Overcoming Goblin Prejudice

[Cole Deschain]

Context informs choice, but context changes.

Look at Smink in the Sandpoint book- a fairly typical “outlier” in conventional goblin society. Had her tribe not been minced into ground goblin-burger, she would possibly have just gotten killed or driven off by her peers.

But they were. Now Smink is a much larger percentage of her tribe as a whole- and her efforts to figure out coexistence mean that she and her followers have much better odds of survival.

The change isn’t the mystery- why it hasn’t already happened dozens of times in the prior history of the setting is.

[PossibleCabbage]

My personal favorite explanation for "why some goblins are good now" is that one of the last decade's big world saving heroes was a goblin, and word of the esteem that one greenskin earned as well as the tales of their exploits has gotten around to various goblin groups. With a clear "positive role model" available who achieved much more than the various bad role models which abound, some goblins reconsidered some things.

Alternatively Sarenrite missionaries just hit one out of the park, and were generally a positive influence.

[DerNils]

I think you can also make an interesting Meta-Point in that the other races of Golarion had a lot of mindset Change, because a lot of their heroes are represented by PC's with our modern ideas. It is established that a lot of the adventure paths have happened, and they happened via PC's played like us.
So Golarion has a lot of influential heroes who think "all Goblins are evil" is not a very good stance. That is a nice way of showing how our evolved ideas influence the Game World :)

[tonyz]

Most surviving goblins have been raised by paladins in orphanages.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Alternatively Sarenrite missionaries just hit one out of the park, and were generally a positive influence.

I mean, if goblins were going to hear out ANY missionaries, it'd be the ones whose goddess has hair made of PRETTY, PRETTY FIRE! ;)

[Squeakmaan]

I'm pretty sure it went something like "Behold the great ball of fire in the sky? Do you want to worship it?" followed by a lot of enthusiastic nodding. "Stop being quite so murderous" followed by some grumbling and few shifty looks then "but you can totally still set the undead on fire" followed by enthusiastic cheering.

[WagnerSika]

Rysky and zimmerwald1915, good points both, but is there an "official" explanation offered anywhere (a blog post or similar is official enough)?
Has anyone clarified, or given examples of, how should the unchanged reputation affect the goblin PCs? If they are able to freely walz in anywhere, the statement that goblin reputation is unchanged is not really true.

Should the average town guard greet Fumbus as warmly as he would greet Harsk? Or should he give him suspicious and dirty looks or worse? I realise this should change from town to town and country to country, but some baseline would be nice. I mean, is the dirty looks a norm and warm welcome a nice exception, or the other way around?
And yeah, I know all adventurers should probably get dirty looks from town guards :D

[Rysky]

WagnerSika wrote:

I realise this should change from town to town and country to country,

That’s precisely it. Even in 1e Goblins weren't kill on sight.

I’d read the Goblin section in the Core rulebook, and the Goblins in the Age of Ashes, and we’ll probably get more info in the Lost Omens World Guide coming up.