Goblins!

For my new Old School Essentials campaign, I wanted to give my critters a dose of flavour. I love the tiny greebly monsters, but they can seem a little bland, especially when fighting hordes of them at low levels. My solution is to make them distinctive - by which I mean "weird". I love Kobolds, and I love Ratfolk, so kobolds largely resemble ambulatory rats in my campaign world (the fact that I have a load of Skaven miniatures is purely coincidental). I struggled for a while to give goblins a flavour, but I've found a way that I like. I've always wondered about why Brian Froud's goblins looked so heterogeneous - now I know why.

Goblin Soup:

Goblins are a bit like a lumpy soup or a gumbo. Stuff floats to the surface from time to time, and the lumps you get in one bowl might not match those in another - goblins don't necessarily share all the same characteristics. Plus goblins can combine. This process involves an incantation and the use of an awful substance called "Goblin Glue". By combining, goblins can form bigger, nastier goblinoids, merging their consciousnesses and bodies into a larger mass (not always seamlessly, on either count).

Goblinoids thus form part of a larger whole, and are a distinct category from humanoids, ranging from gobbets to trolls (an assimilation I've made because it works nicely). No-one quite knows why or how this mutability trait evolved, although many have pointed out that it resembles other "instant army" schemes created during the Wizard War. As such, it is possible that goblinoids are fashioned artificially out of the raw stuff of Chaos (which would help to explain their temperament).

Individuality is brief and fleeting for goblins. This, combined with their low intelligence, makes them unruly, although the fact that they are essentially droplets of a single larger stew means that they can quite effectively have collective order pressed upon them by a domineering presence, and actually work very well in swarms.

Goblin Glue:

Goblin glue is an evil smelling concoction used by dark wizards and goblin sorcerers to meld goblinoids into new forms. The ingredients of the glue are horses' bones (boiled and mashed), mammoth earwax, crushed centipedes, and childrens' tears (this last is technically optional, but ensures quality - plus bugbears in particular enjoy scaring children). Goblin glue is used in conjunction with an incantation, which takes about ten minutes to cast properly, or about thirty seconds if adventurers are at the door and you're happy to do a slap-dash job - beware extra heads and limbs.

Goblinoids combine by Hit Dice: It takes three 1HD goblins to make a 3HD bugbear, for example (ignore adds and minuses in the statblock). By mixing in organic material, usually from fish, with the glue, the sorcerer can actually create goblinoids with particular features, such as gills, webbed or sticky hands and feet, or very small wings.

In theory, dousing a goblinoid in universal solvent will cause it to decompile into its component beings, or perhaps into a fine gazpacho. However, this has never been tested.

Goblang:

Goblins communicate in a dialect of Chaotic known as Goblang, which is almost incomprehensible even to those fluent in the alignment language. Like goblins themselves, Goblang is highly combinatorial, with basic concepts such as "Food" represented by single-syllable words, which can be crudely slapped together into compound words for more complex concepts (similarly to real life German, except much less orderly). Mostly the basic monosyllabic words are bastardised versions of words in Chaotic, so to fluent Chaotic speakers, Goblang sounds deeply "scrambled".

Generally speaking, goblins only use one- or two-syllable words, with more complex goblinoid organisms (see below) using more complex ones, commensurate with their increased hit dice. Goblinoids have only a 10% chance per hit die of speaking common, although those of high rank or working with humanoids will pick up at least a smattering.

Goblinoid names follow the same pattern as Goblang words: Goblins have only one syllable names, often named for things in their environment at the time of their creation from gobbets (which do not have names). Goblins' names are concatenated when they are combined into other organisms. So, for instance, if Ob, Bog and Ukh combined to make a bugbear, the result might go by Obbogukh, or Obukhob, or Ukh-Bogob, etc. In other words, when naming goblinoids, give them as many syllables as their HD.

Taxonomy:

(All stats as in OSE.)

Gobbet: 1hp, AC9, attack: Bite (d4), all other stats as goblins. Tiny creatures, barely formed. No-one knows where they come from, although "secreted from the bowels of the earth" has been suggested. Gobbets don't have names - they barely have animal-level intelligence.

Goblin: HD 1-1. Grotty, vindictive, not very bright. The basic unit of goblinoids - just coherent enough be able to feed and clothe themselves, scheme, and cooperate if given simple instructions. Some are scaly, some are slimy, some are furry - it all depends. They dislike sunlight, which causes them to slowly congeal. It takes three to four gobbets to make a goblin.

Bugbear: HD 3+1. Bugbears have an "adolescent" quality to them - lanky, hairy, and just a few gobbets shy of being a full hobgoblin. They're smart enough to work independently, but not quite enough to lead. They sometimes hang around in loose gangs, sneaking up and bothering passers by. Their armour is made of loose scraps of the gear of their component goblins, which no longer fits.

Hobgoblin: HD 4 (using the stats for "hobgoblin bodyguards" - as in bodyguards to the hobgoblin king - in OSE). True hobgoblins have a presence of mind that isn't seen in other goblinoids, allowing them to corral their fellows into acting with a common purpose. Hobgoblins also have roughly humanoid proportions, which allows them to use looted armour, although they rarely fashion their own. Hobgoblins need purpose to survive - if they fall into a malaise, they can devolve back into their component goblins, literally losing coherence. Thus most hobgoblins fall back to making war in the absence of anything else to do.

(There are tougher goblins called hobgoblins by some, but these - the HD 1+1 variety - are actually regular goblins that have survived in that form for long enough to develop some survival instincts. Their extra toughness is attributed to their developing a "thicker skin", a bit like a day-old casserole.)

Troll: HD 6+3. Trolls are actually the most intelligent of goblinoids, after a fashion, but they suffer from overcrowding; trolls typically struggle to integrate the many goblin(oid)s that go into making them, hence the two-headed trolls (15%), and other "mutations" - actually the result of imperfect assimilation. Trolls thus tend to prevaricate and dither when left to their own devices.

Trolls are the most "liquid" of goblinoids, being able to regenerate and reattach limbs and even heads in combat. Alternatively, detached body part might attempt, ineffectually, to attack the enemy, regaining some of the sentience of the goblinoid whose matter went into making it. On occasion, detached parts may revert back to the gobbet, or even the goblin, that spawned them, and join back in with the fight. Such reincarnations are usually imperfect, e.g.: resulting in a troll's arm turning into a goblin with one huge arm and otherwise normal proportions.

Fire is the only thing that will prevent these antics. An unburned but dismembered troll that "returns to life" has a 25% chance of returning as an assortment of other goblinoids (good excuse to shake up the next combat encounter). Trolls' aversion to sunlight likewise comes from their liquidity; overexposure turns them dry and crusty, contributing to the myth that they turn to stone.

Goblin King: HD 5 (hobgoblin king statblock in OSE). About five goblins-worth seems to be the optimum level for a relatively sane goblinoid (emphasis on "relatively"). The goblin king is strangely charming, and able to perform magic easily, probably owing to his strong constitutional link with raw Chaos. He has a fondness for disguises and practical jokes, as well as music and overly-complex, labyrinthine dungeons.

So there you have it - Froudian goblins! Credit where it's due, David Black's brief but evocative description in the Black Hack was the germ (good word) of this idea, but I feel like there's a common Labyrinth root there. Lots of quest hooks here - goblins stealing childrens' tears (for glue), a troll demands a ransom in exchange for dealing with a marauding band of goblins (it's a con; they're one and the same), flying/swimming/glow in the dark goblins, etc etc. Tune in next time for Kobolds, I guess.