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.

SaveSave​

 

[Demetrios1453]

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...

Not really. The main lair describes a mine, but qualifies it ("If the lair was built around a mine...", "The ideal place for a goblin lair is in an abandoned mine..."), so logically there are lairs outside the stereotypical goblin mine described, or else those qualifiers would not be there. The first sentence of the section does state that goblins live in "shrouded valleys, shadowy forests, and caves and tunnels beneath the surface of the world", which gives quite some leeway on where one can find goblins - while many goblins live in lairs like the one being described, there are obviously some goblins who live above ground in places like forests and jungles as well as in isolated valleys in hills and mountains. Granted, that does leave out places like wide-open plains, frozen tundras, and in the sea and air, but of course a DM can just assume that the "most of" is to be understood from the text and that one is allowed to have the periodic goblin steppe nomads in one's game if one wants...

 

[Charles Rampant]

Tropical islands, which you mentioned, are not actually part of the normal 'D&D landscape', right? I mean, I can't think of anything in 5e that specifically looks or mentions a Caribbean style setup. I say this because it suggests that the lore and whatnot that they are putting out is really focused on the generic, uhm, forests-hills-islands-of-America style; thus the Goblin writeup might only do that, since they're not covering themes like 'Siberia' or 'Mayan Jungles' with this book. Whereas a future arctic themed adventure (which we might never get, since they've already covered Icewind Dale/Sea of Moving Ice thrice in the adventures (Legacy of the Crystal Shard, Rise of Tiamat, Storm King's Thunder) could concievably be the place that they experiment with Volcano-dwelling Goblins, or whatever.

Just a thought.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Tropical islands, which you mentioned, are not actually part of the normal 'D&D landscape', right? I mean, I can't think of anything in 5e that specifically looks or mentions a Caribbean style setup. I say this because it suggests that the lore and whatnot that they are putting out is really focused on the generic, uhm, forests-hills-islands-of-America style; thus the Goblin writeup might only do that, since they're not covering themes like 'Siberia' or 'Mayan Jungles' with this book. Whereas a future arctic themed adventure (which we might never get, since they've already covered Icewind Dale/Sea of Moving Ice thrice in the adventures (Legacy of the Crystal Shard, Rise of Tiamat, Storm King's Thunder) could concievably be the place that they experiment with Volcano-dwelling Goblins, or whatever.

Just a thought.

In the Forgotten Realms? The Jungles of Chult, which has a jungle-dwelling goblin tribe, the Batiri. It hasn't been featured yet, but it did get a mention in SCAG. As SKT dropped hints about a future Ring of Winter adventure, and that particular artifact was for a long time hidden in Chult, it would be a good way to re-introduce the area...