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Legend
Finally got a chance to read/watch a bit about the 2024 Monster Manual fey video. I’ll start by saying something positive – Jeremy Crawford & Wesley Schneider’s enthusiasm for the new MM really shines through the talk, and I’m appreciative of the obvious passion they’ve poured into the book. The “anathema” weakness of archhags? That sounds awesome!
Moreso than other WotC press I’ve read/watched since announcement of the 2024 reboot, I found this fey video more illuminating about the team’s design goals – especially the parts about goblins becoming fey.
I disagree with these design goals / how they’re implementing them. Also, I found the designers’ assertions contradictory. Let’s get into it. I’ll include time stamps as I go.
False Sense of “The (Evolving) Game”
1:46 “This was a migration in the case of the goblinoids (to fey) that we began in MotM. This has actually been going on in the game for a number of years now. And now we finally had a chance to basically have the MM to catch up with where the game had already gone. So yes, just as in MotM, people are going to see that the whole goblinoid family is now in the fey category.”
I think it’s important to call out that “goblins becoming fey” is not a case of "the game" shifting in the same sense as they've discussed “the way players play” shifting thegame. It was not some inevitable happy accident of natural evolution. No. It was a result of the design team’s deliberate choices originating in 4th edition’s Heroes of the Feywild where there was a description of a branch of goblinkind inhabiting the Feywild goblin kingdom of Nachtur.
To reiterate: This is not an organic bottom-up progression through play. This is a designer choice to change the lore originating in 4th edition.
Narrative Constraining
3:13 “With the hobgoblin, we now have 3 kinds, all fey.”
Notice the different approach. In 4e, the feywild goblins were a branch or offshoot in addition to worldly goblins. In 2024 5e, the team is using language like “whole goblinoid family” and “[they’re] all fey” in regards to the goblin entry in the new MM.
Why does it matter? Because core books like the MM establish the contextual lore. We cannot assume players with the 2024 MM will know past goblin lore, not even from the 2014 MM. So if a player wants to run a goblin in 2024 D&D, the MM goblin entry is at odds with certain stories that players might think of regarding “goblin clan in the crags outside town.” No big deal, maybe the flavor text in the new MM accounts for that. But what if player goblin meets the new goblin leader of their family clan…and wants to cast charm person to sway their decision about a critical issue…now the “all fey” stats are working at odds with the narrative.
Instead of expanding the creative space for the GM, it sounds like the 2024 goblin entry is constraining it.
False Equivalency (and ugly implications)
5:33 “When we were working on a spell like hold person or charm person, that specifies it works on a humanoid, we knew that with the new MM there are some monsters that used to be targetable by the spell that the spell would just not work on them any longer… We also consider it a feature, not a bug, when sometimes you need to vary your tactics. It’s similar to not every damage type works against every monster, e.g. oh this creature resists fire… It’s the same with some spells that apply conditions.”
Typically, when a creature has an immunity, there is a clear reason within the imaginative play space that players can reason out “ok, I’m not going to be able to charm a suit of animated armor” or “ok, the fire elemental is probably immune to fire.” Those are apples. The designers are trying to make an equivalence between those apples and the orange of “your charm person fails on a goblin…because a goblin is not aperson humanoid.”
Right away, that’s jarring to the imaginative play space. Maybe a player onboarded with Baldur’s Gate 3, and they made good use of charm person in the goblin camp…and they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised in the 2024 rules…that’s an example of being unnecessarily jarring to the shared imaginative play space.
SIDE NOTE: There are also ugly implications to have goblins in the game that are not affected by hold/charm/dominate person – I know it's "just semantics", but the words matter in a game like D&D and I can imagine younger players getting into the "goblins aren't people" rabbit hole. Given the design choices made around orcs and avoiding racist stereotypes...it's hard to see this change as coming from the same playbook.
Stat Block Miscommunication
6:37 “When it comes to playable species, there is a dividing wall in our design between playable species on one hand and monsters on another. It’s really important to remember that each individual stat block represents either just one monster or a number of monsters like it within a larger family… If you go to goblin in the MM there are a bunch of stat blocks that all do different things, which communicates very clearly no one of these stat blocks represents all goblins.”
OK. Put a pin in what they say about the wall between player species design & monster design. In a moment, you’ll see it’s B.S.
Look at what is being said about all the goblins in the 2024 MM being of the Fey type. That works contrary to the designers’ implied claim that “just because one goblin stat block is Fey, doesn’t mean all goblins are Fey.” No. If you present all the stat blocks for goblins in the MM as Fey…that’s what GMs see…that’s what is replicated in D&DBeyond, Kobold Fight Club, Foundry, Roll20, etc, etc, etc. Stat blocks are being consumed independent of flavor text – that’s part of the digital ecosystem that 5e and WotC has created.
You support the idea that “not all goblins are Fey” by giving the GM a non-fey goblin stat block. Period.
Contradictory Doublespeak
7:54 “Player character design is not in any way guided by what we do with monsters…
10:36: “…but then also people are going to see that we are going to - over the coming years - introduce more playable options that aren’t humanoid. We have some fun stuff coming that demonstrates that.”
Okaaaaaaay. That’s just marketing doublespeak over a blatant contradiction in their design. “Player-character goblins are not fey because of this very clearly defined wall between PC species design and monster design that we’ve reiterated throughout this video…unless you buy our future product where it turns out players can be fey goblins!”
Cherry Picking Faerie Tales
12:30 “That was also part of our motivation a number of years ago moving the goblinoids into the Feywild, because in most folktales and other stories in modern media, goblins are a type of fey. We have fully embraced that.”
Well…it’s good to have inspiration…but this is a logical fallacy. What other creatures in D&D originated in folkloric faerie tales? Kobolds, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, ogres – to name a fey. There isn’t something about goblins that makes them inherently more fey than those other creatures in D&D.
Again, this is a top-down designer-originating decision. This is not a player-originating shift.
Moreso than other WotC press I’ve read/watched since announcement of the 2024 reboot, I found this fey video more illuminating about the team’s design goals – especially the parts about goblins becoming fey.
I disagree with these design goals / how they’re implementing them. Also, I found the designers’ assertions contradictory. Let’s get into it. I’ll include time stamps as I go.
False Sense of “The (Evolving) Game”
1:46 “This was a migration in the case of the goblinoids (to fey) that we began in MotM. This has actually been going on in the game for a number of years now. And now we finally had a chance to basically have the MM to catch up with where the game had already gone. So yes, just as in MotM, people are going to see that the whole goblinoid family is now in the fey category.”
I think it’s important to call out that “goblins becoming fey” is not a case of "the game" shifting in the same sense as they've discussed “the way players play” shifting thegame. It was not some inevitable happy accident of natural evolution. No. It was a result of the design team’s deliberate choices originating in 4th edition’s Heroes of the Feywild where there was a description of a branch of goblinkind inhabiting the Feywild goblin kingdom of Nachtur.
To reiterate: This is not an organic bottom-up progression through play. This is a designer choice to change the lore originating in 4th edition.
Narrative Constraining
3:13 “With the hobgoblin, we now have 3 kinds, all fey.”
Notice the different approach. In 4e, the feywild goblins were a branch or offshoot in addition to worldly goblins. In 2024 5e, the team is using language like “whole goblinoid family” and “[they’re] all fey” in regards to the goblin entry in the new MM.
Why does it matter? Because core books like the MM establish the contextual lore. We cannot assume players with the 2024 MM will know past goblin lore, not even from the 2014 MM. So if a player wants to run a goblin in 2024 D&D, the MM goblin entry is at odds with certain stories that players might think of regarding “goblin clan in the crags outside town.” No big deal, maybe the flavor text in the new MM accounts for that. But what if player goblin meets the new goblin leader of their family clan…and wants to cast charm person to sway their decision about a critical issue…now the “all fey” stats are working at odds with the narrative.
Instead of expanding the creative space for the GM, it sounds like the 2024 goblin entry is constraining it.
False Equivalency (and ugly implications)
5:33 “When we were working on a spell like hold person or charm person, that specifies it works on a humanoid, we knew that with the new MM there are some monsters that used to be targetable by the spell that the spell would just not work on them any longer… We also consider it a feature, not a bug, when sometimes you need to vary your tactics. It’s similar to not every damage type works against every monster, e.g. oh this creature resists fire… It’s the same with some spells that apply conditions.”
Typically, when a creature has an immunity, there is a clear reason within the imaginative play space that players can reason out “ok, I’m not going to be able to charm a suit of animated armor” or “ok, the fire elemental is probably immune to fire.” Those are apples. The designers are trying to make an equivalence between those apples and the orange of “your charm person fails on a goblin…because a goblin is not a
Right away, that’s jarring to the imaginative play space. Maybe a player onboarded with Baldur’s Gate 3, and they made good use of charm person in the goblin camp…and they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised in the 2024 rules…that’s an example of being unnecessarily jarring to the shared imaginative play space.
SIDE NOTE: There are also ugly implications to have goblins in the game that are not affected by hold/charm/dominate person – I know it's "just semantics", but the words matter in a game like D&D and I can imagine younger players getting into the "goblins aren't people" rabbit hole. Given the design choices made around orcs and avoiding racist stereotypes...it's hard to see this change as coming from the same playbook.
Stat Block Miscommunication
6:37 “When it comes to playable species, there is a dividing wall in our design between playable species on one hand and monsters on another. It’s really important to remember that each individual stat block represents either just one monster or a number of monsters like it within a larger family… If you go to goblin in the MM there are a bunch of stat blocks that all do different things, which communicates very clearly no one of these stat blocks represents all goblins.”
OK. Put a pin in what they say about the wall between player species design & monster design. In a moment, you’ll see it’s B.S.
Look at what is being said about all the goblins in the 2024 MM being of the Fey type. That works contrary to the designers’ implied claim that “just because one goblin stat block is Fey, doesn’t mean all goblins are Fey.” No. If you present all the stat blocks for goblins in the MM as Fey…that’s what GMs see…that’s what is replicated in D&DBeyond, Kobold Fight Club, Foundry, Roll20, etc, etc, etc. Stat blocks are being consumed independent of flavor text – that’s part of the digital ecosystem that 5e and WotC has created.
You support the idea that “not all goblins are Fey” by giving the GM a non-fey goblin stat block. Period.
Contradictory Doublespeak
7:54 “Player character design is not in any way guided by what we do with monsters…
10:36: “…but then also people are going to see that we are going to - over the coming years - introduce more playable options that aren’t humanoid. We have some fun stuff coming that demonstrates that.”
Okaaaaaaay. That’s just marketing doublespeak over a blatant contradiction in their design. “Player-character goblins are not fey because of this very clearly defined wall between PC species design and monster design that we’ve reiterated throughout this video…unless you buy our future product where it turns out players can be fey goblins!”
Cherry Picking Faerie Tales
12:30 “That was also part of our motivation a number of years ago moving the goblinoids into the Feywild, because in most folktales and other stories in modern media, goblins are a type of fey. We have fully embraced that.”
Well…it’s good to have inspiration…but this is a logical fallacy. What other creatures in D&D originated in folkloric faerie tales? Kobolds, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, ogres – to name a fey. There isn’t something about goblins that makes them inherently more fey than those other creatures in D&D.
Again, this is a top-down designer-originating decision. This is not a player-originating shift.
