DeathQuaker wrote:
Crager Muldoon wrote:
As I'm coming late to this well-reasoned discourse - what is the essential argument against goblins? Is it that they are being considered for inclusion in the CRB? Is it the stat bonuses? Is it that a 'core' race is someone equated with some elevated prestige or standard in the campaign world when no such prestige was evident previously?
Just trying to understand the acrimony of the commentary.
To me, "core" is what is most common, most representative of the fantasy world the game is reflecting. "Core" is be what players play, most GMs run, where all other things are more likely to be far more optional and varied. Since it's first, the oldest, most experienced characters will be core. So "core race" -- or "core ancestry" as it will be now -- is the most common set of creatures you will see adventuring in the game's setting. Not anything to do with prestige at all--indeed, in fact the opposite, in a way. But indeed rather sentient being so common and seen in society in the adventuring world that the majority of adventurers you will find in the world will most likely be one of those creature-types.
If you or anyone else disagrees as to what a "core race" should be I'd be curious as to your definition.
So that said, I think there's 2-3 "against goblins" camps.
1. That the canon lore up until now was that goblins were generally irredeemably, deeply sadistic monsters; 2e will reinvent them, effectively, as now both redeemable and varied in personality enough they would be equally as common an adventurer as an elf, half-orc, gnome, or dwarf, etc. This indicates there's going to be quite a paradigm shift in the setting. There are subgroups from hereon that
-- a. Think goblins should stay sadistic monster cannon fodder, and so effectively "humanizing" them, for lack of a better word, removes that cannon fodder from the game
-- b. just don't want to deal for any number of reasons, mostly personal in nature, with that presumed paradigm shift/don't want to deal with...
As far as I'm concerned - a Core race is one that appears in the Core Rulebook ("Core" being further generally defined to me as one of the essential components necessary for running the game, and without which running the game would not be possible).
So, within that framework - goblins as a "core" race causes me absolutely no discomfort or irritation at all.
As for how goblins fit into the campaign world - assuming that one is using Golarion - then I would expect the updated campaign materials to provide the necessary background for any possible shift in general attitudes. I think if the campaign world can generally accept medium-sized talking birds and anthropomorphic rats as non-threatening creatures, until individual exceptions prove otherwise - I think it can do the same for goblins. But that's just me.
I think any player predisposed to be a pain at the table will be a pain at the table, regardless of the tools at his or her disposal for facilitating that pain. I don't think we'll see an uptick in the number of problem players simply because of goblins. I do think we'll see an uptick in problem players who use goblins to be an irritant, but I expect that to die down as the novelty wears off.
Beyond that - all of this seems like little more than arguing on the minutae of a possible inclusion into a game, when the very play experience of that game is dominantly controlled by the people at the table and how they apply the rules.
Fundamentally, the game must be an enjoyable experience. And the tradition of home games is that the DM and the players usually customize the rules to some extent to improve on that experience. I expect nothing different here.
