D&D 5E Starter Set Excerpt 5

[RichGreen]

I really like the DiTerlizzi (and 3e) kobolds. Will be cool to see how the 5e ones turn out.

Cheers


Rich

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That image is pretty green, but 4e sometimes suffered from a dissonance between art and text. The 4e MM described all goblinkind like this:

When the art cleaved closer to the text, you'd find yellow-reddish goblins, such as in Keep on the Shadowfell:

Which was a terribly un-goblin-y look. Fat little reddish-yellow pig-men are not goblins. Another example of how utterly terrible KotS was on every level, I guess!

Or in my own image from Dungeon magazine:

Whereas that looks like a goblin. In fact it's a great piece. My brain immediately sees a goblin there. Totally unlike the 5E ones.

And the armor and weapons depicted could very well pass for scavenged (a slightly-too-large cleaver, elbow armor doubling as vambraces), but bear in mind that there *are* technologically advanced races of a similar size to goblins, so there's no reason they can't be found in decently-made metal armor. 1e calls them out as using short swords and military picks, while 2e mentions that they make their own garments and leather goods. Both editions describe them as good miners, as well as being slavers, so taking slaves to create metal items for them is hardly a stretch.

The extreme stylization makes them unbelievable to me as scavenged. They're clearly Uruk-Hai manufacture, not Gnome, Halfling or even Kobold. 4E shows them in decently-made armour - just not stylized weapon-matching Uruk-Hai-style armour.

They're a yellowish-brown, almost ochre, which is in the range given in the descriptive text of all editions since AD&D.

I would debate that, but that might get very boring indeed! Not having an option for green goblins is silly business, to me, but whatever. I do remember we found it patently stupid, in 2E, that neither orcs nor goblins were green, when we knew from art of both (not just D&D art, of course), that they were. I notice orcs moved from bizarre creepy pig-men to much more "If-not-noble-then-at-least-badass savage"-types over the history of D&D.

 

[Lalato]

My opinion on the new goblins... Not ugly enough. Same goes for the concept art on hobgoblins and bugbears.

I don't mind that they look tough and organized, but they should be a little uglier. I think that's what's really missing here.

That said... As they are, they are just two buck teeth away from being rat people. And I guess that's ok if you're into rat people.

 

[DMZ2112]

It's a relative scale, dude. He put Hill Giants at 1 (who are hunter-gatherers, or "cavemen" as it he puts it), Mind Flayers at 10, by that scale, we'd be at like, 20.

Look, I wasn't even really commenting on the scale itself -- I think the argument of who is more civilized than whom in D&D is open to way too much interpretation of the works of numerous authors in settings that for the most part have had only the most halfhearted sort of content uniformity until now.

You said our civilization is three days without new food from descending into chaos. I was just using the context of the conversation to point out that maybe that's because we're not as advanced as we think we are.

Sorry about the dumb! I meant the idea was dumb then I realized it read like you were dumb, which you are not.

It's okay, I do it all the time and privately hate that e-mail notification is instantaneous.

For ART, I should have been clear. So the aesthetics will or theoretically should reflect FR aesthetics. Esp. as this is from an FR-specific adventure is it not?

Phandelver is an FR adventure, yeah. But one of the (contentious) precepts of D&D5 is that a goblin is a goblin is a goblin, no matter what world you're on. If it's not a goblin, it gets a different name. I would not expect Krynnish or Oerthling goblins to look any different.

 

[DMZ2112]

Goblins have been yellow or red since 1e (with hobgoblins being orange and bugbears being yellow). The one thing they never were is green. Gray or gray-green is for orcs, in D&D.

I attached a compilation I did a while back of the looks of goblinoids from 1e to 4e. D&D goblins have always made their own weapons, or successfully adapted those of similar races (really, it's not like goblins couldn't just scavenge dwarven, gnomish or halfling armor/weapons). In 1e and 2e they were stockier, 3e went for a lankier look, and 4e found a middle ground.

(image snipped)

Great post! I've always been fond of Sam Wood's goblinoids but in my mind I've always added noses. That's always been humanoid identification rule one, for me; look at the nose. Orcs don't have them, or they're so upturned so as to appear to be missing; goblinoids have great schnozzes, and kobolds have snouts.

Color is rule two: orcs are grey-green, goblinoids are yellow-orange, and kobolds are red-brown. Glad to know I wasn't too far off, there.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You said our civilization is three days without new food from descending into chaos. I was just using the context of the conversation to point out that maybe that's because we're not as advanced as we think we are.

Sure, it's just that I can't think of complex civilizations that didn't hover on the edge of collapse because civilizations become advanced and complex through specialization (which is what agriculture allows, even though it initially reduces food-per-person compared to hunting/gathering, typically), but specialization means that, well, you're closer to the edge than if everyone is a hunter-gatherer and capable of surviving alone or in small groups.

Phandelver is an FR adventure, yeah. But one of the (contentious) precepts of D&D5 is that a goblin is a goblin is a goblin, no matter what world you're on. If it's not a goblin, it gets a different name. I would not expect Krynnish or Oerthling goblins to look any different.

Whaaaaaaaat?! That's a terrible precept! Have you got a source for that?

 

[DMZ2112]

Whaaaaaaaat?! That's a terrible precept! Have you got a source for that?

James Wyatt, Worlds of D&D, 18 Dec 2013:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20131218

 

[Ruin Explorer]

James Wyatt, Worlds of D&D, 18 Dec 2013:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4wand/20131218

Oh, I remember voting "THAT'S A BLOODY STUPID IDEA, JAMES!" or something to that effect on that one. By that logic, we shouldn't have Taladasian Nyglai Hardinoe Dwarves as a subrace, because they're "just Mountain Dwarves", even though they're Dwarves who've never been below ground a day in their life and have a completely different background and culture to Mountain Dwarves. The whole article seems muddy, conceptually.

I guess it just means we end up with a 2E situation, where you have things like "Racename, Worldversion" (Goblin, Krynnian, or whatever).

 

[DMZ2112]

Oh, I remember voting "THAT'S A BLOODY STUPID IDEA, JAMES!" or something to that effect on that one. By that logic, we shouldn't have Taladasian Nyglai Hardinoe Dwarves as a subrace, because they're "just Mountain Dwarves", even though they're Dwarves who've never been below ground a day in their life and have a completely different background and culture to Mountain Dwarves. The whole article seems muddy, conceptually.

I guess it just means we end up with a 2E situation, where you have things like "Racename, Worldversion" (Goblin, Krynnian, or whatever).

I think we could do worse.

I doubt it's going to be the new fresh hell that everyone seems to think, though. We will likely see some mechanical homogenization of, say, Hylar and Shield Dwarves, but there will still be need to differentiate between Hylar and Daewar, so I doubt it will go much further than that. The only world I see having serious trouble is Eberron, because they went out of their way to buck so many trends.

...I kind of think it serves them right, but that's not a very charitable position.

For my part I think a D&D goblin ought to always be recognizable as a D&D goblin.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think we could do worse.

I doubt it's going to be the new fresh hell that everyone seems to think, though. We will likely see some mechanical homogenization of, say, Hylar and Shield Dwarves, but there will still be need to differentiate between Hylar and Daewar, so I doubt it will go much further than that. The only world I see having serious trouble is Eberron, because they went out of their way to buck so many trends.

...I kind of think it serves them right, but that's not a very charitable position.

Doesn't matter if it's uncharitable, the problem is that it's unreasonable, and causes real issue for a major, popular D&D setting (the only popular new D&D setting written in the last decade or so, too).

Likewise it causes problems for Dark Sun, potential problems for Krynn, and I imagine for other settings.

Luckily, if that article was the last we heard of it, they may have given up on it. Worst of all, there's something very very "un-D&D" about that kind of homogenization, in an edition of D&D that's supposed be really D&D-ish.

For my part I think a D&D goblin ought to always be recognizable as a D&D goblin.

I'm sure Marketing agrees, but I'm not so sure that every D&D group has a sufficiently similar vision for that to really be viable. Plus, if so, they screwed up, here, because those goblins are far LESS recognizable as goblins than, say, Klaus' goblin (though not as bad as the "What is that even supposed to be?! "goblin" from KotS)

I think it also misses a trick in that, if you're looking to expand beyond existing fan markets, and you call something a goblin, then someone who has never seen a D&D goblin before should recognise it as such, and I'm not so sure that people who'd been exposed to goblins in general fantasy would pick those up as goblins at all.