All Trolls Are Different / Tabletop Games

You will take us seriously!

Board Games

• Bridge Troll: Players play as trolls who eat and extort the travelers who attempt to cross their bridges.
• Trollhalla: Players play as trolls who are sick of sitting under bridges extorting travelers for cash (or simply eating them) and instead go out for a seafaring adventure to sack and plunder islands full of mortified monks, panicked princesses, and tasty pigs and peasants, of course.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: Trolls are a relatively uncommon creature type, mostly appearing as big, powerful and none-too-bright bruisers aligned with Green mana, although their specific appearance can vary considerably.
  • Mechanically, trolls are Green, fairly big, and strongly tied with the regeneration keyword, which allows them to recover from damage and return to your hand when they'd otherwise be killed and represents their in-universe ability to heal at an extremely rapid pace. They're also associated with hexproof, which makes them unable to be targeted by opponents' spells (however, this primarily due to the popularity of Troll Ascetic, as very few troll cards actually have that ability).
  • In terms of in-universe flavor, modern trolls have settled fairly consistently into being big, primitive and ogreish humanoids. Notable breaks from this pattern do occur from time to time, however.
    • Ulgrotha is home to sea trolls, amphibious and finned beings who inhabit the oceans and devour anything they can catch.
    • Ravnica's trolls are lanky, horned and often reduced to living on the fringes of society.
    • Mirrodin's trolls are green-skinned, entirely noseless and have sheets of copper growing from their bodies (which is admittedly par for the course for living things on Mirrodin). They're native to the bio-metallic forest of the Tangle, and were already near extinct by the rise of New Phyrexia — one troll was left in the whole plane.
    • The trolls in the dark fairytale plane of Shadowmoor are short, spiny, long-nosed beings and referred to as "trow" — an old folkloric name for trolls.
    • Eldraine, a plane inspired by the Arthurian mythos and the tales of the Brothers Grimm, features two trolls directly derived from the troll-under-the-bridge archetype.
    • On the Norse Mythology plane of Kaldheim, trolls are hunched, green-skinned humanoids with big hooked noses and curving tusks. They live in Gnottvold, a realm of rugged mountains and thick forests, and are divided into two groups. Hagi trolls are shorter (relatively speaking; even hunched over they're taller than a human), have thick manes of shaggy hair, live a primitive tribal existence, and fight constantly with each other and anyone else they meet. Torga trolls are much larger, with craggy features and grey skin, and when sleeping almost perfectly resemble ruins and giant boulders. Torgas can sleep for decades at a time, but if woken up suddenly (say, by adventurers poking around their territory or Hagi making trouble) they fly into murderous rages and rampage across Gnottvold, mauling anything they can catch, until they exhaust themselves and go back to sleep.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: There is a Level-4 Beast-Warrior card called "Three Trolling Trolls", featuring a trio of monsters on a boat. As shown in the picture, they vary wildly in appareance. There's also the older Man Thro' Tro', which looks like a deformed, naked, muscular blob, and the Plunder Patroll archetype, a pirate crew who look like cute, cartoony green goblins.

Tabletop RPGs

• Burning Wheel: Trolls are big, dumb and permanently turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. However, different traits can give them horns, hooves, an unexplained likableness and even an immunity to sunlight. They're still likely to be bigger, dumber and tougher than any other PC race, but apart from that they can be very different.
• Changeling: The Dreaming: Trolls are big and strong and have horns... and that's mostly where the similarity to an "average" troll ends. They're not necessarily dumb or ugly, and they're some of the best warriors of Changeling society. Their major weakness is that they're bound by honor; if they break an oath, they lose their strength, and if someone else breaks an oath they made with a troll, well... they'd better get out of the way.
• Chronopia: The Blackblood Trolls have four arms, and are highly intelligent. They're not as aggressive as the other Blackbloods, but in combat they become a whirlwind of arms and blades.
• The Dark Eye has trolls that are big (about 10 feet/3 metres), hairy humanoids, stubborn and easily angered, with a sweet tooth. They're also one of the oldest civilization-building races in that universe, even though very few of them are alive in the present day anymore, and while they're not too fond of the smaller races, they're not evil.
• Dragon Dice has trolls who are one of the monsters for the Goblin race. Arguably one of the best units in the game, these trolls have the size and strength typical of fantasy trolls, but also have the somewhat unusual ability to regenerate units other than themselves.
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • The trolls aren't too smart, and are also known for their prodigious strength and size. They also have the quality of being able to regenerate most forms of damage, even losing their heads! Only fire or acid will keep them down for long. This depiction was explicitly originally derived directly from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions; the earliest illustrations of D&D trolls closely match Anderson's description. (Notably, early materials claim that the ogre is based on Tolkienian trolls, while the Anderson troll is the "true" troll.)
  • There are various troll subspecies who may omit the vulnerability to acid and/or fire, or gain a new one (and with the right templates, can have no particular vulnerabilities). Such species include swamp trolls, mountain trolls, crystal trolls and war trolls.
  • Additionally, the Fensir, or Ysgardian trolls, have nothing to do with the above and more closely resemble the trolls from Norse mythology.
• Earthdawn's trolls are heavy-set, horned humanoids with a dash of vikingian Sky Pirate. They make good wizards, especially Elementalists.
• Godforsaken: Trolls are hideous humanoid standing three or more meters tall and hunt more by smell than by sight. They are dangerous but not particularly intelligent. Always ravenous, trolls eat anything, and rarely take the time to cook a meal. Usually, they distend their mouths and throats and swallow subdued prey whole. If a troll suffers a particularly egregious wound, it divides into two smaller trolls. Spawned trolls that have access to food grow into full trolls within a few weeks.
• Gods of the Fall: Trolls are hideous and stupid humanoid that stand over three meters tall and hunt by smell. Always ravenous, trolls eat anything, rarely take the time to cook and enjoy a magical metabolism.
• Grimm: Trolls all have wildly different, though hideous and roughly person-shaped, appearances, but they have a few things in common: They're all man-eaters who live under bridges, maintaining them and collecting tolls from those who pass over them. They have master knowledge of the structure and maintenance of bridges, but are weakened greatly if they stray too far from their bridge. They can also hum a wondrous soothing subsonic tune that helps persuade otherwise reluctant people to cross their bridges — cats can actually hear it, and intensely dislike it.
• GURPS, being a generic rule-set, can handle a wide variety of troll types. For example:
  • The current edition of GURPS Fantasy explicitly bases its troll templates on folklore. These trolls are huge, ugly humanoids who turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. Troll-women are weaker than their male counterparts, but possess powerful magic.
  • Banestorm trolls are fairly generic monsters, perhaps most resembling a much-toned-down version of Grendel and his mother from Beowulf.
  • GURPS Thaumatology: Alchemical Baroque has rather folkloric trolls which are essentially variants of its ogres; former immaterial spirits who have, on an incomprehensible whim, "burned out" their spirit powers in the process of taking the physical form of a big, hideous material being, reducing their minds to a parody of intelligence in the process.
• Middle-Earth Role Playing: Trolls are hulking, evil humanoid beings that were created by Morgoth in mockery of the Ents. They're powerful and strong, but most kinds turn to stone under the light of the Sun and thus prefer to live in caverns and other dark places. They usually live as solitary monsters, earing whatever they can catch, but the smarter ones often use their might and fearsome presence to take over leadership of Orc tribes. Multiple varieties exist:
  • Stone trolls are the most common variant. Beyond that, they're stupid, quarrelsome brutes who mostly live alone or in small groups in the mountains, and at eight to ten feet in height are the smallest of the trolls.
  • Hill trolls are slightly rarer but still fairly common. They prefer to live in foothills, are usually a couple feet taller than stone trolls, and are just smart enough to make and use simple spears and clubs.
  • Cave trolls are very rare and only found in deep caves under the mountains, such as the ruins of Moria. They can reach twelve feet in height and are virtually blind, but have a very keen sense of smell.
  • Snow trolls are an extremely rare breed found in the far north. They turn to ice instead of stone under the sun, but thaw back to flesh in the night unless they're badly damaged beforehand; most hibernate during the summer to avoid the long arctic days.
• Palladium Fantasy has Trolls available as a player race. They are the largest, strongest and dimmest race available, and they sport claws that cause quite a bit of damage. Beyond that, however, there is nothing particularly unusual about them.
• Pathfinder trolls are similar to the D&D ones in terms of behavior and regeneration abilities, but are physically different, resembling hunched, ugly humanoids with huge underbites. (Supposedly, this redesign was because the cover of the first Bestiary featured a monster of such description, but none of the staff at Paizo knew what it was supposed to be, so they labelled it a troll and it stuck.) Of course, there are also other types of trolls like the intelligent ice trolls, the subterranean rock trolls (that turn to stone when exposed to sunlight), the hulking nine-headed jotund trolls, and the arboreal moss trolls. Also of note are trollhounds, which resemble trolls as bulldogs and have the same qualities as standard trolls. Huldras (see Mythology above) are also present, though referring to their connection to trolls is a Berserk Button for them.
• RuneQuest: Trolls (Uz, as they call themselves) are a bit bigger than humans with pale fur and snout-like faces, and are about as smart. They originated in the Underworld and only came to the surface to escape the radiance of the sun god Yelm when he died and was sent into their home. They're Extreme Omnivores that can eat literally anything (although they like dwarf and elf best) and practice ritual cannibalism in lieu of burial rites. They are a Dying Race due to an ancient curse that causes most of their children be born as deformed, dim Trollkin. They're barbaric in culture, with little interest in luxuries beyond food and basic shelter, and are generally pessimistic, callous and aggressive. Trolls are divided into numerous breeds, and most troll settlements tend to include several.
  • The true trolls include the Mistress Race (Uzuz), the corpulent, incredibly ancient, multi-breasted progenitors of all other trolls; the dark trolls (Uzko), the most common and widespread type; the great trolls (Uzdo), large, powerful and unintelligent brutes come about as a result of a failed attempt to break the trolls' curse, and which are usually kept as slaves by other trolls; sea trolls (Uztagor), unintelligent, marine Chaos-tainted trolls; and snow trolls (Uzhim), similar to dark trolls, which live along the northern glaciers.
  • There are also several troll offshoots, which are not considered true Uz. These include trollkin (Enlo), the stunted progeny given to trolls by the Curse of Kin, which are invariably short, deformed and unintelligent, and live as either an underclass in troll society or as wild mobs; cave trolls (Romal) mutated by Chaos, which either live as wild animals or are herded like dogs by Uz; jungle trolls (Mori) adapted to live in the southern rainforests; mountain trolls (Snang), another Chaos-tainted breed of giant, bestial predators; and tusk-riders or half-trolls, troll/human crossbreeds that ride giant boars, live as barbarians and raiders, and are hated by both trolls and humans.
• Scion: Ragnarok has two mechanically-similar breeds of troll. One type are the children of the troll-wives; the other is the result of giving a giant's eitr (mutative blood) to a dwarf.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord: Of the big and brutal kind. The Trolls were an ancient people almost as old as the Faerie. Millenia ago they waged a devastating war against them for dominance over Rûl and in the process they created among others the giants as Bioweapon Beast.
• Shadowrun: Trolls are pretty much the embodiment of the Mighty Glacier — massive, powerful, built like a tank, but slow both physically and mentally. They also tend to have random horns, warts, and bony ridges all over their body. So they're big, ugly, mean... and pretty much the best guys to have on your side in a fight.
  Daniel, Bear Shaman: If trolls were really as dumb as they're made out to be there wouldn't be too many troll runners. We'd all be dead of our own idiocy by now.
  • It's stated that trolls are literally slow-witted. They can be quite intelligent, but they just don't think as quickly as a human. The fact that the smartest humans are "smarter" than the smartest trolls is based on this deficiency, rather than lower intellect. The tie-in novel Changeling — the protagonist of which was a brilliant rich kid who'd goblinized — goes into detail on this. Once Peter adjusts to troll thought processes, it's clear that he's still pretty damn sharp (even if he does spend a lot of time playing it down).
    • Trolls, notably, have the highest rate of literacy among all metahuman types. As they tend to live along the edges of the great urban sprawls, mostly in areas that were built during the 20th and early 21st centuries and abandoned in favor of the later sprawls and arcologies, they have access to much of the remaining bulk of non-digital written materials. Most trolls read a lot in their spare time, and they're some of the last people who still known how to read and write cursive.
    • In Runner Havens, a troll is on Hong Kong's board of directors. His name is Tai Kong. It goes without saying his nickname is "King".
    • In the supplement Dunkelzahn's Secrets, there is a list of candidates the dragon Dunkelzahn defeated to become President of the UCAS (what the USA became) — the republican candidate, Anne Penchyk, is a troll.
  • As trolls are far bigger than humans (average height over 9 feet), they have to pay double for their living costs to get things made specifically for them according to the 5th edition rulebook.
  • Variant strains exist beyond the main kind originally goblinized from humanity:
    • Giants are a larger variant native to Scandinavia, and lack the horns and bony plates. For reasons unknown, about one in four giant births are normal baseline humans.
    • Minotaurs are a Mediterranean strain with only two large, symmetrical horns, more body hair and diminished dermal bone growth.
    • Cyclopes, another Mediterranean group, possess a single eye and no dermal armor. Most don't grow horns; those that do have a single one in the middle of their foreheads. They first arose in the Aegean Sea and spread to Mediterranean ports in general, and often work in docks and shipyards as heavy lifters and security. This, combined with historical myth, has led many of them to adopt worship of Poseidon.
    • Fomori are an Irish variant lacking the bony growths and with numerous small hornlets, and are more magically adept than other trolls.
  • The HMHVV virus, which turns humans into vampires, turns afflicted trolls into dzoo-noo-quas, hulking, barely sapient brutes with massively increased growth of horns and dermal bones. As such, a dzoo-noo-qua's frame is an asymmetrical mess of bony plates, spines, horns and hornlets and assorted bony growths. The HMHVV-II strain instead creates fomóraig, marked by similar excessive bone growth as the dzoo-noo-quas in addition to thick chest hair and acid-producing skin glands, and likewise dangerous and mindless predators.
• Tormenta: Trolls are plant-people, thus justifying their vulnerability to fire and regeneration. They are of the tall, mean and brainless monster variety. There is also a monster race from another dimension, but they share the extreme sexual differences from some Troll tales: the women are beautiful and elf-like, and the men are big, brutish, with green hair and four arms, but both are good.
  • There are also the Finntroll, smarter, eviler and more humanoid cousins to the common trolls created by the gods Tenebra and Megalokk whose empire of Trollkyrka waged war on the dwarves of Doherimm centuries ago. They have also developed a bioarcane process in which a humanoid slowly and painfully turns into a troll under their service.
• Wolsung: Steam Pulp Fantasy: Trolls are a playable race. The game uses all three basic stereotypes of a troll. Troll children are fairytale trolls — small, big-headed, tricksters with magical powers. When they grow up, they resemble huge, muscular humans with flaming red hair, have an obsession with honor, and tend towards very explosive personalities. A male troll technically grows larger through his entire life, and he gets meaner. Old trolls with every period of rage become one step closer to becoming monsters. And in women, emotion and compassion die, turning them into fairy-tale witches.

Tabletop Strategy Games

• Iron Kingdoms: There are Trollbloods, which are split into several different kinds. You have the Dire Trolls (massive and stupid), the Full Blood Trolls (not too bright, still pretty tall), Trollkin (who basically take the role of Orcs in IK, and often use the former two as Beasts Of Battle) and Pygmies (small but not as bright as trollkin). The Trollkin have been dicked over by pretty much every faction in Warmachine and Hordes. They regenerate like a number of examples on this page, able to grow back a limb that's chopped off. With Dire Trolls or Full Blooded Trolls, the limb that was dismembered may grow into a tiny troll called a Whelp (with an over-sized limb, hand, foot, or even a finger, depending on what they are regenerating out of), kind of like starfish. Trolls view their whelps a bit like kids, a bit like pets, and (for the Dire Trolls and full-blooded trolls) a bit like snacks.
• Warhammer:
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Trolls are pretty classic fantasy trolls — big, hulking, incredibly stupid humanoids with large ears and noses, scales, and weapons rarely more sophisticated that tree limbs wielded as clubs — only adding on a ridiculously-caustic stomach acid, capable of digesting rock, that they like to vomit on their foes/victims. Their regeneration also makes them highly susceptible to mutation, especially when paired with the influence of Chaos, and there are several distinct kinds of trolls in the Warhammer universe, besides the "common" trolls commonly found tagging along with Greenskin armies:
    • Rock trolls inhabit desolate, rocky wastelands, and have taken to eating rocks for lack of anything else. They are noted to be more resistant to magic than the regular kind of troll.
    • River trolls have scales and live by and in bodies of water. They are revoltingly smelly and filthy even by troll standards.
    • Sea trolls, or shugon, are pale creatures with white, blind eyes, scaly skin and mouths filled with shark teeth, and live in sea caves and the depths of the ocean.
    • Chaos trolls are even weirder due to living so close to the Realm of Chaos. Their regenerating powers cause them to mutate even more than other races. What makes this even worse is the existence of Throgg, the Troll King. After having his head cut off, it grew back, only this time with a mutation giving him genius intellect. Suffice to say, he was a nasty surprise to the Empire, who were used to Trolls being complete morons.
    • Bile trolls are a further mutation of Chaos Trolls descended from trolls who had the supremely bad idea of devouring the followers of Chaos God Nurgle. The plagued flesh infected them with all manner of necrotic diseases, turning them into eternally rotting horrors whose perpetual decay is just barely offset by their regeneration.
  • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Troggoths, as the trolls of the Mortal Realms are called, are the successor race to the Trolls of the Old World. Just like their ancestors, they are incredibly strong, incredibly stupid creatures associated with the forces of Destruction and particularly with the grots — the local goblins — with whole they form a sort of partnership to balance the grots' abundant cunning and minimal might with the troggoths' abundant might and minimal cunning. Troggoths are extremely adaptable creatures, and their bodies often take aspects of what they eat or heal in subtly altered ways in response to their environments, often resulting in the creation of new and unique breeds. Regardless of their type, all troggoths share some common characteristics — a connection to the Bad Moon, their lack of intelligence, monstrous strength, and the ability to regenerate almost any wound.
    • Rockgut troggoths dwell in high mountains and eat rocks, often tunneling by simply chewing their way through virgin stone. Over time, this has given them rocky, armored hides, a natural resistance to magic, and the ability to shape and control stone to their will — a power that they mostly just use to shape clubs and throwing rocks as needed.
    • Fellwater troggoths are slimy, finned and incredibly foul-smelling beasts that inhabit swamps and other stagnant waters. Their stench is so strong that it can nauseate and stagger ever hardened warriors and they produce powerful stomach acids that they can regurgitate on their foes, something that can kill weaker combatants outright.
    • Dankhold troggoths are a particularly powerful but solitary breed that lives deep underground, and left to their own devices they're happy to sleep away decades and centuries in some dank, forgotten cave where nobody will ever find them, while fungi grow from their thick hides and stalagmites accrete on their forms. Occasionally, however, they startle awake for reasons unknown and wander their way to the surface, their broad backs covered with phosphorescent mushrooms and trailed by swarms of subterranean wildlife, and inevitably cause disaster when their paths take them towards surface-dwelling civilizations.
    • Mirebrute troggoths are another swamp-dwelling breed, generally larger and less fishlike than the fellwater kind. Kruleboy orruks often capture them to use as war-mounts for their leaders, who ride on seats mounted on their shoulders and direct them with liberal use of spear jabs.
    • Chaos Troggoths are just like their predecessors, a Troggoth of any variety, and likely mutated, serving the Dark Gods of Chaos.
    • Marshcrawla sloggoths are animalistic, quadrupedal relatives of Troggoths that live as ambush predators in swamps. Grots associated with Kruleboy clans mount primitive howdahs on their backs and ride them as war beasts.
• Warhammer 40,000: While they are not a big part of the lore, there are some knocking about the galaxy. The most famous are probably the Ice Trolls of Fenris, who are not made of ice but are vulnerable (slightly) to fire.

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