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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 3990137" data-attributes="member: 1861">Good Gaming: Goblins, Gewgaws, and Glorious Generalities Pt. 4: The Goblins in Fluff and CrunchWelcome back my friends, to the show that never ends . . . Good Gaming.  Now, what we’re working on today will be the wonders of expressing new and interesting Goblins with folklore and mythology surrounding the goblin adding some much-needed new flavor.  Before we start, let us establish what we know of our standard D&D goblin:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblins are small, green, warty creatures who have a somewhat primitive aspect to them.  They keep animals (dogs and worgs most often) for assistance in hunting and other tasks.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblins are naturally dexterous, but are weaker on average than your standard human.  Also, they have weak personalities or are just naturally ugly.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblins are talented riders and sneaks, and they attempt to use these traits to their advantage.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblins are as fast as most Medium creatures, and combining this quickness with their natural dexterity are good at ranged combat.  Their size also benefits them in being harder to hit (even more so due to their size) and the ability to hit in places which are not easily defended. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblins enjoy having many talents, and thus prefer to use those talents to their advantage if they decide to become heroes.  Their sneaky nature lends them naturally to being Rogues of some note.</li> </ul>Now, knowing these things about the Goblins from D&D, how do they mesh with what we have learned from our readings in previous articles?  Personally, I feel they mesh pretty well.  However, in most stories Goblins are more fey than humanoid, and have abilities that your normal goblin does not really get too quickly.  Since we’re not trying to change the goblins to the point of making them all conform to the Fey mandates, we’ll keep them where they are.  However, goblins do have a certain panache which we could associate with these fey tales, and grant them some abilities through different paths which could assist them in garnering some respect amongst their alleged ‘betters’. Goblins in myth and folklore have many different talents.  Shapeshifting, from the Puca and Lutin legends, suggest that Goblins may enjoy a certain amount of change.  Spriggans, a kissing cousin of the goblin, like changing their form to larger or smaller sizes.  Some goblin legends include mimicry, the ability to call flames, manipulation of weather and a general aura of assistance/malady which can surround the little green ones.  Now, how can we somewhat mimic these characteristics in our goblins to make for interesting gaming?Now, we are in a bit of luck.  Spriggans have been defined for us (though their form is considered more gnomelike according to D&D standards) in the <a href="http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1751&it=1" target="_blank">Fiend Folio</a> (P. 162-3).  When we look at the picture of the Spriggan provided, we see not really a gnome-like creature, but more of an Irish goblin; he has a shock of ginger hair, pale green skin, and hands which could crush Small creature’s skulls.  I’m not really feeling the Gnome interpretation on it, so we could simply adjusted the Spriggan to be Goblinesque.  Give them Goblin instead of Gnome, and perhaps some of the Goblinoid languages as possible other choices.  Now, I like the Spriggan not so much as an ‘every goblin is X’ proposition, but as a specialized or special goblin in and of itself.  Depending on your campaign, the Spriggan may be a goblin child who is trained in the arts of transmutation and uses a natural (or divine-gifted) talent to his advantage.  Or, if you are of a more Fey-loving aspect, perhaps Spriggan are warriors of one of the Fey courts or sects in your setting, goblins who have taken on the mantle of the Court and gained their abilities, or they may even be half-breeds; though the half would, of course, have to be defined by your setting.  Personally, I enjoy a changing look on the goblinoid version of the Spriggan; I prefer to view many of the different types of creatures as paths of knowledge.  In my Modern setting, goblins and other creatures learn how to use their natural powers in ways that would benefit them.  While some may never develop their talents (preferring to take other classes) these goblins go whole-heartedly into their work.  In my Modern game we use modified forms of different monster classes to represent these trainings.  Boggarts, for example, are goblins who have learned to use their mutability in ways which mimic a Doppelganger, while Spriggan goblins take on the aspects of a modified-for-Modern Spriggan.  Not many walk these paths, but those that do provide unique talents.The Lutin is another great example of such training.  A Lutin may be a wise man or woman of the tribe who is trained in the arts of changing form and manipulating crops, weather, and . . . well, I think we have a pretty easily defined path for the Lutin.  When I play a D&D game with goblins (especially so when dealing with a close-to-Earth mythology) Lutins are usually leaders or mystical advisors to the tribe, taking levels in Druid or Adept to change form.  The same may be used for Phooka in a sense; they may be the great mystic warriors and magi of the tribe, using their abilities to change into fearsome beasts and blend in to their advantage.  Of course, the Phooka may take a different tact.  Using the idea of the monster classes as ‘training’ to be a new type, I find that Dark Creeper (<a href="http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1751&it=1" target="_blank">Fiend Folio</a> p. 38) is a great path for your average goblin.  Imagine going into battle with a group of goblins when a single paler goblin with dark whirling tribal tattoos seems to wrap the shadows around itself, and begins to fight in a whirling arc of darkness around you?  Personally, I like the image.  Also, the natural sneak attack given improves them when they take those later Rogue levels, and they serve able infiltrators.  The natural improvements to Hide over Move Silently for your Dark Stalker also provide them able talents in the realms of sneaking, and a pair or trio of advanced Boblin 1.0 and 2.0 combined with a single Phooka would provide for some very interesting battles for your average players expecting an easy route.  Perhaps larger hybrids or even other Medium-sized goblinoids could also have Phooka members, who would easily be represented by the Dark Stalker. Now, we have a few interesting new goblins, but we may want some other items which could be useful to Goblins.  One of the easiest ways to grant Goblins advantages which could then prove to be to your PCs benefit is through new spellcraft.  Goblins have certain encumbrances which they deal with on a daily basis.  Their general weakness, their issues with dealing with other races, and their tiny size are detriments that they should be able to overcome through the use of spells and items (both magical and non-magical).  Most assume that because a goblin is just your average dirt-dwelling heel they will not have the effort to develop new and interesting gewgaw to assist them.  Remember how your average goblins breeds at a rate that Spanish Fly-addled rabbits would find excessive?  We all know that this is a boon to the strength of the goblin warren and society, but few think of the longterm benefits of goblin procreation; mainly that with a large cross-section of adult goblins of various generations, the acquisition and distribution of knowledge would be extensive over time.  Just as there are many breeding females, there are also far more ‘adult’ members of a goblin society to deal with possible problems at any given time in comparison to a humanoid group of similar size.  With their average Intelligence, it would be unthinkable that goblin workers, mystics, and warriors haven’t come together to improve their stock in trade whenever possible.  From observing games other the years with people who took goblins seriously, I have culled a small list of possibilities for your next foray into the green depths:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Coldburning Torches.  Listed here first as it is one of my favorite ideas.  Goblins realize that the humanoids use torchlight to see by, and find that the benefit is great enough as to cause them some issue during your average raid.  Therefore, goblins (along with assistance from other tribes and similar darkvision-using cultures) come up with coldlight.  These torches, while more expensive (the price should be determined individually; I would probably put it at around double to triple what you value a standard everburning torch) are only useful to darkvision users.  Through observation of the differences in vision, goblins practice creating light spells which only work in non-humanoid spectrums.  Similar to a booster for nightvision lenses, these torches extend the possible range of darkvision by half.  Perhaps goblins learn the art from other races who use similar technology, or they are the first.  With a bunch of small sconces or even just odd stalactites or tree hangings near an encampment, they have extended their useful defensive range by half.  When this idea was first posited at a gaming session awhile back, it was immediately locked on in our minds; now, there is a small cabal of DMs who have made their human PCs fearful of hanging art in darkvision-equipped encampments. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Animal Husbandry. And you thought that House Vadalis was the only group about working to build better animals.  Keeping dogs and wolves around their warrens, goblins develop a certain respect for the power of animals in their daily lives.  Therefore, it wouldn’t be too odd that they observe stronger, faster, or smarter mounts and animals and breed selectively for traits.  Goblin Experts and Lutin could easily enhance the dogs of a warren over time, and create new breeds.  Perhaps goblin warriors enjoy using their Lutin-bred mounts over standard riding dogs due to talented instruction.  Lutin and other tribal shamans may also decide to elevate certain animals (when possible) to a status of helpmate or trusted companion; goblin rangers and druids with their talented and powerful steeds and packdogs should not be the only ones with intelligent animals.  A friend’s campaign went so far as to assume that the worg itself was a variation in these experiments; goblins finding that if you Awakened enough breeding stock over time, their pups would slowly develop habits and usage of speech and language in ways unheard of in most other societies.  Thus, a pack of wolves led by an Awakened leader (perhaps itself in possession of a level or two in an appropriate class) could serve as a member not only of the working group, but as trained warriors at the disposal of the tribe. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Clan Items.  A friend posed this as a viable alternative to my presentation of monster classes.  Instead of using a series of training, ancestral artifacts of a shamanic culture gain their own powers and attributes over time.  If Boblin’s great-grandfather was a renowned Lutin who took the form of a great wolf with sable pelt and marking, the other tribal elders may have used the natural bond between the Lutin and his cloak to make a magical item.  This cloak, when empowered before hand with spell energy (usually cast two appropriate level spells into the cloak) would allow any member of the warren or goblinoid to take on the aspect of the wolf, or gain talents besides.  <a href="http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=27999&it=1" target="_blank">Legacy Items</a>, minor magical enhancements, and other abilities are quite useful for this particular type of clan item.  As this depends heavily on the type of magic or even supplements you utilize in a standard game, the normal caveat applies.</li> </ul>Now, I know that I did not apply any actual Crunch in this article; rather, this article and the series in general will serve as a guidebook to the ways of thinking about topics.  Crunchy bits are, sad to say, difficult for your average gamer to incorporate without balancing issues and the like.  I prefer giving ideas on possible fluff and its interpretation in already presented crunch to creating piecemeal a structure in which to operate.  Hopefully, you can forgive this ideology, as I have found that it is the most useful as a DM and a player to hold personally.I hope that I have presented you an intriguing view of goblins and their unique niche in folklore and mythology. If anything, these articles served as sort of the baseline for later possibilities.  As I have gotten a pretty hearty set of replies from some of you I think that these ideas are helping somebody out there.  If anything else, they are at least getting some ideas out there, which cannot be all that bad.  The next articles should be starting up, and currently I am juggling around some ideas on what to cover.  Any suggestions may be emailed to me: my username is the same as my email address at yaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!  (dot) com.  As always…Good Gaming,Slainte,-Loonook.</blockquote>

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