Goblins and architectural competency.

[Askren]

This is a bit of an odd, throwaway question, but I find myself having to ask a lot of these when I'm setting out to make maps for a game and the answer is important in deciding how I actually go about visualizing the thing I'm making.

Currently, I'm constructing a goblin village. Actually a specific village, I'm doing the Licktoad vilage in Brinestump Marsh. What doesn't seem adequately explained in either the source material for the village or any other document I can find is; Just how good at building things are Goblins, really?

I've seen art of them using animal-skin tents, and lots of fluff explains how they steal and re-use garbage for most of their construction. But then they have this fort-style village with full wooden houses constructed 5 feet off the ground. Did the goblins make these? If they're competent enough to, did they steal the wood planks or make them themselves? Where did they get the nails? Or are they really good at lashing? They are capable of making secret doors and palisades and gates, I guess?

My major concern is; if they're competent enough to actually construct the village, are they also competent enough to use relatively well-fit plank floors, straight walls, etc.? Or is it just as ramshackle as I'm led to believe it should be, just sort of held together out of sheer luck?

[Dave Justus]

Goblins have an average intelligence, so they are certainly intelligent enough. However, the flavor of them in Golarion is that they are very impatient and lazy. So I would expect it to be poorly constructed and fairly ramshackle.

Probably the building materials would be a mix of found and stolen cut lumber, poorly split logs that they harvested themselves and for some purposes whole logs. Either nails or lashing would work fine as fasteners (humans built houses long before they made nails) and both palisades and hidden doors would be within their skill sets, if they were desired.

The flavor of Golorion goblins would probably mean that straight walls and smooth floors would be a rarity, but while it might look thrown together, it could well be pretty solidly built (lazy can mean not wanting to do it again too) and certainly Goblins have enough enemies that having solid walls is probably a pretty good idea. I don't think it would be wrong to have it falling down and structurally weak either though, whichever you prefer could be reasonable, and would probably vary somewhat from Goblin to Goblin and tribe to tribe.

[Skeld]

I would hazard a guess that everything is constructed from whatever materials are most expedient: scraps, cast-offs, and raw, harvested materials all used together.

I would also hazard to guess that any goblin structure is indeed ramshackle, barely serviceable, but manages to hold together just well enough to serve its function.

-Skeld

[Thanael]

Building a settlement in the Brinestump Marsh is challenging enough. It's built on stilts iirc. Their love of scavenging and chaos, evil alignment and the small size of tribes probably seriously cramp err reflect in the aesthetically architectural style;-)

map of Licktoad village.

Goblin bestiary on goblin architecture:

Society: Violent but fecund, goblins exist in primitive tribal structures with constant shifts in power. Rarely able to sustain their own needs through farming or hunting and gathering, goblin tribes live where food is abundant or near places that they can steal it from. Since they are incapable of building significant fortifications and have been driven out of most easily accessible locations, goblins tend to live in unpleasant and remote locations, and their poor building and planning skills ensure that they dwell primarily in crude caves, ramshackle villages, and abandoned structures. Few goblins are good with tools or skilled at farming, and the rare items of any value that they possess are usually cast-off implements from humans or other civilized cultures.

Goblins' appetites and poor planning lead to small tribes dominated by the strongest warriors. Even the hardiest goblin leaders quickly find out that their survival depends on conducting frequent raids to secure sources of food and kill off the more aggressive youth of the tribe. Both goblin men and women are ugly and vicious, and both sexes are just as likely to rise to positions of power in a tribe.

Goblin babies are almost completely self-sufficient not long after birth, and such infants are treated almost like pets. Many tribes raise their children communally in cages or pens where adults can largely ignore them. Mortality is high among young goblins, and when the adults fail to feed them or food runs low, youths learn at an early age that cannibalism is sometimes the best means of survival in a goblin tribe.

Now on other worlds in olden times goblinoids had a mighty empire which probably had sophisticated architecture.