22 réponses à ce sujet

[Zwerkules]

Has anybody seen a proper troll model made for NWN or is working on one?

The troll that came with the OC is so bad it is unusable.

So someone made a new troll model which is certainly a nice model, but it doesn't look like a troll to me. Who ever came up with the idea that trolls are green? Not only in D&D games like NWN are trolls green, but also in the elder scrolls games and possibly more.

Trolls should be brown and hairy!

I did an image search for trolls and found pretty few that really looked like trolls should look. The one that came the closest (even if it's a bit comic-like) is this:

 

 

Trolls should be ugly, hairy and have big ears and a huge nose, but not a long pointed nose like the newer NWN troll model has nor should it be a hooked nose. Also notice the tail.

I read over a hundred fairy tale and folk lore books and though not all of those that have trolls in them say that trolls have tails, more than half do.

[3RavensMore]

I don't know Zwerk, that little guy looks kind of cute--as far as trolls go.  

[MerricksDad]

Kinda looks like the ones from the Willow movie! I like it. Make it uglier in the face and we could use it, especially if it has animations to walk upside down on ceilings or the undersides of bridges.

 

 

On the topic of DND trolls, some of the legend lore says that green swampy spongy trolls are male green hags and/or are creatures made by the green hags as servants. I often run with that theme when I portray green DND trolls in my worlds. I also keep the extra-planar connection strong with my hags. That makes trolls less orc or giant -like, and more a servant of something more powerful in a definite chain. Escaped trolls or trolls no longer under the command of green hags become more zombie like, personable, or mutate out of their original shapes, and I use that to explain things like DND scrags.

 

I personally loved the variation of frost and ice trolls in the Aurilite areas of Icewind Dale for the Infinity Engine. They held fairly fast to the long-time portrayal of the troll "species" in DND, but gave variations in function and scale.

 

The more recent portrayals of trolls as thinking creatures, which could somehow issue commands or even wear gear, just blows my mind. I am not unopen to change, but the niche that newish troll portrayal filled was already crowded.

 

Anyway, back to the non-dnd troll topic: I've seen a lot of prototype drawings of how people would like to portray trolls in various games. Most of them never follow through with the really neat looking stuff. Some of the stuff I have seen take curly rams horns and mix them with a hulking body, and toss in some elf ears like these:

 

[meaglyn]

DnD trolls are not your lives-under-the-bridge fairy tale creatures.  I believe they came from Poul Anderson fantasy novels. That's where the regeneration and kill with fire comes from. Probably the green as well, but as the book I have (The Broken Sword) is still on my nightstand unread I can't say for sure.  Playing At The World by Jon Peterson is a fascinating history of role playing games and includes a detailed look at the origins of DnD including the literary bases for many of the classic monsters.  He's got a blog site too

 

I personally like the DnD trolls. They are mean and scary, not so much cute and furry. 6 + 6 HD, regeneration and three attacks, great for putting some fear in non-monty-haul parties! They will certainly be making appearances in my world.

[The Mad Poet]

Search the term 'elf'. You'll get Christmas elves, Tolkien elves, Norse elves, and heck even those Harry Potter elves. These kind of terms change with the authors, geography, and culture. No 'Troll' is any more 'Real' than any other. That is unless you have pictures of real trolls. In which case please share. 

 

With that said I've only seen one like that. One of the CODI models. Fensir. Big nosed kind of guy. Though some of the goblin models approach a rather 'Cute' status. Maybe blow them up a bit and retex them? I dunno.

 

It's here, top row, fifth from the left.

 

[Tarot Redhand]

Have you looked at the movie "Troll Hunter"? Here's some stills etc on google image search.

[The Mad Poet]

Have you looked at the movie "Troll Hunter"? Here's some stills etc on google image search.

 

I've seen it. Yeah, I meant like real trolls.

[MerricksDad]

doh, wrong forum

[Mecheon]

Yeah, D&D calls mythological trolls Fensirs because they already used the name elsewhere

 

Obligatory 2E Monster Manual link, as they were a Planescape race and all

[Grymlorde]

I took the easy way out. . .

 

Ogres are now called Trølls and Trolls are now called Grendels or Grendelowes.

 

There is evidence to suggest that the Grindylow/Grundylow/Grendelowe is derived from Grendel. And the stories about Jenny Greenteeth and her relatives bear a strong resemblance to the Grendel Folk stories.

 

I suspect that when Poul Anderson described Trolls as he did, he was half-remembering a (bad) Beowulf translation that described Grendel as a troll. I certainly remember reading a version of Beowulf that called Grendel a troll before I'd discovered D&D.

 

Point being that the D&D Troll is based on Grendel & his mother and the variations in the following millennium and thus worth preserving but with an appropriate name.

 

Whereas 'ogre' is a 17th century French word created by Charles Perrault to describe Trolls.

 

That's my reasoning at least.

[The Mad Poet]

And this, for me, shall ever be a dwarf.

 

[Tchos]

There is evidence to suggest that the Grindylow/Grundylow/Grendelowe is derived from Grendel. And the stories about Jenny Greenteeth and her relatives bear a strong resemblance to the Grendel Folk stories.

Whereas 'ogre' is a 17th century French word created by Charles Perrault to describe Trolls.

 

Interesting that the name Greenteeth may share an etymology with Grendel.  It seems plausible.

 

While I don't dispute that Perrault may have been the first person to have used "ogre" in writing, the ogre he describes in the cited work (Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, 1697, specifically in Le Maistre Chat), is an intelligent shapeshifter who owns lands and presides over them in a fine human-style castle, and has a civil, if slightly brusque, conversation with the protagonist.  Are you saying that's a troll?

[MerricksDad]

I'm pretty sure lower michigan land owners are looked upon by the northern folks the same way, especially when they pay taxes for no benefits (generally). They even call us trolls.

[Frith5]

I'm pretty sure lower michigan land owners are looked upon by the northern folks the same way, especially when they pay taxes for no benefits (generally). They even call us trolls.

That's because we live 'below the Bridge'  (Mackinac Bridge).

[Tarot Redhand]

Tchos, is there a typo in "Le Maistre Chat"  - shouldn't that be "Le Maitre Chat"  i.e. The Master Cat aka Puss in Boots?

 

TR

[Tchos]

It is not a typo.  Words that are spelled with l'accent circonflexe over a vowel preceding a consonant in modern French, such as "maître" or "hôpital", had an "s" after the vowel and preceding the consonant in Old French, as in "maistre" and "hospital".  That was the spelling in the 1697 edition.  But it is the same tale you're talking about.

[Tarot Redhand]

So that's why google translate (I have it on speed dial in opera) wouldn't work until I removed the 's'.

 

TR

[Grymlorde]

Interesting that the name Greenteeth may share an etymology with Grendel.  It seems plausible.

 

While I don't dispute that Perrault may have been the first person to have used "ogre" in writing, the ogre he describes in the cited work (Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, 1697, specifically in Le Maistre Chat), is an intelligent shapeshifter who owns lands and presides over them in a fine human-style castle, and has a civil, if slightly brusque, conversation with the protagonist.  Are you saying that's a troll?

 

AWK! Of course the ogre in Puss 'n Boots is not a troll! How could I have forgotten that the French ogre first appeared in that tale?!? and thank you Tchos for providing the detail! This is why I love this board!

 

OK, now I don't know when exactly ogres in English became Trolls.

 

Now as regards Jenny Greenteeth, as far as I know (and I'm only an amateur so I could certainly be wrong), it's not that she shares an etymology with Grendel per se but that she is part of a tradition of freshwater amphibious humanoids who drag people underwater for food and fun. My research turned up several stories in Mid- and Northern England which while remarkably similar called these creatures Gendylow, Grundylow, Grindylow, Ginny Greenteeth, Jenny Greenteeth, and other variations.

[MerricksDad]

Anybody ever seen that movie where the underwater vampires puke out their lungs to regenerate?

[LoA_Tristan]

In D&D you would ideally want to divide trolls into subraces to cover the various myths and perceptions people have in their minds.  D&D is supposed to cover everything.

 

The default model looks like an opportunist.  Classic DnD template with hooked nose, wiry frame and an afro.  Perhaps Marsh / Forest Troll.

 

LOTR trolls would be an extremely massive subterranean type (Cave Troll) and an overground tribalist (Giant Troll? War Troll?).  I don't favor LOTR depictions automatically, but Tolkein's trolls are hard to beat- a bigass linebacker-type that roars at everything and raises hell.  They probably do not regenerate, not from being hacked to pieces at least.

 

Another depiction would be a huge, stealthy creature— probably has a gorilla-ish shape— based on Grendel (Grendelowe Troll?).

 

Trøll, or just Troll, would be the bulbous, human-faced creatures from norse mythology, like that picture.  Possibly shamans, with trickery, animal, death or evil domains?  There could be an outsider variant.

[Tchos]

AWK! Of course the ogre in Puss 'n Boots is not a troll! How could I have forgotten that the French ogre first appeared in that tale?!?

OK, now I don't know when exactly ogres in English became Trolls.

 

Now as regards Jenny Greenteeth, as far as I know (and I'm only an amateur so I could certainly be wrong), it's not that she shares an etymology with Grendel per se but that she is part of a tradition of freshwater amphibious humanoids who drag people underwater for food and fun.

 

I've done some more research since last post, since this was an interesting subject, and I saw that there was an earlier French mention of ogres than Perrault's: in Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, le Conte du Graal (written between 1135 and 1190).  However, these ogres are never described in any way aside from there being a land where they supposedly lived.  From that I could infer either that ogres were monsters that were well known enough at that time and place to have needed no explanation, or else it was simply the name of a particular group of people, with no relation to the monsters.
 
However, in the book Romania by Paul Meyer et al., pp. 301-305, the author examines this passage from Perceval in multiple translations and manuscript variants, with an eye not only for determining its meaning, but also its authenticity.  Meyer rebuts Heinzel's claim (in Ueber die franzosischen Gralromane) that the lines mentioning ogres are an interpolation, due to existing in multiple other manuscripts, and for other reasons.  There is some possibility that the word simply meant "pagan", as it did in Middle Ages Dutch, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't giving an already-existing monstrous appellation to a hated people.
 
The book also mentions that le Dictionnaire Darmesteter-Hatzfeld-Thomas claims that the earliest use of the word "ogre" is from 1527, but that the use in Perceval would predate that.  Unfortunately, it's just not clear what the word actually meant at the time, but by Perrault's time, it had definitely acquired the meaning of a monstrous humanoid that could nevertheless pass for a human, which could hold positions of power, and had a taste for human flesh.
 
As for Jenny Greenteeth, I only noticed the similarity of the structure of the names: Green = Gren, teeth = del.  The latter part is a bit of a stretch, but not too much with corruption and dialect variants, especially with the consonant d/t.  Of course, there are many other folkloric creatures that match her description which have completely different names, like nyk / nökken / nykkjen, and all of the shapeshifting water-horse-men like the kelpie or each-uisge.  Fascinating subject.

[Nevercallmebyname]

"traditional" trolls are hairy humanoids of marginally above average stature with cow tails and large noses. Or at least from my research that is the case.

A model of that would certainly be nice.

[Zwerkules]

"traditional" trolls are hairy humanoids of marginally above average stature with cow tails and large noses. Or at least from my research that is the case.

A model of that would certainly be nice.

That's exactly what I've been asking for.