Tell me of the goblins in your world

To continue the series, goblins and goblinkin. Beyond reading of your ideas, I just want to add a question- how are bugbears, hobgoblins and goblins related?

don't forget nilbogs, norkers, and koalinths
edit: and blues if you use psionics

I have a "tropical island" campaign. Goblins are generally arranged in tribes and "gangs". Each group is differentiated in some way. For example, the Crab Tribe (now decimated) were worshippers of a gargantuan crab that would surface periodically from the lagoon to devour sacrificial victims. The "Filthy Ones" gang were a cursed group of albinos that were vulernable to sunlight.

Each goblinoid gang or tribe is different, so in concept.. bugbears, hobgoblins, etc would be their own seperate tribes and gangs.

I had begun to work on it, but currently my idea run somewhere else so i have abandoned about goblins. Nonetheless:

Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, plus a few similar races (including an homebrew "ogrelin") are all variations of the same root race. Then, I find a poor and boring idea that these races are unrelated and found in scattered primitive tribes of their own living in ruins or cavers. In my homebrew I took idea from some Internet stuff (13 Kingdoms I believe) and created a militaristic Empire.

As such, goblinoids are organized and "civilized" although they are LE and aggressive. They live in a feudal society, in a vast empire of their own. Their society is divinded into castes. The ruling castes are hobgoblins, generally warriors and priests who oversee a much larger population of goblins serfs, slaves, and lowly commoners. Bugbears are unruly barbarians living in the wild highlands of the north (counterpart of Scottish highlanders in 13th century England); they usually cause trouble, yet some individual become gladiators, bodyguards, and what not.

Goblinoids are militaristic minded. As such a few new character classes of warriors were created just for them (Ironguard, Brawler, etc.) to replace some classes that don't exist in their society and to add some flavor. These classes are not available to non-goblinoids.

Note that all of these goblinoids are not 1st level warrior NPC class weaklings. Goblins are 1st level weakling when they are starved beaten slaves only. Many goblins are 3rd level thieves; many hobgoblins are 3rd level and above fighters, ironguards, etc. This is a society of disciplined soldiers and could well take over the whole humans - dwarves - elven lands (to the West) if they dared to. However, they must constantly fight against horrors from the East, so are too much occuppied to conquer humans and other humanoids.

Lastly, as a measure of exotism, hobgoblins of this militaristic empire have a culture outwardly looking and sounding like medieval Russia (Margrave, Boyar, etc.); just there is no Orthodox Christianity .

Goblins IMC have nothing to do with the ones in the MM. They are small, darkblue, and very social beings who live in human cities. Basically taking the place of halflings, but with a twist. They are nocturnal, primarilly, and live in big extended families with very complex realtionships. By ancient law they are the alchemists, which is pretty important in a low magic setting. They even mate with humans, OK they mate with EVERYTHING, and one of the PCs in the campaign is a blue-skinned redhaired Paragoblin Bard.

In my current campaign, goblins are unrelated to bugbears & hobgoblins. They're a distinct race of short green guys with pointy noses & ears. They tend to be cruel, cowardly and tricksy.

I'm currently developing a different setting (for a different group) where the goblins are vicious pirates and very clever mechanically (like gnomes). They build bizarre contraptions and weapons but are basically non-magical.

Needless to say, neither of these ideas is 100% original, but that's how I use them.

I seem to have created a monster..


Anyway - DEAD. All dead. Killed in a war around 500 years ago where elves and humans and halflings combined forces and eventually just eradicated them.

That doesn't mean they don't exist in some far off land, but for the purposes of my campaign, in the immediate vicinity there are none.


bullywugs on the other hand.. that's a different matter...

DMH said:

To continue the series, goblins and goblinkin. Beyond reading of your ideas, I just want to add a question- how are bugbears, hobgoblins and goblins related?

Click to expand...

In my campaigns, goblins are fairly standard. Civilized as opposed to the usual, but still nothing too earth-shatteringly creative.

In my current DM's campaign, they're somewhat interesting. Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Bugbears are all one race of creature. They simply never stop growing. So if left unchecked, a goblin will grow into a hobgoblin will grow into a bugbear, will grow into a bigger bugbear, etc. etc. Some scholars have posited that they aren't a humanoid race at all, but some sort of alternate lifeform, like a fungus.

Bugbears IMC are 'Mangani' (aka Maero) Neutral-aligned jungledwelling 'Beastmen' with brachiation and climb movement types. They avoid contact with other humanoids but are occasionally spotted when they come down to the shore to fish (which they catch by hand). One adventure concerned a lycanthorpy-like disease which was affecting the Maero and transforming them into bloodthirsty 'Wendigo'. After a 'Wendigo' attacked the hu,man village, the PCs were called in to find the source of the disease and cure it (whilst also defending the Maero from the human villagers who wanted them all dead)

Hobgoblins have only been meet a few times (ie I haven't developed them much - I prefer to use Gnolls) but they have been encountered in a foreign army as highly-disciplined heavy infantry and one as a swamp dwelling Ranger with a croc companion (an encounter sourced from Enworld somewhere)

Goblins are a playable race IMC (since halflings and Elfs aren't). They are typically dispicable and cowardly and will willingly sell its own mother (or backstab its own brother) to get ahead in life. Noone 'likes' goblins but nonetheless they are tolerated in most civilised settlements and can be found in the ghettoes of human cities, scavenging around the edge of Orc camps, or even hiding out in the abandoned tunnels of dwarf mines. Goblins can take a Plaguebearer feat which means their spit (and blood) causes disease (being bitten by such a goblin causes the victim to become sickened, drinking goblin contaminated water makes a victim nauseated)
Blues sometimes appear and try to get the backstabbing gobls to work together to overthrow thei Overlords (it rarely works)

At the moment, I'm using fairly standard goblins. In the past I've run three different varients to the goblin races:

Goblins as Drow Replacements: They were kin to spiders, had innate magical powers, and tended to sail the aquatic world they lived in giant ships that resembled spiders. Hobgoblins used the drow stats, small goblins were re-written to give them a poisonous bite and minor darkness abilities, and while I never got around to using bugbears there were notes for giving them various shadow-like abilities and making them closely related to demons.

Goblins as Fey: I rewrote the goblin race as a fey creature, creatures of malicious mischeif with gold powers. They danced on moonbeams, they kidnapped babies, they attacked with magic and swords forged from icicles. The base stats eventually got printed in the Gaming Frontiers: Monsters pdf which I was kind of happy about.

Goblins as outcast: Goblins have no gods, so they have turned to nature and strange magics to keep their race alive. Druids were common among many primitive tribes, taking the place of standard clerics and adepts, while there were usually elite orders of psions and wizards who took responsibility for several tribes within a local area. Blues, Bugbears and Hobgoblins were the result of experiments by the elite magic-using ruling class.