Trollin' on the River

Friday, February 19, 2010

We've had the cover for Pathfinder Adventure Path #32: "Rivers Run Red" (written by our own Rob McCreary) up for sometime now, but it bears another mention, as this cover sees the climax of a long and interesting evolution. It's little surprise that we were only three months into the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path—and Pathfinder's life in general—when it came time to order art for our first troll. How to handle this got a little tricky, though, as it's important to us that our creatures walk the line between familiarity and distinctiveness when it comes to earlier incarnations of the game. What we ended up with was the gnarled, lanky, long-nosed fellow from "The Hook Mountain Massacre". Neat! And totally a cool piece of art. But definitely nothing ground breaking.

Several months later, against all odds, we found ourselves ordering a cover for a Bestiary. Attempting to follow in the tradition of the "a whole bunch of monsters about to getcha!" covers from classic gaming bestiaries, we wanted a swarm of little monsters, one or two medium monsters, and a big monster. Creature ideas went around and around, then sketches did their circles, and what we ended up with was goblins, a maralith, and WHAT THE HECK IS THAT! OMG, that's a TROLL! Awesome! You don't get an incredible Wayne Reynolds cover and then say, "That looks amazing, but could we get this guy to look a little ganglier." This was our new look for the troll.

Flash forward a few more months and we're ordering Kingmaker covers. So we want a cool bandit and a sexy fey and a barbarian dude and a—hey, how 'bout a troll boss! Okay, that'd be cool. And thanks to Vincent Dutrait, here he is.

So our trolls have come a long way over the course of the past few years, but without a doubt, things are settled now. And if that nasty claw-claw-bite wasn't enough to send your PCs running for their alchemist fire, just wait for "Rivers Run Red" to see all the nasty tricks Chief Hargulka has in store for the Stolen Lands.

Looking back, trolls actually had it pretty easy. You should have seen the backstage identity crisis the ogre had before its debut. But that's a story for another day…

F. Wesley Schneider
Managing Editor