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Post by cadriel on Mar 26, 2012 6:49:51 GMT -6
Because a lot of the sets of OD&D out there are from OCE - including the PDFs that were sold through RPGNow a few years back - it wasn't until I started to go back through old zines (particularly Alarums & Excursions) that I realized how big the presence of the Balrog was as a monster in the earliest years of D&D, and what we lost when it went away. Sure, it more or less returned in Eldritch Wizardry and the Monster Manual with the Type VI demon / "Balor", but it wasn't quite the same. With Monsters & Treasure in printings 1-5, the Balrog was clearly the sort of "boss" monster in a way that dragons, while interesting, never were. By the time it got to the Monster Manual, Type VI Demons were just one of a number of big foes.
What's interesting is that, at least for me, having Balrogs as a standard entry makes the M&T list a fairly strong baseline for the game's monsters. Without it, it's lacking a final punch of an ultimate enemy for the PCs. Sure, I like tinkering with monsters as much as the next guy, but it gives you a solid and fairly Tolkien-esque basis for those monsters of various horrid aspect.
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Post by DungeonDevil on Mar 26, 2012 11:56:39 GMT -6
I get the impression after having read through the First Fantasy Campaign that balrogs were definitely the go-to monster for heavy-duty baddies. It's a shame that the Tolkien estate's lawyers got in the way. BTW, where can one find "Alarums & Excursions"? I've heard of it, but it's pretty obscure. Are they worth tracking down?
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Post by cadriel on Mar 26, 2012 12:43:50 GMT -6
I get the impression after having read through the First Fantasy Campaign that balrogs were definitely the go-to monster for heavy-duty baddies. It's a shame that the Tolkien estate's lawyers got in the way. Yeah. Although I'm surprised that they didn't do the same thing with Balrogs as they did with Ents and Hobbits - they just had to relabel them. And while wraiths as Nazgûl went away (with slightly odd effects) they were still in D&D. The early issues of A&E that I have are a favor done (at my cost) by Lee Gold, who created the magazine back in the '70s, photocopied from her personal collection. A lot of it is actual play reports and discussion from gamers, with an emphasis on California, but with other parts of the US represented. It was a very different "scene" than the Midwest that we are used to with a focus on Gary, Dave and their respective crowds. Rather like reading a message board done with typewriters, from a certain point of view. The zine is still ongoing after all these many years, believe it or not! |
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Post by Zenopus on Mar 26, 2012 17:57:10 GMT -6
Because a lot of the sets of OD&D out there are from OCE - including the PDFs that were sold through RPGNow a few years back - it wasn't until I started to go back through old zines (particularly Alarums & Excursions) that I realized how big the presence of the Balrog was as a monster in the earliest years of D&D, and what we lost when it went away. Sure, it more or less returned in Eldritch Wizardry and the Monster Manual with the Type VI demon / "Balor", but it wasn't quite the same. With Monsters & Treasure in printings 1-5, the Balrog was clearly the sort of "boss" monster in a way that dragons, while interesting, never were. By the time it got to the Monster Manual, Type VI Demons were just one of a number of big foes. Agreed, which is why I put together a Balrog Reference Sheet with all of the original information on Balrogs from the LBBs and GH, plus the description from Chainmail. For those of us with the later printings. Digest-sized single-sheet pdf. |
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Post by Zenopus on Mar 26, 2012 18:01:02 GMT -6
BTW, where can one find "Alarums & Excursions"? I've heard of it, but it's pretty obscure. Are they worth tracking down? Copies of Alarums & Excursions are vanishingly rare. Copies appear on Ebay very infrequently. I currently have just one issue, #30. They were like the Blogs of the 70's. Each issue had multiple "zines" collated together, frequently separated by different colored paper. Each "zine" was by a different author and included whatever he wanted to talk about, including comments on previous articles by others. Check out this thread on the Acaeum where a few contents of early issues have been gathered: www.acaeum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11336 |
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Post by noffham on Mar 26, 2012 20:08:53 GMT -6
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Post by Finarvyn on Apr 14, 2012 4:56:08 GMT -6
[I put together a Balrog Reference Sheet with all of the original information on Balrogs from the LBBs and GH, plus the description from Chainmail. For those of us with the later printings. I have all this information, but EXALT for putting this together anyway. This is a great resource for someone trying to get into OD&D!  |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 23, 2012 16:32:32 GMT -6
I get the impression after having read through the First Fantasy Campaign that balrogs were definitely the go-to monster for heavy-duty baddies. It's a shame that the Tolkien estate's lawyers got in the way. BTW, where can one find "Alarums & Excursions"? I've heard of it, but it's pretty obscure. Are they worth tracking down? Back in the 70's I used balrogs a lot. We had one memorable encounter when a players 9th level fighter stood in a doorway trading natural 20 rolls with a balrog to mutual death.  |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2012 6:19:55 GMT -6
Agreed, which is why I put together a Balrog Reference Sheet with all of the original information on Balrogs from the LBBs and GH, plus the description from Chainmail. For those of us with the later printings. Digest-sized single-sheet pdf. Why did I never see this before? EXALT! Now, if you do the CHAINMAIL Fantasy Combat table with the Balrog, another exaltation shall be thine. |
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Post by Falconer on Aug 2, 2012 14:46:51 GMT -6
I think all of the Tolkien races sadly lose their mojo when you change their names.
Hobbit —> Halfling
Ent —> Treant
Balrog —> Type VI Demon
Nazgûl —> Spectre
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Post by Mr. Darke on Aug 2, 2012 16:41:31 GMT -6
I think all of the Tolkien races sadly lose their mojo when you change their names. Hobbit —> Halfling Ent —> Treant Balrog —> Type VI Demon Nazgûl —> Spectre I came in (long) after the changes but tend to use the Tolkien names you listed. The only differences are: Nazgul -> Wraith Urik Hai -> Bugbear |
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Alex
Level 3 Conjurer
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Post by Alex on Aug 8, 2012 8:20:52 GMT -6
An here, but different:
Barrow Wight -> Wight
Nazgul/Ringwraith -> Wraith
Witch King of Angmar/Black Captain of the Nazgul -> Spectre
Goblin/Orc/Uruk Hai -> Goblin/Orc/Hobgoblin (remember, the Uruk Hai were larger, more disciplined orc troops and orcs were the larger goblins, so that makes the perfect scaling of goblin/orc/hobgoblin, even matching the behavioral descriptions in the D&D game)
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Post by trebormills on Aug 9, 2012 7:59:07 GMT -6
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Post by kenmeister on Aug 9, 2012 10:01:47 GMT -6
One interesting point is that in a pure White Box game, I can see the balrog as tough. AC 2, 10 HD, if the party fighters do 1d6 with every weapon and don't get strength damage bonuses, yeah that could take a while. Once you mix in the Greyhawk weapon damage and strength scores, a fighter of mid-level can lay waste to a balrog in toe-to-toe combat.
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jacar
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
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Post by jacar on Aug 9, 2012 14:51:35 GMT -6
An here, but different: Barrow Wight -> Wight Nazgul/Ringwraith -> Wraith Witch King of Angmar/Black Captain of the Nazgul -> Spectre Goblin/Orc/Uruk Hai -> Goblin/Orc/Hobgoblin (remember, the Uruk Hai were larger, more disciplined orc troops and orcs were the larger goblins, so that makes the perfect scaling of goblin/orc/hobgoblin, even matching the behavioral descriptions in the D&D game) Goblin is nothing more than an Orc in the Tolkien world of Middle Earth. The term Goblin is used extensively in The Hobbit and the term Orc is used extensively in The Lord of the Rings. DnD has them separate by type. Not good or bad. Just different. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2012 23:08:24 GMT -6
Goblin is nothing more than an Orc in the Tolkien world of Middle Earth. The term Goblin is used extensively in The Hobbit and the term Orc is used extensively in The Lord of the Rings. DnD has them separate by type. Not good or bad. Just different. Actually, in "The Hobbit," at one point talking about goblins Tolkien says "the really big ones, the Orcs of the mountains...." So there is at least some implication that Orcs are bigger, meaner goblins. |
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Post by trebormills on Aug 10, 2012 4:17:57 GMT -6
I was editing my greyhawk re write and noticed tucked away at the back that the Balrog has erratta to be HD9
As I understand orcs in ME, they are basically all the same but smaller ones are referred to as Goblins, man sized ones are Orcs and new nasty LOTR half breeds are Urak Hai (Saruman didnt make em...that was Sauron). I think of it as being like variants in the human race, all the same but also different at the same time.
So what do folks think the Olog Hai and Trolls are as DnD trolls are totally different rubbery regenerating things (more Beowulf/grendal style)
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Post by waysoftheearth on Aug 10, 2012 5:06:10 GMT -6
Sauron made the first Uraks, but Saruman later bred his own Uraks which were superior, being taller yet and unperturbed by sunlight.
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Alex
Level 3 Conjurer
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Post by Alex on Aug 10, 2012 8:54:58 GMT -6
I was editing my greyhawk re write and noticed tucked away at the back that the Balrog has erratta to be HD9 As I understand orcs in ME, they are basically all the same but smaller ones are referred to as Goblins, man sized ones are Orcs and new nasty LOTR half breeds are Urak Hai (Saruman didnt make em...that was Sauron). I think of it as being like variants in the human race, all the same but also different at the same time. So what do folks think the Olog Hai and Trolls are as DnD trolls are totally different rubbery regenerating things (more Beowulf/grendal style) 1. Sauron had orcs. Sauruman cross-bred his orcs with hillmen to create Uruk Hai (which were bigger and tougher and more disciplined...just like the hobgoblin). 2. I've never heard of Olog Hai, but it seems pretty clear that from the "Hai" that they are giant orcs. Orcs are big goblins in Tolkien, so giant orcs could be called giant goblins. In OD&D there is a giant goblin: the bugbear. 3. Trolls in Tolkien are ogres in D&D. 4. We now have a simple progression of evil humanoids: Tolkien ==> goblin, orc, Uruk Hai, Olog Hai, troll OD&D ==> goblin, orc, hobgoblin, bugbear, ogre 5. Additionally, OD&D introduces kobolds and says "treat these monsters as if they were goblins except that they will take from 1 - 3 hits." So we have one creature type running the scale from 1/2 HD to 4+1 HD. If desired one could also decide that they all speak different dialects of the same language, so an orc would speak the orcish dialect of goblinoid while a "troll" would speak the ogre dialect of goblinoid. Thus a referee could give characters a chance of understanding bugbears if they speak goblin, yet keep them in the dark if he wants as there are enough differences in the languages that a character could need to know both to understand everything. Like Louisiana Creole vs Haitian Creole vs French, or Jamaican Patois vs Cockney English vs (American) Jive vs whatever-the-hell Snoop Dogg thinks is language. |
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premmy
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Post by premmy on Aug 10, 2012 9:54:46 GMT -6
Sauron made the first Uraks, but Saruman later bred his own Uraks which were superior, being taller yet and unperturbed by sunlight. Do you have explicit citations to this? I'm pretty sure there's nothing of the sort in LotR itself. Sauron has bred the Uruk-hai orcs, yes. Much later (as of War of the Ring), Saruman has at least two battalions of the same Uruks, but nothing suggests that he has bred them himself or that they were superior to Sauron's. Wrong. Olog-hai are Sauron's "improved" trolls. They're trolls who are bigger, stronger, smarter and don't turn to stone from sunlight. |
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Post by waysoftheearth on Aug 10, 2012 18:24:44 GMT -6
Do you have explicit citations to this? I'm pretty sure there's nothing of the sort in LotR itself. Sauron has bred the Uruk-hai orcs, yes. Much later (as of War of the Ring), Saruman has at least two battalions of the same Uruks, but nothing suggests that he has bred them himself or that they were superior to Sauron's. |
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jacar
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
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Post by jacar on Aug 21, 2012 10:39:00 GMT -6
From my Tolkien Companion I looked up Goblin, Orc and Uruk-Hai in that order. Essentially order of appearance.
The goblin was the most amusing. To paraphrase, it is a translation of the Elven word Urch (Pl Yrch). Then it goes on to say, "See Orc"
Under Orc, it says that Orcs are Orcs though there are some physiological differences by region, mainly in color and sometimes size. Uruk is the black speech for Orc. Uruk-Hai are nothing more than improved Orcs. Physiologically the same though stronger and smarter. They can withstand sunlight where true Orcs cannot.
The entry under Uruk-Hai goes on to reiterate that which was already stated under Orcs about Uruk-Hai.
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Post by Falconer on Aug 21, 2012 12:02:14 GMT -6
Yes, it’s true that, technically, an Orc is an Orc is an Orc. However, it’s clear that there are “breeds,” basically due to the race’s natural tendency to degenerate, combined with multiple interbreeding experiments done by Sauron over the ages, and later by Saruman. The Hobbit mentions “goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs” in one passage (see also Gronan’s quote, above). In The Two Towers, of course there’s the chapter where it makes quite plain the great differences between three different groups (from Moria, Mordor, and Isengard), though here it refers to them all as Orcs. These are two different ways of addressing the same subject. And in a game, it’s desirable to give them all distinct nomenclature (because you’re going to have to stat them differently) rather than explain every time that you’re talking about orcs of such-and-such a breed. Tolkien speaks of: GoblinsHobgoblinsMountain OrcsSnagasBlack Uruks of Mordor (Red Eye) Fighting Uruk-hai (Isengarders/White Hand) Goblin-menHalf-orcsBoldogs |
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Aug 22, 2012 15:01:58 GMT -6
Like I said, "goblins" are a translation of man. Those commonly seen by men of the west come from the Misty Mountains. They are different in name only. That is my point. Not much different than us saying Europeans or Africans or Asians. All human with their own qualities.
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Post by Falconer on Aug 22, 2012 15:42:14 GMT -6
They are different in name only. In name — and in color, and in size, and in strength, and in intelligence, and in resistance to sunlight. All things you mentioned in your previous post. |
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Aug 22, 2012 16:28:00 GMT -6
I vaguely remember reading an interview with Christopher Tolkien about the elf lord Glorfindel. In the Silmarillion Glorfindel was an elf of Gondolin, who fell to his death in Cirith Thoronath in combat with a Balrog after the escape from the sack of the city. An elf lord named Glorfindel meets Strider and the hobbits after the attack on Amon Sul (Weathertop) and sends Frodo fleeing on his horse to the ford of Bruinen. Christopher said this was the same elf lord of Gondolin who had been sent back to Middle Earth because his father never used the same name for two people.
I thought this was interesting because I believe he was the only elf reincarnated and allowed to interact again in the affairs of Middle Earth. In my old "A Guide to Middle Earth" its states that Glorfindel also led the elvish host that routed the forces of Angmar at the battle of Fornost in TA 1975.
My old guide on the Olog-hai says this means the troll-people and that they were a race of trolls of southern Mirkwood and northern Mordor, bred by Sauron toward the end of the Third Age. Hmm I wonder if they were bred in the pits of Dol Guldur?
D&D trolls are from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions which is a great novel if you haven't read it.
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Post by Falconer on Aug 22, 2012 22:27:32 GMT -6
There’s a really fascinating chapter on Glorfindel in The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 377-91. It’s actually one of the last things that Tolkien ever wrote. The one thing I will point out is that it’s not quite true that Tolkien never re-used names — for example, “Galdor is a name of…a more simple and usual form and might be repeated” (p. 387) —, but that Glorfindel is “so striking a name” that “repetition…though possible, would not be credible” (p. 380).
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Post by Otto Harkaman on Aug 23, 2012 4:58:12 GMT -6
I'll have to check that out, I don't believe I have read The Peoples of Middle Earth. I still have The Children of Hurin unread on my bookself. I think I saw while looking for other things more on your Balrog in some issue of SpaceGamer or WhiteDwarf.
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Post by cadriel on Aug 23, 2012 6:49:04 GMT -6
There’s a really fascinating chapter on Glorfindel in The Peoples of Middle-earth, pp. 377-91. It’s actually one of the last things that Tolkien ever wrote. The one thing I will point out is that it’s not quite true that Tolkien never re-used names — for example, “ Galdor is a name of…a more simple and usual form and might be repeated” (p. 387) —, but that Glorfindel is “so striking a name” that “repetition…though possible, would not be credible” (p. 380). There's a Denethor in the published Silmarillion who is an elf in the First Age, so Tolkien clearly reused names every now and then. As for the discrepancies, the Silmarillion was a moving target for Tolkien's entire life, he never actually settled on anything final, just a succession of revisions according to his latest ideas. Lord of the Rings in this sense was an inconvenience, in that it set a lot of details relatively firmly. It's possible that Glorfindel's death at one point in the revisions was meant to be changed at another; Christopher Tolkien had to stitch the published Silmarillion together from a melange of stories written over more than a half-century. |
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Aug 23, 2012 8:03:25 GMT -6
They are different in name only. In name — and in color, and in size, and in strength, and in intelligence, and in resistance to sunlight. All things you mentioned in your previous post. Color and size refers to all sub types of Uruks while resistance to sunlight and better intelligence refers to Uruk-Hai. The point I am trying to make, before it gets lost, is that GOBLINS and Orcs (or YRCH or URUKS) are the same creature. Uruk-Hai are improved Uruks as Ooolog-Hai are improved Trolls. |
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