Am I asking for a ruined game? (SPOILERS)


Rise of the Runelords


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

We are closing in on the finish of our Kingmaker campaign and I have selected RotRL as our next game. Players are excited and asking questions about Sandpoint and proposing possible characters. So far I have:

Half-elf Inquisitor (archer)
Elf Witch (sleepy) or Elf Druid
Goblin Rogue
Human Cleric or Human Wizard
Aasimar Paladin

Take a WILD GUESS which character I have reservations over. The player does not have any idea what pathfinder goblins are like (and his character backstory is such that I can still introduce the scary little bastards properly). Nor does the player have any idea that the fist book is going to revolve around them. As a DM, I am salivating over the roleplay possibilities that having a goblin the party will bring. BUT I have not run this AP before and the character has the strong possibility of taking the game WAY off the rails. Anyone daring/stupid enough to have DMed this with a goblin PC? How did it go?

Honestly part of the appeal of the AP is how it takes “generic” D&D story setups and turns them up to 11 (goblins, haunted houses, ogres, giants, etc…). My group is new to Pathfinder (Kingmaker is it) but we are all D&D and RPG veterans. I welcome the possibilities that this PC brings but am worried about losing one of the things that make this AP so strong.


There are several threads amid this AP's archives about goblin parties. Some sound like they turned out well...others not so much.

CJ


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You might try playing the free modules, "We Be Goblins" and "We Be Goblins Too" first, before Runelords.
Both can introduce the Pathfinder goblins to the party, and show what heart-warming ('cause cold hearts don't taste good) little monsters they really are.

RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

I had Klang, a goblin bard, as a PC in Rise of the Runelords way back when the path first came out. He was introduced as a spy/hostage--he was a Birdcruncher passing intel along to Sandpoint on a rival tribe, the Thistletop goblins. The sheriff turned him over to the party after the Swallowtail Festival attack with orders to keep an eye on him.

Over the course of the game, he had his name written down (which caused him to transform into a hobgoblin via sympathetic magic), became the chief of the Thistletop goblins, killed Xanesha, lost the Thistletop goblins to the nilbog that had been created when his name was written down and then retired from the party after saving the party knight's soul from Hell via a fiddle contest.

Shadow Lodge

IMO Thistletop quickly takes a back seat to the metaplot. I say roll with it.

It isn't as if the citizens of Sandpoint aren't aware of nearby goblins. Look into what happens with their trash, for example.


You could have him have been raised in town. Or you could have him IN town having tried to warn the Sheriff of the impending attack... and then the attack happens.

Demiurge, your goblin sounds absolutely awesome. Weird about having the name written down turning them into hobgoblins! ^^;;


Kildaere wrote:

We are closing in on the finish of our Kingmaker campaign and I have selected RotRL as our next game. Players are excited and asking questions about Sandpoint and proposing possible characters. So far I have:

Half-elf Inquisitor (archer)
Elf Witch (sleepy) or Elf Druid
Goblin Rogue
Human Cleric or Human Wizard
Aasimar Paladin

Take a WILD GUESS which character I have reservations over. The player does not have any idea what pathfinder goblins are like (and his character backstory is such that I can still introduce the scary little bastards properly). Nor does the player have any idea that the fist book is going to revolve around them. As a DM, I am salivating over the roleplay possibilities that having a goblin the party will bring. BUT I have not run this AP before and the character has the strong possibility of taking the game WAY off the rails. Anyone daring/stupid enough to have DMed this with a goblin PC? How did it go?

Honestly part of the appeal of the AP is how it takes “generic” D&D story setups and turns them up to 11 (goblins, haunted houses, ogres, giants, etc…). My group is new to Pathfinder (Kingmaker is it) but we are all D&D and RPG veterans. I welcome the possibilities that this PC brings but am worried about losing one of the things that make this AP so strong.

This was our group:

Human Arcane Duelist
Half-Elven Summoner (mounted)
Half-Elven Master Summoner (the two were m/f twins)
Kitsune Crossblooded Sorcerer
Goblin Brawler

The Kitsune was posing as a Human and apart from the Goblin the party looked outwardly pretty mundane, so I pulled aside the Kitsune and the Goblin players ahead of time and gave them a brief non-spoilery head's up that we'd have to do something a little different to make the party's integration a little more seamless.

The Goblin played as a member from another tribe exiled by a paranoid chieftan. He had come across the goblin raiding party and followed them at a discreet distance, witnessing their infiltration of Sandpoint. He decided to take advantage of the confusion and avenge himself on the rival tribe members, ignoring the longshanks completely.

The Kitsune, meanwhile, ended up Sleeping him along with two other goblins he was fighting and later charmed him when time came to interrogate goblin prisoners over the inspiration behind the raid. She had him imprisoned instead of killed and visited him regularly, renewing his charm each time - she felt a kinship with him as an outsider herself, and eventually the charm took root and became more or less semi-permanent.

He was released under her recognizance when they went into investigate the tunnels beneath the Glassworks in part because none of the PC's had darkvision and in part because the rest of the party considered him expendable. He proved himself in that adventure and eventually became part of their company in truth. The Kitsune and he had a lot of fun with it, him posing as her ill-mannered barely tamed servant when necessary but for the most part they had a Lilo & Stitch thing going on. It worked just fine, but - and this is a big but - it worked fine because the Goblin player understood that he was running a normally unacceptable race, and as such accepted with good graces when he was neglected, ignored, ostracized and discriminated against. He enjoyed confounding and disproving expectations and never expected anyone to just accept his character right off the bat.

If your player is of similar temperment then you'll be fine. If he just chose a goblin for the 'cool factor' and a few mechanical bonuses, then its probably going to eventually disrupt your group or you'll be forced to treat him like an ugly halfling and just handwave the social encounters - which would defeat the whole point in my opinion.


If you have the Anniversary Edition, then read the Ten Fun Facts About Goblins to the player. It's found on Page 5. Then switch to Page 15 and read the Goblin Song to that player. Hopefully you can do this over the phone or type it over e-mail so the player doesn't realize it's from the AP in question.

Those two bits will help cue the player as to what Goblins are about.

(As an aside, we just unveiled in last week's game that one of the characters is a Goblin who believes he's a Gnome and was riding inside a mechanized suit of armor. Everyone loved it. So goblins as PCs is doable. Just weird. ^^)


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Cool. Thanks for the input everyone (keep it coming if others discover the thread). I will put up the character's backstory and game results when the game starts. They are just about at book 6 in Kingmaker...so not long now....


I restricted my game to core races and core classes. Even if I had expanded the available races to some non-core, I would not have allowed goblin PCs.

But, YMMV-- do what works best for your game and your group!

Scarab Sages

You may want to consider suggesting to the goblin that he was raised or converted by the paladin, giving him a protector against prejudice and a religious leg to stand on. A pious goblin would go a long way towards allaying the fears of townsfolk, as would a paladin to vouch for him. Of course, having the paladin be a aasimar might make that a little too uncomfortable a parallel in some folk's viewpoint!! :)

Or even better yet, have him be a goblin saved or vouched for by Shalelu.


I think I would work it such that the inquisitor was in charge of the goblin rogue as a prisoner of sorts, and that after the attack on the town, he acts as a snitch to save his life and assists the party. He would give up all the useful information about the tribes/champions that is normally given by Shalelu.

The encounters with Gogmurt and Ripnugget should be interesting.


the goblin player can be an awesome or a terrible idea, especially with the first book. I suggest having the goblin player make a backup character to introduce in case the rest of the party, the townsfolk, the other goblins, ect. decide to kill him off. That also being said, having the Goblin "Hero" could be cool too. Just to mess with the players, maybe have the Goblin be the focus of Foxglove's obsessions in the second adventure, just to throw them the hell off! :D

Sovereign Court

I've run RotR twice and used the first two books as a launch into a home brew once. In one of the full run throughs, I had one of the wizards get reincarnated as a goblin ... not too difficult to deal with as he was known in Sandpoint before he died and came back.

In the home brew launch, I had a player who was introduced as the PCs were headed to Thistletop. We had her PC as one of the Birdcruchers, and who had heard other members of her surviving group say she should be the next one to go to the hole. When the PCs showed up, she helped them take care of her former tribe members and quickly integrated into the party. She still acts the part of a goblin quite well, even with the hat of disguise.

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