D&D (2024) Video previews for 2024 Players Handbook begin 6/18~

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Goblins had to be reprinted I think like 5 times in the 2014 era, something like that should be centralized.
I mean, arguably that's what Monsters of the Multiverse was for... It is supposed to still be compatible.

Moving goblins into the PHB alongside orcs makes a certain degree of sense, but failing that, I don't think there's much reason to reprint them unless they're adding something to them in the way they are goliaths (new giant lineages) or enough time has passed that MotM is going out of print and needs an update.
 

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Outside of D&D, goblins have had an enormous surge in popularity in the past decade, both inside gaming and without. If they're not in this PHB, they'll be in the next one.
The only problem is that the generally popular goblin doesn't have a lot of overlap with the official D&D goblin, in either looks or personality. I'd say the Pathfinder goblin comes closer. They're at least green, have the "ugly-cute little maniacs" vibe going. And both are a good distance from the widely popular Warcraft goblins.

If D&D wants to promote goblins to a higher status, they're probably going to have to cave to popular opinion a bit.
 





The only problem is that the generally popular goblin doesn't have a lot of overlap with the official D&D goblin, in either looks or personality. I'd say the Pathfinder goblin comes closer. They're at least green, have the "ugly-cute little maniacs" vibe going. And both are a good distance from the widely popular Warcraft goblins.

If D&D wants to promote goblins to a higher status, they're probably going to have to cave to popular opinion a bit.
Honestly, I'd argue they're not really all that different. Warcraft goblins are still "ugly-cute little maniacs", they're just filtered through a culture of mad scientists/engineers and scummy, uber-capitalist businessmen rather than the more typical, D&D-style scattered tribes of raiders living on the fringes of "civilization". It's a distinction of how the setting uses goblins, not a fundamental difference in what goblins are.

Even Eberron has goblins that are wildly different from the D&D "baseline", from city goblins that are more-or-less fully integrated into the society of modern Khorvaire to the cultural remnants of the ancient Dhakaani empire that dominated the continent before the first humans ever arrived.
 
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I mean, arguably that's what Monsters of the Multiverse was for... It is supposed to still be compatible.

Moving goblins into the PHB alongside orcs makes a certain degree of sense, but failing that, I don't think there's much reason to reprint them unless they're adding something to them in the way they are goliaths (new giant lineages) or enough time has passed that MotM is going out of print and needs an update.

My idea is Gobliniods species with Goblin, Hobgoblin, and Bugbear lineages since they are supposed to all.be related like Elves are to each other (Sea Elves, Shadar Kai, Eladrin, High Elves, Wild Elves, Drow, Astral Elves can be physically and magically very different from each other, like Gobliniods, except for size differences), Fey Ancestry can be a shared trait.
 

My idea is Gobliniods species with Goblin, Hobgoblin, and Bugbear lineages since they are supposed to all.be related like Elves are to each other (Sea Elves, Shadar Kai, Eladrin, High Elves, Wild Elves, Drow, Astral Elves can be physically and magically very different from each other, like Gobliniods, except for size differences), Fey Ancestry can be a shared trait.
I can see goblins getting the PHB treatment for various reasons, but bringing in the full set of goblinoids seems less likely to me.

Orcs fill a kind of visual niche that the '14 PHB only really had through the inclusion of half-orcs (which have now evaporated into the aether, as we all know), and goblins can fill a similar niche for small-sized characters that "legally-distinct hobbit" and "garden fixture" don't really cover. But trying to work in bugbears and hobgoblins as well just muddies the orc's place in the lineup. There's a meaningful difference between "big orc" and "small orc", but not so much between "big orc", "slightly less big orc", and "big, furry orc".

It also starts to run into the same kind of issues you'd have if the PHB elf entry were forced to cover every kind of elf (high, wood, dark, sea, eladrin, shadar-kai, astral, etc.). After a certain point, option variety and page space becomes a concern. Goblins are one extra page to the line-up. Goblinoids would be three. Gith would be two, and genasi four.

The more that are added, the larger the species chapter of the PHB balloons and the less distinct any individual option in the lineup becomes, even if there are compelling reasons for a given option's inclusion. We already have human, elf, dwarf, orc, halfling, gnome, goliath, dragonborn, tiefling, and aasimar in the '24 PHB, along with all the various lineage options included within those species. At the end of the day, there is a limit to what they can fit into the book.

I think goblins, by themselves, might be able to fit in under that limit, but probably not goblinoids as a whole.
 
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