D&D General I really LOVE Stomping Goblins

[HammerMan]

My players can absolutely turn a "rescue the princess" scenario into an argument about whether they should support the monarchy or join the dragon.

I love playing with smart people who have compatible senses of humor but it does make adventure design a challenge...

i have had a PC who is SMART (college educated and in the tech field with some decent history knowledge) ask not jokely "Why is he king, what are HIS quilfications" and we all had to pause for a moment... "Um, he is the son of the last king..."

 

[Sacrosanct]

It's no secret that I tend to lean more towards the more modern design changes (not all orcs are evil, get rid of default alignment, etc), but one thing that always struck me odd was how we give more moral weighting/judgment on TTPRGs than we do for things like CRPGs.

That is, if someone wants to treat all goblins as evil and should be killed with impunity are often described with pejoratives for that play style, but no one bats an eye when we play video games that have all goblins as inherently evil and are just there for the kill'n. People play TTRPGS for lots of different reasons, and believe it or not, some folks really don't care about the lore or story. Especially if time is short to play the session. I try not to judge folks who like playing hack and slash dungeons or just want simple lines between evil and good. It's a game, after all.

 

[Sacrosanct]

On a related note, years ago I wrote an adventure where the players play the "evil" races, and this image seems appropriate to the discussion

 

[billd91]

It's no secret that I tend to lean more towards the more modern design changes (not all orcs are evil, get rid of default alignment, etc), but one thing that always struck me odd was how we give more moral weighting/judgment on TTPRGs than we do for things like CRPGs.

That is, if someone wants to treat all goblins as evil and should be killed with impunity are often described with pejoratives for that play style, but no one bats an eye when we play video games that have all goblins as inherently evil and are just there for the kill'n. People play TTRPGS for lots of different reasons, and believe it or not, some folks really don't care about the lore or story. Especially if time is short to play the session. I try not to judge folks who like playing hack and slash dungeons or just want simple lines between evil and good. It's a game, after all.

Because it's more fulfilling to feel morally superior jabbing at our fellow gamers than a computer?

 

[Remathilis]

It's a shame they're MtG creatures, because the small cackler demons from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica could really fill the goblin niche.



I could see these guys as replacements for the Pathfinder 1E style of goblin that sings gleefully about killing dogs and eating babies.

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They have the Mimicry trait to mimic sounds and voices, so they could lay ambushes by mimicking past victims' cries for help or whatever. They also have Tasha's Hideous Laughter once per day, which is also good for incapacitating victims and forcing them to laugh as they get chopped down.

As a replacement for goblins, I think it would eventually end up in the same place.

Gnolls are basically in this design space already, they are living fiends that basically only have the humanoid type so you can cast "X person" spells on them and can't use protection from evil to stop them. They have no cultures but destruction, aren't even born of natural means, and exist to basically be Chaotic Evil: The Monster and WotC is having to back away from that due to outcry over always Evil outcries.

I'm sure any monster positioned to be a goblin replacement would, given enough time, see the same trend toward humanizing that has turned goblins into an adorable not-evil PC race.

 

[Reynard]

Because it's more fulfilling to feel morally superior jabbing at our fellow gamers than a computer?

I think it is because there is a more concrete separation between a video game and its audience than a TTRPG and its audience. It takes work for video game developers to get players to really internalize what is happening in the game, whereas that's sort of the default in RPGs. (I think this is also why the Satanic Panic people really targeted RPGs.) Not that folks can't enjoy RPGs at a very casual level.

For the record I don't think the game has to be beer and preztles to draw stark lines between good and evil forces.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

It's no secret that I tend to lean more towards the more modern design changes (not all orcs are evil, get rid of default alignment, etc), but one thing that always struck me odd was how we give more moral weighting/judgment on TTPRGs than we do for things like CRPGs.

I think it's because in computer RPGs and other video games you rarely have the option to interact with monsters other than by fighting, and monsters are rarely shown to have lives outside of fighting.

For example, the game Darkest Dungeon has the Swinefolk, who live in the Warrens and only appear in combat, with no structures or culture to speak of. If someone tried to make a Darkest Dungeon TTRPG and wrote an adventure module where the players go down into the Warrens the PCs might try to talk to the Swinefolk, find their dwellings, learn about their culture, see their young, wonder about the ethics of invading their home territory and killing them, etc.

 

[Sacrosanct]

For the record I don't think the game has to be beer and preztles to draw stark lines between good and evil forces.

True, and my comment overlapped the two, but I do understand they are mutually exclusive. You can have a very robust and fleshed out game world and still have clear "goblins are evil" setting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You don't kill goblins in video games because they are evil, you kill them because they have red rings around them.

 

[Scribe]

one thing that always struck me odd was how we give more moral weighting/judgment on TTPRGs than we do for things like CRPGs.

I think it's the basic understanding that any game like Baldurs Gate, or Kingmaker, there are challenges based on programming.