A Study in Green (Part 1)

For a while I have been wondering what certain creatures look like. Specifically Trolls and Ogres, but also how Goblins fit into the picture, and how the different types of goblins work/look. I flipped through the Monster Manual to find some pictures, but the trolls did not fit the trolls I knew as a kid. (When I was growing up I was told many stories from Norse Mythology- albeit rewritten for children.) So I went to refresh my memory and googled trolls. I read the wiki article, but I also went on to read more stories from Scandinavian Mythology featuring these creatures. What I found was that trolls were not the brutes which the MM seems to show them as. Most stories depict them as rather human. Sometimes they weren't even much bigger than humans. Most interestingly I found that many were adept magic users.

Ok, sounds a lot more like the trolls I knew as a kid, and far more interesting than trolls described in the MM. But how do they look? And what is the difference between a troll and an ogre? So I googled ogre. I was surprised to find that ogres do not refer to a particular mythology, rather, they are a type of role. Wikipedia describes them as being featured in myths across the world, which would mean that a troll is really a type of ogre. Which leaves me in a bit of a jam. After all, if they are the same creature then I cannot use both in games. So I decide that rather than ogres and trolls being the same creatures, an ogre would just be a sort of, lesser troll. Like a troll, but not quite. That sat well with me, but it still left me with a the problem of drawing the beasties. I pondered how the two would differ for some time, and kept coming back to the same idea: that ogres were a lesser being of sorts. Which would mean that there must be some sort of tree, like a family tree, but for species. I remembered that the Wikipedia article said ogres and giants were very close, almost interchangeable, so I decided that ogres were a mix of trolls and giants. Which accounts for why they are a little slower than trolls mentally. The rest of this tree sprang from that. Why do orcs and ogres often appear in groups (according to the MM)? What the heck is a Hobgoblin? Where do bugbears fit in? Well, I have my answers.

Which just leaves drawing them...

Cheers.