Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Hobgoblin on April 24, 2020, 05:29:19 PM
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(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UB0TKjRIYMk/XqMJtTGXd_I/AAAAAAAABjs/3tx8e9f3fd81lsLJG1a7kbqJTFHG-hXKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/FT%2Borc%2Belement.JPG)
I just posted a blog (https://hobgoblinry.blogspot.com/2020/04/citadels-fantasy-tribe-orcs-and-d.html) with the staggering revelation that early Citadel ranges were heavily influenced by the 1979 Monster Manual. Earth-shattering stuff, I know, but I found it quite interesting to see how clear the influence was.
TLDR: the Fantasy Tribe orc and dwarf ranges map very closely - or exactly, in the case of the dwarfs - to the detailed armament descriptions provided in the Monster Manual. All of which makes the mystery of the Fantasy Tribe gnolls even deeper ...
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I feel the need to comment, just to let you know I've read it. I'm not sure what to say except ... urm, okay, that was kind of interesting.
It is another nudge towards me making my own Orc or two, in the C-series Citadel style, without the restrictions of having to cast.
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Yes, definitely worth pointing out, I'd say.
A good reminder, if one were needed, that in those far-off and indeed near-mythical days AD&D really was the only game in town.
Let us know if you have any further thoughts on the Problem of the Gnolls...
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It is another nudge towards me making my own Orc or two, in the C-series Citadel style, without the restrictions of having to cast.
You must and shall! You could probably harvest a few of the unused ideas in the Blanche sketch:
(https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Qi30MqQYaWg/WeEKALHG9DI/AAAAAAAADuE/sqdthtAcQJAopX-KOP6Ha-zJgLB3108QgCKgBGAs/s1600/armouredorcsblanche.jpg)
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Yes, definitely worth pointing out, I'd say.
A good reminder, if one were needed, that in those far-off and indeed near-mythical days AD&D really was the only game in town.
The dwarf thing was the big surprise for me today. In their own way, the Citadel ranges were as close to the Monster Manual as the Minifigs ones.
Let us know if you have any further thoughts on the Problem of the Gnolls...
I fear that's an unfathomable mystery!
I did check the Fantasy Tribe hobgoblins too. They don't quite match up - unless you have a very liberal interpretation of what a morning star is. But there are some signs of influence: "sword & whip" (the ultimate origin of the "discipline master" type that recurred in the Citadel hobgoblin ranges?).
And then there's the hobgoblins' tribal standard, which "cause hobgoblin warriors within 6" to fight harder, thus giving them +1 on their attack dice rolls and +1 on morale (reaction) dice rolls". That's something that lay dormant in Warhammer for a while but resurfaced broadly intact in 3rd edition. And it's probably the origin of Frenzy for Warhammer hobgoblins too.
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Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest! I used to think it was the same as a ball and chain, then I read it was like a mace but with spiky ball instead of flanges, then I read it could be either! I gave up trying to understand in the end.
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Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest! I used to think it was the same as a ball and chain, then I read it was like a mace but with spiky ball instead of flanges, then I read it could be either! I gave up trying to understand in the end.
I always thought the chain made it a morning star...
Then there’s a mace and spiked mace, too.
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Interesting thread :)
Of course Minifigs did ‘classic’ gnolls,some of my first miniatures. And where do the Samurai hobgoblins fit in? I was astounded by the intricate sculpting at the time. I seem to remember those gnolls/goblins being described as night goblins at some stage.
You should write a book Hobgoblin :)
A morning star is a mace with spikes basically,also known as a holy water sprinkler,an ironical joke,it resembles a aspergillum...
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I was wondering about the FT gnolls and had a look through the Monster Manual for clues.
What about the bugbears? Not a complete source, for sure, but some physical resemblances (particularly the ears and the straggly beards) particularly to the "Great Gnolls" like this guy below. Doesn't account for the long noses on most of the range, admittedly. Curious that the MM mentions "females and young" as typically present in the bugbear lair, and the FTG range has both. Nothing particularly conclusive, but suggestive anyway as a partial source.
Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest!
Bugbear weaponry is "the gamut of available weapons - from swords to wooden clubs with spikes set in them (morning stars)". So there's a Gygax version for them too, inevitably.
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Oh, 'What is a morning star?' is one of those questions that always stir up a hornet's nest! I used to think it was the same as a ball and chain, then I read it was like a mace but with spiky ball instead of flanges, then I read it could be either! I gave up trying to understand in the end.
Ha! Yes - I went through exactly the same process. When I was at school, I'd have sworn blind that it was a handle with a spiked ball on the end of a chain - as Christian says below. (I seem to recall some primary-school educational text that described it thus and showed a Viking wielding one!) But I think there's a fair bit of doubt as to whether such weapons really existed - as discussed in this article (https://www.publicmedievalist.com/curious-case-weapon-didnt-exist/). The ones in museums seem to be later reproductions - and possibly reproductions of weapons shown in fanciful manuscripts rather than physical ones.
But Blackwolf has it right, I think: the 'morning star' is the same as the 'holy water sprinkler' - a big, spiked club (as in Severian's Monster Manual definition below). Those definitely did exist - there are quite a few genuine ones in museums, and very nasty they look too!
Blackwolf: the Citadel 'gnolls' became 'great goblins'; the night goblins were a parallel range (not Fantasy Tribe, though there were a couple in the Fiend Factory range, and the generic Fiend Factory goblins were swallowed up by the night goblins by the time of the First Citadel Compendium):
(http://www.solegends.com/citcat1983comp1/citcomp1028-01.jpg)
Severian, that bugbear idea's intriguing - especially as those bare-chested, long-eared gnolls/great goblins are at one point described as "great gnolls" in some of the Citadel ads.
My best guess (and it's only that!) is that the Perrys might have been working off the pre-Monster Manual description of gnolls in D&D:
"A cross between Gnomes and Trolls (perhaps ... Lord Sunsany [sic] did not really make it all that clear) with +2 morale. Otherwise, they are similar to Hobgoblins, although the Gnoll king and his bodyguard of from 1-4 will fight as Trolls but lack regenerative power."
If you look at the FT gnolls, they answer quite nicely to that description: I don't think anyone would bat an eyelid if they were described as either gnomes or trolls.
That still leaves the possibility of bugbears floating around in the mix, especially as the bigger, beefier, bare-chested ones were somewhat distinct (in D&D, bugbears are the next step up from gnolls, although I think bugbears came in in the Greyhawk supplement rather than the original 1974 rules).
There's a possibilty that there might have been some inspiration from Lord Dunsany's original gnoles, which were based on this drawing by Sydney Sime (The Book of Wonder was a collaboration: Sime did the drawings, then Dunsany wrote the stories):
(https://lostdelights.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/simegnoles1.jpg)
The Citadel gnolls are closer to those than to the hyena-men of the Monster Manual.
But that might be too obscure. I'm not sure how widely available Dunsany's stuff was in the late 70s and early 80s; he's one of those authors who was massively famous in his lifetime but whose stuff more or less disappeared for a long time thereafter. I once checked the archive on Google News for the 1920s/30s, and Dunsany cropped up all the time.
So I wonder if it was just a matter of gnome/troll gnolls being demoted to goblinhood once the clash with the Monster Manual became apparent. Or maybe it was a case of models first, naming later - especially as there were about four different takes on goblins floating around in the early Citadel lines.
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I've often wondered at the transition from tiny 'Lesser Goblins' (Snotlings in the later GW jargon) through Goblins and Orcs to 'Trolls' and whether they could be described as 'breeds' of Goblinoid instead of separate races, each with distinct traits (physical and mental) evolved to cope in different environments and evolutionary niches.
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I'm not sure how widely available Dunsany's stuff was in the late 70s and early 80s; he's one of those authors who was massively famous in his lifetime but whose stuff more or less disappeared for a long time thereafter. I once checked the archive on Google News for the 1920s/30s, and Dunsany cropped up all the time.
As far as I can remember, I'm not sure I ever saw anything actually by Dunsany in the 1980s; I knew who he was, of course (and he's mentioned in Appendix N of the 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide amongst the "inspirational reading"), but I'm not sure that any of his stuff was easily available. I spent a lot of my free time in 2nd hand bookshops (and local libraries) and never found him. And before the interweb, that was as far as I could go.
At some point in the mid-80s I acquired an ex-library copy of the Mark Amory biography, first published in 1972; and much more recently I got a copy of a book of Sidney Sime illustrations published in 1980, which has a good few of his Dunsany pieces. So Dunsany was in the air, as it were, but maybe not that much read. In fact I'm not sure how much of his stuff was reprinted at all before the excellent Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series picked him up in 2000. Since he only died in 1957, all of his stuff is still in copyright, which probably didn't help. Anyway, that's enough bibliographical digression. I expect you know all these things anyway.
So I wonder if it was just a matter of gnome/troll gnolls being demoted to goblinhood once the clash with the Monster Manual became apparent. Or maybe it was a case of models first, naming later - especially as there were about four different takes on goblins floating around in the early Citadel lines.
I think that's a good working hypothesis (or hypotheses). I don't remember much caring about the precise appearance of the various monsters in my early games of D&D (which were usually played without miniatures, in fact) or 1st edition Warhammer. Just having some sort of usable figure was the most important thing, and if it called itself a goblin (or gnoll, or whatever) then that's what it was. I suspect a lot of figure ranges were assembled with a similar casualness.
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I've often wondered at the transition from tiny 'Lesser Goblins' (Snotlings in the later GW jargon) through Goblins and Orcs to 'Trolls' and whether they could be described as 'breeds' of Goblinoid instead of separate races, each with distinct traits (physical and mental) evolved to cope in different environments and evolutionary niches.
I think that's the most aesthetically pleasing way to do it - and it worked a bit better, visually, in the 80s, when Perry goblins often had 'orc' faces, so that they were more obviously the same sort of thing.
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As far as I can remember, I'm not sure I ever saw anything actually by Dunsany in the 1980s; I knew who he was, of course (and he's mentioned in Appendix N of the 1979 Dungeon Master's Guide amongst the "inspirational reading"), but I'm not sure that any of his stuff was easily available. I spent a lot of my free time in 2nd hand bookshops (and local libraries) and never found him. And before the interweb, that was as far as I could go.
Yes, I knew of him long before I read any of his stuff - and I mainly knew of him through references to his inspiring Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories (in Call of Cthulhu and forewords to Lovecraft collections). I eventually picked up The King of Elfland's Daughter second hand (it was re-published by Allen and Unwin/Unicorn in 1982, but I must have got hold of it about 10 years ago).
It's a shame he was so neglected; he's really the inventor of swords and sorcery - and he laid the foundations for the archetypal RPG adventure. And I've found that many of his tales make excellent bedtime stories for kids ('The Hoard of the Gibbelins', 'How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles', etc.).
I think that's a good working hypothesis (or hypotheses). I don't remember much caring about the precise appearance of the various monsters in my early games of D&D (which were usually played without miniatures, in fact) or 1st edition Warhammer. Just having some sort of usable figure was the most important thing, and if it called itself a goblin (or gnoll, or whatever) then that's what it was. I suspect a lot of figure ranges were assembled with a similar casualness.
Yes, I'm sure you're right. I also reckon that D&D itself didn't really distinguish between humanoid types with Aristotelian precision until the Monster Manual. I reckon that the hierarchy of kobold/goblin/orc/gnoll/bugbear - all of which essentially mean 'goblin' (if we go on Sime and Dunsany's gnoles) - was really just a way of matching the escalating fighter titles in the game (veteran/warrior/swordsman/hero/swashbuckler, etc). So a gnoll was probably just a bigger and tougher sort of goblin, just as a kobold was a weaker one.
In D&D's forerunner Chainmail, kobolds and goblins are described as essentially the same thing, as are orcs and goblins. And the line between trolls and ogres is blurry in that game too, hence the 'true troll' (the regenerating Poul Anderson type) that cropped up in the Ral Partha ranges.
I've also spotted another clear bit of Monster Manual influence on Citadel: the Goblin Raiding Party. I can't believe that I'd never spotted how close Torg Dwarfsmasher is to the Monster Manual illustration (https://hobgoblinry.blogspot.com/2020/04/but-wait-theres-more.html)!
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I think you can get his collected works (or at least some of them) on Kindle for peanuts.
I do like mucking about with the origins of these things, seeing how they began and then were adapted by the various systems. It's interesting how the background and the miniatures took turns with leading each other in developing the creatures.
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I do like mucking about with the origins of these things, seeing how they began and then were adapted by the various systems. It's interesting how the background and the miniatures took turns with leading each other in developing the creatures.
Yes: there's an odd circularity when Warhammer orcs, which were originally trying to be D&D orcs, started to influence the look of D&D orcs. The gangly grey-green orc of the Monstrous Manual (second-edition AD&D) is very much like the Warhammer orcs of its time and quite unlike the pig-headed Monster Manual orcs - and as the Warhammer orcs became beefier, so did the D&D orcs - even to the extent that their stats changed radically.
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Indeed. I Used D&D hobgoblins from Minifigs as my Uruks,these are before Citadel came on the scene,oh yes and Ral Partha when I could get them. I guess the timeline for Orcs for me ran like this:
Minifigs
Ral Partha
Asgard
Citadel
Bear in mind I'm in Australia, and tis all happened over a coyple of years by which stage I'd discovered Glorantha...