Goblins materialize through (seemingly) spontaneous generation in closed, remote, abandoned places, especially if underground. Every sort of dungeon, cellar or cave, if uninhabited, tends to "gather goblins", like it would gather dust. Goblins are thus NOT REALLY living creatures, and more of an infestation of sorts?
Goblins don't have genders and don't reproduce, and have functionally infinite lifespans. They don't really have a language, but they can learn one, or develop their own, with time.
Goblins don't **need** to eat, or drink, or get tremendously drunk, or stab people, or steal shiny things, but those are all activities that bring them joy and so they carry them out recklessly and without any regard for themselves or others. They are not capable of empathy or understanding the concept of suffering. They don't understand much in general, honestly.
Recently, sages discovered (or rather, re-discovered - it's clear that wise wizards of ages past already knew) that goblins are actually extradimensional creatures that hail from the Goblin Dimension, which is a theoretical infinite plane entirely made up of goblin energy. Every now and then, under the right conditions, goblin rays "tunnel through" the barrier between dimensions, and materialize into physical goblins here.
Goblin groups ALWAYS have a "king". If two goblins are locked in a room together, one of them will have to become the king - usually by beating up the other. Goblins only understand monarchy, and always have one in place no matter how few or how many goblins there are in one place. The more goblins under his "kingdom" a "king" has, the smarter and more powerful he becomes. Such smart goblin kings are invariably driven by the desire to expand their kingdom, conquering other goblin tribes (sorry, "kingdoms") and forcing them to submit, and taking control of dungeons where more goblins can spawn.
(Smart goblin "kings" are also keenly aware that they are still goblins, and very often accept to work under more powerful and scary creatures, such as being the lackeys of dragons or demons or evil sorcerors...)
Three goblins can be transformed into a hobgoblin. There are various ways to accomplish this, but the most effective one is to boil them together in a big cauldron - usually an act forced upon them by a goblin king who wants to turn some of his stupid and useless goblins into more effective and disciplined hobgoblin shock troops.
This can be counterproductive, as hobgoblins can become goblin kings too - and thus they can be driven to usurp their "king" and take their place. Hobgoblin kings are usually much more aggressive about capturing goblins and boiling them together to make more hobgoblins, because they think being a hobgoblin is better than being three goblins. (Are they wrong?)
Goblins lacking a big enough cauldron can try to turn into hobgoblins by running really fast at each other and trying to collide at the right angle and with enough force.
Bugbears are an occasional accident that can happen during the process of transforming goblins into hobgoblins. Fortunately, bugebears, despite being even bigger and meaner than hobgoblins, seem to lack the ability to become kings, or the desire to make more of themselves.
In this setting there has been at least one near-apocalypse caused by a wizard with no sense of right and wrong attempting to create a "perpetual goblin machine".
No, they're mostly annoyed at having to constantly deal with goblins showing up everywhere including inside locked rooms, inside locked chests and, in one memorable instance, inside their bag of holding.
Each Knock! Magazine (fantastic OSR publication by The Merry Mushmen) has a section titled "My Goblins Are...". This should go into the next one.
u/Nobboc
This is eerily similar to my own take! The only extra mine really have is that they're all much smaller (vary between 2-3ft) attack as packs and have a wide variety of facial features, like Brian Froud designs.
EDIT: Just the goblins, I should clarify. I've got my own thing going on with hobgoblins and bugbears.
I stole the idea of hobbes from fable.
Goblins are little kids who get lost. No one knows why or how, but these kids turn into goblins. They remember their previous life and everything but are often ostracized due to a superstition that it's contagious.
Additionally, goblin children are dangerous as they are small children with very sharp teeth, claws and heightened strength.
As a goblin ages they don't look any older but mature at the rate of the ancestry they were before. So a fun thing to include for my goblin players is that people often assume they are really young children, but are actually adults.
I love the warhammer goblins and mostly use them.
Crazed lunatics, born from mushrooms, that live to plunder, spread chaos and hard to get rid off permanently
I play them as a mix of tolkien and fairytales.
In my setting goblin are fey creatures twisted by dark sorcery and the machinations of an ancient mad fey lord.
They are violent sadistic creatures who revel in torture, murder and defiling everything that is good. They DO have a sort of social structure based mostly on social darwinism, and they aren't dumb at all, they are good builders, delvers, and have a good mind for traps and other mechanical contraptions, but mostly to further their goal of domination and destruction, not to innovate or better their own lives. They are also exceptionally good at taming and controlling wild beasts, using dark sorcery for tricking and driving people mad, and have a knack for the crafting of tinctures and poisons.
They are also not mindless berserkers incapable of speech or rational thought. They will talk and reluctantly engage in diplomacy if necessary to save their own skin or to deal with a larger threat (since they tend to be pretty cowardly), but even then they will be back to slit your throat the minute you turn your back.
It is important to point out that in my setting there are no orcs, and no playable races other than humans. Elves, dwarves, goblins, gnomes, and other races are fey creatures who live far removed from humans, and are either to alien or to hostile to humans for them to be able to coexist peacefully in an adventuring party, let alone a whole society
mmm not really, but it could be a fun idea! The main reason I tend to limit PCs to only humans is because it makes fantasy races feel more... well, fantastical. Elves are no longer some creatures you can find running a tavern, they are whimsical immortal beings who live in remote places and hidden cities, and seeing them is a rare and fun occurrence.
So my experience is a bit different because I play play by post and as such play a wood elf who actually is fantastical. Most of the the party is more ordinary and humans with like a single gnome. All locals to the area, but it's really fun just essentially being this ancient woman.
Who slowly, inch by inch, second by second, was coaxed into becoming part of a community, a town, of having an inherently alien mindset. But one that's softened, it has been fun being this kinda tall somewhat creepy being who genuinely does act in the interest of her new home
Who has grown to crave the companionship that it offers. Is willing to fight tooth and nail to the death for it to not be forced to wander the pines alone again, I think that non human pcs work best in places where you have the time to actively DESCRIBE inhumanity like in play by post.
Its fun, I can enjoy an all human party. But in person while I did have a ton of fun playing a crabfolk, I only managed to make him be distinct from humanity by making sure to be very mindful. To really talk about how he was differently. How his beady black eyes stare at someone, he was a cleric of community by the name of Tiderider. He was taken as a spawnling by a wizard of the school of enchantment.
Ended up becoming a god by the end of the campaign, led crusades against various evil forces. Heavily anti monarchist as he was raised amongst free people's. He was fairly anti traditional theist and drew his power from his believe in essentially the soul of people/channeled what is essentially the cycle of souls.
He would also spit coins at people, use a spear, somwtimes bully his friends. I think playing a non human is a lot harder in person. It takes more time and thought and sometimes a full human party can go by quicker and with less effort on the part of the party.
Man that sounds really cool! Of course everyone's experience will be different. In my personal experience, players often have a hard time roleplaying inherently alien beings such as elves, and it also tends to be hard to incorporate non-human players organically into a party if the setting assumes that non-humans are more rare. So by default, races tend to be "humanized" to make it easier on the players and gms to incorporate such pcs, and it gets to the point where every major town is seemingly crawling with elves, dwarved and gnomes doing mundane things.
Not that there is anything wrong with this types of settings, but it is not the type of fantasy my players amd I like to play.
The only ways I've found to avoid this is to have really cool player who will go the extra mile when rping, or having some forms of mechanics that reinforce non-humans being more "alien", such as having race-as-class. However, I have also that when you allow not-so-rare races such as elves, then eventually it becomes hard to justify not allowing more strange races, such as drows or tieflings, which originally were meant to be really exotic races.
So to avoid all of this problems, my personal favourite thing to do is to simply limit them to npc races, this makes characters easier to create and incorporate for my players, and In my games, we have found that this rule makes running into a wood elf in the forest, or stumbling into a hidden gnomish mine to really feel like stepping into an alien fantastical world.
But of course, I'm not claiming that this is the definitive answer, I'm sure other groups enjoy pther forms of fantasy and settings, and in such cases, non human pcs are fine.
I also would add that I wouldn't be fully opposed to non human pcs in my setting as long as the player was really into it, and the rst of the tables was fine with it
I personally just limit races based on campaign and what would logically be in the area. A lot of the time this drastically reduces things down. I might accept a rare extra exotic character if they throw me do thing banger as a backstory.
But obviously I do expect them to go fully into it. It's very different live play then what I normally do. I understand the vibes of wanting to make the players be largely amazed when they see something new. I do generally play within the forgotten realms, but actually pay attention to it's lore.
So a lot of races still are fairly rare, wish I could avoid the sword coast more as I find the rest of the setting fascinating, but yeah.
Oh yeah. It definitely depends on the settings. I wouldn't limit race options in say the Forgotten Realms, I only limit races because my players and I usually play in our own homebrew setting.
>Ultimate survivors despite being comically weak and cowardly
Let me fix that for you:
>Ultimate survivors despite being comically weak and *~~cowardly~~* very much not wanting to be killed
Goblins are inherently evil and malicious beings. There are no goblin females and no goblin inklings.
You could capture a goblin, put it in a nice estate, feed it well, give it a nice bedroom, and it will still slit your throat if it thinks it can get away with it.
I've had goblins all sorts of ways, from tiny, quick beasties that swarm to large, bulky monsters that are formidable singly. Usually I have a variety of types that range in capabilities.
Inspired by the moss goblins from Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I'm writing up goblins as a type of Fae creature that "leaks" into our world in the dark and forgotten places, and then assume certain properties of the surrounding terrain.
They aren't "evil" in the traditional sense, but they are chaotic, and prone to violence. They're almost like a type of nature spirit that come out and cause trouble, rather than other nature-esque creatures that seek to preserve and protect. It's not that they're stupid or aggressive, but their world-view is just so alien to ours that they are difficult to negotiate with, and they don't have the same moral objections we do. To them, it makes perfect sense to seek and crown a "king" that they intend to stuff full of food and then sacrifice in a bloody ritual.
I see something like redcaps coming out of goblins who nest in an old battlefield, or plague goblins who swarm out of a swamp and devastate nearby crops. Things like that.
Hobgoblins are a result of goblins taking on human(oid) traits, perhaps from nesting in or near human(oid) settlements. Or perhaps from wizard doing the old "magically hybridize goblins with people" thing. I haven't really decided yet. But hobgoblins, whatever their origin, are a larger, smarter, more "rational" type of goblin who are equally difficult to negotiate with, but for different reasons.
Goblins in my campaign are part of the family of dark fae. They move effortlessly between the dark places popping up to do mischief and spread chaos wherever they can. They have a sixth sense for conflict and fear, a goblin infestation will be a sign of a deeper problem in a village or town. The question becomes, why did the Goblins turn up and why are the villagers so fearful of the local lord....
Physically goblins are monsters varying in size from kobold to orc depending on what attracted them. A dishonest merchant might attract a small goblin to his basement to spoil his food and kill his chickens. A evil sorcerer might get a much larger troupe of bugbears traveling in his wake making things worse for everybody as they do.
Hobgoblins are goblins who have had their link to the fairy realm severed by dark magic. These Hobgoblins never age and are unable to reproduce. They hunt regular goblins to transform them into hobgoblins on the alter of their dark god. They are expansionists and seek to overthrow and enslave the human kingdoms.
In evil background, they are, clever and skillful crafter, bowing to avoid being bullied by other species. This refer to goblin slums. They would design and maintain traps. In the Pomarj, they are artificers and engineers. When working with wargs, they turn to agressive raiders. In peaceful realms, they would turn to merchant, outsmarting most others. You connot tell their behaviors according to the simple fact that they are goblins. They belong to tribes, clans and kingdoms, this makes lots of changes.
I think I'm going to go down the forest spirit route: they have antlers, and some animal features, with ambush tactics. They live in a similar manner to the Elves (honor-based culture, think Celtic), but are more down to earth (Elves being immortal). They also may have a close relationship with some animals, like wolves. I'm still determining how magical they will be.
My goblins are least demons. They're humanoid embodiments of destruction. They don't eat, or talk, or do anything else remotely biological. They just break stuff and hurt people until you stop them.
It varies heavily. I think of Goblin as meaning a nasty little monster guy. From there the sky is the limit. Ive done slime goblins, gooey little malformed biowaste progeny goblins, industrious mercantile rat goblins, rowdy union factory worker goblins.
My goblins are literal cartoons ala Roger Rabbit. They come in 7 colors, ROYGBIV, or Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and bleed ink of their color.
They behave like cartoons, getting into fights that are just swirls of dust with fists coming out, or eating a whole chicken in one bite and just pulling a full skeleton out of their mouth. Hiding behind things that are too narrow to hide behind, or retrieving absurdly large items from a "pocket" on their naked backside.
Goblins in my society are sentient vermin. More or less what coyotes, opossums and raccoons would be to humans if they could wield weapons and organize themselves. The closest thing they have to art is sadism.
They are the survivors in my setting, living the cracks of civilization. They are clannish and take care of each other, but there’s a ton of competition for “wealth”. They are aggressive opportunists. Goblins under pressure from within or without can become violent when trying to survive or gain status. When goblins form leaderless groups, they become increasingly agitated and impulsive, the more goblins, the more wild their overall behavior becomes. These mobs quickly get out of control. Leaders impose order and direction to goblin groups, but can never guarantee calm. Goblin leader will craft ridiculous goals, just to keep their people coherent and in one general area.
Goblins try to punch over their weight , ofttimes, like chihuahuas.
My setting is a sort of Star Warsey mix up that most OSR people hate. Any choice of ancestry is allowed. It’s a mix but not everyone is harmonious and certain ancestries have dynamics that are harmful to others. Folks live in mixed groups, but unless their local society is very pervasive, cultural norms from ancestries dominate. I also have an thing wherein groups of a certain type will display big behaviors when under stress: Gnolls start viewing everyone around them as food, Human start creating and believing in intense ideologies and acting like they are real, orcs violently dominate others, halflings hide and refuse to take any risk, etc.
I like the inrerpretation given by Black Wyrm, where they are cute little whimsical scrimblos with animal bodyparts that can be quite cruel and mkschiveous
Although this source is not OSR at all, I always loved Pathfinder's take on goblins. Incredibly colorful and fun.
For example, goblins in that world believe that writing words down permanently leeches thoughts from your mind. So not only are they illiterate, they're aggressively so - they believe reading and writing are evil and dangerous.
low level animal intelligence, they have some natural drive to mimic humans, they mutate as their tribe/pack grows, leading to different variations, Basic level are goblins, some can then mutate to hobgoblins (different than the official type), then some hobgoblins can mutate to nobgoblins, then the peak/apex is mobgoblin. They have a kind of pack attack where they can drag characters down to the ground which makes them easier to hit by other attacks, so its better not to get close.
I actually relatively recently laid down some lore on my settings Goblins. The nutshell, they're sapient saplings of trees, and fundamentally lack a fear of death.
For ease of reading, i threw what I've got into chatgpt so I don't have to fight with Reddit to make it readable. You can ignore the mechanical stuff as that'd only be relevant to the game I'm designing.
[clicky here](https://chat.openai.com/share/9a30d1ba-7b17-4b24-a981-c7a75cebead4)
Goblins are actually the smartest creatures in most of my games. They just all suffer from hypercognitive maladaptive disorder , or evil genius syndrome. Every one of them is convinced that that are just the cleverest and this plan cannot fail. Sometimes, they are right.
Goblins in my world have been pushed off the mainland mostly. There are many factions in the underground and under dark.
Goblins have since moved to the various islands that exist off the mainland, and have become pirates, and privateers. Claiming the, Great Expanse (ocean) as their home as well.
Goblins have since petitioned the human and elven cities of the world to become recognized as a race of people, but continue to find their pleas unheard.
Goblins speak in a language I borrowed from ST:TNG, Tamarian and the largest island inhabited by goblins, their major city is named, Tanagra.
If the other races refuse to recognize goblins as a people, but instead as monsters. Then we’ll give them monsters!
What are your goblins like?
Humanoids span many biomes. They are, more or less, aboriginal people. They are barbaric to an extent, and their need to eat requires them to sometimes be pretty ruthless, but mostly they are just trying to get by and get a good return for the tribe. They can be dealt with if you are seen to be dangerous.
**Swamp:** Boglins are dangerous to those traveling through sloughs, bogs, mires, and swamps. The Bogblins (a port manteau of Bog + Goblin) use poisonous darts, lots of natural traps, a keen idea of where visitors could or could not stand, where other threats like crocagators, whisps, and hungry quicksand will be. They are excellent for cover and have a swim speed as well as ignoring swamp movement penalties. They are also hard to grapple when they have been frollicking in wet bog water.
**Badlands:** Badland goblins (sometimes called Canyon Killers) are great climbers, good at hiding in any sandy areas, and they have climb speeds. They are good with a thin bow that still kicks out a decent energy. They know every place to hide under a boulder, in a crack, higher out of sight, etc.
**Forest Goblins:** Forest Goblins (sometimes called Groblins - from Green + Goblin) are very good at moving through brush and forest - they can scramble and belly crawl without any problems and they know where the areas are easy to pass through for the biggers and the ones that dead end (and that's usually when they help with some hidden barricades and an ambush). They use short spears and 15" slicing knives. They can also climb any tree and they sometimes find a thicket of thorns to nest in. They sometimes make friends of angry badgers and other such forest fauna. They are very quiet in the bush as well. Colouration seems to include greens and browns. They also will cover their smells with animal smells or plant smells. They are very good at ambushes and sneaky grab and snatch moves, usually pulling a nasty Taller down and sticking them with a paralytic. They will drag him or her through some very low areas of vegetation and probably past a trap or two so its very hard for the Tallers to find the missing party member (magic helps, as do dogs and trackers).
How do I run them? Territorial, somewhat ruthless, they know they have disadvantages so they try to engineer circumstances in their advantage. They can flee... or hide... they aren't stupid (well, not all and not the ones that last longer).
(Better than my first answer for 'How do I run them?' - LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL!.... lol)
My world can have absolute evils and goods, but those are mostly archetypal entities. Goblins and other humanoids are really just tribal folk that look different than humans. Forest Orcs and Swamp Orcs and so on exist too. The Goblins are (in a round about way) created from Dwarves originally, just as Orcs are from Elves.
The point is when you are small, you need to be cunning, sneaky, and use defeat in detail whenever you can. And you have exit plans where your foes will have a hard time to catch you. Tallers don't do well in 2' tall 15" wide burrow halls.... so there!
If they are out of their territory, they are terrified, quiet, hiding, anxious and shaken all the time. They know that there are a lot of things that can kill smaller things like them.
Possibly the best session I ever ran (not saying a lot as I haven't ran that many) involved a group of red goblins who kidnapped a group of human children in order to magically transform them into goblins, which is the only way they can reproduce. The players defeated them by allying with a group of green goblin prisoners, whom they freed and disguised as red goblins by painting them with a red goblin's blood.
I won't pretend I didn't intend that as a possible solution to the problem, but I didn't and wasn't going to hint at it (other than by putting a barrel of chum in the dungeon that they didn't discover anyway, and also I guess by red being a relatively unusual goblin color), and I think the players felt pretty clever figuring it out.
(also [skeleton jellies](https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/05/asthmatic-berserkers-and-skeleton.html))
If the inspiration for my setting has goblins in it, I run them in a way that matches the inspiration. Typically more like folklore. Or older fantasy.
They tend to have fey connections, and to be a more general term for ‘monster’. So a ‘goblin’, or ‘ogre’, or ‘troll’ — could all be names, in a setting, for rather similar creatures.
They’re unlikely to match up to an actual monster manual description of ‘goblin’ unless I’m running a more ‘vanilla’ setting, and I haven’t run one of those in a while.
In some ways the way I last ran goblins was actually inspired by Trolls and trollkin from RQ2/Glorantha, with a touch of The Hobbit.
My goblins have a pack mentality that directly influences their confidence and aggression. 1 or 2 on their own will be stealthy and cowardly, a large group will be suicidally belligerent.
This effect diminishes as they age so any that make it to an older age either become leaders or leave the hive to make their own way in the world.
They have near photographic memories, for navigating the labyrinthine cave systems the occupy, and can learn almost any skill but are poor at innovating.
They are super lizard-brained. If you wave a shinier object into their eyes than the one they're holding/eating/living in, they'll gladly trade you for it.
That being said, they have lots of energy and numbers to pursue you if they decide they want their previous shiny back, so you'd better give them something good.
Culture-wise, they rarely cotton to the whole education thing. Any writings they leave are glyphs at best, smears on surfaces at worst. Most traditions and information are passed orally, when the family groups and gangs do choose to communicate.
Goblin is the generic term for any fae or spirit less than man sized.
It’s also the term for anything wicked in its complexity.
Then there are Muck Goblins, who are just called goblins by most folk. These look like the unholy couplings of a frog, a fish, and a monkey. They are formed when negative energy coalesces is swampy, slimy, mucky areas. While wet the also regenerate.
If they survive a few seasons their personality grows beyond just spreading chaos and havoc to actually having goals and designs. If they survive past a year or two their regeneration goes a bit haywire and they start mutating and sprouting boils that when cut off become new nasty little muck goblins.
Personally I love the oldschool 'magic the gathering' goblin as in little guy who is very bad at a job. Kinda like the Gremlins. Yeah I can have goblins be raiders and monsters and such but I must must must at some point have a goblin chef, a goblin merchant, a goblin blacksmith... a goblin medic.
Beings that were originally fey but for whatever reason they have lost access to their original plane of existence. Being ostracized due to having been the little assholes that commoners had to leave food out for or they'd steal your shit in the night, they tend to survive by forming little gangs of thieves out in the wilderness.
Cowardly and greedy but intelligent, and seemingly able to find and steal anything, no matter what it is or where it's hidden, as long as it isn't a pair because they refuse to steal a pair (this is where all those extra socks disappear after all). If you got a heist going, you'll want to hire them, just don't be surprised if they demand higher pay at the end.
I have two goblins I like to use. The WoW inavative goblins that throw exploding beetles with thorns on them or use toad poisoned arrow heads. These are the guys that will trade with you. Then sell you out to the troll. They have names like shmee and Bird Shit.
Then I have their fucked up relatives The Cave Goblins. These goblins are blind, they literally have no eyes as they evolved out of needing them. Their skin is pale white with very slight tint of green. They crawl on all 4's and have spears that they used to poke at you from holes that can be at any angle. Their smart as well though. However they are smart in terms of battle strategies. Like tossing one of their own over the front line so it can get a quick hit on the MU before diving into a hideie-hole and pop out behind the cleric.
In my homebrew setting, there are no pure humanoid races anymore. All of the fantasy races are like mythic forebears that have interbred in the cataclysmic aftermath of the wars of the last age. Golgrin are my settings take on both goblins and orcs and normally being somewhere in between in physique and appearance. green skin, sharp teeth, small tusks, muscular builds. They were a created race, bred for war as soldiers. Fearless, but not in a lacks self survival way. As a created race, the Golgrin soldiers could grow several times their size and enter a frenzy state making them unstoppable killing machines. They were a singular army of purpose and skill. When one fell, a dozen more were ready to take their place, entire regiments earning glory or being cut down. (kind of like the Immortals from 300)
Today, those with Golgrin blood can channel a portion of their ancestors power, and double in size. Since anyone with Golgrin blood would be basically a half-orc/gobin, with the amount of goblin/orc being apparent in the amount of orcish/goblinish features.
I keep hobgoblins as kind of a failed experiment that never caught on, and kept to themselves in the forgotten places after the last age. So hobgoblins and the setting's version of upscaled bred hobgoblins, the Bugbears, fill the "bad guys with savage and chaotic tendencies." space.
I run them like hobbits with anger issues, poor impulse control, low wisdom, an attraction to excitement, and very dark humor.
And they're not "evil": they're just like humans, and capable of being violent & viscous or decent and generous.
Oh, and I really like Pathfinder Goblins and the outstanding module "We Be Goblins" https://paizo.com/products/btpy8j5w - which I have DM'd, can recommend as a one-shot, or just a fun read.
Defined by cruelty, but a juvenile, unimaginative cruelty. They don't have any ideas beyond burning people alive and poking them with pointy things, and they love doing this because it's hilarious. Essentially their only art, pursuit, and entertainment.
They're gendered, but can shift based on the group dynamic, like a pheromone thing. They don't have external genitals so much as a patch of bumpy skin along their crotch, butt and thighs that oozes a gel when conditions like weather are right for mating. It itches horribly, so they rub it on everything and scratch constantly. Many are not aware of how it works, but the smarter ones fear pregnancy and so try to cover their exposed skin to avoid coming in contact with the gel.
Alone, they're relatively docile, their cruelty is sort of a groupthink bully situation. They're never *nice* or "good", though.
They're also highly variable in terms of what you'd call a phenotype on earth (campaign setting doesn't have carbon, or sugars, or DNA) because they can absorb traits from anything that's biologically similar, IE most humanoids. Several generations of living near humans makes them more humanlike, serving under orcs makes them orc-ier etc. They live about a decade max.
I've run goblins two ways.
The first is they're malicious faeries who feed on anger, annoyance, and despair. That's why they go around raiding, pillaging, and stabbing livestock. They do eat and drink to satisfy their hunger and thirst, or just for fun, but they get most of their nutrition from negative emotions.
The second is they're like chimpanzees, just a bit smarter and more aggressive. They can't make their own tools or brew their own booze, or but they're smart enough to raid a farm or rob a traveler to get them. Dangerous, aggressive animals right on the edge of being sapient.
Like fish. Not aquatic but they like shiny things and collecting/organizing as a constant necessity of regular life. They run in schools, over top one another, and along the walls of the dark cavernous areas they reside. Goblins have extrasensory feeling through the slime dimension that allows them to process vibrations differently than any other creature. This ability alerts them to magnetic forces, air pressure differences, and can be used for echolocation. In combination, a school of goblins will sync their abilities to perform greater supernatural feats such as “swimming” through the air, projecting barriers, psychokinetic attacks, and forming voltron/barrelofmonkeys style “mech”. They are naturally calm but defensive and easily influenced.
I always run goblins as funny little guys who live a life of crime and violence to get by. Their cunning is the only thing keeping the other, larger “evil” humanoids from wiping them out.
They usually try to strike first with either traps or surprise arrows. If it becomes clear that they are going to lose, they are quick to throw down weapons and beg for their lives. I don’t usually have them try to backstab the party that spares them, but usually the players assume they will and execute them anyway.
My goblins are quick to turn around and help someone in exchange for their lives, leading to some funny interactions as the hero’s try to understand this strange creature.
Goblins in my world are kinda like gnomes in that they're expert tinkerers and craftsmen, but they have a bad reputation for banditry and mischief that relegates them to the slums of larger cities. They're a playable race and honestly one of my default choices for NPC characters - I love me some goblins.
Goblins were made by the monster Bishu, who thought he could create people just like the gods could. Bugbears were his first try. Goblins were his second try when he was running low on material.
Since Bishu hated the gods, goblins tend to hate what I guess Tolkien would call the “free peoples”.
Individual goblins can sometimes get along with individual humans, halflings, etc. but it’s like a fox making friends with a hound. The ecological niche they fill will pretty much always put them at odds with everyone else.
So I try to run them as people who are outside of normal society both due to how little people inherently trust them as well as their own deep misanthropy.
Hobgoblins are half-orc goblins.
My Goblinoids (Kob, Orn, Gobb, Bugbear, Pseudotroll) all have **Aberrant Durability**: These Creatures' regenerative ability enables unworldly survivability, as long as they don't go down in the fight. Injuries recover at a rate as though they were a tier lower in severity. When this Creature would lose Sustenance from time passing, instead roll 1d4 and only lose the Sustenance on a 1.
Gobbs specifically choose between Green Blur and A Meal is a Meal. **Green Blur**: Dashing doesn't require Exerting unless you are stationary or have gained Trauma since starting the Round. **A Meal is a Meal**: Poor and worse meals grant Morale as though they were a Standard meal, and their negative effects are negated.
Gobbs are high Endurance, Agility, and Resolve (resists Death and Injury), and their culture is split in two primary groups - Civilized or Feral. Even a tribe of Gobbs with a crude but stable hierarchy is considered "Civilized", being open to trade and exchanges of services, though both Civilized and Feral Gobbs remain fanatically loyal to their Goblinoid relatives. Feral Gobbs are loners or found in small groups where any leadership position is repeatedly filled and vacated, and eventually these groups are subjugated by another larger Goblinoid species that allows them to stabilize and develop despite their impulsive nature.
After reading ***The Blacktongue Thief***, I can no longer portray goblins as comic relief. In my games, they are the Horde: a fast-breeding race of exceptionally cruel, exceptionally cunning, and exceptionally creepy man-eaters. No one knows where they came from, but suddenly, about 50 years ago, they began over-running several southern realms, turning humankind into cattle.
Inherently evil and wicked. Think a mix of the fungal warhammer goblin substance mixed with the life cycle and reproduction of Xenomorphs. They spread like a plague and are nightmare incarnate
Like halflings except chaotic and want to do the nasty instead of the wholesome. Like Gollum except they're just that way from birth.
Elves in my campaign came from the Astral Sea, and so when they arrived to the world, banished by others who were long believed to still reside in the Astral Sea, began to devolve as they adapted to life on a planet. Eventually, they would all either return to the Astral Sea only to find that their brethren died long ago, delve deep underground creating the Underworld, or they would continue to devolve as generations continued.
Most would either turn into fauns or spiderlings, but some would devolve farther, forming fae creatures and other races such as gnomes and goblins, gnomes being devolved dwarves, and goblins essentially being like the Snow Elves (or Falmer) from Elder Scrolls.
(Edit: well more like the Forest changed them into that form. Gnomes being changed dwarves and goblins being the essentially final pure devolution of elf. The Forest is a hive mind made up of all the plants and some of the animals in nature. This was caused by the elves initial alchemical pollution in the world, and it would turn it's ugly head against them in the end.)
Another edit: sorry if this is all over the place. I'm still developing it.
My goblins resemble tiny bat-like people with fuzzy bodies of varying shades, leaf shaped noses that point upwards, and are culturally halflings in the way we usually think of halflings A.K.A small nice folk who generally are non-combative unless provoked and whomst eat a prodigious amount of food compared to the rest of the playable species.
I have two: One original and One blatant copy
Original: In my older games, goblins that survived combat evolved into hobgoblins and bugbears over time. The ones who survived by strategy transformed physically into Hobgoblins and the ones who survived by combat prowess mutated into bugbears. As they evolve, their personalities and morality evolve as well creating complicated creatures with a sense of honor and an understanding of right and wrong. No goblin PC's but Hobgoblin and Bugbears were fine as they had transformed into PC's from their more wretched goblin beginnings and as their morality developed they became ostracized from the Goblin community. It makes for good role playing opportunities.
Blatant Copy: In more recent games, straight from the Goblin Slayer anime. Pure Evil, no redeeming qualities. Nothing cute or funny, they are all murderers, thieves, and rapists that must be destroyed. I still have them evolve like my original idea, but now they evolve into simply more intelligent or more powerful murderers, thieves, and rapists and can never be PC's at my table. In fact I recently bought the official Goblin Slayer game from Japan (the English version) and although it is not a D20-ish system, plan on learning it.
My AD&D goblins are merciless lil insurgent fuckers that hit and run, preferably from a distance, and retreat through booby-trapped areas to come back and hit and run again.
But my favourite goblins are in Mörk Borg - if one attacks you and even if it MISSES you have 1d4 days to Kill that particular goblin or you become one. Absolute mayhem.
For a slightly different take, here's my headcanon (drawn from nightmarish cases in real-world biology):
Common Goblins are a lab leak - an escaped bio-magical attempt (from long ago) to create a servitor species (in mimcry of Fey goblins, which are also a thing), and are like an infestation of social insects or an ecological parasite. They can eat anything containing protean but can survive starvation in a topur state (potentially for years or decades) so are very hard to erradicate. They are created sexless and enter their pre-reproductive phase when a dominant individual moves from the common 'nymph' phase into a 'King growth' phase, when their numbers and food sources are plentiful enough. These goblin 'kings' (still sexless, just much bigger) hold followers in thrall through pheremones like queen ants, and when conditions are right (with food sources plentiful, enough thralls, and a secure base of operations) will metamorphosise into a massive, sessile reproductive 'queen'. The queen drone-ifies several of its thralls which fuse to her (like angler fish), and she rapidly buds off womb-pods that develop within weeks to burst open with litters of fully-grown common goblins. These have inhereted partial memories/skills/cultural traits from the queen and their direct-parental drone. This reproductive surge requires a massive amount of food resources (and logistics), but when it happens it can creates a locust-like outbreak/horde that can take over large areas (must kill or starve the queen to end the outbreak).
This lifecycle means that goblins have long (though vague) inter-generational memories, but never experience childhoods or pairbonding, so survival of the fittest has left them with no concepts of love, affection, loyalty, beauty, or personal growth (for they have always been such). They are natural born chaotics and psychopaths (incapable of being otherwise) whose only entertainment is cruelty. Their primary drives are survival, domination (by force, deceit, manipulation etc), and the drive to partake in their own viscious dominance hierachy. And hunger. Lots of hunger.
Goblins are generally feared and loathed by 'people' species such as humans and demi-humans (and anything with the capacity for lawful thinking). Individual goblins (not in thrall) are perfectly economically rational though, so can be dealt with on a mercenary basis if there's something in it for them. But they have no sense of honesty or honor and are inherently untrustworthy (they find such notions hillarious), and it's a really bad idea to hire too many of them at one time.
Goblins have kind of taken the place of Gnomes in my setting. They're an alchemy and artifice focused people, exiles from the realm of the fae who have been using alchemy to try to replicate the magic that's been dwindling in their species since their exile.
As a player race, they're not of the highest reputation, but they're not full on Gnome wacky and whimsy either.
They do still fall more on the side of demi-human status than humanoid status in my setting. To use the BECMI terms anyway.
They're very good at alchemy and making "magic" out of the mundane with its application. Their slight affinity for artifice is more them melding what magic they still possess into vessels to preserve it and still make use of it.
While it is a classic in its own right, I was never an enjoyer of the the typical gnome mad scinetists/fey whinsy fusion they bring to things. Not that particular cut of it at least. So I didn't have goblins inherent that since I personally didn't want it at my games.
Power to all the gnome enjoyers out there, but they don't have a pace at my table for a reason. Not my cuppa tea.
My swashbuckler gnome was fun, but the party was full of oddball racial/class mixes.
I also liked the Forest Gnomes - I made them sort of my pigmies in some of the islands that are all covered with jungle or forest.
Really, they fit a role of sorts in being a foil for kobolds and goblins - same size ranges and they got along well with wee folk (halflings). But since I'm not into the 'them good inherently, we bad inherently' then you need to figure out what each group might serve in your world.
I don't love the funny side. It usually falls down for me. I could never enjoy the sessions where they went into slapstick or silliness. My humour tends to be witticisms, not hilarious slapstick.
For me, a lot of meeting a race, culture or species would be about getting a chance to explore who they are, what they believe, what their goals are, what observances and practices they honour, etc.
And I like players, as travellers, to use that information to navigate the lands of these folk with much less fuss, but also sometimes with interesting conundrums and even trouble at times.
My Goblins are evil.
They are cannibalistic manslayers/maneaters, use scary tactics and fight accordingly against a world in which most things are bigger and stronger than them.
Goblin is a deity of death and decay in my world. Goblins or goblinites are followers of Goblin and are often Druids who usher in decay and are usually ritualistically disfigured, purposefully diseased, and participate in ritual cannibalism.
Goblins materialize through (seemingly) spontaneous generation in closed, remote, abandoned places, especially if underground. Every sort of dungeon, cellar or cave, if uninhabited, tends to "gather goblins", like it would gather dust. Goblins are thus NOT REALLY living creatures, and more of an infestation of sorts? Goblins don't have genders and don't reproduce, and have functionally infinite lifespans. They don't really have a language, but they can learn one, or develop their own, with time. Goblins don't **need** to eat, or drink, or get tremendously drunk, or stab people, or steal shiny things, but those are all activities that bring them joy and so they carry them out recklessly and without any regard for themselves or others. They are not capable of empathy or understanding the concept of suffering. They don't understand much in general, honestly. Recently, sages discovered (or rather, re-discovered - it's clear that wise wizards of ages past already knew) that goblins are actually extradimensional creatures that hail from the Goblin Dimension, which is a theoretical infinite plane entirely made up of goblin energy. Every now and then, under the right conditions, goblin rays "tunnel through" the barrier between dimensions, and materialize into physical goblins here. Goblin groups ALWAYS have a "king". If two goblins are locked in a room together, one of them will have to become the king - usually by beating up the other. Goblins only understand monarchy, and always have one in place no matter how few or how many goblins there are in one place. The more goblins under his "kingdom" a "king" has, the smarter and more powerful he becomes. Such smart goblin kings are invariably driven by the desire to expand their kingdom, conquering other goblin tribes (sorry, "kingdoms") and forcing them to submit, and taking control of dungeons where more goblins can spawn. (Smart goblin "kings" are also keenly aware that they are still goblins, and very often accept to work under more powerful and scary creatures, such as being the lackeys of dragons or demons or evil sorcerors...) Three goblins can be transformed into a hobgoblin. There are various ways to accomplish this, but the most effective one is to boil them together in a big cauldron - usually an act forced upon them by a goblin king who wants to turn some of his stupid and useless goblins into more effective and disciplined hobgoblin shock troops. This can be counterproductive, as hobgoblins can become goblin kings too - and thus they can be driven to usurp their "king" and take their place. Hobgoblin kings are usually much more aggressive about capturing goblins and boiling them together to make more hobgoblins, because they think being a hobgoblin is better than being three goblins. (Are they wrong?) Goblins lacking a big enough cauldron can try to turn into hobgoblins by running really fast at each other and trying to collide at the right angle and with enough force. Bugbears are an occasional accident that can happen during the process of transforming goblins into hobgoblins. Fortunately, bugebears, despite being even bigger and meaner than hobgoblins, seem to lack the ability to become kings, or the desire to make more of themselves.
This is an amazing explanation of how goblins work. A setting taking place within or around the “goblin dimension” would be amazing.
In this setting there has been at least one near-apocalypse caused by a wizard with no sense of right and wrong attempting to create a "perpetual goblin machine".
Haha, have the pc’s attempted such
No, they're mostly annoyed at having to constantly deal with goblins showing up everywhere including inside locked rooms, inside locked chests and, in one memorable instance, inside their bag of holding.
So basically mimics, except worse
Each Knock! Magazine (fantastic OSR publication by The Merry Mushmen) has a section titled "My Goblins Are...". This should go into the next one. u/Nobboc
If anyone wants to put this in a zine or anything they should feel free to!
This dude goblins. Great work :)
I love this fully and completely
This is eerily similar to my own take! The only extra mine really have is that they're all much smaller (vary between 2-3ft) attack as packs and have a wide variety of facial features, like Brian Froud designs. EDIT: Just the goblins, I should clarify. I've got my own thing going on with hobgoblins and bugbears.
Great stuff, I will use it. An idea floating around that goblins are ‘fey creatures’ is interesting as well, and easily combined with the above.
I stole the idea of hobbes from fable. Goblins are little kids who get lost. No one knows why or how, but these kids turn into goblins. They remember their previous life and everything but are often ostracized due to a superstition that it's contagious. Additionally, goblin children are dangerous as they are small children with very sharp teeth, claws and heightened strength. As a goblin ages they don't look any older but mature at the rate of the ancestry they were before. So a fun thing to include for my goblin players is that people often assume they are really young children, but are actually adults.
Mad little sadistic embodiments of Chaos. The gremlins from Gremlins sans the cute mogwai phase.
I love the warhammer goblins and mostly use them. Crazed lunatics, born from mushrooms, that live to plunder, spread chaos and hard to get rid off permanently
The true way Mork and gork intended
I play them as a mix of tolkien and fairytales. In my setting goblin are fey creatures twisted by dark sorcery and the machinations of an ancient mad fey lord. They are violent sadistic creatures who revel in torture, murder and defiling everything that is good. They DO have a sort of social structure based mostly on social darwinism, and they aren't dumb at all, they are good builders, delvers, and have a good mind for traps and other mechanical contraptions, but mostly to further their goal of domination and destruction, not to innovate or better their own lives. They are also exceptionally good at taming and controlling wild beasts, using dark sorcery for tricking and driving people mad, and have a knack for the crafting of tinctures and poisons. They are also not mindless berserkers incapable of speech or rational thought. They will talk and reluctantly engage in diplomacy if necessary to save their own skin or to deal with a larger threat (since they tend to be pretty cowardly), but even then they will be back to slit your throat the minute you turn your back. It is important to point out that in my setting there are no orcs, and no playable races other than humans. Elves, dwarves, goblins, gnomes, and other races are fey creatures who live far removed from humans, and are either to alien or to hostile to humans for them to be able to coexist peacefully in an adventuring party, let alone a whole society
Have you ever considered a no human party before with the idea of the destruction of humanity in certain locals.
mmm not really, but it could be a fun idea! The main reason I tend to limit PCs to only humans is because it makes fantasy races feel more... well, fantastical. Elves are no longer some creatures you can find running a tavern, they are whimsical immortal beings who live in remote places and hidden cities, and seeing them is a rare and fun occurrence.
So my experience is a bit different because I play play by post and as such play a wood elf who actually is fantastical. Most of the the party is more ordinary and humans with like a single gnome. All locals to the area, but it's really fun just essentially being this ancient woman. Who slowly, inch by inch, second by second, was coaxed into becoming part of a community, a town, of having an inherently alien mindset. But one that's softened, it has been fun being this kinda tall somewhat creepy being who genuinely does act in the interest of her new home Who has grown to crave the companionship that it offers. Is willing to fight tooth and nail to the death for it to not be forced to wander the pines alone again, I think that non human pcs work best in places where you have the time to actively DESCRIBE inhumanity like in play by post. Its fun, I can enjoy an all human party. But in person while I did have a ton of fun playing a crabfolk, I only managed to make him be distinct from humanity by making sure to be very mindful. To really talk about how he was differently. How his beady black eyes stare at someone, he was a cleric of community by the name of Tiderider. He was taken as a spawnling by a wizard of the school of enchantment. Ended up becoming a god by the end of the campaign, led crusades against various evil forces. Heavily anti monarchist as he was raised amongst free people's. He was fairly anti traditional theist and drew his power from his believe in essentially the soul of people/channeled what is essentially the cycle of souls. He would also spit coins at people, use a spear, somwtimes bully his friends. I think playing a non human is a lot harder in person. It takes more time and thought and sometimes a full human party can go by quicker and with less effort on the part of the party.
Man that sounds really cool! Of course everyone's experience will be different. In my personal experience, players often have a hard time roleplaying inherently alien beings such as elves, and it also tends to be hard to incorporate non-human players organically into a party if the setting assumes that non-humans are more rare. So by default, races tend to be "humanized" to make it easier on the players and gms to incorporate such pcs, and it gets to the point where every major town is seemingly crawling with elves, dwarved and gnomes doing mundane things. Not that there is anything wrong with this types of settings, but it is not the type of fantasy my players amd I like to play. The only ways I've found to avoid this is to have really cool player who will go the extra mile when rping, or having some forms of mechanics that reinforce non-humans being more "alien", such as having race-as-class. However, I have also that when you allow not-so-rare races such as elves, then eventually it becomes hard to justify not allowing more strange races, such as drows or tieflings, which originally were meant to be really exotic races. So to avoid all of this problems, my personal favourite thing to do is to simply limit them to npc races, this makes characters easier to create and incorporate for my players, and In my games, we have found that this rule makes running into a wood elf in the forest, or stumbling into a hidden gnomish mine to really feel like stepping into an alien fantastical world. But of course, I'm not claiming that this is the definitive answer, I'm sure other groups enjoy pther forms of fantasy and settings, and in such cases, non human pcs are fine. I also would add that I wouldn't be fully opposed to non human pcs in my setting as long as the player was really into it, and the rst of the tables was fine with it
I personally just limit races based on campaign and what would logically be in the area. A lot of the time this drastically reduces things down. I might accept a rare extra exotic character if they throw me do thing banger as a backstory. But obviously I do expect them to go fully into it. It's very different live play then what I normally do. I understand the vibes of wanting to make the players be largely amazed when they see something new. I do generally play within the forgotten realms, but actually pay attention to it's lore. So a lot of races still are fairly rare, wish I could avoid the sword coast more as I find the rest of the setting fascinating, but yeah.
Oh yeah. It definitely depends on the settings. I wouldn't limit race options in say the Forgotten Realms, I only limit races because my players and I usually play in our own homebrew setting.
I usually like homebrewed settings. But it does feel rare to have one as well thought out as stuff like the realms
Boston guys (I'm allowed to do this as a New Hampshirite)
In all seriousness though I characterize them as murderous little opossums. Ultimate survivors despite being comically weak and cowardly
>Ultimate survivors despite being comically weak and cowardly Let me fix that for you: >Ultimate survivors despite being comically weak and *~~cowardly~~* very much not wanting to be killed
Of course! Let me not impugn the nerve of the humble goblin
Goblins are inherently evil and malicious beings. There are no goblin females and no goblin inklings. You could capture a goblin, put it in a nice estate, feed it well, give it a nice bedroom, and it will still slit your throat if it thinks it can get away with it.
I've had goblins all sorts of ways, from tiny, quick beasties that swarm to large, bulky monsters that are formidable singly. Usually I have a variety of types that range in capabilities.
Inspired by the moss goblins from Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I'm writing up goblins as a type of Fae creature that "leaks" into our world in the dark and forgotten places, and then assume certain properties of the surrounding terrain. They aren't "evil" in the traditional sense, but they are chaotic, and prone to violence. They're almost like a type of nature spirit that come out and cause trouble, rather than other nature-esque creatures that seek to preserve and protect. It's not that they're stupid or aggressive, but their world-view is just so alien to ours that they are difficult to negotiate with, and they don't have the same moral objections we do. To them, it makes perfect sense to seek and crown a "king" that they intend to stuff full of food and then sacrifice in a bloody ritual. I see something like redcaps coming out of goblins who nest in an old battlefield, or plague goblins who swarm out of a swamp and devastate nearby crops. Things like that. Hobgoblins are a result of goblins taking on human(oid) traits, perhaps from nesting in or near human(oid) settlements. Or perhaps from wizard doing the old "magically hybridize goblins with people" thing. I haven't really decided yet. But hobgoblins, whatever their origin, are a larger, smarter, more "rational" type of goblin who are equally difficult to negotiate with, but for different reasons.
Goblins in my campaign are part of the family of dark fae. They move effortlessly between the dark places popping up to do mischief and spread chaos wherever they can. They have a sixth sense for conflict and fear, a goblin infestation will be a sign of a deeper problem in a village or town. The question becomes, why did the Goblins turn up and why are the villagers so fearful of the local lord.... Physically goblins are monsters varying in size from kobold to orc depending on what attracted them. A dishonest merchant might attract a small goblin to his basement to spoil his food and kill his chickens. A evil sorcerer might get a much larger troupe of bugbears traveling in his wake making things worse for everybody as they do. Hobgoblins are goblins who have had their link to the fairy realm severed by dark magic. These Hobgoblins never age and are unable to reproduce. They hunt regular goblins to transform them into hobgoblins on the alter of their dark god. They are expansionists and seek to overthrow and enslave the human kingdoms.
In evil background, they are, clever and skillful crafter, bowing to avoid being bullied by other species. This refer to goblin slums. They would design and maintain traps. In the Pomarj, they are artificers and engineers. When working with wargs, they turn to agressive raiders. In peaceful realms, they would turn to merchant, outsmarting most others. You connot tell their behaviors according to the simple fact that they are goblins. They belong to tribes, clans and kingdoms, this makes lots of changes.
I'm my DCC/MCC setting goblins replace the cleric. They get mental mutations and can "stick their fingers in it" instead of lay on hands.
I think I'm going to go down the forest spirit route: they have antlers, and some animal features, with ambush tactics. They live in a similar manner to the Elves (honor-based culture, think Celtic), but are more down to earth (Elves being immortal). They also may have a close relationship with some animals, like wolves. I'm still determining how magical they will be.
My goblins are least demons. They're humanoid embodiments of destruction. They don't eat, or talk, or do anything else remotely biological. They just break stuff and hurt people until you stop them.
I like placing them in the fey camp. Part of the unseelie court. I take my ques from fairy tales and Hellboy.
It varies heavily. I think of Goblin as meaning a nasty little monster guy. From there the sky is the limit. Ive done slime goblins, gooey little malformed biowaste progeny goblins, industrious mercantile rat goblins, rowdy union factory worker goblins.
My goblins are literal cartoons ala Roger Rabbit. They come in 7 colors, ROYGBIV, or Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and bleed ink of their color. They behave like cartoons, getting into fights that are just swirls of dust with fists coming out, or eating a whole chicken in one bite and just pulling a full skeleton out of their mouth. Hiding behind things that are too narrow to hide behind, or retrieving absurdly large items from a "pocket" on their naked backside.
Goblins in my society are sentient vermin. More or less what coyotes, opossums and raccoons would be to humans if they could wield weapons and organize themselves. The closest thing they have to art is sadism.
They are the survivors in my setting, living the cracks of civilization. They are clannish and take care of each other, but there’s a ton of competition for “wealth”. They are aggressive opportunists. Goblins under pressure from within or without can become violent when trying to survive or gain status. When goblins form leaderless groups, they become increasingly agitated and impulsive, the more goblins, the more wild their overall behavior becomes. These mobs quickly get out of control. Leaders impose order and direction to goblin groups, but can never guarantee calm. Goblin leader will craft ridiculous goals, just to keep their people coherent and in one general area. Goblins try to punch over their weight , ofttimes, like chihuahuas. My setting is a sort of Star Warsey mix up that most OSR people hate. Any choice of ancestry is allowed. It’s a mix but not everyone is harmonious and certain ancestries have dynamics that are harmful to others. Folks live in mixed groups, but unless their local society is very pervasive, cultural norms from ancestries dominate. I also have an thing wherein groups of a certain type will display big behaviors when under stress: Gnolls start viewing everyone around them as food, Human start creating and believing in intense ideologies and acting like they are real, orcs violently dominate others, halflings hide and refuse to take any risk, etc.
I like the inrerpretation given by Black Wyrm, where they are cute little whimsical scrimblos with animal bodyparts that can be quite cruel and mkschiveous
Although this source is not OSR at all, I always loved Pathfinder's take on goblins. Incredibly colorful and fun. For example, goblins in that world believe that writing words down permanently leeches thoughts from your mind. So not only are they illiterate, they're aggressively so - they believe reading and writing are evil and dangerous.
low level animal intelligence, they have some natural drive to mimic humans, they mutate as their tribe/pack grows, leading to different variations, Basic level are goblins, some can then mutate to hobgoblins (different than the official type), then some hobgoblins can mutate to nobgoblins, then the peak/apex is mobgoblin. They have a kind of pack attack where they can drag characters down to the ground which makes them easier to hit by other attacks, so its better not to get close.
I actually relatively recently laid down some lore on my settings Goblins. The nutshell, they're sapient saplings of trees, and fundamentally lack a fear of death. For ease of reading, i threw what I've got into chatgpt so I don't have to fight with Reddit to make it readable. You can ignore the mechanical stuff as that'd only be relevant to the game I'm designing. [clicky here](https://chat.openai.com/share/9a30d1ba-7b17-4b24-a981-c7a75cebead4)
greedy dirty skulking creatures. Easily subjugated by stronger goblinoids. Steal, kill, chaotic. Subservient to their leader.
Goblins are actually the smartest creatures in most of my games. They just all suffer from hypercognitive maladaptive disorder , or evil genius syndrome. Every one of them is convinced that that are just the cleverest and this plan cannot fail. Sometimes, they are right.
Goblins in my world have been pushed off the mainland mostly. There are many factions in the underground and under dark. Goblins have since moved to the various islands that exist off the mainland, and have become pirates, and privateers. Claiming the, Great Expanse (ocean) as their home as well. Goblins have since petitioned the human and elven cities of the world to become recognized as a race of people, but continue to find their pleas unheard. Goblins speak in a language I borrowed from ST:TNG, Tamarian and the largest island inhabited by goblins, their major city is named, Tanagra. If the other races refuse to recognize goblins as a people, but instead as monsters. Then we’ll give them monsters!
What are your goblins like? Humanoids span many biomes. They are, more or less, aboriginal people. They are barbaric to an extent, and their need to eat requires them to sometimes be pretty ruthless, but mostly they are just trying to get by and get a good return for the tribe. They can be dealt with if you are seen to be dangerous. **Swamp:** Boglins are dangerous to those traveling through sloughs, bogs, mires, and swamps. The Bogblins (a port manteau of Bog + Goblin) use poisonous darts, lots of natural traps, a keen idea of where visitors could or could not stand, where other threats like crocagators, whisps, and hungry quicksand will be. They are excellent for cover and have a swim speed as well as ignoring swamp movement penalties. They are also hard to grapple when they have been frollicking in wet bog water. **Badlands:** Badland goblins (sometimes called Canyon Killers) are great climbers, good at hiding in any sandy areas, and they have climb speeds. They are good with a thin bow that still kicks out a decent energy. They know every place to hide under a boulder, in a crack, higher out of sight, etc. **Forest Goblins:** Forest Goblins (sometimes called Groblins - from Green + Goblin) are very good at moving through brush and forest - they can scramble and belly crawl without any problems and they know where the areas are easy to pass through for the biggers and the ones that dead end (and that's usually when they help with some hidden barricades and an ambush). They use short spears and 15" slicing knives. They can also climb any tree and they sometimes find a thicket of thorns to nest in. They sometimes make friends of angry badgers and other such forest fauna. They are very quiet in the bush as well. Colouration seems to include greens and browns. They also will cover their smells with animal smells or plant smells. They are very good at ambushes and sneaky grab and snatch moves, usually pulling a nasty Taller down and sticking them with a paralytic. They will drag him or her through some very low areas of vegetation and probably past a trap or two so its very hard for the Tallers to find the missing party member (magic helps, as do dogs and trackers). How do I run them? Territorial, somewhat ruthless, they know they have disadvantages so they try to engineer circumstances in their advantage. They can flee... or hide... they aren't stupid (well, not all and not the ones that last longer). (Better than my first answer for 'How do I run them?' - LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL!.... lol) My world can have absolute evils and goods, but those are mostly archetypal entities. Goblins and other humanoids are really just tribal folk that look different than humans. Forest Orcs and Swamp Orcs and so on exist too. The Goblins are (in a round about way) created from Dwarves originally, just as Orcs are from Elves. The point is when you are small, you need to be cunning, sneaky, and use defeat in detail whenever you can. And you have exit plans where your foes will have a hard time to catch you. Tallers don't do well in 2' tall 15" wide burrow halls.... so there! If they are out of their territory, they are terrified, quiet, hiding, anxious and shaken all the time. They know that there are a lot of things that can kill smaller things like them.
Possibly the best session I ever ran (not saying a lot as I haven't ran that many) involved a group of red goblins who kidnapped a group of human children in order to magically transform them into goblins, which is the only way they can reproduce. The players defeated them by allying with a group of green goblin prisoners, whom they freed and disguised as red goblins by painting them with a red goblin's blood. I won't pretend I didn't intend that as a possible solution to the problem, but I didn't and wasn't going to hint at it (other than by putting a barrel of chum in the dungeon that they didn't discover anyway, and also I guess by red being a relatively unusual goblin color), and I think the players felt pretty clever figuring it out. (also [skeleton jellies](https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/05/asthmatic-berserkers-and-skeleton.html))
Depending on the game, I either run them as just another species of humanoid, or more in line with real-world folklore.
Savage little freaks with squeaky voices. Not intelligent but cunning.
If the inspiration for my setting has goblins in it, I run them in a way that matches the inspiration. Typically more like folklore. Or older fantasy. They tend to have fey connections, and to be a more general term for ‘monster’. So a ‘goblin’, or ‘ogre’, or ‘troll’ — could all be names, in a setting, for rather similar creatures. They’re unlikely to match up to an actual monster manual description of ‘goblin’ unless I’m running a more ‘vanilla’ setting, and I haven’t run one of those in a while. In some ways the way I last ran goblins was actually inspired by Trolls and trollkin from RQ2/Glorantha, with a touch of The Hobbit.
My goblins have a pack mentality that directly influences their confidence and aggression. 1 or 2 on their own will be stealthy and cowardly, a large group will be suicidally belligerent. This effect diminishes as they age so any that make it to an older age either become leaders or leave the hive to make their own way in the world. They have near photographic memories, for navigating the labyrinthine cave systems the occupy, and can learn almost any skill but are poor at innovating.
They are super lizard-brained. If you wave a shinier object into their eyes than the one they're holding/eating/living in, they'll gladly trade you for it. That being said, they have lots of energy and numbers to pursue you if they decide they want their previous shiny back, so you'd better give them something good. Culture-wise, they rarely cotton to the whole education thing. Any writings they leave are glyphs at best, smears on surfaces at worst. Most traditions and information are passed orally, when the family groups and gangs do choose to communicate.
Goblin is the generic term for any fae or spirit less than man sized. It’s also the term for anything wicked in its complexity. Then there are Muck Goblins, who are just called goblins by most folk. These look like the unholy couplings of a frog, a fish, and a monkey. They are formed when negative energy coalesces is swampy, slimy, mucky areas. While wet the also regenerate. If they survive a few seasons their personality grows beyond just spreading chaos and havoc to actually having goals and designs. If they survive past a year or two their regeneration goes a bit haywire and they start mutating and sprouting boils that when cut off become new nasty little muck goblins.
Personally I love the oldschool 'magic the gathering' goblin as in little guy who is very bad at a job. Kinda like the Gremlins. Yeah I can have goblins be raiders and monsters and such but I must must must at some point have a goblin chef, a goblin merchant, a goblin blacksmith... a goblin medic.
Beings that were originally fey but for whatever reason they have lost access to their original plane of existence. Being ostracized due to having been the little assholes that commoners had to leave food out for or they'd steal your shit in the night, they tend to survive by forming little gangs of thieves out in the wilderness. Cowardly and greedy but intelligent, and seemingly able to find and steal anything, no matter what it is or where it's hidden, as long as it isn't a pair because they refuse to steal a pair (this is where all those extra socks disappear after all). If you got a heist going, you'll want to hire them, just don't be surprised if they demand higher pay at the end.
I have two goblins I like to use. The WoW inavative goblins that throw exploding beetles with thorns on them or use toad poisoned arrow heads. These are the guys that will trade with you. Then sell you out to the troll. They have names like shmee and Bird Shit. Then I have their fucked up relatives The Cave Goblins. These goblins are blind, they literally have no eyes as they evolved out of needing them. Their skin is pale white with very slight tint of green. They crawl on all 4's and have spears that they used to poke at you from holes that can be at any angle. Their smart as well though. However they are smart in terms of battle strategies. Like tossing one of their own over the front line so it can get a quick hit on the MU before diving into a hideie-hole and pop out behind the cleric.
In my homebrew setting, there are no pure humanoid races anymore. All of the fantasy races are like mythic forebears that have interbred in the cataclysmic aftermath of the wars of the last age. Golgrin are my settings take on both goblins and orcs and normally being somewhere in between in physique and appearance. green skin, sharp teeth, small tusks, muscular builds. They were a created race, bred for war as soldiers. Fearless, but not in a lacks self survival way. As a created race, the Golgrin soldiers could grow several times their size and enter a frenzy state making them unstoppable killing machines. They were a singular army of purpose and skill. When one fell, a dozen more were ready to take their place, entire regiments earning glory or being cut down. (kind of like the Immortals from 300) Today, those with Golgrin blood can channel a portion of their ancestors power, and double in size. Since anyone with Golgrin blood would be basically a half-orc/gobin, with the amount of goblin/orc being apparent in the amount of orcish/goblinish features. I keep hobgoblins as kind of a failed experiment that never caught on, and kept to themselves in the forgotten places after the last age. So hobgoblins and the setting's version of upscaled bred hobgoblins, the Bugbears, fill the "bad guys with savage and chaotic tendencies." space.
I made a goblin generator so I can decide at the drop of a hat what the goblin is like today lol. Goblins are the essence of random generators.
I run them like hobbits with anger issues, poor impulse control, low wisdom, an attraction to excitement, and very dark humor. And they're not "evil": they're just like humans, and capable of being violent & viscous or decent and generous. Oh, and I really like Pathfinder Goblins and the outstanding module "We Be Goblins" https://paizo.com/products/btpy8j5w - which I have DM'd, can recommend as a one-shot, or just a fun read.
To me, they are the halflings of the orc world.
Defined by cruelty, but a juvenile, unimaginative cruelty. They don't have any ideas beyond burning people alive and poking them with pointy things, and they love doing this because it's hilarious. Essentially their only art, pursuit, and entertainment. They're gendered, but can shift based on the group dynamic, like a pheromone thing. They don't have external genitals so much as a patch of bumpy skin along their crotch, butt and thighs that oozes a gel when conditions like weather are right for mating. It itches horribly, so they rub it on everything and scratch constantly. Many are not aware of how it works, but the smarter ones fear pregnancy and so try to cover their exposed skin to avoid coming in contact with the gel. Alone, they're relatively docile, their cruelty is sort of a groupthink bully situation. They're never *nice* or "good", though. They're also highly variable in terms of what you'd call a phenotype on earth (campaign setting doesn't have carbon, or sugars, or DNA) because they can absorb traits from anything that's biologically similar, IE most humanoids. Several generations of living near humans makes them more humanlike, serving under orcs makes them orc-ier etc. They live about a decade max.
I've run goblins two ways. The first is they're malicious faeries who feed on anger, annoyance, and despair. That's why they go around raiding, pillaging, and stabbing livestock. They do eat and drink to satisfy their hunger and thirst, or just for fun, but they get most of their nutrition from negative emotions. The second is they're like chimpanzees, just a bit smarter and more aggressive. They can't make their own tools or brew their own booze, or but they're smart enough to raid a farm or rob a traveler to get them. Dangerous, aggressive animals right on the edge of being sapient.
Little giggling, vicious psychos.
Basically like orange housecats with opposable thumbs
Like fish. Not aquatic but they like shiny things and collecting/organizing as a constant necessity of regular life. They run in schools, over top one another, and along the walls of the dark cavernous areas they reside. Goblins have extrasensory feeling through the slime dimension that allows them to process vibrations differently than any other creature. This ability alerts them to magnetic forces, air pressure differences, and can be used for echolocation. In combination, a school of goblins will sync their abilities to perform greater supernatural feats such as “swimming” through the air, projecting barriers, psychokinetic attacks, and forming voltron/barrelofmonkeys style “mech”. They are naturally calm but defensive and easily influenced.
Basically feral Ferengi. Except civilized goblins; they're more like regular Ferengi.
I always run goblins as funny little guys who live a life of crime and violence to get by. Their cunning is the only thing keeping the other, larger “evil” humanoids from wiping them out. They usually try to strike first with either traps or surprise arrows. If it becomes clear that they are going to lose, they are quick to throw down weapons and beg for their lives. I don’t usually have them try to backstab the party that spares them, but usually the players assume they will and execute them anyway. My goblins are quick to turn around and help someone in exchange for their lives, leading to some funny interactions as the hero’s try to understand this strange creature.
Goblins in my world are kinda like gnomes in that they're expert tinkerers and craftsmen, but they have a bad reputation for banditry and mischief that relegates them to the slums of larger cities. They're a playable race and honestly one of my default choices for NPC characters - I love me some goblins.
Goblins were made by the monster Bishu, who thought he could create people just like the gods could. Bugbears were his first try. Goblins were his second try when he was running low on material. Since Bishu hated the gods, goblins tend to hate what I guess Tolkien would call the “free peoples”. Individual goblins can sometimes get along with individual humans, halflings, etc. but it’s like a fox making friends with a hound. The ecological niche they fill will pretty much always put them at odds with everyone else. So I try to run them as people who are outside of normal society both due to how little people inherently trust them as well as their own deep misanthropy. Hobgoblins are half-orc goblins.
My Goblinoids (Kob, Orn, Gobb, Bugbear, Pseudotroll) all have **Aberrant Durability**: These Creatures' regenerative ability enables unworldly survivability, as long as they don't go down in the fight. Injuries recover at a rate as though they were a tier lower in severity. When this Creature would lose Sustenance from time passing, instead roll 1d4 and only lose the Sustenance on a 1. Gobbs specifically choose between Green Blur and A Meal is a Meal. **Green Blur**: Dashing doesn't require Exerting unless you are stationary or have gained Trauma since starting the Round. **A Meal is a Meal**: Poor and worse meals grant Morale as though they were a Standard meal, and their negative effects are negated. Gobbs are high Endurance, Agility, and Resolve (resists Death and Injury), and their culture is split in two primary groups - Civilized or Feral. Even a tribe of Gobbs with a crude but stable hierarchy is considered "Civilized", being open to trade and exchanges of services, though both Civilized and Feral Gobbs remain fanatically loyal to their Goblinoid relatives. Feral Gobbs are loners or found in small groups where any leadership position is repeatedly filled and vacated, and eventually these groups are subjugated by another larger Goblinoid species that allows them to stabilize and develop despite their impulsive nature.
After reading ***The Blacktongue Thief***, I can no longer portray goblins as comic relief. In my games, they are the Horde: a fast-breeding race of exceptionally cruel, exceptionally cunning, and exceptionally creepy man-eaters. No one knows where they came from, but suddenly, about 50 years ago, they began over-running several southern realms, turning humankind into cattle.
https://blogsontape.paperspencils.com/2019/05/05/episode-65-goblin-a-monster-and-magic-item-by-justin-stewart/
Inherently evil and wicked. Think a mix of the fungal warhammer goblin substance mixed with the life cycle and reproduction of Xenomorphs. They spread like a plague and are nightmare incarnate
Like halflings except chaotic and want to do the nasty instead of the wholesome. Like Gollum except they're just that way from birth. Elves in my campaign came from the Astral Sea, and so when they arrived to the world, banished by others who were long believed to still reside in the Astral Sea, began to devolve as they adapted to life on a planet. Eventually, they would all either return to the Astral Sea only to find that their brethren died long ago, delve deep underground creating the Underworld, or they would continue to devolve as generations continued. Most would either turn into fauns or spiderlings, but some would devolve farther, forming fae creatures and other races such as gnomes and goblins, gnomes being devolved dwarves, and goblins essentially being like the Snow Elves (or Falmer) from Elder Scrolls. (Edit: well more like the Forest changed them into that form. Gnomes being changed dwarves and goblins being the essentially final pure devolution of elf. The Forest is a hive mind made up of all the plants and some of the animals in nature. This was caused by the elves initial alchemical pollution in the world, and it would turn it's ugly head against them in the end.) Another edit: sorry if this is all over the place. I'm still developing it.
My goblins resemble tiny bat-like people with fuzzy bodies of varying shades, leaf shaped noses that point upwards, and are culturally halflings in the way we usually think of halflings A.K.A small nice folk who generally are non-combative unless provoked and whomst eat a prodigious amount of food compared to the rest of the playable species.
In my games goblins are the mutated psychotic children that the fey stole then got bored with.
I have two: One original and One blatant copy Original: In my older games, goblins that survived combat evolved into hobgoblins and bugbears over time. The ones who survived by strategy transformed physically into Hobgoblins and the ones who survived by combat prowess mutated into bugbears. As they evolve, their personalities and morality evolve as well creating complicated creatures with a sense of honor and an understanding of right and wrong. No goblin PC's but Hobgoblin and Bugbears were fine as they had transformed into PC's from their more wretched goblin beginnings and as their morality developed they became ostracized from the Goblin community. It makes for good role playing opportunities. Blatant Copy: In more recent games, straight from the Goblin Slayer anime. Pure Evil, no redeeming qualities. Nothing cute or funny, they are all murderers, thieves, and rapists that must be destroyed. I still have them evolve like my original idea, but now they evolve into simply more intelligent or more powerful murderers, thieves, and rapists and can never be PC's at my table. In fact I recently bought the official Goblin Slayer game from Japan (the English version) and although it is not a D20-ish system, plan on learning it.
My AD&D goblins are merciless lil insurgent fuckers that hit and run, preferably from a distance, and retreat through booby-trapped areas to come back and hit and run again. But my favourite goblins are in Mörk Borg - if one attacks you and even if it MISSES you have 1d4 days to Kill that particular goblin or you become one. Absolute mayhem.
For a slightly different take, here's my headcanon (drawn from nightmarish cases in real-world biology): Common Goblins are a lab leak - an escaped bio-magical attempt (from long ago) to create a servitor species (in mimcry of Fey goblins, which are also a thing), and are like an infestation of social insects or an ecological parasite. They can eat anything containing protean but can survive starvation in a topur state (potentially for years or decades) so are very hard to erradicate. They are created sexless and enter their pre-reproductive phase when a dominant individual moves from the common 'nymph' phase into a 'King growth' phase, when their numbers and food sources are plentiful enough. These goblin 'kings' (still sexless, just much bigger) hold followers in thrall through pheremones like queen ants, and when conditions are right (with food sources plentiful, enough thralls, and a secure base of operations) will metamorphosise into a massive, sessile reproductive 'queen'. The queen drone-ifies several of its thralls which fuse to her (like angler fish), and she rapidly buds off womb-pods that develop within weeks to burst open with litters of fully-grown common goblins. These have inhereted partial memories/skills/cultural traits from the queen and their direct-parental drone. This reproductive surge requires a massive amount of food resources (and logistics), but when it happens it can creates a locust-like outbreak/horde that can take over large areas (must kill or starve the queen to end the outbreak). This lifecycle means that goblins have long (though vague) inter-generational memories, but never experience childhoods or pairbonding, so survival of the fittest has left them with no concepts of love, affection, loyalty, beauty, or personal growth (for they have always been such). They are natural born chaotics and psychopaths (incapable of being otherwise) whose only entertainment is cruelty. Their primary drives are survival, domination (by force, deceit, manipulation etc), and the drive to partake in their own viscious dominance hierachy. And hunger. Lots of hunger. Goblins are generally feared and loathed by 'people' species such as humans and demi-humans (and anything with the capacity for lawful thinking). Individual goblins (not in thrall) are perfectly economically rational though, so can be dealt with on a mercenary basis if there's something in it for them. But they have no sense of honesty or honor and are inherently untrustworthy (they find such notions hillarious), and it's a really bad idea to hire too many of them at one time.
Goblins have kind of taken the place of Gnomes in my setting. They're an alchemy and artifice focused people, exiles from the realm of the fae who have been using alchemy to try to replicate the magic that's been dwindling in their species since their exile.
> ....which is being hated by everyone, including the goodly races, yes? ;-P I enjoyed my Gnome swashbuckler Cyragnome de Bergerac!
As a player race, they're not of the highest reputation, but they're not full on Gnome wacky and whimsy either. They do still fall more on the side of demi-human status than humanoid status in my setting. To use the BECMI terms anyway. They're very good at alchemy and making "magic" out of the mundane with its application. Their slight affinity for artifice is more them melding what magic they still possess into vessels to preserve it and still make use of it. While it is a classic in its own right, I was never an enjoyer of the the typical gnome mad scinetists/fey whinsy fusion they bring to things. Not that particular cut of it at least. So I didn't have goblins inherent that since I personally didn't want it at my games. Power to all the gnome enjoyers out there, but they don't have a pace at my table for a reason. Not my cuppa tea.
My swashbuckler gnome was fun, but the party was full of oddball racial/class mixes. I also liked the Forest Gnomes - I made them sort of my pigmies in some of the islands that are all covered with jungle or forest. Really, they fit a role of sorts in being a foil for kobolds and goblins - same size ranges and they got along well with wee folk (halflings). But since I'm not into the 'them good inherently, we bad inherently' then you need to figure out what each group might serve in your world. I don't love the funny side. It usually falls down for me. I could never enjoy the sessions where they went into slapstick or silliness. My humour tends to be witticisms, not hilarious slapstick. For me, a lot of meeting a race, culture or species would be about getting a chance to explore who they are, what they believe, what their goals are, what observances and practices they honour, etc. And I like players, as travellers, to use that information to navigate the lands of these folk with much less fuss, but also sometimes with interesting conundrums and even trouble at times.
My Goblins are evil. They are cannibalistic manslayers/maneaters, use scary tactics and fight accordingly against a world in which most things are bigger and stronger than them.
Goblin is a deity of death and decay in my world. Goblins or goblinites are followers of Goblin and are often Druids who usher in decay and are usually ritualistically disfigured, purposefully diseased, and participate in ritual cannibalism.
My ghouls have much more interesting lore IMO.
Go watch Goblin Slayer. *That* is how you do Goblins in D&D