whatever they might need from the corpses of their victims. I can’t help but compare that to villainized depictions of displaced communities or nomadic peoples, scorned by those of more settled societies that may or may not be expanding out into the nomad’s territory. 

How we can make this better: Stripping the Gnolls down to their base concept as “ Hyena people” gives us quite a lot to work with while reimagining them. Hyenas are adaptable social creatures with a unique sexual hierarchy that you can spin out into a lot of interesting cultural dynamics out of ( go look up some hyena biology facts and tell me that’s not a goldmine for coming up with unique social patterns). Being strict carnivores means they miss out on the development that agriculture brings,   but their wider palate when it comes to what’s acceptable as meat ( scavenged carrion, insects) allows them to survive in much harsher climates, though likely with smaller numbers. Groups would be transitory, following the migration routes of the animals that they hunted, splitting up and gathering together based on the availability of the food supply. 

Though migratory, gnolls would likely be highly protective of these lands, as sustainable access to a highly limited foodsource would mean the difference between being able to stay with the route or being force to travel to unknown lands scavenging. Gnoll territory would likely clash with wolves, lions, and other large predators 

Gnolls could also perform a unique form of insect-agriculture, cultivating colonies of termites, crickets, and leaf-cutter ants throughout their territory to act as backup food storage. 

( Also this whole thing about gnolls keeping Hyenas as pets always bugged me. You don’t want pets that eat the same thing as you, gnolls would keep easily ) 

Gnoll culture would likely be eminently practical, with everyone expected to be able to cultivate different skills depending on the seasonal availability of food. This would lead to less specialization and stratification among the pack-members, as well as a network of mentor-apprentice relationships that would likely transcend individual packs. The best leatherworker would train leatherworkers from all allied packs, and this would foster a spirit of dependence and unity despite territorial separation. Gods of the hunt and weather would likely feature prominently, as well as dualistic gods of life and death, who the gnolls would thank for their random gifts of carrion. 

Like most of the “always chaotic evil” ancestries, I don’t mind keeping the monstrous aspects of the gnolls somewhere in the toolbox, and the idea of the “always hungry, always bloodthirsty” raiders that not even other evils will align with is an interesting menace to face. In the default Gnoll lore, the gnolls were created from hyenas who fed upon the carrion left behind by the rampaging demon-prince Yeeenoghu. With a simple twist, we instead have “The hungry ones” a cult or demonically influenced faction of gnolls who are a dark perversion of gnollish nature much in the same way that vampires are a dark reflection of humanity. Made up of outcasts from stable gnollish society, these wretches revere a carrion demon as none of their people’s other spirits will watch over them, and aim o fill their bellies as many times as possible before the wilds finally claim them ( think Mad-Max warboys) 

If you wanted to put a twist on it, have these hungry ones be the “first contact” point between your traditional fantasy cultures and the gnolls of the badlands, souring relations between both groups and feeding off the inevitable clash. 

Art 

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I will always prefer Wizards Is A Job over Wizards Is A Species as a trope.

Wizarding should be something you work towards. Being a wizard is like being an architect, or a painter, or a chemist. It’s something that makes your relatives ask “So are you still doing that or do you have an actual job now”

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I love me a pseudo-historical arranged marriage au but it always nudges my suspension of disbelief when the author has to dance around the implicit expectation that an arranged marriage should lead to children, which a cis gay couple can't provide.

I know for a lot of people that's irrelevant to what they want from an Arranged Marriage plot, but personally I like playing in the weird and uncomfortable implications.

So, I've been thinking about how you would justify an obviously barren marriage in That Kind of fantasy world, and I thought it'd be interesting if gay marriage in Ye Old Fantasy Land was a form of soft disinheritance/abdication.

Like, "Oh, God, I don't want to be in this position of power please just find me a boy to marry", or, "I know you should inherit after you father passes but as your stepmother/legal guardian I think it'd make more sense if my kids got everything, so maybe consider lesbianism?", or "Look, we both know neither of our families has enough money to support that many grandkids, so let's just pair some spares and save both our treasuries the trouble".

Obviously this brings in some very different dynamics that I know not everyone would be pinged by, but I just think it'd be neat.

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Problem with making sci fi dungeons is coming up with places that aren't just military tech bases, research facilities, mines or abandoned space stations.

I have the entirety of modern life to pull from and I come up blank somehow.

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The piece I created for Dames, Fantasy Warriors earlier this year! My idea was a ghostly hellhound knight inspired by the tales of ghost dogs like Black Shuck

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Dumb science fiction concept: the bomb that makes ghosts.

It doesn’t actually kill anyone, but its guts of clockwork crystal and brass release a burst of psychokinetic energy that resonates with any death that’s ever happened within the blast radius. If anything above the spectral weight of a dandelion has died in the past year in that area, its soul is pulled screaming back into the world of the living. The ghosts of ants. The ghosts of rats. The ghosts of birds and cats and dogs and neighbours, pulled into howling, shrieking unnatural undeath.

The practical application of this has yet to be determined.

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Prototype portrait for a game project.

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Problem with making sci fi dungeons is coming up with places that aren't just military tech bases, research facilities, mines or abandoned space stations.

I have the entirety of modern life to pull from and I come up blank somehow.

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Anyway, the main reason I dislike "it's not fair to expect players to learn the rules" because there is actually a secret parenthetical there: "(except for one player, the GM, who has to know all the rules)"

Like do you all realize how patently absurd it is on the face of it to argue that you can't expect people to learn the rules when the game itself hinges on at least one person having learned the rules? At this point you are infantilising players and making them seem like poor little meow meows who can't be expected to learn things or they'll die.

Like, your GM probably also has a day job like you and just like you would have to take time off from your busy schedule to learn the game, they are pretty much guaranteed to have to take time off from their schedule to prepare the game. If you think it's unfair to expect players to make an effort to learn the game, do you think it's fair to expect one player to learn the game while they also prep sessions, meaning that they will have to handle every rules interaction for each player while also running to the game?

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This is I think, my best prep tip as a DM:

When the players are about to visit a new town, pre-generate several NPCs who fit the demographics of the town, but don't give them jobs. Your town is Mostly human, with a number of halflings and gnomes? Make a list that's mostly humans with some halflings and gnomes mixed in, with names that match the vibe you're going for and maybe the barest description + a quirk of some sort.

So the list would look something like this:

Ophelia Bracegurdle, older Halfling woman who laughs a lot

Norabecka Johnson, a young human woman who seems tired

Geraldofinio Babblecock Nimsy, gnome gentleman who takes pains to maintain a fabulous mustache

Etc.

Then, when the players are like, "Can I go to the blacksmith?" You look at your list of NPCs and the one at the top is Ophelia Bracegurdle. She's your blacksmith now. Then they want to go to the tavern, where Norabecka is the innkeeper and Geraldofinio is a patron having a drink at the bar. He's using a straw so he doesn't mess up his mustache.

If they had gone to the inn first, Ophelia would have been the innkeeper with Norabecka as the patron, and then Geraldofinio should have been a blacksmith with some sort of mustache guard to keep the sparks off.

Making the list ahead of time doesn't take much time, and you can often re-use the people you never got to at the next town.

Your world will seem vibrant and interesting and like you have everything planned out.

Have fun!

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I just saw a post that deeply annoyed me because it went, "Here's a story that's like a Regency romance, but I FIXED it by making the characters sexually liberated and shame-free and polyamorous!"

This is like saying, "Here's a story that's like a thriller, but I FIXED it by having the serial killer go to therapy instead of trapping victims in his evil maze and dismembering them."

.

The thing a lot of people don't seem to get is that the entire appeal of a Regency romance is watching a deeply repressed, perfectly controlled, buttoned up, straight-laced person who has never expressed an emotion before fall so hard for someone that something in them just breaks and they come completely unhinged.

It's a very specific kink that this genre is tapping into.

People who think the characters in a Regency novel are boring are missing the whole point. The characters are supposed to be boring, right up until they fall so madly in love that it drives them insane, at which point they become very interesting. Regency romance novelists are doing the writing equivalent of putting plain white featureless uncooked whole eggs in a microwave and waiting for them to explode.

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"Hidden supernatural world" RPG with an ostensibly contemporary setting where the boundaries on the illustrated map in the setting lore chapter's section on global politics clearly depict an extant Austro-Hungarian Empire. This is never addressed in the text.

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Ultimately an RPG that uses playing cards as a randomizer but doesn't actually utilize the cards for. You know. The things that cards can do. Is just using them as a fancy, weirdly shaped die.

A few things that cards can do that dice can't:

You know that dice superstition that people have about how if they roll enough low numbers they're bound to get a high one? That sort of actually works with cards provided cards aren't immediately returned to the deck and the deck reshuffled. Because there's a limited number of each "roll," good or bad.

You can hold them in your hand. It's basically like pre-rolling a bunch of numbers and then getting to spend those numbers as they become relevant. Maybe you only get to draw more cards by playing all your cards, meaning that if you don't conserve your good cards your character's luck is eventually bound to run out.

You can make poker hands with them. Added to the previous point, maybe you will be forced to play a worse hand and have your character flub a non-critical roll because you're hoping for that better hand that'll turn the tide.

There's suits as an added bit of information that can be utilized for some mechanics. Maybe matching suit with an action type results in an extra benefit?

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I do think we need to repopularize open-table gaming where people can drop in and drop out of games, but also they can take their characters made for one table out of that game and just transport them to another table. It would be good for all of us!

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HOSTILE WORK ENVIRONMENT