roguerouge
First Post
What follows isn't a campaign journal. It's intended to be amusing, but also to indicate one way that you might make Paizo goblins part of the party without an Evils campaign.
I run a 1 PC campaign, with my girlfriend, Kristen. The one PC is a CG Bard 5/Rogue 1, named Dior Schaeffer, with two CG NPC companions, her best friend and her brother. They're privateers who hunt pirates, amongst other missions.
And their crew is partially composed of Paizo goblins.
Kristen finds them cute as the dickens. She describes the appeal as the "they're so ugly they're cute" thing. ("Chihuhua syndrome" is her other term for it.)
Dior found them as part of the crew of a smuggling operation run by a seriously frightening pirate captain outside of my campaign's Saltmarsh. She captured them all after using the bard's fireball against the captain (a.k.a. charm person). After a great deal of maneuvering, she got the captain captured in town, then got the crew arrested by the Town Guard after that.
At the climactic trial, Dior claimed that "Goblins are people too." (You could have knocked me over with a feather.) She said that they weren't responsible for their actions because they had been bullied by the human pirate who commanded them. She then nailed the Diplomacy check, which bards are wont to do.
So the court gave her custody of them. And assigned a LG Cleric to watch both the goblins and her.
How this has worked out:
Dior is trying to wean them away from being evil little bastards to being neutral little bastards. She's been using candy (saltwater taffy), crunchy foods, and utterly disgusting garbage as rewards like a behavioral scientist. (Figuring out what goblins eat caused her brother to get arrested for being a public nuisance when he took a goblin to a number of different restaurants in town to figure that one out.) And they HATED working during the day, rather than staying nocturnal.
Dior's actually succeeded in civilizing ONE of them, the alpha male, named Max. He's become the bo'sun and he bullies the others mercilessly as the resident "big-big." That's a term of power, reserved only for the alpha male and the matriarch (the captain).
Goblins as Crew:
Since they'd been found as the grunt labor of pirates, I ruled that they had been pain-stakingly taught their single rank in Profession: sailor. Dior, as the captain, always takes a penalty for her crew's quality, which is usually made up for by bardic music, her navigator's skill, and the ship's excellence.
They get into everything, of course. Dior locks away the really valuable stuff, but she's lost some kegs of brandy to them already. Another goblin sailor was found unconscious with claw marks on him, having lost a battle with the ship's cat.
One goblin sailor, Noorick, found a gold piece in the bilge, which produced a fight between all the goblins, then a sustained search of the bilge by them when the captain ordered them to stop fighting. When Noorick got money for being the first to sight a ship, a rivalry with Max was born. They each watch each other like hawks.
As a result, Max insisted on a display of his big-big status. Dior built a separate room for Max, as all the other "officers" got separate quarters. Max then insisted on a throne, which was... a chair.
(I think Kristen lets them divide and conquer themselves rather than impose peace and harmony on them.)
Kristen uses the goblins as red shirts in melee, albeit red shirts that run away when things go badly. She does heal them afterwards, however. She also never, ever leaves them alone on the ship, lest they sail away with it.
Even though sacrificing large numbers of goblins to achieve military goals is a typical tactic for goblin tribes, it would have led to trouble eventually.
And it did.
During one mission, The captain, some of the goblins, and her officers were looting a derelict ship. After a climactic battle, the derelict started to list and sink. Her navigator/wizard-in-training came over from her ship with a launch, rowed by a goblin, to rescue them. (They lacked the manpower to sail the ship over there in time.) The party, although occupied with a giant octopus grappling several of their number, lowered a chest full of treasure down to the launch. Hoping to escape and let everyone else drown, the goblin on the launch then pushed the navigator overboard, ruining this wizard-in-training's only spell book.
That goblin got the brig and then exiled.
But she gave the other goblins a taste of the gold that an adventurer brings in. And that never happens in goblin tribes.
Max showed real leadership potential when he stole everyone's dog slicer while they were playing in their piles of coins. The greed-driven melee that night was all nonlethal damage as a result. (They then got fined for fighting.)
Goblins on Shore Leave:
As captain, she's been using strict discipline on ship while giving them utter freedom off the ship. She studiously avoids checking up on the rumors of chaos on their shore leaves. Those shore leaves, man, have been a blast as a DM. I just drop seeds and let them flower off screen.
At a lot of ports, the PC goes to the outlying farms to resupply the foodstuffs, while her goblins are sometimes raiding those same farmer's hen houses. (Perhaps she does realize this, actually. Getting rid of the middle man and buying direct would be the chaotic way to make up for what her crew's doing to those same suppliers.)
In one port, Dior caught them all leaving ship en masse. They informed her they were going on a "religious observance" break in the woods. They didn't inform her that the rituals involved tormenting things smaller than goblins. It was a very religious experience for them.
When they returned to Saltmarsh, she found them working as the garbage men under the half-orc in charge of these town duties. During this visit, Max the Bo'sun, insisted on being taken shopping like the other big-bigs, having already scrounged the city dump. (Max's smart, so after a few ports he realized that the only way he'll get the shinies from the shopkeepers is if the Captain chaperoned him.) My player was awfully tired and absently allowed him to get a battering ram. The humans on her crew hit the roof when they found out, particularly the navigator, who kept a cat in her room.
When they visited Freeport, the goblin crew disappeared into the slums of Scurvytown. Weeks later, Dior ran into her crew in a burning building. She was searching for trapped survivors. They were working as firemen for the town's privately-run "fir dept," under Glitch, a goblin arcane caster. (It essentially works as some of the first fire departments did: you pay for the service or they let your building burn.) As firemen, their job was to go into the burning buildings and ... loot them. They were biting the heads off pet birds, scavenging valuables, going through peoples things, etc. Max was a big-big here too, because he owned a battering ram. Max, however, would occasionally save someone if they were small and portable. The look on Kristen's face when Max toddled off saying "Me go find babies" was worth all the effort.
Afterwards, the goblins celebrated by taking Dior to a goblin club (read: basement) for warchanter songs. Never fear: wackiness and mayhem from the presence of a long-shanks ensued.
Max also helped the captain on her shore leave on one occasion. She was wondering how far to go with her new man in this port, a brawny blacksmith. Max advised her to dump him, as he'd make her a "little-little." He advised her to find a smaller and more easily bullied man as a mate.
Communications:
The bard learned goblin from a goblin cookbook, so communications are still a work in progress. (The cookbook was captured from an exiled goblin, so it makes sense as an heretical text, although she's not put that together yet.) There are times when I make the PC use Listen checks to "keep up" with their jabbering when they're excited.
The goblins use the goblin term "me" and "not-mes" to refer themself as an individual and the latter term for everyone else. When Dior is good at communicating human values, they use the Common language terms Me and You. They dislike the term "gobbo," recognizing it as a human slur and thus prefer "gobbo-lin."
I run a 1 PC campaign, with my girlfriend, Kristen. The one PC is a CG Bard 5/Rogue 1, named Dior Schaeffer, with two CG NPC companions, her best friend and her brother. They're privateers who hunt pirates, amongst other missions.
And their crew is partially composed of Paizo goblins.
Kristen finds them cute as the dickens. She describes the appeal as the "they're so ugly they're cute" thing. ("Chihuhua syndrome" is her other term for it.)
Dior found them as part of the crew of a smuggling operation run by a seriously frightening pirate captain outside of my campaign's Saltmarsh. She captured them all after using the bard's fireball against the captain (a.k.a. charm person). After a great deal of maneuvering, she got the captain captured in town, then got the crew arrested by the Town Guard after that.
At the climactic trial, Dior claimed that "Goblins are people too." (You could have knocked me over with a feather.) She said that they weren't responsible for their actions because they had been bullied by the human pirate who commanded them. She then nailed the Diplomacy check, which bards are wont to do.
So the court gave her custody of them. And assigned a LG Cleric to watch both the goblins and her.
How this has worked out:
Dior is trying to wean them away from being evil little bastards to being neutral little bastards. She's been using candy (saltwater taffy), crunchy foods, and utterly disgusting garbage as rewards like a behavioral scientist. (Figuring out what goblins eat caused her brother to get arrested for being a public nuisance when he took a goblin to a number of different restaurants in town to figure that one out.) And they HATED working during the day, rather than staying nocturnal.
Dior's actually succeeded in civilizing ONE of them, the alpha male, named Max. He's become the bo'sun and he bullies the others mercilessly as the resident "big-big." That's a term of power, reserved only for the alpha male and the matriarch (the captain).
Goblins as Crew:
Since they'd been found as the grunt labor of pirates, I ruled that they had been pain-stakingly taught their single rank in Profession: sailor. Dior, as the captain, always takes a penalty for her crew's quality, which is usually made up for by bardic music, her navigator's skill, and the ship's excellence.
They get into everything, of course. Dior locks away the really valuable stuff, but she's lost some kegs of brandy to them already. Another goblin sailor was found unconscious with claw marks on him, having lost a battle with the ship's cat.
One goblin sailor, Noorick, found a gold piece in the bilge, which produced a fight between all the goblins, then a sustained search of the bilge by them when the captain ordered them to stop fighting. When Noorick got money for being the first to sight a ship, a rivalry with Max was born. They each watch each other like hawks.
As a result, Max insisted on a display of his big-big status. Dior built a separate room for Max, as all the other "officers" got separate quarters. Max then insisted on a throne, which was... a chair.
(I think Kristen lets them divide and conquer themselves rather than impose peace and harmony on them.)
Kristen uses the goblins as red shirts in melee, albeit red shirts that run away when things go badly. She does heal them afterwards, however. She also never, ever leaves them alone on the ship, lest they sail away with it.
Even though sacrificing large numbers of goblins to achieve military goals is a typical tactic for goblin tribes, it would have led to trouble eventually.
And it did.
During one mission, The captain, some of the goblins, and her officers were looting a derelict ship. After a climactic battle, the derelict started to list and sink. Her navigator/wizard-in-training came over from her ship with a launch, rowed by a goblin, to rescue them. (They lacked the manpower to sail the ship over there in time.) The party, although occupied with a giant octopus grappling several of their number, lowered a chest full of treasure down to the launch. Hoping to escape and let everyone else drown, the goblin on the launch then pushed the navigator overboard, ruining this wizard-in-training's only spell book.
That goblin got the brig and then exiled.
But she gave the other goblins a taste of the gold that an adventurer brings in. And that never happens in goblin tribes.
Max showed real leadership potential when he stole everyone's dog slicer while they were playing in their piles of coins. The greed-driven melee that night was all nonlethal damage as a result. (They then got fined for fighting.)
Goblins on Shore Leave:
As captain, she's been using strict discipline on ship while giving them utter freedom off the ship. She studiously avoids checking up on the rumors of chaos on their shore leaves. Those shore leaves, man, have been a blast as a DM. I just drop seeds and let them flower off screen.
At a lot of ports, the PC goes to the outlying farms to resupply the foodstuffs, while her goblins are sometimes raiding those same farmer's hen houses. (Perhaps she does realize this, actually. Getting rid of the middle man and buying direct would be the chaotic way to make up for what her crew's doing to those same suppliers.)
In one port, Dior caught them all leaving ship en masse. They informed her they were going on a "religious observance" break in the woods. They didn't inform her that the rituals involved tormenting things smaller than goblins. It was a very religious experience for them.
When they returned to Saltmarsh, she found them working as the garbage men under the half-orc in charge of these town duties. During this visit, Max the Bo'sun, insisted on being taken shopping like the other big-bigs, having already scrounged the city dump. (Max's smart, so after a few ports he realized that the only way he'll get the shinies from the shopkeepers is if the Captain chaperoned him.) My player was awfully tired and absently allowed him to get a battering ram. The humans on her crew hit the roof when they found out, particularly the navigator, who kept a cat in her room.
When they visited Freeport, the goblin crew disappeared into the slums of Scurvytown. Weeks later, Dior ran into her crew in a burning building. She was searching for trapped survivors. They were working as firemen for the town's privately-run "fir dept," under Glitch, a goblin arcane caster. (It essentially works as some of the first fire departments did: you pay for the service or they let your building burn.) As firemen, their job was to go into the burning buildings and ... loot them. They were biting the heads off pet birds, scavenging valuables, going through peoples things, etc. Max was a big-big here too, because he owned a battering ram. Max, however, would occasionally save someone if they were small and portable. The look on Kristen's face when Max toddled off saying "Me go find babies" was worth all the effort.
Afterwards, the goblins celebrated by taking Dior to a goblin club (read: basement) for warchanter songs. Never fear: wackiness and mayhem from the presence of a long-shanks ensued.
Max also helped the captain on her shore leave on one occasion. She was wondering how far to go with her new man in this port, a brawny blacksmith. Max advised her to dump him, as he'd make her a "little-little." He advised her to find a smaller and more easily bullied man as a mate.
Communications:
The bard learned goblin from a goblin cookbook, so communications are still a work in progress. (The cookbook was captured from an exiled goblin, so it makes sense as an heretical text, although she's not put that together yet.) There are times when I make the PC use Listen checks to "keep up" with their jabbering when they're excited.
The goblins use the goblin term "me" and "not-mes" to refer themself as an individual and the latter term for everyone else. When Dior is good at communicating human values, they use the Common language terms Me and You. They dislike the term "gobbo," recognizing it as a human slur and thus prefer "gobbo-lin."
