Hello everyone!
I always think about doing something conceptual, and I'm still trying things to share my opinions while communicate with you aswell. Aaand I came up with this new idea: Monster Monday! With this series, I'll try to share my opinions and my style of use about a monster. Probably most of them will be D&D (or at least d20 fantasy) creatures, but I'll try to add some varies to introduce different monsters with you. Okay, here we go!
Savage, Tribal, Chaotic
Everything has started for me when Wizards announced their 5th edition of D&D. I wanted to start a campaign, pre-ordered core books, and started to build up a campaign. And people were using goblin for EVRITING! It was extremely boring for me, so I started to look out for "my-style-of-goblin", another lesser monster race which I could use for savage ambient. And I picked gnolls.
Gnolls are basically hyena, with erected posture, primitive behaviour and predator instincts. Their size are medium, but with their hunchback, they look smaller. They are chaotic evil, but I like to use them as neutral evil or chaotic neutral, because, basically they're trying to make out their living by hunting and stealing. Their primitive and tribal life-style makes them more dangerous and I really like to use it that way.
Yeenoghu
In my campaign, gnolls in the world are under effect of a mind-affecting effect. Because, Yeenoghu, a demonic gnoll entity shares some of its demonic power to ones who loyal to it. And shaman-gnolls of tribes understand what it is, and gather others for sacrifice living beings for the sake of Yeenoghu. Actually, there was a moment which gnoll tribes gathered up their forces and tried to bring Yeenoghu into material plane. They captured lots of commoners to offer their souls to Yeenoghu, and there was a huge portal working in progress. But adventurers were able to negate this attempt, somehow.
Gnoll Varieties
There were lots of different threats in the campaign, but gnolls were everyday threat and I created some varieties for constantly using the same concept, but keep it from becoming a boring element. A year later, Wizards released a book called Volo's Guide to Monsters, and they added ALMOST the same gnoll variants I created! It was shocking for me, but I was glad to have these varieties inside of an official content book.
Gnolls in my setting are misunderstood, pushed away, underestimated, and they want to make people pay for it. They're angry (I gave Rage trait to some of my varities), ambitious, and always loyal to Yeenoghu!
This is just an introduction post to a new concept, so I kept it short. What do you think about it? Would you like to read more of monsters' nature? Do you want to see statistical details? Do you like gnolls? Drop your comments and let's talk about them!
