#goblinoids

They're crafty and cunning, but most lack intelligence (representatively, at least). They're in tune with nature in a weird way, and they're technically fey, but they're almost never portrayed as fey. They're capable of industry and wickedly clever designs but are not masters of craft or artisans.

They are the creatures originally intended for cannon fodder that players of ttrpgs kinda fell in love with. They represented a lot of bad tropes, and so we tried to change them but we were not fully capable of washing away the complicated history on them.

When I run goblins as a society. They aren't lesser. They aren't stupid. They aren't bad. They just haven't been given opportunity as a culture. They're outcast as a race of beings, never welcomed in to communities where they'd learn things and have resources due to how different they are. They also tend to be what happens when you get a very diverse heritage (in a sort of roundabout description way). Elves and orcs and dwarves and gnomes and everything. You get fey pointed ears, you get darker green and brown skin tones, you get this thin figure that's surprisingly durable and hardy, they're short, they're nimble, they're good with they're hands, they can work iron. The list goes on. Heck. Sometimes I give them horns.

I also like to rule that they do the best with what they're given. They can't get access to raw materials, so they scavenge what they can. They get metal from slag dumps and pan out the useful bits. Thier cloth is a mixture of scrap hide and recycled trash. Goblin alchemy is slightly more refined because they can gather most of what they need from nature, but glassware is almost always unavailable and so they are limited in what they can make.

The Magic Spider

Day 5 Gobust2025

Goblinoids have quite the large family, having goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, trolls, ogres, cyclopses. Within this family are various subtypes based on environment and breeding that we will not be discussing due to the heated debate surrounding it.

Goblins (standard) are 3 1/2-4 feet tall, and are the quickest adaptive race on the planet. Within just 4 generations they can develop skin that camouflages or gills/webbing to fit a swamp or lake. The reason I say standard is that they may grow taller (like the greater goblin) for roaming forests or smaller (like the little goblin) to fit in caves. Like primates, all goblins (no matter the biome) have grasping feet with an opposable hallux making them 4 toed. The goblin’s larger cousins lack the opposable toe but still possess the grasping foot with the same number of toes. Most goblins have dark vision and have large bat-like ears. Using chirps, clicks and whistles to communicate. While they may lose those large ears due to an aquatic environment, they are swapped for dorsal fins. 

You may think that as a lesser monster that the reason the goblins have survived is due to their quick adaptations or their high birth rate. You would be only partially correct, yes they are a lesser monster but they are the only predator for the fey. Their diet is comprised of grubs, beetles and insects. [with some exceptions when accounting for environment] But with a waning moon the goblins will split into packs and participate in a grand hunt of pixies, faeries, archfey, whatever they can sink their teeth into. 

Goblins will swarm fey forest grounds like piranhas, and once they are done they take their carapaces to make armor of and wings to market…if anything is left. Most goblins hunt in packs but some do manage on their own in hunts and if they do manage to hunt on and kill fey their own they’ve right to all the spoils and are allowed to distribute them as they see fit.

 —[In some desperate cases, they’ll follow bugbears and hobgoblins (the hunters of their species) and, if they feel safe to (or if they’re in a mixed pack with them) they’ll scavenge off of the carcasses they kill. But more often than not there is nothing left.]—

Those who are able to vanquish the fey on their own are often appointed as leaders and defenders within their packs. You’ll see them guarding their compatriots as they sleep, decorated with the durable exoskeletons of archfey. This isn’t to say goblins are the only magical pest control in the lands. But more on that in a later entry.