DM: "Have you finished rolling your character?" Player: "Yes, they're a humanoid." DM: "You mean human?" Player: "Well... my father was a minotaur and my mother was a centaur, but I only inherited their human traits... so I'm just some guy."
The MM illustrations for kobolds was also not what Gary intended, but it stuck. They were not meant to appear reptilian or have scales. The 2E Monstrous Manual humanoid illustrations are probably what I consider the best, and except for orcs probably the closest to what Gygax had in mind for the AD&D humanoids.
Those 1st edition Kobolds were always my favorite. I hate the way they've drawn them since. But as an 80s kid....Kobolds will always look like what you showed in this video. lol
Despite being scaly I got the impression they were dog-like in the structure of their heads. I think the more draconic / reptilian bend might have come from the depiction of their patron deity, Kurtulmak (see pg110 of the original released Deities & Demigods).
@@Dungeon_Reviews Yeah they did, they were more rat-terrier/chihuahua faced with longer, pointed snouts. Between BECMI, 1E and 2E versions, I liked to think of those variants almost as different "breeds" of kobolds to kind of explain the differences in how they appear.
As I was listening I imagined a meeting of the gods Hruggek, Kurtulmak, Gruumsh and Yeenoghu, debating who's to be included in which category... It all ends in a divine, furious yelling contest, of course!
Kobolds are the German version of the Welsh Coblynau, which would best be described as goblins. They’re both mining faeries, similar to the brownies and the like in English folklore. Humanoids in my games vary wildly. Because I include things like the Coblynau, Ghillie Dhu and Metsan Vaki (from Finnish folklore), which benevolent types of the base goblin. The orcs get the pig-nosed description because of their size. Pretty much everything looks up at their faces, so they end up looking up their nostrils. My bugbears call the dog-noses, but my goblins pretty much all call them pig-noses. All orcs being evil comes from Tolkien because they are corrupted elves in his writings. Once that origin was removed, their evil tendencies didn’t have an explanation. If you want an interesting twist, let something like an Arrow of Orc Slaying work on evil elves, but not on good-aligned orcs. That’s guaranteed to screw with your players’ minds.
I always thought like you, Grognard - that goblins/hobs/bugbears would cooperate to some extent, and that hobgoblins were the only ones disciplined enough to keep the coalition together. I think my head-canon was that orcs/gnolls/ogres did the same. . .orcoids?
Yeah, I stick to the list of evil humanoids (Orc-ogre-goblinoids, troll-types and evil giants) in the Players Handbook Ranger section. I do not use the entire Unearthed Arcana Ranger foe list as there are a few creatures on there from the later monster books that I don’t think fit (gibberling, meenlock, meazel, etc.). However, I will restrict the description to EVIL Giants because I do not want Rangers to get their damage bonus versus good Giants. I’ll allow Ogrillons, Giant Trolls, etc. as variants of the existing “evil humanoids.”
Nice run down. As a kid, I decided that "Goblin, Hobgoblin, Bugbear" was a competing set of related creatures paralleling "Halfling, Human, Ogre". In my mind, the Humans and Goblins were eternally at war to see which would "win" as the dominant species in the "short lived non-giant races" niche. Elves and Dwarves were bystanders to this conflict, and had their own foes to deal with, often just cousins of theirs (drow, dueregar, etc)
Another great video! As a side note, I've been using your "Journey to Hommlet" module in my Castles & Crusades Greyhawk campaign. The players (and myself) have really enjoyed it.
According to Gygax and Arneson in OD&D Bk2, a gnoll is a species created by crossing a gnome and a troll (based on Lord Dunsany's 1912 story 'How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles'). That kind of disappeared in AD&D where they became hyena looking humanoids.
Also in the original LBB's Bugbears were considered giant-class creatures. Although hilariously, the gnoll entry actually says that Dunsany was unclear on the subject of the gnolls!
@@GreyhawkGrognard in OD&D, "giant class" was "humanoids" before that term was created. Hill-, Frost-, Fire-, and other giants were called "True Giants" to distinguish them.
An aside on the lawful vs chaotic split among the humanoids. I enjoy having 3 man crossbow teams, primarily the kobolds. Using hvy crossbows on pintles. My son 'ambushed' his group and they had a blast.
Funny enough, one of my first ever characters for AD&D is a humanoid, using the 2e Complete Book of Humanoids rules. Fin Bruar is an Orc Fighter/Thief, and was more so made for Forgotten Realms, where he was connected to the Ondonti people that worshipped Eldath, Goddess of Peace, but I've been thinking of remaking him for Greyhawk where someone suggested he could've been from either the Pomarj and be a mercenary worshiping Ilneval, Orc God of Strategy, or be from the Wild Coast and be from an orphanage ran by a church of Rao, God of Peace, to keep with his original FR counterpart.
I've always really preferred goblinoids as my baseline humanoids and would love it if they had gotten even more development as a culture and more subraces.
For my homebrew I incorporate some concepts from later editions of D&D and then run with them. For example, Goblins are now neutral evil which changes the goblinoid dynamics to have the Hobgoblins at the top. Orcs are Chaotic Evil and form their own family group with Ogres and Ettin. Trolls are a throwback common ancestor to both groups. Kobolds aren't related to either group (or dragons for that matter. I always hated that), but because they're the most tech-savy humanoids Hobs actually respect them more than their own relatives.
Funny, I was just talking to my buddy about this a couple of days ago! I can tell you how I implement humanoids in my world. You are going to get more than you bargained for here!!! In my world all of these species are more intelligent than they are laid out in the original D&D books. Hobgoblins, goblins and Bugbears probably tend to be a little smarter on average than orcs. Greater orcs and uruk-hai being the exception here. These latter two can be equivalent to hobgoblins and goblins. Bugbears are also quite smart. Gnolls and kobolds on the whole are less intelligent than the others and tend to be a bit dull-minded. Orcs: Pig-faced are awesome, but expensive! We consider them to be a separate subspecies of Orc. They are tougher than "lesser orcs" and about on par with "greater orcs", but not quite as tough as "Ukruk Hai". We like having a lot of different orcs. We also have a sub-species of lesser orc ("snaga") that have crooked legs that bend backwards. These guys can run quite fast and are used for runners and scouts. Orcs in our games might ride dire wolves or wild boar. They may also ride wargs ("undead wolves"), but only if they are serving a demon or powerful sorcerer. You may find an orc- Shaman, who has achieved "great-cult" status, though some trickery or arcane means, but in general it takes more than this to keep these guys from killing each other and dissolving. There are so many tribes of orcs that you can do a lot with them. You can give them magic, let them have a powerful leader, who can train and discipline them (or cause them great fear), so that they can be molded into an elite force or you can let them be primitives with stone spears and axes. There is a lot of leeway there. There are few orc women, but each one of them has like 6-10 baby orcs, half of which do not live very long. Female orcs may have up to 3-8 litters in her short lifetime, but "orc-fant" fatality rates are high especially in the first 5-8 years. We once had a well-educated orc tribe with libraries and culture, but let's not get into that. Ogrillions: In my games Ogrillions are pretty dim-witted. They are usually living and working in a tribe of orcs and are used as slaves, laborers and for shock in battle. They are great if you want something heavier than what an orc can lift moved around or if you need someone to break down a door, but beyond that there is just not much to them. They are dumber than gnolls and sterile. There is just not a whole lot of potential there. Maybe occasionally one of them gets angry or tired of serving and kills an orc, but then it’s curtains for that ogrillion. In my games they are never shamans. Hobgoblins: Hobgoblins are the nastiest of the original D&D humanoids. They are tougher than greater orcs and they are much better disciplined as well! Hobgoblins are generally speaking, hierarchical, militaristic, well-disciplined and sadistic, but of course there are always exceptions. Hobgoblins tend to be organized into militaristic clans around a strong warlord leader. They tend to have less magic, but they do have sorcerers, shamans, priests etc. Usually, what holds hobgoblin tribes together is a strong, militaristic, warrior ethos. Hobgoblins may be just as cruel and brutal as orcs, but they are far more systematic and organized about it. Hobgoblins are like humans in terms of their reproductive rate. There are fewer hobgoblin women than human women, but they have 2-3 times as many babies as humans. About a third of these never see adulthood. Norkers: Norkers were never really explained very well. They were supposed to be some offshoot, far distant relatives to hobgoblins. I could never really see that. So for me they were their own species or maybe a mutated subspecies of hobgoblin at best. They are tough and don’t feel much pain, so hobgoblins respect them for that, I guess. I could never really figure out what they are supposed to be. They are only 4 feet tall. They are not very good at dealing damage, but they can absorb a lot of damage. They are kind of like ogrillion-dwarves for hobgoblins. I do not know why hobgoblins would keep them around, except maybe to hold their drinks? Bugbears: Bugbears are, if I recall correctly, as tough as hobgoblins and they would possibly be nastier, especially because they are very silent. Silence is a biological advantage that is counterintuitive, because of their size. You just do not think that a big bugbear like that can move quietly, but they can. The only reason that bugbears do not rule is that they do not like being told what to do by anyone and there are just too few of them compared to hobgoblins, goblins and orcs. As a result, bugbears are either: 1.) Solitary living in family groups, clans or small bands living alone and staying out of the way of larger tribes of hobgoblins, goblins and orcs or . . . 2.) they end up being body-guards, scouts and shock troops in some hobgoblin, goblin or orc group/tribe. Bugbears probably get picked on a lot. Gnolls are a scourge to them and they probably try to kill gnolls whenever they can do so without engaging a large group of them. In terms of reproduction Bugbears are probably between hobgoblins and humans. Gnolls: Gnolls are tough, but they are too undisciplined and unorganized. Again, I get the impression that there are not as many gnolls as there are hobgoblins, goblins and orcs. There are more gnolls than bugbears though. Gnolls. for the most part, are just these roving chaotic warbands that form around a flind. They raid and ravage until someone more disciplined and better organized hunts them down. They raid and ravage more for food and things to eat than they do for treasure. Goblins: Goblins are between orcs and hobgoblins in terms of hierarchy, organization and discipline. Like with orcs, one finds a wide gambit with a great deal of leeway in terms of what might be encountered. Generally speaking, just like with orcs, there will always be more unorganized, chaotic, primitive tribes than there will be hierarchical, well- organized, well-lead, well-disciplined tribes with higher technological levels and greater understanding. Goblins are more likely to achieve something like the goblins in Harry Potter, than the Orcs are. There are of course, always exceptions. Goblins make up for their lack of strength through greater numbers. They tend to use hit and run tactics and a lot of projectile weapons, but they may also have cavalry mounted. These are usually mounted on dire wolves or wild boar. Occasionally, a Barghest will take over and lead a goblin tribe. Otherwise the goblins have their own priests, shamans, great-hero warriors and kings. Goblin tribes may also be ruled by a more powerful orc or hobgoblin tribe or by a group of bugbears. Goblins usually are treated better by bugbears than they are by hobgoblins or orcs. The former being too disciplined and sadistic (even toward their own) and the latter just being too murderous and chaotic. Kobolds: I never liked the kobolds in D&D being dragon-like with scales and such. For me, kobolds are more like little goblins or maybe snotlings from Warhammer, at least from what I have seen and read of them. Kobolds in my games are usually dull-witted and cannot achieve the level of intellect that goblins or Hobgoblins can. There are always exceptions, however. One way that kobolds are different from the other humanoids and a bit more like dragons or duck-billed-platypuses, is that their females can lay eggs! This gives kobolds a great biological advantage. A female kobold lays a clutch of between 20-30 eggs and can do so up to 3 times per year, although food scarcity usually limits their numbers. The mortality rate among the young kobolds is the highest of all the humanoids! Kobolds are omnivorous and can be quite nasty, especially in numbers. If there are not enough kobolds, in a colony the kobolds will try to join a tribe of hobgoblins, goblins or orcs, where they are usually seen as being both helpful and a nuisance. Kobolds are often the slave-servants of these other humanoid groups. There are however, independent colonies or hordes of kobolds and they can be a force to be reckoned with. Qullan: Qullan seemed such an unlikely “race” of humanoids. I could never picture them surviving as they were described. As a result, I re-imagined them to be a little less whacky. In my games they are basically a humanoid species separate from humans like say the Neanderthal were. They clearly are a group that is close to nature in some way, so I would say that they are quasi-magical, not so much as say faeries, brownies, satyr, dyrads, kelpies or sprites, but maybe more like gnomes or half-elves. They have their magical ability to confuse opponents. Otherwise, they are pretty primitive except for their inexplicable ability to forge early medieval broadswords and their advanced cosmetics. I had an encounter with a tribe of them in one game that I made once, but the party somehow avoided running into them, so I must admit I have never used them. Xvarts: Xvarts were also an implausible species. They seemed like some kind of malicious smurfs or maybe and attempt by TSR to capitalize on the Steve Jackson and Metagaming Prootwaddles from Mêlée the Fantasy trip? No idea. I find it unlikely that kobolds and goblins would have a “mediary race”. That just seems kind of silly. I must confess, I have never used these.
Nice video. I personally like pig faced orcs not just because I started with ad&d 1e in 2015 but because it definitely is unique to dnd is in my opinion one of the ways to distinguish between tolkien and other fantasy in a way (plus the look cool.) Beyond that I count ogres as a cousin to both giants and goblins in my world and can be affected by items and magic that works on both, but other than that I haven't really thought about classification too much for my games and if a player could make a logical argument with some in-game or other fantasy evidence I would be willing to change around or modify things to that.
The picture in module G1 of the hill giant cook terrorizing the porcine featured orc slave with a frying pain will forever ever be the basis of how I imagine orcs, no matter how many times I read Tolkien. Etymologically the word orc and ogre are from the Italian/French doublets orco/ougre and ultimately from the Greek root Órkos (just as the words kobold and goblin are likely derived from the Greek kobalos, a treasure stealing mountain sprite), so the connection between orcs and ogres is imo a sensible one to make.
@Elliot Vernon thank you for the input. It's definitely something I didn't know. I just felt that they were always depicted too close to orc and goblins to not be semi related. But it's cool they kind of are in some way through folklore
Do you have any theories or explanations of the Greyhawk setting drawn from the text that aren't explicitly written? Any implied causes to the current state of the world? One I found interesting was the notion that the humanoids were only able to invade the Bone March due to the Great Kingdom fighting the barbarians (which removed a check on the humanoid population).
Since 2nd ed (where I was first introduced) I had things separated into species and subspecies like Humans+halflings Dwarves +gnomes Elves, all sub-races Goblins + hobs and bugbears, norkers, gibberings. Orcs (separate unto themselves) Giants, and lastly ANYTHING A WIZARD DIDDLED WITH centaurs, minotaurs, catpeople whimics ect
Very good video! I enjoyed it especially since it made me rethink some of the things that had become head canon for me for no apparent reason. For example: kobolds as lizardy things. Since I apparently read somewhere that they communicate through yips and barks, combined with their dog-like heads, I had just considered them little dog-men. A magical creation done by some obviously insane magician or god crossbreeding halflings or gnomes with chihuahuas. :-D Awful, awful, awful. (Actually, Void, which is the general name for the evil entity in my campaign's pantheon, created humanoid races by corrupting the good races with darkness, so in my campaign kobolds were basically halflings crossbred with chihuahuas as those little dogs are the incarnate of evil. :-p ) Also, probably because of the name similarity, I considered norkers to be related to orcs, orcs crossbred with something chitinous I guess? I never really used norkers either, so it never came up. Humanoids has always been a vague kind of a term to me. At times I have counted ogres as humanoids though they are giant-class creatures. Ogrillions were humanoids too in my mind. Qullans I always just considered a very different offshoot race of humans, though since I never really used them it was irrelevant. 😛 Though it doesn't seem that way from the paragraphs above, I used Fiend Folio monsters a LOT in my campaigns. Just not the humanoids.
@@IamsTokiWartooth I swear I read something about them communicating that way in one of the books or modules I read early on, since that is how I've always thought of their speech. I'll have to look and see if I can find the reference.
Now here is an area that I will gladly borrow from Warhammer, which contributed great lore in this area in their milieu. Some notable additions: the strong dumb Black Orcs, kind of like hobgoblins for the orcs. And then the Snotlings, tiny goblinoids so small they must fight as swarms. Definitely need them in my Greyhawk. And finally the rat-like Skaven… I’ve seen so many D&D modules substitute wererats in their place but it doesn’t work, they need to be a proper society of humanoids, not humans suffering from lycanthropy!
It does seem that cooperation and trade with humanoids is possible despite their generally hostile status. If I recall humanoids are allowed in the city of Greyhawk and modules like Steading of the Hill Giant chief seem to suggest you might take orcs as (at least temporary) allies. This is actually pretty different than middle earth.
I'd I look at what will be found with who. Organizational capacity and alignment are something I place in a continuum, but to me it's important to consider cooperative capacity separately. The highest cooperative capacity should always be humans. Nearly everyone fails to consider cooperative capacity and gets sidetracked with big brains, or class restrictions and advancement, but dominant species factor #1 is cooperation (avoiding the single factor fallacy of course). If one considers ransom and Mercenary exchanges alongside the racial attitude chart in the DMG you can develop a picture of correlations. idk, I like to use this class of creatures past the shelf life most people do, and I like to make them fairly dynamic.
This category gets ultra confusing when entries for monsters like Aarakocra call them out as humanoids. It's basically impossible to distinguish when the rules are checking for the specific term, or if it just means "anything with a head, torso, two arms, and two legs (wings optional)." But that's what a DM is for!
In one of my worlds, during the first age, all evil beings were called orcs, however, through centuries of cultural changes and evolving among "subtypes", there came along the race of orcs, goblins, demons, devils and so on, BUT they all derived from the original orcs, which was a wide concept back then.
The problem with the Otherworld figures is that they're 28mm, so they don't look right next to my old Grenadiers, Heritage, and Ral Partha figures. Fortunately the Minifigs pig-faced orcs can still be had from the UK.
@@GreyhawkGrognard Yeah if you are using classic 25mm then modern figs are definately out of scale, but I'm 90% Reaper, Citadel, Otherworld, and more modern manufacturers. I just recommend Otherworld to any 1e fan looking for models that are pretty much taken from the 1e MM iillustrations. Assuming they are using "28mm" modern scales.
What about Ogres and Ogre-kin. They were at one point linked to Goblinoids. They qualify for the +2 Favored Enemy bonus of Rangers when Goblinoids are selected. This may be my recollection from a later version (2e+).
Any way you might do a video comparing 5e statblocks to osr stat blocks? I find it hard to understand, and it's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to run a game using OSE
Humanoid to me means human-shaped (two arms ending in hands, one torso and one head, human facial plan, stands on two legs). I don't like that people seem to HUMANIZE monsters because they're not human. When I think about monsters, I think about monsters in terms of a horror genre rather than a fantasy genre. I believe that the monsters should be monsters, and anything you can look up in a book called a monster manual is something the likes killing humans and eating their meat.
Hi I'm interested in the history of D&D and have gotten into AD&D 1e first edition. If anyone is interested in playing classic source material from GreyHawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Lankmar, Conan, Ravenloft, Gamma World or Arduin using strict 1e rules, send me a Comment. I'm a writer, happy to DM or play. Currently studying Greyhawk A modules/ Scourge of the Slave Lords.
As to the uniqueness of the relationship between gnolls and Yeenoghu, as to whether or not they're the only humanoids with a demon lord patron: there is also a demon lord of Minotaurs, Baphomet.
I’m actually trying to work up a bestiary based of European Myth & Folklore. I’m finding that there is far less definition between what gamers might classify as Goblinoid.
It's a bit amusing but sad at the same time that one might have to explain what humanoids are after decades of drifting away from the original concept by game designers over the years. Next maybe "monster" could be defined? Once upon a time players could not play monsters.
I believe there was a table showing th humanoids reactions or preferences for each other. Bugbears and hobgoblins bully and tyrannize the orcs and goblins.
Basic and dvanced are not at all similar. It is not your fault. A lot of grognards make that presumption. There are no half-races and it is a Race-as-Class game. But more than that, Orcs are a playable glass. GAZ 10, Orcs of Thar, gives rules for all the humanoids to be classes (including ogres and trolls as humanoids and playable classes). Suffice to say, the definition of "humanoid" you are using applies to AD&D and not at all to Basic. Further, in the original game (1974 Men and Magic), Orcs are listed as being potentially Neutral or Chaotic. In BX and BECMI they are listed as Chaotic, as is every other humanoid, but Chaotic does not always equal "evil" (and good/evil are not part of alignment in Basic). However, from a pure AD&D point of view, you raise some interesting points to consider. However, I must confess that this pure AD&D view is soooo very long ago to me that it is difficult to remember. That was what? 32 years ago? Long story short: I had quit this game back during the TSR death spiral of the 1990s. I restarted in 2020, bounced really hard off of 5e into Basic (BX/Becmi/Retroclones), and so that is the lens I tend to view things through in terms of fantasy gaming.
My biggest problem with WoTC is the fact as a company they cannot seem to separate the monstruous humanoid races from HUMANS. If you want representation for real humans in the real world in your game, you recreate real human cultures. I have no problem with a Orc of Goblin being good, but it needs to be the exception not the rule. I had a group try to "Reform" a goblin, it trashed their cart, escaped in the middle of a city and attacked a lady of the night (Whom was a rugged woman who dispatched the Goblin with her belt knife)
DM: "Have you finished rolling your character?"
Player: "Yes, they're a humanoid."
DM: "You mean human?"
Player: "Well... my father was a minotaur and my mother was a centaur, but I only inherited their human traits... so I'm just some guy."
Old Horseface
The MM illustrations for kobolds was also not what Gary intended, but it stuck. They were not meant to appear reptilian or have scales. The 2E Monstrous Manual humanoid illustrations are probably what I consider the best, and except for orcs probably the closest to what Gygax had in mind for the AD&D humanoids.
Those 1st edition Kobolds were always my favorite. I hate the way they've drawn them since. But as an 80s kid....Kobolds will always look like what you showed in this video. lol
Agreed. There's an absolutely fantastic illustration of them being blasted by some sort of magic sphere in the Rogues Gallery.
Despite being scaly I got the impression they were dog-like in the structure of their heads. I think the more draconic / reptilian bend might have come from the depiction of their patron deity, Kurtulmak (see pg110 of the original released Deities & Demigods).
I always liked the bulldog-looking 🐶 version of Kobolds, pretty sure they were in the BECMI 🔴Basic set.
They still looked like Dog men in AD&D 2e if I'm not mistaken as well.
@@Dungeon_Reviews Yeah they did, they were more rat-terrier/chihuahua faced with longer, pointed snouts. Between BECMI, 1E and 2E versions, I liked to think of those variants almost as different "breeds" of kobolds to kind of explain the differences in how they appear.
As I was listening I imagined a meeting of the gods Hruggek, Kurtulmak, Gruumsh and Yeenoghu, debating who's to be included in which category...
It all ends in a divine, furious yelling contest, of course!
Just yelling? I seriously doubt that.
AD&D (1e) was the golden age of D&D editions.
Kobolds are the German version of the Welsh Coblynau, which would best be described as goblins. They’re both mining faeries, similar to the brownies and the like in English folklore.
Humanoids in my games vary wildly. Because I include things like the Coblynau, Ghillie Dhu and Metsan Vaki (from Finnish folklore), which benevolent types of the base goblin.
The orcs get the pig-nosed description because of their size. Pretty much everything looks up at their faces, so they end up looking up their nostrils. My bugbears call the dog-noses, but my goblins pretty much all call them pig-noses.
All orcs being evil comes from Tolkien because they are corrupted elves in his writings. Once that origin was removed, their evil tendencies didn’t have an explanation. If you want an interesting twist, let something like an Arrow of Orc Slaying work on evil elves, but not on good-aligned orcs. That’s guaranteed to screw with your players’ minds.
I always thought like you, Grognard - that goblins/hobs/bugbears would cooperate to some extent, and that hobgoblins were the only ones disciplined enough to keep the coalition together. I think my head-canon was that orcs/gnolls/ogres did the same. . .orcoids?
Greyhawk my first and really only world I adventure in.
Yeah, I stick to the list of evil humanoids (Orc-ogre-goblinoids, troll-types and evil giants) in the Players Handbook Ranger section. I do not use the entire Unearthed Arcana Ranger foe list as there are a few creatures on there from the later monster books that I don’t think fit (gibberling, meenlock, meazel, etc.). However, I will restrict the description to EVIL Giants because I do not want Rangers to get their damage bonus versus good Giants. I’ll allow Ogrillons, Giant Trolls, etc. as variants of the existing “evil humanoids.”
Nice run down.
As a kid, I decided that "Goblin, Hobgoblin, Bugbear" was a competing set of related creatures paralleling "Halfling, Human, Ogre".
In my mind, the Humans and Goblins were eternally at war to see which would "win" as the dominant species in the "short lived non-giant races" niche.
Elves and Dwarves were bystanders to this conflict, and had their own foes to deal with, often just cousins of theirs (drow, dueregar, etc)
Another great video! As a side note, I've been using your "Journey to Hommlet" module in my Castles & Crusades Greyhawk campaign. The players (and myself) have really enjoyed it.
Interestingly, all these little oddities stuck in places like Japan. Orcs are still pig-like, kobolds are often depicted as canine, etc.
According to Gygax and Arneson in OD&D Bk2, a gnoll is a species created by crossing a gnome and a troll (based on Lord Dunsany's 1912 story 'How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles'). That kind of disappeared in AD&D where they became hyena looking humanoids.
Also in the original LBB's Bugbears were considered giant-class creatures. Although hilariously, the gnoll entry actually says that Dunsany was unclear on the subject of the gnolls!
@@GreyhawkGrognardrangers get the bonus against gnolls and other giants, right?
Might have to run them old school soon.
@@The_Custos Yes, at least in the AD&D rules, "giant class" as it applies to rangers includes both giants and humanoids. Again, sort of arbitrary.
@@GreyhawkGrognard in OD&D, "giant class" was "humanoids" before that term was created. Hill-, Frost-, Fire-, and other giants were called "True Giants" to distinguish them.
An aside on the lawful vs chaotic split among the humanoids.
I enjoy having 3 man crossbow teams, primarily the kobolds. Using hvy crossbows on pintles.
My son 'ambushed' his group and they had a blast.
I still use these definitions in my 5e game. If it’s not human (or Demi-human) stick a sword in it.
Funny enough, one of my first ever characters for AD&D is a humanoid, using the 2e Complete Book of Humanoids rules. Fin Bruar is an Orc Fighter/Thief, and was more so made for Forgotten Realms, where he was connected to the Ondonti people that worshipped Eldath, Goddess of Peace, but I've been thinking of remaking him for Greyhawk where someone suggested he could've been from either the Pomarj and be a mercenary worshiping Ilneval, Orc God of Strategy, or be from the Wild Coast and be from an orphanage ran by a church of Rao, God of Peace, to keep with his original FR counterpart.
I've always really preferred goblinoids as my baseline humanoids and would love it if they had gotten even more development as a culture and more subraces.
For my homebrew I incorporate some concepts from later editions of D&D and then run with them. For example, Goblins are now neutral evil which changes the goblinoid dynamics to have the Hobgoblins at the top. Orcs are Chaotic Evil and form their own family group with Ogres and Ettin. Trolls are a throwback common ancestor to both groups. Kobolds aren't related to either group (or dragons for that matter. I always hated that), but because they're the most tech-savy humanoids Hobs actually respect them more than their own relatives.
Funny, I was just talking to my buddy about this a couple of days ago! I can tell you how I implement humanoids in my world. You are going to get more than you bargained for here!!!
In my world all of these species are more intelligent than they are laid out in the original D&D books. Hobgoblins, goblins and Bugbears probably tend to be a little smarter on average than orcs. Greater orcs and uruk-hai being the exception here. These latter two can be equivalent to hobgoblins and goblins. Bugbears are also quite smart. Gnolls and kobolds on the whole are less intelligent than the others and tend to be a bit dull-minded.
Orcs:
Pig-faced are awesome, but expensive! We consider them to be a separate subspecies of Orc. They are tougher than "lesser orcs" and about on par with "greater orcs", but not quite as tough as "Ukruk Hai". We like having a lot of different orcs. We also have a sub-species of lesser orc ("snaga") that have crooked legs that bend backwards. These guys can run quite fast and are used for runners and scouts. Orcs in our games might ride dire wolves or wild boar. They may also ride wargs ("undead wolves"), but only if they are serving a demon or powerful sorcerer. You may find an orc- Shaman, who has achieved "great-cult" status, though some trickery or arcane means, but in general it takes more than this to keep these guys from killing each other and dissolving.
There are so many tribes of orcs that you can do a lot with them. You can give them magic, let them have a powerful leader, who can train and discipline them (or cause them great fear), so that they can be molded into an elite force or you can let them be primitives with stone spears and axes. There is a lot of leeway there.
There are few orc women, but each one of them has like 6-10 baby orcs, half of which do not live very long. Female orcs may have up to 3-8 litters in her short lifetime, but "orc-fant" fatality rates are high especially in the first 5-8 years.
We once had a well-educated orc tribe with libraries and culture, but let's not get into that.
Ogrillions:
In my games Ogrillions are pretty dim-witted. They are usually living and working in a tribe of orcs and are used as slaves, laborers and for shock in battle. They are great if you want something heavier than what an orc can lift moved around or if you need someone to break down a door, but beyond that there is just not much to them. They are dumber than gnolls and sterile. There is just not a whole lot of potential there. Maybe occasionally one of them gets angry or tired of serving and kills an orc, but then it’s curtains for that ogrillion. In my games they are never shamans.
Hobgoblins:
Hobgoblins are the nastiest of the original D&D humanoids. They are tougher than greater orcs and they are much better disciplined as well! Hobgoblins are generally speaking, hierarchical, militaristic, well-disciplined and sadistic, but of course there are always exceptions.
Hobgoblins tend to be organized into militaristic clans around a strong warlord leader. They tend to have less magic, but they do have sorcerers, shamans, priests etc. Usually, what holds hobgoblin tribes together is a strong, militaristic, warrior ethos. Hobgoblins may be just as cruel and brutal as orcs, but they are far more systematic and organized about it.
Hobgoblins are like humans in terms of their reproductive rate. There are fewer hobgoblin women than human women, but they have 2-3 times as many babies as humans. About a third of these never see adulthood.
Norkers:
Norkers were never really explained very well. They were supposed to be some offshoot, far distant relatives to hobgoblins. I could never really see that. So for me they were their own species or maybe a mutated subspecies of hobgoblin at best. They are tough and don’t feel much pain, so hobgoblins respect them for that, I guess. I could never really figure out what they are supposed to be. They are only 4 feet tall. They are not very good at dealing damage, but they can absorb a lot of damage. They are kind of like ogrillion-dwarves for hobgoblins. I do not know why hobgoblins would keep them around, except maybe to hold their drinks?
Bugbears:
Bugbears are, if I recall correctly, as tough as hobgoblins and they would possibly be nastier, especially because they are very silent. Silence is a biological advantage that is counterintuitive, because of their size. You just do not think that a big bugbear like that can move quietly, but they can.
The only reason that bugbears do not rule is that they do not like being told what to do by anyone and there are just too few of them compared to hobgoblins, goblins and orcs. As a result, bugbears are either:
1.) Solitary living in family groups, clans or small bands living alone and staying out of the way of larger tribes of hobgoblins, goblins and orcs or . . .
2.) they end up being body-guards, scouts and shock troops in some hobgoblin, goblin or orc group/tribe. Bugbears probably get picked on a lot. Gnolls are a scourge to them and they probably try to kill gnolls whenever they can do so without engaging a large group of them. In terms of reproduction Bugbears are probably between hobgoblins and humans.
Gnolls:
Gnolls are tough, but they are too undisciplined and unorganized. Again, I get the impression that there are not as many gnolls as there are hobgoblins, goblins and orcs. There are more gnolls than bugbears though. Gnolls. for the most part, are just these roving chaotic warbands that form around a flind. They raid and ravage until someone more disciplined and better organized hunts them down. They raid and ravage more for food and things to eat than they do for treasure.
Goblins:
Goblins are between orcs and hobgoblins in terms of hierarchy, organization and discipline. Like with orcs, one finds a wide gambit with a great deal of leeway in terms of what might be encountered.
Generally speaking, just like with orcs, there will always be more unorganized, chaotic, primitive tribes than there will be hierarchical, well- organized, well-lead, well-disciplined tribes with higher technological levels and greater understanding. Goblins are more likely to achieve something like the goblins in Harry Potter, than the Orcs are. There are of course, always exceptions.
Goblins make up for their lack of strength through greater numbers. They tend to use hit and run tactics and a lot of projectile weapons, but they may also have cavalry mounted. These are usually mounted on dire wolves or wild boar.
Occasionally, a Barghest will take over and lead a goblin tribe. Otherwise the goblins have their own priests, shamans, great-hero warriors and kings.
Goblin tribes may also be ruled by a more powerful orc or hobgoblin tribe or by a group of bugbears. Goblins usually are treated better by bugbears than they are by hobgoblins or orcs. The former being too disciplined and sadistic (even toward their own) and the latter just being too murderous and chaotic.
Kobolds:
I never liked the kobolds in D&D being dragon-like with scales and such. For me, kobolds are more like little goblins or maybe snotlings from Warhammer, at least from what I have seen and read of them.
Kobolds in my games are usually dull-witted and cannot achieve the level of intellect that goblins or Hobgoblins can. There are always exceptions, however.
One way that kobolds are different from the other humanoids and a bit more like dragons or duck-billed-platypuses, is that their females can lay eggs! This gives kobolds a great biological advantage. A female kobold lays a clutch of between 20-30 eggs and can do so up to 3 times per year, although food scarcity usually limits their numbers. The mortality rate among the young kobolds is the highest of all the humanoids!
Kobolds are omnivorous and can be quite nasty, especially in numbers. If there are not enough kobolds, in a colony the kobolds will try to join a tribe of hobgoblins, goblins or orcs, where they are usually seen as being both helpful and a nuisance. Kobolds are often the slave-servants of these other humanoid groups. There are however, independent colonies or hordes of kobolds and they can be a force to be reckoned with.
Qullan:
Qullan seemed such an unlikely “race” of humanoids. I could never picture them surviving as they were described. As a result, I re-imagined them to be a little less whacky. In my games they are basically a humanoid species separate from humans like say the Neanderthal were. They clearly are a group that is close to nature in some way, so I would say that they are quasi-magical, not so much as say faeries, brownies, satyr, dyrads, kelpies or sprites, but maybe more like gnomes or half-elves. They have their magical ability to confuse opponents. Otherwise, they are pretty primitive except for their inexplicable ability to forge early medieval broadswords and their advanced cosmetics.
I had an encounter with a tribe of them in one game that I made once, but the party somehow avoided running into them, so I must admit I have never used them.
Xvarts:
Xvarts were also an implausible species. They seemed like some kind of malicious smurfs or maybe and attempt by TSR to capitalize on the Steve Jackson and Metagaming Prootwaddles from Mêlée the Fantasy trip? No idea. I find it unlikely that kobolds and goblins would have a “mediary race”. That just seems kind of silly.
I must confess, I have never used these.
Officially on Kobolds - A Chihuahua and an Iguana were REALLY drunk one night...😁
@@hamishshaw4907 Seems like it. I guess the draconian part is not so bad. I never played warhammer, but I just like the idea of snotlings more.
Nice video. I personally like pig faced orcs not just because I started with ad&d 1e in 2015 but because it definitely is unique to dnd is in my opinion one of the ways to distinguish between tolkien and other fantasy in a way (plus the look cool.)
Beyond that I count ogres as a cousin to both giants and goblins in my world and can be affected by items and magic that works on both, but other than that I haven't really thought about classification too much for my games and if a player could make a logical argument with some in-game or other fantasy evidence I would be willing to change around or modify things to that.
The picture in module G1 of the hill giant cook terrorizing the porcine featured orc slave with a frying pain will forever ever be the basis of how I imagine orcs, no matter how many times I read Tolkien. Etymologically the word orc and ogre are from the Italian/French doublets orco/ougre and ultimately from the Greek root Órkos (just as the words kobold and goblin are likely derived from the Greek kobalos, a treasure stealing mountain sprite), so the connection between orcs and ogres is imo a sensible one to make.
@Elliot Vernon thank you for the input. It's definitely something I didn't know. I just felt that they were always depicted too close to orc and goblins to not be semi related. But it's cool they kind of are in some way through folklore
Do you have any theories or explanations of the Greyhawk setting drawn from the text that aren't explicitly written? Any implied causes to the current state of the world?
One I found interesting was the notion that the humanoids were only able to invade the Bone March due to the Great Kingdom fighting the barbarians (which removed a check on the humanoid population).
Since 2nd ed (where I was first introduced) I had things separated into species and subspecies like Humans+halflings Dwarves +gnomes Elves, all sub-races Goblins + hobs and bugbears, norkers, gibberings. Orcs (separate unto themselves) Giants, and lastly ANYTHING A WIZARD DIDDLED WITH centaurs, minotaurs, catpeople whimics ect
Hobgoblins are like the humans of the humanoid world
Very good video! I enjoyed it especially since it made me rethink some of the things that had become head canon for me for no apparent reason.
For example: kobolds as lizardy things. Since I apparently read somewhere that they communicate through yips and barks, combined with their dog-like heads, I had just considered them little dog-men. A magical creation done by some obviously insane magician or god crossbreeding halflings or gnomes with chihuahuas. :-D Awful, awful, awful. (Actually, Void, which is the general name for the evil entity in my campaign's pantheon, created humanoid races by corrupting the good races with darkness, so in my campaign kobolds were basically halflings crossbred with chihuahuas as those little dogs are the incarnate of evil. :-p )
Also, probably because of the name similarity, I considered norkers to be related to orcs, orcs crossbred with something chitinous I guess? I never really used norkers either, so it never came up.
Humanoids has always been a vague kind of a term to me. At times I have counted ogres as humanoids though they are giant-class creatures. Ogrillions were humanoids too in my mind. Qullans I always just considered a very different offshoot race of humans, though since I never really used them it was irrelevant. 😛
Though it doesn't seem that way from the paragraphs above, I used Fiend Folio monsters a LOT in my campaigns. Just not the humanoids.
balders gate is the 1st place i saw them listed as dog like, with the yipping
@@IamsTokiWartooth I swear I read something about them communicating that way in one of the books or modules I read early on, since that is how I've always thought of their speech. I'll have to look and see if I can find the reference.
Now here is an area that I will gladly borrow from Warhammer, which contributed great lore in this area in their milieu. Some notable additions: the strong dumb Black Orcs, kind of like hobgoblins for the orcs. And then the Snotlings, tiny goblinoids so small they must fight as swarms. Definitely need them in my Greyhawk. And finally the rat-like Skaven… I’ve seen so many D&D modules substitute wererats in their place but it doesn’t work, they need to be a proper society of humanoids, not humans suffering from lycanthropy!
Greta video. Very in depth analysis
Thanks!
Thanks for the video! Early D&D had a fair number of problems with word usage like humanoid and level.
Great stuff as usual!!!!
It does seem that cooperation and trade with humanoids is possible despite their generally hostile status. If I recall humanoids are allowed in the city of Greyhawk and modules like Steading of the Hill Giant chief seem to suggest you might take orcs as (at least temporary) allies. This is actually pretty different than middle earth.
I'd I look at what will be found with who. Organizational capacity and alignment are something I place in a continuum, but to me it's important to consider cooperative capacity separately. The highest cooperative capacity should always be humans. Nearly everyone fails to consider cooperative capacity and gets sidetracked with big brains, or class restrictions and advancement, but dominant species factor #1 is cooperation (avoiding the single factor fallacy of course).
If one considers ransom and Mercenary exchanges alongside the racial attitude chart in the DMG you can develop a picture of correlations. idk, I like to use this class of creatures past the shelf life most people do, and I like to make them fairly dynamic.
This category gets ultra confusing when entries for monsters like Aarakocra call them out as humanoids. It's basically impossible to distinguish when the rules are checking for the specific term, or if it just means "anything with a head, torso, two arms, and two legs (wings optional)." But that's what a DM is for!
Great commentary!
Check out Rosewood bestiary from WR Beatty's Rosethrone publishing. He has a great goblin kin system.
Bug bears, I nicknamed my youngest "booger bear", an off shoot of bug bear. He's a little tyrant for sure 😆
In one of my worlds, during the first age, all evil beings were called orcs, however, through centuries of cultural changes and evolving among "subtypes", there came along the race of orcs, goblins, demons, devils and so on, BUT they all derived from the original orcs, which was a wide concept back then.
I love my pig faced orcs. Otherworld Miniatures makes great models of these and all the 1e AD&D classic monsters.
The problem with the Otherworld figures is that they're 28mm, so they don't look right next to my old Grenadiers, Heritage, and Ral Partha figures. Fortunately the Minifigs pig-faced orcs can still be had from the UK.
@@GreyhawkGrognard Yeah if you are using classic 25mm then modern figs are definately out of scale, but I'm 90% Reaper, Citadel, Otherworld, and more modern manufacturers. I just recommend Otherworld to any 1e fan looking for models that are pretty much taken from the 1e MM iillustrations. Assuming they are using "28mm" modern scales.
@@AaronWilbers It's also worth pointing out that Splintered Light Minis has a range of 15mm pig faced orcs.
What about Ogres and Ogre-kin. They were at one point linked to Goblinoids. They qualify for the +2 Favored Enemy bonus of Rangers when Goblinoids are selected. This may be my recollection from a later version (2e+).
I put ogres as giant-class creatures, not goblinoids or humanoids.
Any way you might do a video comparing 5e statblocks to osr stat blocks? I find it hard to understand, and it's one of the reasons I'm hesitant to run a game using OSE
Thanks!
Thank you so much!!
Humanoid to me means human-shaped (two arms ending in hands, one torso and one head, human facial plan, stands on two legs). I don't like that people seem to HUMANIZE monsters because they're not human. When I think about monsters, I think about monsters in terms of a horror genre rather than a fantasy genre. I believe that the monsters should be monsters, and anything you can look up in a book called a monster manual is something the likes killing humans and eating their meat.
Hi I'm interested in the history of D&D and have gotten into AD&D 1e first edition. If anyone is interested in playing classic source material from GreyHawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Lankmar, Conan, Ravenloft, Gamma World or Arduin using strict 1e rules, send me a Comment. I'm a writer, happy to DM or play. Currently studying Greyhawk A modules/ Scourge of the Slave Lords.
As to the uniqueness of the relationship between gnolls and Yeenoghu, as to whether or not they're the only humanoids with a demon lord patron: there is also a demon lord of Minotaurs, Baphomet.
I was always a fan of Thulcondar, demon lord of Men, but of course that wasn't official outside of the City-State campaign by Judges Guild.
I’m actually trying to work up a bestiary based of European Myth & Folklore. I’m finding that there is far less definition between what gamers might classify as Goblinoid.
It's a bit amusing but sad at the same time that one might have to explain what humanoids are after decades of drifting away from the original concept by game designers over the years. Next maybe "monster" could be defined? Once upon a time players could not play monsters.
I believe there was a table showing th humanoids reactions or preferences for each other. Bugbears and hobgoblins bully and tyrannize the orcs and goblins.
Yes indeed. I even expanded it out to include all humanoid races in the Adventures Dark and Deep Game Masters Toolkit.
Basic and dvanced are not at all similar. It is not your fault. A lot of grognards make that presumption. There are no half-races and it is a Race-as-Class game. But more than that, Orcs are a playable glass. GAZ 10, Orcs of Thar, gives rules for all the humanoids to be classes (including ogres and trolls as humanoids and playable classes). Suffice to say, the definition of "humanoid" you are using applies to AD&D and not at all to Basic.
Further, in the original game (1974 Men and Magic), Orcs are listed as being potentially Neutral or Chaotic. In BX and BECMI they are listed as Chaotic, as is every other humanoid, but Chaotic does not always equal "evil" (and good/evil are not part of alignment in Basic).
However, from a pure AD&D point of view, you raise some interesting points to consider. However, I must confess that this pure AD&D view is soooo very long ago to me that it is difficult to remember. That was what? 32 years ago?
Long story short: I had quit this game back during the TSR death spiral of the 1990s. I restarted in 2020, bounced really hard off of 5e into Basic (BX/Becmi/Retroclones), and so that is the lens I tend to view things through in terms of fantasy gaming.
My biggest problem with WoTC is the fact as a company they cannot seem to separate the monstruous humanoid races from HUMANS. If you want representation for real humans in the real world in your game, you recreate real human cultures. I have no problem with a Orc of Goblin being good, but it needs to be the exception not the rule. I had a group try to "Reform" a goblin, it trashed their cart, escaped in the middle of a city and attacked a lady of the night (Whom was a rugged woman who dispatched the Goblin with her belt knife)