DMDC 07 - Bonus Hobgoblins

Talkin' 'bout herbgerblins!

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Hey! This is the DM Discourse, a podcast about D&D, focused on the experience at the table from behind the screen. I'm your host Darrell, and today I’m picking up where I left off with the party in the Halls Under the Hill, but will be focusing on a different faction in my game world and analyze how I foreshadowed their goals inevitably clashing with the party’s.

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There are no gods worthy of our praise, no outsider entities watching over us from secluded places beyond our ken whose actions earn them gratitude from our lips. Look to the chapels of men, the groves of elves, and the halls of dwarves - what do you see? Legions of hollow, droning fools, singing hymns to deities whose history and actions have never shown them true favor or benevolence. The gods are real, make no mistake, but their divinity does not make them better than you or me.

Once, in ages past, we were as they. There were powers we worshipped with fire in our hearts for the favor they granted us. Boons for battle we were given, tools to defend our families and tribes from the endless conquests of unsatisfied, would be emperors. For the gods of other folk rebuked us and led them to think they could conquer as they please, to take as their whims demanded. Ask yourself - what god could make such a demand or breed such desires in their followers?

False idols. Broken icons. The power they wield is used only to further their own selfish ambitions, for even they bicker amongst themselves the best way to use mortals to further their own goals. Our gods proved no better. Eventually, when we were found lacking, we were cast aside all the same, and left to fend for ourselves in the harsh wilds that we could make some semblance of home for our people. The pantheon of the hobgoblins did not aid them when called upon. For our hubris of trusting gods we have lost our culture, our identity. No greater a price could have been paid, and no reward worth its trade.

Hark! Beware their priests in robed garments of temptresses. Their missionaries will bring us words of empty promise and prosper off our kin’s foolishness. Do not turn them away by violence although your heart may call you to do so. Seek to enlighten them to their futility and pointless of their path. Should their minds be closed, turn them back to whence they came. Their justice and gods are self-serving, their ways set to fade against time and its irreverence.

On the Ethos of Melwa Religion

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I never cared much for hobgoblins. When it comes down to the classic, “evil” races of D&D, orcs and goblins always stood out more as picks to throw at adventurers. Even kobolds, given their relationship to dragons, was appealing when compared to bugbears and hobgoblins. But after a few years of running the game and learning more about them, I thought it would be neat to make hobgoblins a core race in my setting. The players didn’t know this coming in, which gave me the opportunity to subvert their expectations - much in the same way the campaign starting with a boat raid by sea elf raiders did.

But whereas sea elves were, effectively, replacing drow to be a more thematic tie-in to my very aquatic-centric setting, I wanted hobgoblins to serve as a parallel to the dominant races of the continent: humans and dwarves and so forth. Dragonborn were usurped by the humans at some point in history, tieflings I had reskinned to originate from primordials more than outsiders, but for these red colored goblinoids they could be antithetical to the culture of both the players and surrounding rulers. I could add a depth to them past just being another monster race to be killed for XP.

It’s been a hot button topic lately about the language that is used regarding these traditionally “evil” races of D&D. That’s not something I want to get into here, you can do a quick internet search if you want to see WotC’s official take and replies on social media, but I think it does raise a good point. For decades these iconic members of the shared fantasy monolith have been described in Dungeons & Dragons as inherently amoral, in societies and cultures that encourage their behavior. The god of orcs, Gruumsh, is a savage god of raiding and conquest, and the dark elves venerate a sociopathic, betraying spider lady. So sure the argument can be made that these people focus their civilization on vile traditions but I think it’s inherently reductive to limit the scope of an entire people to a few basic concepts of morality.

So don’t. You can take what you think is cool and put that in your world and if you want to redefine aspects or the entirety of established tropes in the hobby, I want to encourage you to do that. That’s what I did for hobgoblins, not because I wanted to be a high-minded moralist in my ivory tower. I just thought it would be neat. I thought my friends would like it. I wanted to see what fun we could have by giving these long-standing enemies of the traditional races a little more to work with it.

So I made them the melwa, no longer just some variation of goblinoid, but a genuine race with their own ties to the history and landscape and stories that they tell alongside their campfires about betrayals by those they once called kin and others they worshipped as gods. Whether folk believed the change in their physical appearance to be from magic or some evolutionary distinguishment, that answer isn’t concrete. What is concrete, is that they are struggling to survive in a world that views them as monsters because that is what they are told the melwa are, the hobgoblins - which at this point as turned into a slur against them, to see that they are essentially hobbled beings in the company of goblins.

That’s the group of people that the players went to meet after they had finished exploring the Accursed Halls. Last time they made one loop from the lower part of the dungeon that led back to the central chamber along the upper balcony, and this week they went through its mirror. First on the list was the crumbling passage they passed through, which I just had the party make dexterity saves against. A lot harder to avoid than the pitfall trap from last week’s first room.

The next room combined the tricky terrain with a combat encounter. Striges, which are these bat wasps things? Some stirges attacked them in the small cave room while they had to jump in-between some stable pillars. It wasn’t the most challenging encounter they had, in fact they continued to steam roll through the rest of the dungeon from here on out, but it combined the two facets of encounter types into one - so now they knew that they could get into scraps while also having to navigate tricky areas. Again I’m still going without a grid, but we just kept mental track of where each person was. Of course for one player - the vesryn, which are a bat race in my setting - just flew across easily. Again me learning to keep flying player characters in mind for the future.

Then they encountered more goblins - three, specifically, playing a game of dice while waiting for their leader up above for their next orders. This made it easy for party to get the jump on them, three very impatient adventurers who have had enough of goblin shenanigans. However this time they ended up letting these surprised goblins go - as you probably suspect this does come back to haunt them.

The group of goblins in the last, incomplete chamber upstairs, were less lucky. Here the goblin boss, Murgmo, was investigating the ruins for something important to their tribe’s leader, the Warpriest Mido. The party did get into combat with this group and interrogated Murgmo. However, they didn’t let her live. The cleric ended up killing her during the interrogation, but I think this had more to do with the veteran player trying to get a reaction or inspire action from the other players. This goes back to them traveling to Fenskeep on the boat where they didn’t stop the cleric from shooing off the kenku that were trying to warn them of impending danger. To be honest I don’t think the other party members expected this from the cleric, but were more or less fine with how it turned out.

The next room they went through had a phantasmal chill trap on it but all of the party members ended up succeeding their saves so just found some violet stones that could be used for the puzzle door in the entryway. After this, however, was the objective of Murgmo and her group of goblins, an abandoned temple to some goblinoid god. In the room the party fought two fungal crawlers, which ended up being tougher than expected, but since this was the final room of the dungeon I think it turned out fine to just be a secondary or true boss fight. They found a goblin blade amidst the ruins, which was just a +1 short sword, but being the objective of the goblins this was still important to the melwa as a piece of their heritage. 

After deliberating it and giving it some thought, the players ended up deciding to go visit the melwa tribe in town and gauge their reaction to turning the blade into them. They weren’t friends with the goblins, and didn’t see themselves as aggressors, so if giving this item to the tribal leader was an opportunity to curry favor they were going to go for it. They could use a few guaranteed friends in this part of the world.

Of course as I’ve been talking about in the intro and their backstory, the melwa were never going to truly be friends with the party. It was a bit of a struggle to get there in the first place, the goblins they let go freed Brog and attempted to commandeer the party’s ship - the cleric knocked off one of their heads to dismay any further attempts at that. But once they reached the Briarwarren, a thicket of bramble the tribe had carved their home into, they discovered a truly different culture than that from the town.

The head of the tribe and its cleric, Warchief Mido, welcomed the group to his home, comfortable in his domain, and when they presented to him the sword, he surprised them by being amicable and curt. To Mido, the history revealed by the sword was disappointing, similar to the performance of the goblins he had sent down to the Accursed Halls in the first place, but he was grateful that the party had the decency to come meet him face to face. He ended up letting them keep the sword, and warning them of things to come, at the hands of this tribe, Wogar’s Brood.

The party had been paying attention up to this point so this surprised them immediately, that hobgoblins would have a priest for they had embraced a non-religious lifestyle by and large. Yet here was a zealot, a central NPC to be sure, set to challenge them further down the road because at his heart Mido has one purpose - to see the rise of his people, a triumph they have been deserving for countless centuries yet never fulfilled. For this he has turned to the gods once more, who have so long been tossed aside by his people. He seeks answers where others do not, and will do whatever it takes to see his goals fulfilled.

That is what I presented to the players for the hobgoblins, or melwa, in my setting. A civilized and historic people, tied to the setting as much as the other races, caught in complications in order to survive. Here was one defying the traditions of his kind as well, hoping to lead his folk to glory. I don’t think the party believed it or knew it at the time, but there was certainly no way that, whatever they tried, would this being of singular purpose ever be their ally.

That might be the only lesson I have to look back on for this session but I think it’s a good one: you can defy convention to add surprising depth to the characters of your setting. I’ve tried to make my hobgoblins not follow the typical mold, but still they are primed to serve as potential antagonists to the party - and they do, further down the road. They wish to believe that Mido and them could aid one another, but for Mido there is only a justice that his people are due.

Thanks for listening, as always. Means a lot to me to know people are out there genuinely interested in my weird story going on. Feel free to leave feedback or comments on whatever platform your listening, or shoot me an e-mail at dmdiscoursepodcast@gmail.com or on Twitter at DMDCPodcast. Take care, and have a great week.