Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2010618" data-attributes="member: 24255">The Slayer's Guide to GoblinsMongoose Publishing product number MGP0020 Shawn Girard 32 pages, $9.95The 20th in the ever-expanding line of successful "Slayer's Guides" takes a look at that fantasy staple, the goblin.The cover, by Anne Stokes, shows a small band of goblins along a cliffside, preparing to ambush the small caravan passing below.  The placement of figures is not optimal, however, for what looks to be the goblin shaman has his face obliterated by the word "Goblins" in the title.  (Since the Slayer's Guide cover layouts have not changed since the original, you'd think they might have foreseen this.)  The inside front cover has the ubiquitous Chris Quilliams anatomical diagram, this time also in color as well.  Chris is up to his usual high standards; I'll state for the record that I think his goblin profile is singlehandedly the BEST goblin depiction I've ever seen.  (I plan to use it in my own campaign to show my players what a goblin looks like.)  The rest of the illustrations - 13 in all, plus the map to the accompanying short adventure - are black and white, of merely average quality.Perhaps I should explain that last statement.  I make no secret of the fact that I am a major Chris Quilliams fan.  He has the ability to completely capture the essence of the creature in question whenever he does one of his anatomical diagrams.  The last "Slayer's Guide" I looked at ("Kobolds") had a wonderful "unity of vision" throughout because the interior artist made his kobolds look the same as Chris'.  Sadly, this is not the case with "The Slayer's Guide to Goblins."  The interior artist, Patricio Soler - while talented in his own right - fails to match the "look" of his goblins to those inside the front cover.  Worse, he fails to keep his goblins consistent with his own goblins: the one on page 5 fits in nicely with the Quilliams goblin (not surprisingly, it's my favorite of Soler's work here), but the one on page 18 looks like some kind of dinosaur man, and the one on page 29 is anybody's guess.  (If pressed, I'd have to say it was a long-horned planarian-worm-headed humanoid.)Lest anybody think I'm just picking on Patricio, Anne's cover painting also fails to match Chris' goblin standard, but at least she's consistent among the six goblin figures we can see in the foreground of the picture.  Also, I'm not arbitrarily picking Chris' as "the right goblin depiction" because I happen to like his artwork better, either - his happens to be the only one of the three to completely fit the description of the creatures on page 4.  Anne forgets about the goblins' sloping foreheads; Patricio only remembers about half of the time.Okay, I've dwelt on artwork long enough - on to the written content.  Shawn Girard (who for some reason is credited only as "S Girard" on the front cover), does an outstanding job on depicting the filth and cruelty of the goblin.  Despite the fact that this is his first "Slayer's Guide," he ranks up there at the top part of the "Slayer's Guide" writers list as far as I'm concerned.  "The Slayer's Guide to Goblins" follows the standard format, giving us the following chapters:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Introduction - describing the purpose of the "Slayer's Guide" line and following with a page-long bit of fiction</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblin Physiology - focusing on skin coloration, body modification and adornment, goblin lifecycle, diet, mindset, and a sidebar depicting the mythological goblin origin story</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblin Habitat - a quick look at goblin warrens and how a tribe goes about moving on to new lands</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblin Society - focusing on leadership, raiding, slavery, more on warrens, religion (with details of the same deity, "The Mighty One," that hobgoblins worship), a goblin prestige class, and 4 goblin spells</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Methods of Warfare - where we learn about goblin scouts, archers, worgs, and ambushes</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Roleplaying With Goblins - focusing on their brutality and cowardice</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> 6 Scenario Hooks and Ideas</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> The Torn Heads Warren - a very nicely done goblin lair</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Goblin Reference List</li> </ul>Shawn deserves much credit for taking a well-known (and somewhat ho-hum) monster and making it CREEPY again.  Time and again he drops in a little fact that reinforces that goblins are just plain EVIL.  Want some examples?  Female goblins usually give birth to twins or triplets - uh-huh, interesting, makes sense given their proclivity for rapid tribal repopulation after numerous combat losses - oh, and pregnant females often eat the weakest of the tribal young to nourish themselves as they grow the next generation in their wombs.  Disgusting!--and yet it makes perfect sense.  Female slaves (of other races) are often forced to wet-nurse goblin young, and once the young grow big enough they devour their former wet-nurse.  Ugh!  And speaking of slavery, guess what slaves of goblins are often fed?  You guessed it: flesh from slain slaves (in this way, the goblins save the best food for themselves, get rid of their oldest and weakest slaves, and inflict psychological torment on the other slaves all in one fell swoop).The book is filled with all kinds of fascinating little tidbits that to my mind make the goblin much more interesting than I'd ever deemed possible.  Female goblins can determine the gender of their unborn offspring.  Goblins believe that worgs are imbued with the bravest of slain goblin spirits - this would certainly explain why the two species work so well together.  Communal goblin females (those "shared" by the rank-and-file goblin warriors) are called "the stew."  (Why?  Beats me, but it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)  Shawn breathes real life into these nasty little critters!As far as some of the new things go, I really like the goblin prestige class, although its name ("the skulk") could potentially cause some confusion since skulks are also a separate race of D&D creatures dating back to First Edition.  I like the fact that it's only a 5-level prestige class, no bigger than it needs to be, really.  The four new spells are well thought out and have a definite "goblin feel" to them, although I was surprised they weren't alphabetized (not a big deal, though, since they're all on one page), and "Vision of the Wolf" should probably have been called "Vision of the Worg," seeing as how it's based on seeking out and finding the nearest worg, not wolf.  The adventure at the back ties everything nicely together: narrow little goblin passageways in their warrens, traps, one of the new spells, filth, etc.  It gives plenty of attention to goblin tactics, so DMs should have no trouble giving their goblin-hunting PCs a run for their money.There is short snippets of fiction interspersed throughout the book, something fairly common in a "Slayer's Guide."  Shawn's fiction bits are okay, recounting a fairly standard adventuring party's encounters with a group of goblins.  I won't give anything away, but he managed to make the story much more interesting by rearranging the sequence of events somewhat.This might be an unusual thing to point out in a review (at least, I haven't seen many reviews doing so), but kudos to Lucya Szachnowski, credited on the Table of Contents page as the Proof-Reader.  "The Slayer's Guide to Goblins" has the fewest number of typos in recent memory of all the "Slayer's Guides" I've seen.  While still not perfect (I caught a missing question mark, a missing space, and a couple of capitalization errors in one of the spell listings), the typos were few and far between.  (Typos are by no means solely a Mongoose problem; they seem to be prevalent among most d20 company's products, so a good proofreader's worth her weight in gold.)I also noticed some new formatting changes with this product.  First of all, the inside back cover has been given up for ad space.  I don't know if I like that or not.  It's kind of jarring, since I've come to expect a lair map or rules table summary to be there, but if it's needed to keep the price of the "Slayer's Guide" line from increasing then I'm all for it.  Also, I noticed that Mongoose is playing around with putting a "shadow" underneath the chapter headings (or most of them, anyway - they forgot to do it to "Goblin Reference List").  I think it makes the headings too cluttered and hardr to read; maybe they should consider lightening the shadows considerably if they want to keep up with this approach.Speaking of the "Goblin Reference List" section, I notice that the statistics of the various sample goblins - goblin chief, goblin shaman, goblin warrior/archer, goblin cavalry, etc. - have been "squished" together to make more room.  I don't know if this was done because the inside back cover ad ate up some room (I'm thinking that normally the lair map would have gone there), but it's not a bad idea regardless.  Since they bolded the stat categories it's just as easy to find anything as it would have been using the standard "Monster Manual" format, only it takes up far less space this way.  It might be a good idea to carry on with this format in the future.All in all, this is an excellent addition to the "Slayer's Guide" line - I think "The Slayer's Guide to Goblins" is among my favorite five of the 20 published so far.  I rate it a strong four stars and recommend it for anyone wishing to bring the creepiness back to the well-worn goblin.  And I hope that Shawn Girard starts work on another "Slayer's Guide" in the near future!</blockquote>

Verification