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It's the gremlins syndrome. You can take something murderous and make it adorable and likeable. Look at how people cute-ify Cthulhu.
Funny, but the Gremlins/Mogwai thing is almost how I see Goblins/Gnomes.
Don't feed a gnome after Midnight.
In my long-running one PC game, my wife decided to convert the goblins she defeated. I was as cute as i could be as they begged for their life. She argued on their behalf at trial (saying that they had been bullied by pirates into evil) and the court, in amusement and disgust, granted her custody over about eight of the. They were the most awesome companions ever... And only two mutinies!
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Um...well, they're "evil" but they're also really BAD at being evil. Led to their own devices, they're pests at best. That, and the probably reasons they're mascots is probably because they were among the first Golarion creations if i remember correctly. That sort of makes them, I dunno, mascots by default. Even if something is evil, if its iconic enough, well...
Also, its hilariously adorable how hard they try...and all they accomplish is starting a few junkyard fires.
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Thanks for the angle to look at it from, when you mention it that way, it becomes funnier (yet still creepy) when I remember what I read in ** spoiler omitted **
As for gnomes, the guys I DM have never experienced gnomes like they're classically treated, I WILL be making them wily/evil tricksters in close tune with fey.
Gnomes in Pathfinder are already not as 'classically treated'. They are refugees from the First World and thus closely in touch with fey.
However, I would warn against making them evil.
Why?
1. They are a PC race, reducing a PC option to a single villainous role is not a good idea.
2. They have communities and trade and are part of civilised world in every published setting. Not a problem if you homebrew, of course, unless you want to drop a published resource into your setting.
3. Pathfinder already has a gazillion evil, trickster fey for you to use. But it only has one race of exiled-fey-constanly-in-search-of-new-experience: gnomes.
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Funny, but the Gremlins/Mogwai thing is almost how I see Goblins/Gnomes.
Don't feed a gnome after Midnight.
I kind of love the idea of gnomes and goblins being two sides of the same coin, one a more First-Worldy 'Seelie' kind of fey reject and the other a more Shadow-Planey 'Unseelie' kind of fey reject, complete with the possibility that one could turn into the other, under the right / wrong circumstances...
Ditto Elves and Hobgoblins.
Ditto Bugbears and a 'seelie' counterpart that is now extinct, because the Bugbears hunted down and killed them all...
That's certainly not doable in canon Golarion, since the elves of Golarion (unlike the elves of Greyhawk) have no faerie ties, and there is already a 'Shadow Plane Gnomes' type race in the Dragon Empires called the Wayang.
Yeah, I've tied the goblinoid/Orcs to the Fey, but a lot differently then Tolkien did. Mine are more folklore-based (as it should be). I love the whole Seelie/Unseelie concept. In fact, I created the concept of Corellon and Gruumsh being brothers (which some author ran with and it became official on the WotC site). Not everyone's favorite lore (because it is equally reviled by both elves and orcs).
I've also being using a 'First Word' concept for a few years now, before I ever read about PF's. However, mine isn't the plane of Faerie... mine was the Prime Material plane before it got shattered into a million million worlds (during the first godwar). My Feylands were a piece of that First World (as all worlds are) that was protected by the giant deities, and was home to the giants for many years, until the 'pesky Fey' invaded (fleeing their own world-ending event). Now it is a plane in contention, with many, many groups vying for power there (just like PF's First World).
So similar, but not quite the same. :)
As for Gnomes not being evil... have you read folklore? Fey are all nice and cuddly until you piss them off (and it doesn't take much). All that 'happy insanity' turns to psychotic behavior when they are mad at you. A gnome may not set your cat on fire just for laughs, but he may chop it up for you to find in your stewpot if you've angered him enough. They are not just 'small humans' with weird hair - they are AIENS, and think nothing like us. All non-human races should be thought of that way.
You had me until you wrote...
Elves and dire hyenas mate with one another under lamashtus blessing to give birth to crippled, mad gnolls...
That just sent my "Eeeeeeewwww" meter off the scale.
It takes 'puppy love' to a whole 'nother level. :P
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That's cool but it only works in homebrew because it's no good if every PC elf and every PC gnome is a Drizzt.
As for Gnomes not being evil... have you read folklore? Fey are all nice and cuddly until you piss them off (and it doesn't take much). All that 'happy insanity' turns to psychotic behavior when they are mad at you. A gnome may not set your cat on fire just for laughs, but he may chop it up for you to find in your stewpot if you've angered him enough. They are not just 'small humans' with weird hair - they are AIENS, and think nothing like us. All non-human races should be thought of that way.
Yep, read plenty of folklore... I wouldn't like to suggest it is completely homogonous though.
I actually think it is good that dwarves, elves, goblins and gnomes are not fey. We have so many other fey to fill those roles.
The Tolkein-esque dwarves and elves present cool options for characters, as do the Golarion gnomes.
I'm not saying gnomes cannot be evil, as a PC race they can have any alignment: they have a flexibility that redcaps (for example) lack.
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I just re-watched the movie Gremlins recently for the first time in at least 20 years (It's a Christmas movie!). That's how I see Pathfinder goblins. They're like the Three Stooges of evil.
And now I'm thinking of a Goblin Alchemist based on the Brain Gremlin from Gremlins 2. Best BBEG ever.
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They're like the Three Stooges of evil.
EXACTLY! This is why I love them!
& I actually am having Goblins be just Mischievous little buggers. Not exactly Evil just annoying little b******s that are like ugly little kids. They have developed a defensive cuteness. I mean so cute that it can't be overcome without a DC50 Will Save kind of thing.
Hobgoblins are just Militant Isolationists.
Bugbears are... Well they are still Mass Murdering Murder Hobos. But none of that fraking Fuzzy Wookie BS. They are basically large ugly malformed Goblins.
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And now I'm thinking of a Goblin Alchemist based on the Brain Gremlin from Gremlins 2. Best BBEG ever.
Urbane, well-spoken, frighteningly intelligent and utterly sociopathic? Flies in the face of everything the players (think they) know about goblins?
DO IT.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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It would be very funny to see him convince the goblins that he isn't reading or writing or that it is okay for him to do.
"No my dear friend, I am stealing words from the pen and putting them into my head. It gives me power and only I know the true secret of this. I do this to protect you, so don't try this yourself."
Honestly for all that they are neutral evil, and I can see why they are and understand it, I think paizo goblins have a pretty chaotic-neutral common image, being pretty crazy and mischeivous but at the very least incompetent at being evil most of the time.
Yup - they are more like 'evil wannabees'.
What would a movie gremlin be considered in PF? A goblin/Kobold Hybrid?
They made goblins into a stupid joke. Its like when Doc Ock running around in that stupid green spandex before Tod McFarlane fixed it. No just NO!
In most games I run I reject the Tolkien pretty principal entirely, no race gets to be cleanly good or cleanly evil. Yes there are monsters but they aren't actually races. Pathfinder goblins bug the crap out of me, with there stupid football shaped heads and their goofy brand of pathetic evil.
I tend to ignore them, at least they didn't completely muck up kobolds.
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They made goblins into a stupid joke. Its like when Doc Ock running around in that stupid green spandex before Tod McFarlane fixed it. No just NO!
In most games I run I reject the Tolkien pretty principal entirely, no race gets to be cleanly good or cleanly evil. Yes there are monsters but they aren't actually races. Pathfinder goblins bug the crap out of me, with there stupid football shaped heads and their goofy brand of pathetic evil.
I tend to ignore them, at least they didn't completely muck up kobolds.
The 'pretty principle' pre-dates Tolkein by about 3000 years.
And it is 'principle', not 'principal'
[/pedant]
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They made goblins into a stupid joke. Its like when Doc Ock running around in that stupid green spandex before Tod McFarlane fixed it. No just NO!
In most games I run I reject the Tolkien pretty principal entirely, no race gets to be cleanly good or cleanly evil. Yes there are monsters but they aren't actually races. Pathfinder goblins bug the crap out of me, with there stupid football shaped heads and their goofy brand of pathetic evil.
I tend to ignore them, at least they didn't completely muck up kobolds.
I like Pathfinder goblins. They go from whacky to disturbing in no time flat. They were what convinced me to jump from 3.5 to Pathfinder because they went from speed-bumps to characters and were much closer to goblins from folklore (mischievous, could be hiding anywhere and could easily be to blame for all the little accidents in a town).
They have a culture of evil, like orcs, drow or ogres do but individuals can vary.
In 3.5 goblins had no culture, nor anything vaguely interesting about them (except perhaps in Eberron as the bottom rung of Hobgoblin society). My players love fighting goblins because the crazy little creeps are liable to do anything. Like light a firework and shove it down your trousers or climb your back and try twist your head off. It's not always optimal, but goblins aren't about optimal or efficient. That's hobgoblins.
I like Pathfinder goblins. They go from whacky to disturbing in no time flat. They were what convinced me to jump from 3.5 to Pathfinder because they went from speed-bumps to characters and were much closer to goblins from folklore (mischievous, could be hiding anywhere and could easily be to blame for all the little accidents in a town).They have a culture of evil, like orcs, drow or ogres do but individuals can vary.
In 3.5 goblins had no culture, nor anything vaguely interesting about them (except perhaps in Eberron as the bottom rung of Hobgoblin society). My players love fighting goblins because the crazy little creeps are liable to do anything. Like light a firework and shove it down your trousers or climb your back and try twist your head off. It's not always optimal, but goblins aren't about optimal or efficient. That's hobgoblins.
+1
3.5 DnD Goblins had no personality and were as general a mook as you could get. Pathfinder goblins are distinctive and unique amongst the evil races, and are maybe the best reinterpretation of a classic DnD foe they have done
I like how Bugbears are slightly more Goblinoid rather than 3.5's annoying Wookie-Esque abomination.
Very obscure geek joke:
Is that why R.A. Salvatore had Drizzt killing all those Orcs? He's really trying to get to the Bugbears?
Anyhow, agree on goblins. I haven't liked 'silly' in my RPGs since my Greyhawk days (Coca Cola Golems?), but even if I don't like their personality, at least they HAVE personality. D&D Goblins were just small, green stat-blocks to mow down. Running combats against swarms of them got so boring I'd just have the players roll a D6 each and say, "the goblins are all dead, thats how many hits you took... next room."
They made goblins into a stupid joke. Its like when Doc Ock running around in that stupid green spandex before Tod McFarlane fixed it. No just NO!
In most games I run I reject the Tolkien pretty principal entirely, no race gets to be cleanly good or cleanly evil. Yes there are monsters but they aren't actually races. Pathfinder goblins bug the crap out of me, with there stupid football shaped heads and their goofy brand of pathetic evil.
I tend to ignore them, at least they didn't completely muck up kobolds.
The 'pretty principle' pre-dates Tolkein by about 3000 years.
And it is 'principle', not 'principal'
[/pedant]
Thanks for your insightful corrections. Everyone loves being corrected really keep doing what you do.
Did you want to actually contribute to the conversation topic or do you just make sure everyone is grammatically correct.
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They made goblins into a stupid joke. Its like when Doc Ock running around in that stupid green spandex before Tod McFarlane fixed it. No just NO!
In most games I run I reject the Tolkien pretty principal entirely, no race gets to be cleanly good or cleanly evil. Yes there are monsters but they aren't actually races. Pathfinder goblins bug the crap out of me, with there stupid football shaped heads and their goofy brand of pathetic evil.
I tend to ignore them, at least they didn't completely muck up kobolds.
The 'pretty principle' pre-dates Tolkein by about 3000 years.
And it is 'principle', not 'principal'
[/pedant]
Thanks for your insightful corrections. Everyone loves being corrected really keep doing what you do.
Did you want to actually contribute to the conversation topic or do you just make sure everyone is grammatically correct.
I thought that my main point was a contribution to the discussion: you said you didn't like the 'pretty principle' and implied that Tolkein was responsible for it. I added some historical perspective: sharing ideas and proposing a new approach to your idea, I just didn't go into much detail.
If I was looking to critise posts for not adding to the debate, I'd probably be concerned if my contribution was a straight-up whinge with a bit of vulgarity thrown in.
There is something else I missed: you wrote 'they' like i was some faceless corporate/government (depending on your politics) minion.
It was actually James Jacobs, the guy with the post just before yours.
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Thanks to movies like Labyrinth and Legend, I'm okay with goblins being *wildly* different in appearance anyway, so I'd be cool with Varisian goblins being all pumpkin-headed shark-toothed singing pyromaniacs with literally *termimal* cases of ADHD, and goblins in other lands looking more like this or this or this, but *not* this.
but *not* this.
Thanks now I will have nightmares...
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but *not* this.Thanks now I will have nightmares...
Oh please, you know how hard it was to find a picture of him that didn't focus on his crotchal bulge?
:)
but *not* this.Thanks now I will have nightmares...Oh please, you know how hard it was to find a picture of him that didn't focus on his crotchal bulge?
:)
True... Very true...
Thanks for the angle to look at it from, when you mention it that way, it becomes funnier (yet still creepy) when I remember what I read in ** spoiler omitted **
As for gnomes, the guys I DM have never experienced gnomes like they're classically treated, I WILL be making them wily/evil tricksters in close tune with fey.
Gnomes in Pathfinder are already not as 'classically treated'. They are refugees from the First World and thus closely in touch with fey.
However, I would warn against making them evil.
Why?
1. They are a PC race, reducing a PC option to a single villainous role is not a good idea.
2. They have communities and trade and are part of civilised world in every published setting. Not a problem if you homebrew, of course, unless you want to drop a published resource into your setting.
3. Pathfinder already has a gazillion evil, trickster fey for you to use. But it only has one race of exiled-fey-constanly-in-search-of-new-experience: gnomes.
Spriggans are evil gnomes...
All gnomes are evil gnomes. Does any so-called 'evil' race have Hatred as a racial trait? Orcs? Gnolls? Bugbears? Aboleth? Starspawn of Cthulhu? No.
But gnomes? Oh yes, gnomes train their little gnome spawn from birth to hate and kill members of races they despise. Hold up your hand if you have to go potty. Use the little fork for the salad. Hold your sister's hand and look both ways before crossing the street. Oh, and kill alla lizard-peeps!
The only thing more evil than a gnome is a dwarf, who not only has Hatred as a racial trait, but also Greed.
They wanted to have 'Voyeur' (+2 to stealth and perception checks) and 'Bully' (+1 to hit and damage anything smaller and weaker than yourself) as race traits, but Torag was already giving them the stink-eye...
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The original question... Shows a misunderstanding, I think. When Burnt Offerings came out, goblins were monsters that everyone had fought hundreds of times. We knew they were evil. We knew they were ineffective at it. However, suddenly goblins became FUN. Not because we did not fight them, not because we did not kill them, but because they had a personality, a culture. Such as it is. What Paizo did was sublime. Goblins were exactly the right monster to start with.
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The original question... Shows a misunderstanding, I think. When Burnt Offerings came out, goblins were monsters that everyone had fought hundreds of times. We knew they were evil. We knew they were ineffective at it. However, suddenly goblins became FUN. Not because we did not fight them, not because we did not kill them, but because they had a personality, a culture. Such as it is. What Paizo did was sublime. Goblins were exactly the right monster to start with.
While I agree with liking what Paizo has done with goblins (and gnomes, who have far more personality now than they did back when I used to play 1st edition AD&D), what about other races? Where are the orcs?
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In terms of races Paizo has 'done' as villains we've had kobolds, goblins, mites and gnolls. Plus, JJ did Hobgoblins in Red Hand of Doom.
I'm sure they'll get round to orcs, the write-up in Classic Monsters Revisited is pretty cool.
Mad marauders in the dark of night, these terrors descend on the unsuspecting and leave naught but slaughter and burning ruins in their wake. Although beaten back in epic wars again and again, these raiders always seem to return to visit their wrath upon the weak and helpless. No frontier settlement or traveling merchant is ever completely safe from the depredations of the orcs.
I view Savage Orcs as Brutal and Efficient Skirmishers.
I tend to have a Homebrewed Civilized Orc Race though...
I use Hobgoblins as my 'Warcraftian' (civilized) Orcs. As much as I like the concept of them in gaming, I do not like it in literature. A 'nice' Orc should be a rare exception. Hobs also aren't nice, but they can play nice (when it is to their advantage to do so).
I've also hombrewed it that Hobgoblins originated from Orc/Goblin crossbreeding (the result being superior to either parent). They are now a race unto themselves, but that was their origins (in my campaigns). Thus, if you want to know what a goblin/Orc crossbreed looks like (because it happens a lot), you just picture an exceptionally ugly Orc with Hobgoblin stats (a 1st generation one wouldn't have had its genetics 'rounded off' into an average yet). Then again, I've pretty much traced all the races back to 'common ancestors' from the First World.
And I've never really seen any RPG setting present goblins in a uniform manner, whether it be size, appearance, or personality. Each group is a little different - no reason why PF can't be the same. Thats why your players should NEVER take anything for granted.
Mine aren't necessarily nice. They are just not as savage. Think along the lines of Dominic Deegan's Orcs.
Isolationist Tribal People.
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Mine aren't necessarily nice. They are just not as savage. Think along the lines of Dominic Deegan's Orcs.
Isolationist Tribal People.
I think the issue is that quite a few gamers don't want orcs, goblins, etc. to be any sort of 'people,' they'd rather they be two-dimensional cardboard cut outs made out of evil and easily reduced into chunky bits of XP.
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Mine aren't necessarily nice. They are just not as savage. Think along the lines of Dominic Deegan's Orcs.
Isolationist Tribal People.
I think the issue is that quite a few gamers don't want orcs, goblins, etc. to be any sort of 'people,' they'd rather they be two-dimensional cardboard cut outs made out of evil and easily reduced into chunky bits of XP.
In any debate, the most ignoble thing you can do is reduce your opponent's argument to a crude caricature.