Wednesday, February 21, 2018

My trolls are different?

Scandinavian mythology has a diverse array of creatures all referred to as trolls, ranging from dwarves to giants. D&D, on the other hand, has a single variety of troll whose shtick is that they are nearly impossible to kill without fire (they were copied wholesale from a single troll encounter in Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, which was presumably intended to be a unique individual rather than a race).  I decided to bring the mythological diversity into the game and expand the variety of trolls, using Trudvang Chronicles as a guide.

Trolls as depicted in Trudvang Chronicles

A single variety of troll is boring, so I like having many varieties. The various kinds of trolls in myth may be represented by re-skinning existing monsters that share a similar role. Humanoids may represent the human-sized or smaller trolls, giants may represent larger trolls, ogre mages and hags may represent troll witches, etc.

Having all these redundant monsters sounds a bit boring (unless you're playing a Norse themed campaign where they replace standard monsters), so I think it would be more fun to make "troll" a subtype applied to the original monsters.

Perhaps "trolling" is a disease that causes the infected to suffer photo-sensitivity, bone growth, cartilage growth and other mutations. This results in the iconic troll features of large noses, large ears, horns, tails, etc. In extreme cases sunlight may turn them to stone!

Ditto
Alternately, "troll" could be the generic term for savage humanoids like orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc that adventurers are expected to face on a regular basis. This is how it is used in Trudvang Chronicles. (In older editions of D&D, the player character races were referred to as "humans and demi-humans" while the enemy races were referred to as "humanoids." In 3.x and beyond, "humanoid" became the default term while "demi-human" was forgotten. Using "troll" in the same sense as the older sense of "humanoid" allows me to bring back the "demi-human" terminology, though I would prefer to use "demikind" instead and apply it to humans as well. Why are humans, dwarves, elves, etc referred to as demikind? I will think of an explanation in the future.)

"Troll Monster vs Troll Warrior." "A primitive troll, degenerated by generations of inbreeding, is attacking a more normal troll with a human father not too far back in his bloodline."
Calling all the generic enemies trolls also gives more leeway in defining the capabilities of trolls. Furthermore, many varieties of giants, such as the uglier ones, could be labeled trolls as well. Indeed, the dictionary definition of troll is "a mythical, cave-dwelling being depicted in folklore as either a giant or a dwarf, typically having a very ugly appearance", with synonyms "goblin, hobgoblin, gnome, halfling, demon, monster, bugaboo, ogre."

What about the standard troll in the MM? What do we call it now? Well, since one of its flavor texts is "troll freak," then "troll mutant" or "troll monster" might suffice; Mystara calls them "root trolls." Their shtick is that they are prone to mutation due to their rapid regeneration, producing various freaks. For example, Fredrik Andersson's conception of trolls (seen above) has them suffering from progressive mutation as a result of low genetic diversity; as a result, they must periodically intermarry with humans. The civilized counterparts of troll mutants may be represented by the trollkin race from Kobold Press' Midgard Heroes sourcebook.

Alternately, maybe trolls could be a class of fey? Huldra? Troll wives? Or maybe there are two tribes of troll, one fey and one humanoid/giant/goblinoid, both of which hate one another? So many possibilities!

Wood Woman ©2005 Beth Trott

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2 comments:

  1. The MalumFebruary 22, 2021 at 10:55 AM

    I've been reading and revelling in your remakes of popular D&D monsters, and will use many of them in my games. The one exception is trolls. While I enjoy the Scandinavian trolls, I had to include Dave Trampier's trolls (also as a player option!) just out of a love of the source material.

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  2. imredaveSeptember 6, 2024 at 6:11 AM

    I really like the trolls in Runequest. The mother species is a big and powerful species but due to an ancient curse most of the offspring are little runty creatures.

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