| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Only feedback at my tables about shoony was 'Why only pugs?' and something about the short nose thing that's apparently bad for real dogs? I don't know. No pleasing anyone, as it turns out.Hobgoblins, lizardfolk and leshy are already playable for a couple of months already, they were published in the Lost Omens Character Guide. But, of course, nobody noticed because people who come down here to kvetch pretty much never read the stuff they complain about :)
To make your life easier, aasimars, catfolk, changelings, dhampirs, duskwalkers, kobolds, orcs, tieflings, ratfolk and tengu will be out in 3 months with Advanced Player' Guide.
Also, the indomitable Shoony, the pug-people, were published in a recent AP instalment. I think some here might flip out at the notion of pugfolk in their xxxxtreme dark and edgy fantasy grimdark :D
It makes me really sad whenever I see a Pug or a Bulldog or a Daschund or any number of similar small breeds because we as humans have deliberately created an animal that spends most of its life suffering and struggling to breath. What is a cute meme dog to other people is to me a really tragic situation - that is probably why people have that reaction to them. Pugs basically spend their entire lives gasping for breath because their snouts are so deformed, all because breeders decided a squished face is cute.
I wonder if that was something whoever came up with Shoonies was thinking about when they gave them the backstory of having been created just to keep Aroden company.
On the Goblin thing, anyone who thinks that not having them all be pure evil ruins them as antagonists is seriously lacking in imagination. We have devils and demons and undead for that - having the non-supernatural "monsters" be individuals who aren't monolithically evil isn't just realistic, it doesn't just move things away from a really gross way of looking at the world, but it also makes stories more interesting and more fun. A villain who had a choice of whether to be evil or not is a lot more interesting than a villain who was just evil by default.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I wonder if that was something whoever came up with Shoonies was thinking about when they gave them the backstory of having been created just to keep Aroden company.Well they do have a Constitution Flaw.
On the Goblin thing, anyone who thinks that not having them all be pure evil ruins them as antagonists is seriously lacking in imagination.
Ayup.
There’s nothing genetic about Goblins that’s makes them bandits, you can have bandits be… literally anyone else.
Humans, elves, gnomes (we really need gnome brigands), dwarves, etc.
If anything the “obvious generic antagonist” slot is taken by humans, since you tend to fight them more than anything else.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah. The sentient-species-as-irredeemable-evil is the laziest of approaches.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah. The sentient-species-as-irredeemable-evil is the laziest of approaches.While I agree, we then need to remove the alignment portion of the bestiary template. Don't list something as LE, NE or CE if the GM and PCs are not supposed to see them as, well, evil.
Yep. Alignment is a pretty lazy system.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ok, to add some background info to my earlier post.
One of the PCs is a ranger whose father and older brother died during the goblin wars. He is the primary reason the goblins died in the first adventure (more on that in a moment). Another is a gnome alchemist who certainly didn't argue for their lives either (the hatred mechanic may be gone but the player highly doubts a whole species has forgiven and forgotten).
The PCs agreed to track Calmont but never agreed to contact the goblins. After they killed the lizard thing they could hear the goblins arguing above and the gnome and ranger lobbed oil and alchemist fire up to the are above. Calmont escaped injured and they found and captured him later.
Hey, it sucks to lose a parent, but it doesn't justify murdering someone just because they look similar to the person who killed your parents. Those goblins did nothing to provoke them other than just exist and make noise, and got burned to death for just existing and being green.
At very best the PCs made a horrible mistake where they perpetuated the cycle of hatred. More likely they are racists who murdered people in cold blood.
The stuff in the bestiary is just describing what is normal in goblin culture. It is not okay to kill people based on the assumption that that person is a "normal" member of that society. Its also generally not okay to kill a person who you know for sure is a violent psychopath unless you have to.
You don't go up to a bandit camp with the intention of killing them all - you go to rescue someone from them or to arrest them, then kill some of them in self-defense if they force you to.
Goblins are no less sentient than human bandits, they just look different to humans and have a different culture that developed on the fringes of society (which is where humans force them to live).
Play your game how you want, but don't expect people to agree with you that those player characters are heroes or even meeting the bare minimum it takes to not be a monster.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
My group in Extinction Curse is trying to redeem a Xulgoth. Not abduct him. Not brainwash him. Redeem him. He isn't even a default character, as far as I know. Just a random dude who we took the time to talk with and said "yo. we know you want to kill everyone because of this stuff your people have been told. some of it is true. most of it applies to only a very small number of people." We invited him to our circus and were like "you are safe here."
Treating people AS people is way more complex and deep than being a murderbot.
IF you are going to play that way, though: it should be with the intent of exploring the horror of evil acts committed in pursuit of good. It should be a critical look.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
My group in Extinction Curse is trying to redeem a Xulgoth. Not abduct him. Not brainwash him. Redeem him. He isn't even a default character, as far as I know. Just a random dude who we took the time to talk with and said "yo. we know you want to kill everyone because of this stuff your people have been told. some of it is true. most of it applies to only a very small number of people." We invited him to our circus and were like "you are safe here."
Treating people AS people is way more complex and deep than being a murderbot.
IF you are going to play that way, though: it should be with the intent of exploring the horror of evil acts committed in pursuit of good. It should be a critical look.
Considering the history of the Xulgath. I love this. They were did so bad.
| 22 people marked this as a favorite. |
The idea that not being able to treat an entire ancestry unilaterally will somehow paralyze adventurers is patently ridiculous. Adventurers deal with cultists and bandits and warlords that are human without treating all humans as bad guys, because adventurers are people with a basic level of sentience and can distinguish between a person's actions and their species.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
If I offended people, I apologize.
This is a non-apology apology. You're shifting the blame of your offense onto others. You can play the game how you like, but when you play an adventure where you're tasked with saving goblins and you instead kill them because "they're goblins," people are going to call you out.
EDIT: Also necro'ing a thread to out yourself like this is a hell of a choice.
|
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Clearly I cannot make a point here. My roleplaying background comes from almost 40 years of adventurers clearing dungeons, fighting orc hoards and saving villages from nearby evil humanoid encampments. I guess my group is not the kind to put real world morality in our game about being powerful adventurers looking to have fun fights and get cool gear.
If I offended people, I apologize. I am not saying any other play style is wrong. I, and my players, feel like expecting every drow to be a Drizzt and every sentient monster to be a potential ally muddles what is supposed to be a black and white escape from our everyday confusion.
There's been a concerted effort to move away from that black-and-white morality as an escape from reality, for a few reasons really. I think the most relevant here is that the creatures that are being slain as part of a fun, thoughtless piece of escapism are inevitably inspired in parts by real groups of people It's hard to make entirely novel cultures that are still based in the real world! Stuff like Tolkein calling Orc "Mongol-types", or drawing from nomadic cultures to inspire nomadic Orc tribes. I think everyone would agree that participating in easy escapism by the mass slaughter of a specific race of real-world people would be ... not great, and this is a step removed. I think there are two ways to continue to engage in a game while maintaining this sort of 'lets not think too hard about the morality of these actions' sort of playstyle:
1: The easy solution is to use the more unambiguously evil creatures - although there may be a small amount of non-evil demons, demons are made from the souls and memories of horrifically evil mortal creatures, are defined by their evil acts in almost all circumstances, and are so thoroughly different from mortals that they draw substantially less real-world parallels. Going for a Diablo-esque campaign in a place like the Sarkoris Scar, playing as the native people of Sarkoris reclaiming their land from demons, is going to be a pretty black-and-white morality sort of situation.
2: The still-pretty-easy solution is to look at what situations you're comfortable doing the same thing to humans, and apply them. Would you feel comfortable just walking in and murdering all the humans in a village because they may have connection to a band of bandits? Probably not. You're probably more OK going into a bandit camp and fighting your way to the leader, or killing the cultists trying to summon evil fiends. Don't focus on the ancestry of the creatures doing the evil deeds, focus on the deeds - if the dungeon is full of goblin cultists trying to summon a Great Old One, it's very different to a simple goblin village being situated in the dungeon.
EDIT: And if you put in a simple goblin village, you are introducing real-world morality whether you like it or not - goblins are thinking, living creatures with their own lives. Killing them all is an (im)moral act, even if it's not something you're dwelling on for a very long time. If you're trying to run a game without much morality and going for black-and-white ethics, just roll with that - make everything extremely black and white. All enemies you find are cartoonishly evil, there are no families or villages or anything of the sort. Black-and-white morality is incompatible with a realistic world, so just don't present environments that aren't black-and-white morality. This isn't compatible with existing APs and adventures, but that's because they're not written for those sort of morality, and honestly never have been.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This is a non-apology apology. You're shifting the blame of your offense onto others. You can play the game how you like, but when you play an adventure where you're tasked with saving goblins and you instead kill them because "they're goblins," people are going to call you out.I honestly wasn't looking to offend anyone though. Also, I didn't realize I necroed the thread, I forgot to look at post dates. (facepalm)
@Arcaian Yeah, my first adventure I ever played was keep on the borderlands. Our DM just said, monsters live there, go get 'em.
You make a very good point though. In most adventures I have ever played the evil humanoids have been doing evil things. In this particular adventure it was not true. Allowing my players to get away with that behavior, even if it was in character for them, was mostly laziness on my part but still not excusable.
Older adventures like that certainly tended to be a great deal more willing to treat thinking creatures as unerringly evil. I'm glad you can see where we're coming from about the morality of the actions here! :)
Clearly I cannot make a point here. My roleplaying background comes from almost 40 years of adventurers clearing dungeons, fighting orc hoards and saving villages from nearby evil humanoid encampments. I guess my group is not the kind to put real world morality in our game about being powerful adventurers looking to have fun fights and get cool gear.
If I offended people, I apologize. I am not saying any other play style is wrong. I, and my players, feel like expecting every drow to be a Drizzt and every sentient monster to be a potential ally muddles what is supposed to be a black and white escape from our everyday confusion.
Since you are aware of Drizzt, I implore you to search a story called "Dark Mirror" by R.A. Salvatore, it's in an Anthology called Realms of Valor.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Clearly I cannot make a point here. My roleplaying background comes from almost 40 years of adventurers clearing dungeons, fighting orc hoards and saving villages from nearby evil humanoid encampments. I guess my group is not the kind to put real world morality in our game about being powerful adventurers looking to have fun fights and get cool gear.
If I offended people, I apologize. I am not saying any other play style is wrong. I, and my players, feel like expecting every drow to be a Drizzt and every sentient monster to be a potential ally muddles what is supposed to be a black and white escape from our everyday confusion.
Playing Pathfinder as a dungeon-crawling combat game with no concern why the hostiles opposing the party are hostiles is a perfectly legitimate playing style. Some of my players have played Pathfinder for the fights alone.
Pathfinder's goblins are a good race for enemies in a dungeon crawl. (1) They frequently live in dark places abandoned by other people, such as the entrance to a lost treasure trove, (2) they are weak opponents seldom above 1st level, (3) they are unorganized so do not prepare well for the arrival of a party, (4) they are amusingly manic, and (5) their destructive urges and worship of evil goddess Lamashtu make them nominally evil and therefore legitimate targets.
That does not mean that "they have been alignment fluid all along".Of course it does, Humanoids don’t have innate Alignments, never have.How many exceptions to the rule change the rule?That’s the thing, there never was a rule, you made it up.
Even in the very first book that people try to use to paint all goblins, Burnt Offerings, the reason the raid on Sandpoint worked as well as it did? Because the goblins never had done that before, it was completely out of character for them. *points at main villain of the AP, an Aasimar*
Also the only other major group I can think of in an AP is Jade Regent where they stole a bunch of fireworks and have been fending off undead.
Fight is likely but definitely not “evil murderers you need to kill on sight”. The person paying for their ears isn’t painted as a good person either.
And that is reason 6: the goblin tribes often live harmlessly in the forest or caves or swamp until something rouses them into raiding. The setting can keep them in reserve until the adventure path needs them as opponents. If the goblins were always actively evil, then they would have been driven away from the human settlements. A 1st-level adventure needs nearby opponents.
The changes in Pathfinder 2nd Edition are that goblins are more likely to live in towns among humans and worship gods besides Lamashtu. Those changes do not eliminate goblins who live in caverns, attack travelers, set buildings on fire, and worship evil gods.
In contrast to playing for combat, my wife plays for telling a character's story. The other players in my current campaign are our two daughters and our two housemates with similar preferences, and two new players who don't have strong preferences yet. To let them develop their 3-dimensional characters, their enemies have to be at least 2-dimensional.
The campaign is Ironfang Legion, converted to PF2 rules. The hobgoblin "monster" division in the Molthune army, lead by former child warrior in the Goblinsblood Wars General Azaersi, broke away from Molthune and is trying to conquer parts of Molthune and Nirmathis to create a homeland for monstrous humanoid races. Therefore, it would be reasonable for the PCs to kill any hobgoblin on sight, because they are their enemies in war.
Nevertheless, my players have fun learning the motives of their enemies, both the hobgoblins and the other non-human-elven-dwarven humanoids recruited by Azaersi. Some hate humans (very amusing because the party contains no humans), some are bloodthirsty, some are soldiers following orders, some are inspired by the hope of a nation of their own, some were offered rewards for their service, etc. They notice hypocricies, such as hobgoblins hoping for a free nation for all goblinoids, yet keeping goblin slaves. They notice enemies who can be negotiated with instead of killed. They notice inefficiencies in the rigorous hobgoblin obedience to orders. They like the variety.
|
Wow, this is an old thread to revive. Thought this was talked to death before, but the short version is that it seems Paizo has went down the road of believing if a Creature is sentient it can make its own decisions and go with or against cultural norms.
In cases of goblins specifically, they are typically short lived which also tends to mean they can evolve culturally much faster. A few individuals and then some tribes started being less aggressive and actually found that life expectancies of the ones that adapted to work WITH other races extended and so that life style caught on even more.
Outside of the game, there has been a push in the real world to understand other cultures and realize that people may be different, but that doesn't equate to good or bad. Paizo is tapping into real world move for tolerance and taking that into their game world.
Plus...goblins are very fun to role-play!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow, this is an old thread to revive. Thought this was talked to death before, but the short version is that it seems Paizo has went down the road of believing if a Creature is sentient it can make its own decisions and go with or against cultural norms.
In cases of goblins specifically, they are typically short lived which also tends to mean they can evolve culturally much faster. A few individuals and then some tribes started being less aggressive and actually found that life expectancies of the ones that adapted to work WITH other races extended and so that life style caught on even more.
Outside of the game, there has been a push in the real world to understand other cultures and realize that people may be different, but that doesn't equate to good or bad. Paizo is tapping into real world move for tolerance and taking that into their game world.
Plus...goblins are very fun to role-play!
Yes to all of that, especially the last part. I'm hypocritical about that though because I believe at the same time that creators have liberty to reserve some sentient creatures to use purely as NPCs, predominantly in an antagonist capacity. Goblins have an evolving narrative as to their worldview but some sentient societies like serpent folk are all generally evil. I'm down for social progress but I also like dms having a toolbox of recognizable "bad guys". Maybe that toolbox shouldn't have humanoids anymore.... maybe serpent folk and xulgath should be aberrations or some other classification. Or maybe, as is happening in APs, all you really need is more nuanced writing. Idk I'm rambling, but goblins becoming nicer and being playable is definitely a boon. It's fun to be a loud, chaotic gremlin.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
You make a very good point though. In most adventures I have ever played the evil humanoids have been doing evil things. In this particular adventure it was not true. Allowing my players to get away with that behavior, even if it was in character for them, was mostly laziness on my part but still not excusable.
Good on you for recognizing that. It is hard to undo decades of habits, especially if you feel attacked when people call you out on it.
At the end of a day it is really easy to make a scenario where ANY species is doing evil things that call for violence to solve. Especially because when a creature is hurting other people those people will often put out a job posting for adventurers to come and stop it.
I don't think old school D&D really cared about this, because it was originally a game about looting treasure, not saving lives. Tying XP to gold really lended itself to amoral adventurers who didn't care about whether the creature in front of them was evil, just that it MIGHT be dangerous and probably had gold to steal. So really not any different than banditry, just targeting more vulnerable populations with less risk of repercussions.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes to all of that, especially the last part. I'm hypocritical about that though because I believe at the same time that creators have liberty to reserve some sentient creatures to use purely as NPCs, predominantly in an antagonist capacity. Goblins have an evolving narrative as to their worldview but some sentient societies like serpent folk are all generally evil. I'm down for social progress but I also like dms having a toolbox of recognizable "bad guys". Maybe that toolbox shouldn't have humanoids anymore.... maybe serpent folk and xulgath should be aberrations or some other classification. Or maybe, as is happening in APs, all you really need is more nuanced writing. Idk I'm rambling, but goblins becoming nicer and being playable is definitely a boon. It's fun to be a loud, chaotic gremlin.Wow, this is an old thread to revive. Thought this was talked to death before, but the short version is that it seems Paizo has went down the road of believing if a Creature is sentient it can make its own decisions and go with or against cultural norms.
In cases of goblins specifically, they are typically short lived which also tends to mean they can evolve culturally much faster. A few individuals and then some tribes started being less aggressive and actually found that life expectancies of the ones that adapted to work WITH other races extended and so that life style caught on even more.
Outside of the game, there has been a push in the real world to understand other cultures and realize that people may be different, but that doesn't equate to good or bad. Paizo is tapping into real world move for tolerance and taking that into their game world.
Plus...goblins are very fun to role-play!
I dont disagree. It is a nature vs nurture thing for me. Some societies in fantasy settings, like Golarion, are evil by most standards. It is what they know based on their teaching (murder as appropriate, slavery, underhanded tactics to get the upper hand, xenophobia, etc.). In those societies, most of the individuals will be evil as well and will display it rather prominently. However there are always going to be exceptions. I know it's D&D, but Dritzz is the perfect example of this.
The opposite holds true too of course. However it has never been as big an issue to people when a single bad guy emerges from an otherwise good community. I never understood why a small group of "good" guys emerging from a generally "evil" community triggered some people.