Yet More From VOLO - Goblins, Nilbogs, Kobolds, Hobgoblins, & Barghests!

The Volo's Guide to Monsters previews are coming quick and fast now! Adding to the flinds, gnolls & yuan-ti, froghemoth, giants and orcs, mindflayers and beholders, fire giant dreadnoughts, giant lore, and the book's preface comes yet another bunch of pages courtesy of Gizmodo. This time, it's goblins, barghests, hobgoblins, nilbogs, and kobolds. WotC must have shown off about a quarter of the book by now! It comes out this coming Friday (Nov 4th) in WPN stores, and 11 days later (Nov 11th) everywhere else.

The Volo's Guide to Monsters previews are coming quick and fast now! Adding to the flinds, gnolls & yuan-ti, froghemoth, giants and orcs, mindflayers and beholders, fire giant dreadnoughts, giant lore, and the book's preface comes yet another bunch of pages courtesy of Gizmodo. This time, it's goblins, barghests, hobgoblins, nilbogs, and kobolds. WotC must have shown off about a quarter of the book by now! It comes out this coming Friday (Nov 4th) in WPN stores, and 11 days later (Nov 11th) everywhere else.

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Sacrosanct

Legend
I like to consider myself a creative guy. I've been writing adventures for 35 years. But the flavor text of some of these? It's almost like the adventures write themselves. So many ideas in my head....

Great stuff. And rot grubs are here! Yay! Well, not for my players' PCs :D

The only bad thing about Volo's guide is that it is rendering much of my 3PP material moot now ;)
 

I'm A Banana

Potassium-Rich
I was already pretty sold on this, but I love this. Probably my favorite preview of the bunch. DEFINITELY worth a slot on my bookshelf.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
I had a Barghest as a major enemy in my 4e game, now I want to have a pack of Barghest come after some adventurers who got on the wrong side of someone with "Friends on the Other Side". They are vicious, and in case anyone missed it, Pass Without Trace as an at-will spell. That means they roll stealth at a +14 most of the time when harrying the party.

They will get the drop on you, and then they will devour your soul.
 


I had a Barghest as a major enemy in my 4e game, now I want to have a pack of Barghest come after some adventurers who got on the wrong side of someone with "Friends on the Other Side". They are vicious, and in case anyone missed it, Pass Without Trace as an at-will spell. That means they roll stealth at a +14 most of the time when harrying the party.

They will get the drop on you, and then they will devour your soul.

They are vicious. That's for sure.

The devouring of soul part has been around since forever. I know it's supposed to be scary, but I always found it extremely dumb. You trap (not have destroyed, if there are souls, they are immortal) your soul by making a Faustian bargain, not by some random encounter.
 

GreenTengu

Adventurer
There are definitely some good ideas here, the only concern I have is that this presents it as though goblins have only one very specific habitat and set their lairs up only in one very specific way. Not even an indication that these are <adjective> goblins it is talking about-- so any idea of subraces is undercut from the very beginning.

It is saying that Goblins cannot live on tropical islands in huts mostly fishing and gathering fruits from the trees, but killing and eating anyone who comes to their island. Or on icy tundras, nomadic on the pack of their wolves as they hunt game and dig up whatever they can from the frost. Or have a particularly wild and savage tribe that heavily utilizes animals to do their labor and wield nature magics. Or live in the crust of an active volcano, adapted to the high heats and specializing in using minerals and metal-working. Or deep in the underdark as albino sightless creatures that get around by their sense of sound and smell and survive by eating mushrooms and anything they can take down by using numbers and pack tactics. Or as denizens of the feywild infused with unstable magical energies that cause them to mutate in odd ways so that no two look alike and living in hidden burrows. Or traveling the deserts as night-worshiping nomads with various adaptations that allow them to thrive in sandstorms and thus ambush people within them. Or sewer dwelling city underclass that live by lurking around at night and stealing whatever they can get their hands on, collecting whatever might be useful and dreaming of over-throwing the city they live beneath.

Maybe it would still allow for the random mutated blue-skinned one that pops up with psychic powers.

Because it applies adjective-less "goblin" specifically to the forest-dwelling miner variety, it doesn't leave room for all the myriad other ideas for goblin tribes with their own special adaptations and lifestyles that could be occupying radically different environments of the same world. Clearly the same sort of creature, but with slight adaptations and quite different cultures.
 

There are definitely some good ideas here, the only concern I have is that this presents it as though goblins have only one very specific habitat and set their lairs up only in one very specific way. Not even an indication that these are <adjective> goblins it is talking about-- so any idea of subraces is undercut from the very beginning.

It is saying that Goblins cannot live on tropical islands in huts mostly fishing and gathering fruits from the trees, but killing and eating anyone who comes to their island. Or on icy tundras, nomadic on the pack of their wolves as they hunt game and dig up whatever they can from the frost. Or have a particularly wild and savage tribe that heavily utilizes animals to do their labor and wield nature magics. Or live in the crust of an active volcano, adapted to the high heats and specializing in using minerals and metal-working. Or deep in the underdark as albino sightless creatures that get around by their sense of sound and smell and survive by eating mushrooms and anything they can take down by using numbers and pack tactics. Or as denizens of the feywild infused with unstable magical energies that cause them to mutate in odd ways so that no two look alike and living in hidden burrows. Or traveling the deserts as night-worshiping nomads with various adaptations that allow them to thrive in sandstorms and thus ambush people within them. Or sewer dwelling city underclass that live by lurking around at night and stealing whatever they can get their hands on, collecting whatever might be useful and dreaming of over-throwing the city they live beneath.

Maybe it would still allow for the random mutated blue-skinned one that pops up with psychic powers.

Because it applies adjective-less "goblin" specifically to the forest-dwelling miner variety, it doesn't leave room for all the myriad other ideas for goblin tribes with their own special adaptations and lifestyles that could be occupying radically different environments of the same world. Clearly the same sort of creature, but with slight adaptations and quite different cultures.

Interesting. So you've seen the entire section from the as-of-yet-unreleased book and can confirm it definitely states that the goblin descriptions we've seen on the page or two released so far are the only allowable type? After all, it would certainly be jumping to unsupported conclusions to have written all that based on just the currently released pages...
 
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GreenTengu

Adventurer
Interesting. So you've seen the entire section from the as-of-yet-unreleased book and can confirm it definitely states that the goblin descriptions we've seen on the page or two released so far are the only allowable type? After all, it would certainly be jumping to unsupported conclusions to have written all that based on just the currently released pages...

Well, yes-- in fact you can. The simple fact that the description of "goblin lairs" is done without giving them an adjective ("hill goblin" or "forest goblin") or specifying which region's goblins are being talked about does pretty definitively suggest that the idea is that this encompasses all "goblins" in the whole world without leaving any margin for those that live differently.

Granted-- from the intro I suppose one could say that the book is being written from the point-of-view of an unreliable narrator and so that does leave room...
 

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