Years later while going back through the archives, I finally notice that the title says "Hobgobglins" and realize that everything in the video was actually about hobgobglins and not hobgoblins and now I still have to learn about hobgoblins.
Maybe Kobolds come from infertile dragon eggs. You might get 10-15 from such an egg. Dragons don't mind so much because they like their little servants. Which also means that there could be Black Kobolds, Silver Kobolds... Then a deadly insult for a Dragonborn is to call them a Kobold.
Powerful hero in D&D: "I miss when having a grappling hook mattered." Powerful hero in RuneQuest: "I'm going to die because I forgot my grappling hook."
In the final session of the first campaign I ever played in, we ended up fighting a dark mage inside the ribcage of a very large dracolich. My rogue and an NPC were knocked off and began plummeting to the city below. Luckily I had a grappling hook in my equipment that I managed to throw up and latch onto the dracolich - saving myself and the falling NPC! No matter how high level you are, you always need the right equipment!
@@nickbeutler He’s referring to how in even moderately levelled groups, you will have access to items like the boots of flying, or a ring of feather falling, or similar items.
I treat bugbears as "drop bears". Give them better climbing and have them fall from the ceilings of caverns where the player characters aren't paying attention.
@@patrickbuckley7259 There has to be. Even if there's no other human for miles, the bugbears will always keep one as bait. The Aussie frantically warns the party about the drop-bears... and while the party huddles close to listen, that's when the bears drop!
@@patrickbuckley7259 Everywhere I've travelled, there's been another Aussie in the hostel. Even when we're the only people there, and it's on the other side of the world. It's just a Law of Backpacking - every hostel has a well-travelled Aussie. (Sometimes, they're sober.)
Historically, D&D Bugbears were crazy stealthy despite being massive. In one of the editions I swear they made like, no noise at all when moving around. It's always been their thing for whatever reason, though most DM's don't exploit it because they're already nasty to low level parties and getting one shotted before you even know anything is there feels kind of dirty.
From 1st Edition Monster Manual: "Although bugbears are clumsy looking and walk with a shambling gait, they are actually able to move very quickly and with great stealth, thus surprising opponents 50% of the time." So they've always been stealthy ambushers in D&D
I like the idea of Bugbear being the source of boogy-man. Big scary thing squeezing into your room through the window then crawling under your bed. Snatching at midnight, never to be seen again.
The word "orc" comes from the Italian "orco" which is equivalent to the French "ogre" which is often regarded as a kind of giant. So yes, linguistically, orcs are related to giants.
I've always associated them with ogres. So there may some kinship there. And if not I can make it! I even had one game world where "goblins" were, in actuality, adolescent orcs.
So oddly my players are about to find orcs for the first time in the setting in an area where Ogres and Ogre mages took over and the Orc are essentially quarter Ogres.
For 5e I found that Volo's Guide to Monsters was a brilliant take on the goblinoids. Goblins are, well, goblins, but it made hobgoblins and bugbears really interesting. Hobgoblins are a race of disciplined soldiers who fight and die for the glory of their god, Maglubiyet. Orcs have hordes, goblins have packs, bugbears have gangs but hobgoblins have armies. Think of them as particularly dickish and bloodthirsty Mandalorians and you should have a view of what they're like. Bugbears on the other hand are more inclined to be loners or travel in small gangs. Despite their size they can be very sneaky, and their strength allows them to employ clubs and garrotes with equal lethal efficiency. They consider murder and battle sacred acts performed for the glory of their gods, Hruggek and Grankhul. The former is cunningly brutal while the latter is brutally cunning (aka the former will bash your face in with a club while the other will strangle you from behind), which likely sounds familiar. Another act sacred to bugbears is the taking of the heads of your fallen enemies, removing the eyelids and putting the heads on stakes and display them as trophies (the book has a note by Elminster suggesting that you use magic to make the heads talk, which allows you to talk the bugbears into doing just about anything). Bugbears frequently join hobgoblin armies because their gods are subservient to Maglubiyet, and by joining said armies the hobgoblins believe they follow the will of the gods. As for kobolds... they don't fight fair. They fight from ambush employing all sorts of traps, tricks and tools in order to get the upper hand on more powerful enemies. The infamous Tucker's Kobolds are played this way, who are named after a DM named Tucker who used his kobolds to great effect this way against a high level party in an older edition of D&D. Nowadays the name is synonymous with any force of monsters engaging in asymmetric combat against the party, and they are feared for this exact reason.
Personally really liked volo's but hated the way it treated hobgoblins, it made no sense to me, turned them into "just another race", where before they were an interesting tribal adjunct to goblins, I've always ran hobgoblins as somehow related to goblins, either a higher form of the same species, very old goblins, goblin crossbreeds, etc
Game Fun man, what kinda spells do you gotta use to coerce/convince a bear and an owl to get it on? Edited to add: it occurs to me it's probably more likely a digifusion sort of thing than setting the lights down low and turning on on some Barry White songs
Actually Goblins are more akin to Skirmishers and Scouts, while Hobgoblins are the Heavy Infantry, and Bug Bears are the Shock Troops and Assassins. As for Orcs vs Goblins, particularly Hobgoblins, it's basically Chaotic Evil vs Lawful Evil, one raids and pillages, the other conquers and enslaves.
Profesh Videographer here, Matt. Quick guide: generally, 4 things control light internally in a DSLR camera, in order from lowest to highest likelihood that it's your problem. 1. NDs (neutral density filters, think sunglasses). Make sure these are flipped off. Usually DSLRs don't have them built in, but your lens might. 2. shutter speed, the speed to which your light sensor opens and closes. the lower the setting, the brighter the footage you will get, but you will get more motion blur (not a problem for what you are doing). Make sure it's at 30 or 1/30 as opposed to 1/60 or higher. 3. the F-stop of your lens. The F-stop is how much light your lens lets in. Lower numbers are better, so an f stop of 20 is terrible, but an f-stop of 3.5 is pretty good. Your lens might auto adjust, but it could have an aperture that you dial between a set range. Since you aren't moving much, dial it to as low as it can go. You might be able to see what it's at on your screen, usually expressed as "f-5.0" or "fstop:5.0" 4. ISO. This is probably your issue. ISO is the amount of light that the camera artificially adds into the image. The higher ISO you have, the more noisy your footage gets (worse quality footage), but most modern DSLRs can go to 3200 ISO or sometimes higher without any real quality change. I just did a side by side look at your RTG#51 video, and I can see that the light noise in this video increased slightly. Its likely that you accidentally told the camera to auto adjust the ISO, and it did a pretty good job, or you just bumped the ISO up higher on your own. A lot of cameras have a regular ISO and a nighttime ISO. You could have switched to nighttime, but that's unlikely, because that's usually a few button presses to get there. Whatever the problem is: What you could do is check if you have the camera in full Auto filming or just Aperture priority mode. I think on Canons, full auto shooting is usually a green A+ symbol. It's where the camera does literally everything, and is probably the setting you want to have all the time for what you are doing. Aperture priority is usually just a white A or Av symbol. The camera does everything for you except your ISO and F-stop. I recommend not using that mode for your video format. Thanks, dude for all the awesome content! Hope this helps. If you can tell me the exact camera you have, I could probably more easily troubleshoot the situation for you.
Re: orcs and giants - in the 1st edition PHB orcs were included among the list of 'giant class' creatures that Rangers did extra damage against, so that's where you probably picked it up from.
For me it goes like this: Hobgoblins - basically evil Rome, mid-game bad guys. In battle, they are usually 2nd to 6th line and cavalry forces. Tactics used are mostly stuff I read from De Re Militari, with some changes where appropriate. Goblins - the skirmishers in hobgoblins' war machina, they are fast but weak. They go in before the main line and pelt the enemy ranks with several volleys of light crossbow bolts and then leg it behind the main line. Orcs - shock troops, the 1st line in hobgoblins' ranks. They charge in, cause some mayhem, and after they are broken, the hobgoblins themselves move in to engage. Bugbears - a piece of siege equipment used by hobgoblins basically, they are used to knock down palisades and recklessly charge into the well-defended kill zones on the other side of the breach to soften up the defenders. Kobolds - a stepping stone in an arc with dragonkin involved and the only ones in this group who have nothing to do with hobgoblins. That said, goblin tribes, orc raiding parties and bugbear savages can still be randomly chanced upon in the wilderness. Kobolds, on the other hand, are always linked to more powerful dragonkin. EDIT: as a side note, I ran Matt's goblin adventure once, only I put a hobgoblin deserter in command of the local goblins there. So they acted more or less tactically. Unfortunately for my players, a level 1 party at the time, having to withstand a barrage of arrows from behind a pseudo-phalanx in a narrow corridor was more than they could handle. Fortunately for them, I couldn't roll for crap and after, like, 3 volleys, a goblin archer rolled a nat 1 and hit his ally in front of him. At that point, everything went downhill for the baddies.
Huh, I find it weird that people find Hobgoblins "simple", I've always loved Hobgoblins for their industrial and martial background, in a way they're very similar to say Rome . In fact my fantasyesque setting Hobgoblins are one of the major races and Humans are a byproduct of the mating of Orcs and Hobgoblins and are a relatively new race themselves. I don't know I generally see Hobgoblins as sign that as a Party you've moved up from Local Problem, to a Regional Threat.
Actually surprisingly enough, WOTC has done that with Eberron which has the Goblinoid Empire that only fell when Lovecraftian Horrors bled through and shattered them and the humans just showed up and kinda settled in their land.
Interestingly the "original" 1st edition & basic art always depicted hobgoblins as using imitation samurai equipment. This was interesting because it implied a dash of culture. A cultural identity, as it were. It was easy to then envisage them as behaving like an invading Mogol horde all geared up with oriental looking equipment, foreign food, eating habits, language etc. They didn't have to be played that way but it offered an imaginative nudge that gm's could run with if they wanted.
On a related note, the art didn't much support it but the 1st edition tactics for bugbears meant they behaved a bit like Viking goblins (big hairy goblins who could sneak quite well and could throw one handed hafted weapons like hammers, axes and maces, which was someone nobody else could do in the game at the time as unorthodox weapon sue was simply not covered in the rules).
I actually really enjoyed the unedited version, it shows how much work goes into these videos. You must be sick of hearing your voice attempt the same line 5 times.
I have always loved giving mundane monsters pc levels and gear. Takes more time but it keeps the players on their toes. Comments like, one kobald stands out particularly. He has a well maintained breastplate and a sword that seems far too exquisite for a kobald. My players never took monsters for granted, they learned quickly to pay attention to details and treat every encounter like it could be their last.
Norcal Bowhunter the idea is elementary, in the sense that it is an essential building block, but many storytellers forget to ask those questions when making assertions. Many movies and books try to give their audience an absurd amount of assertions to make up for a lack of continuity. What I appreciate about Matt's technique is that he only makes one or two assertions then teases out the implications of those few assertions.
Re-watching this 4 years later and it is SO awesome to see Matt's thoughts on making monsters "cooler" and how Flee Mortals! style monsters have their inception so early in the Coville timeline
I played a 5e recapitulation of the film at Gen Con 2017, and it was easily the most fun thing I did all weekend. DM was an old-school dude. 11/10, would play again.
If you play your kobolds right, they can be a dangerous foe. My DM made our first quest involve a cave full of kobolds. We were outnumbered and we were in their home, they had the advantage. And we had to actually be strategic about how we would attack. It was hard and the party almost died several times, but that made it fun. In previous games we could just walk into a Goblin camp, no plans or strategy. Just walk in and kill. But fighting these kobolds we had to take our time and plan our next attack. And that made it fun...
I’m having quite a bit of fun tweaking kobolds to be a significant challenge for a mid-level party. You expect kobolds to be just little germs in the caves, but nope, these kobolds not only don’t have sunlight sensitivity but they’re powered up on Tarrasque worship and draconic sorcery, and some of them have some pretty mean equipment.
If I remember correctly in 5e Ettins (giant type) are originally orcs transformed by magic. And there are also Ogrillons that are Orc and Ogre (giant type) crossbreed, so there is definitely some relation with giants.
Tip: goblins and especially kobolds are quite short. There's no reason for them to dig lairs that have 7-foot ceilings. They may occupy natural caves with high ceilings, but the parts they dig themselves should be too short for adventurers to walk thru comfortably, so it should be very difficult to root them all out. Once the adventurers get the upper hand, have the creatures flee into their tunnels. That lets the adventurers explore the cavern/dungeon but leaves them subject to harassing attacks from time to time.
I loved the BG gnolls, imagine my surprise when I played WoW and 5e and I discovered that they are not 7ft tall with halberds. I liked the kobolds in that too.
I love seeing you so excited about this, and seeing you talk so fast and nearly stumble over yourself just because of the sheer joy this seems to bring you. I’m finding myself re-watching your videos because I’m thinking about DM’ing my first campaign (or at least one-shot, and probably over the summer), and seeing you so excited is such a wonderful part of every video. Keep making amazing videos, because every single one so far has made me so tremendously happy.
I still remember our gaming group's initial forays into D&D and the module "In Search of the Unknown." Our 1st level party was nearly wiped out by hordes of Kobolds. I love your videos, Matthew, which I just stumbled across.
Matt, I just branched out from being player only to DMing a group in 5e. I've dmed other games before, but never dungeons and dragons. Your video series "Running the game" taught me many tricks and tips to keep the game fresh and exciting. We ran our first session last night, and all of the players and myself had a great time! Your advise on tweaking monster stats for the party came in truly handy, and my only misstep was when I forgot to tweak the HP for the monster I rolled for a random encounter while the party was taking a short rest. That single instance showed me how powerful your advice had been, because the rest of my monsters provided enough of a challenge for the 7 player party of level 7 adventurers to encourage them to social their way out of an encounter when it was abundantly clear that this was NOT A FAIR FIGHT - yet another awesome tip from the "running the game" series.
"Goblins are one of the classic chaotic evil monsters." (looks at goblin alignments throughout the editions) 1st and 2nd Lawful Evil, 3rd - 5th Neutral Evil.
As soon as Matt started talking about organised Kobolds, I immediately thought of Tucker's Kobolds. Whoo boy, now there's something that everyone needs to experience at least once.
Matt - First off, you do a really fine job with all of your videos: presentation is pitch perfect and very engaging. I especially like the "plan of no plan" approach you seem to embody in your gameplay style and this video channel. I always have a rough idea of what might be coming next, but have learned not the expect it and have learned to be patient. I tend to have podcasts, vlogs and such as my background vibe when I am working in the shop. Great way to digest it without having to sit down and focus intently. I am launching my own channel later this month. Roleplaying advocacy, woodworking and general life will be on display and you have shown plenty of great ideas and plenty of ideas to avoid, so thanks for taking point and showing me (and the rest of us) how to grow a channel and presentation information with value.
I love this perspective, this approach, treating the wilderness like it’s both dangerous and exotic, with creatures in it that our medieval ancestors feared. It’s brilliant!
I don't usually comment, but I have to say that it was really cool seeing the unedited version of this video earlier, even though it might have been a mistake. Interesting to watch you work and see how much effort goes into a video.
I like Web DM's take on Kobolds as the ultimate guerilla fighters. They know their warrens and their woods perfectly and have set up all sorts of traps and vantage points to whittle down the players, all the while taking pot-shots with slings and arrows whenever the players stop to take a breather. They move with practiced coordination and attack/retreat in synchronized rhythm. They never face the PCs directly untill they've been cornered. By the time the players even get to the point where they have them out in the open, the party has been drained of hit points, spells, and items to just make it through the preceding gauntlet. Even if the players then proceed to wipe out the buggers easily, they'll view Kobold territory as dangerous and best avoided.
I watched The Red Hand of Doom yesterday and when I finished watching the stream I opened TH-cam, I saw colville uploaded a cut version exactly then, Im glad I saw the entire thing though, I like watching whole stuff.
I always picture bugbears as nocturnal, stealth oriented like the special forces of goblinoids. While the goblins surround the village, led by hobs, there's already a bugbear under the mayor's bed and another skulking out of the captain of the guards closet with a long blade.
Saw the unedited version of this and thought...wait... did Matt upload that by mistake? In any regard, I’m a huge fan of Orcs and orc culture, and a big proponent of using a Hobgoblins correctly. I see Orcs like Vikings, whereas the Hobgoblins and more like Mongols or dark Samurai. Each approaches War differently. One on one, Hobgoblins should win more. More disciplined, better organized, better equipment, smarter, and just as ruthless. That established, I believe lower CR monsters like these could easily scale with the Heroes. A Hobgoblin Khan or Shogun would be a devastating opponent. And Orc Barbarian Overlord commanding a horde that not only fears no death, but wishes to mark their place and rank in Archeron in blood and glory would be terrifying. One foe got overlooked that is truly terrifying. Gnolls. Gnolls are a kill-you-or-eat-you-alive Aliens equivalent. Evil to the core and unafraid of death. Cutting, chewing, rending every living thing in their path. Propagating through carnage and feeding the flesh of the fallen to hyenas. That’s fear. That’s carnage. It’s one both Hobgoblins and Orcs would turn on to survive, despite their own unending war on Archeron. With Volos out, the ranks of Gnolls, demons, and undead all associated with Gnolls is huge.
Glad to see some people are enjoying 5e's take on gnolls. I prefer the older version of ravenous beastmen that weren't virtually demons, the ones presented in 3.5's "Playing Gnolls" Dragon article. I understand the demand for a humanoid race uncompromisingly hostile but wish they had kept the gibberlings from 2e around for that purpose.
In my campaign, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears are all battling each other over territory. The smaller, weaker goblins are getting displaced and are moving into human lands. The hobgoblins have well-established lairs and military structure and are pretty secure. The bugbears are getting help from the humans to fight the goblins and hob's. Each faction has relatively equal power, and the choices of the PCs will determine how the balance of power swings.
Also I really like the new lore for Bugbears in Volo's Guide. Makes them feel a lot more like a monster of folklore, rather than just a barbarian species.
Yeah, I have always seen Bugbears as the 'boogeyman' of the goblinoids. If you're going with a kind of dark fairytale feel, which I quite like in D&D, goblins make excellent child-snatching open-window-scuttling-scurrying monsters for villagers to fear, whilst the bugbear makes an amazing hulking-monster-hiding-in-the-closet.
Personally I made my Hobgoblin the "prime" race of Goblinoid with Goblin and Bugbear and... whatever else being the result of selective breeding in order to meet the unit's needs when it comes to fighting and general survival. They normally test themselves in combat against all sorts of creatures and if I were to compare them to any culture of the real world? Think of them as a mix of Spartans and Samurai.
I love playing low level tier D&D, both as a player and DM. The squishiness is wonderful and I love seeing the characters' personality come together and their personal history beginning to emerge and form the story. I haven't had a chance to do a hobgoblin encounter as a DM yet.
@@Jackesfox Is correct, in the Hobbit appendices/lore, it's noted that the smaller orcs are nicknamed 'goblins' by humans and the bigger soldier orcs are similarly known as 'hobgoblins'. In LOTR they're more commonly referred to by their own words, Snaga ('slave') and Uruk-Hai. So yeah orcs, goblins and hobgoblins are all based on Tolkien's work, except in Tolkien's world they were all variants of the same kind of creature.
Matt, there's a awarded Pathfinder supplement that propose a change of view of exactly those monsters. It's called "Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Monsters Revisited". In there you will find an array of things, 'pumping up' our beloved low level monsters, such as a chart of random actions a goblin does in battle or a secret "graffiti" language that the orcs use to comunicate. Very nicely done.
When it comes to using low-tier monsters, such as Goblins & Kobolds, I like the idea that every monster is not necessarily the same. So if I throw a pack of 20 Kobolds at the party, among the rabble there might be one or two, unstable Kobold sorcerer or something, poor stats but access to high level spells; basically like idiotic children given access to powerful magic through the virtue of their odd birth. Dies easily but can deliver a truckload of pain if given the chance to cast. A single well placed fireball/ray of disintegration can turn what would otherwise be an orderly massacre into a chaotic battle for survival for even mid-tier adventurers. I do avoid buffing the average baseline creatures themselves, or giving them all access to magical weapons, as I don't want to ruin their core theme. If I throw a 10th level goblin rogue at the party, I usually give that goblin some 15 normal goblin helpers to remind players that goblins are still shit, except some can still be deadly :P
I do remember reading something (Sage Advice?) from the mid 80s about how useless Kobolds were against even a mid-level party, and one DMs solution was to make no changes except give them a +4 to hit when charging (a horn attack). You could still just about kill them by breathing on them, but a wave of 20 or so could actually do a bit of damage on that first attack.
i like the escape from the bloodkeep rule of "every goblin has a chance of having a bomb in them that explodes when they die", keeps the players on their toes
I feel like there are better spells that are more fair to give to your goblin casters: Resilient Sphere, Conjure Animals, Polymorph (self only), Conjure Fey, Planar Ally (allows the goblin to summon literally any extra planar creature that shares its alignment, also doesn’t require concentration (as the sole creature conjuration spell that does not require concentration), main drawback is that it takes 10 minutes to cast).
I imagine Matt's not happy about the unedited video slipping out, but I agree with others that it was absolutely fascinating. I have even MORE respect for Matt after seeing how much work is involved in these things. I knew it was tough, but it's different to actually see it.
Glad to see this uploaded in all its edited glory. I was about halfway through the unedited version (which I didn't mind) when the page decided to refresh itself and the video disappeared. This is some awesome stuff as usual and I can't wait to finish it and become enriched by its knowledge, that it may further inform my own campaign(s)
I actually really like the idea of Hobgoblins being Half-Human/Half-Goblin hybrids. I've watched this video maybe 7-8 times since it came out and I never really liked that idea because I didn't have a way to work it with my game. But recently I've been trying to figure out what a good magically spawned/bred creature would be for my Big Bad Evil King's army and this altered nature of hobgoblins fits the bill perfectly. Thanks Matt, even a year and a half later your videos are still providing me with fresh ideas/suggestions to mine.
Crap, I've already sent out a pitch document identifying the dragon as having a goblin army (stupid Magic: The Gathering influence), but I really want to switch them to Kobolds after watching this video.
It's cool even if you're doing a setting heavily MTG influenced- are you using any of the supplements that WOTC released for the various MTG settings? I want to read-up on the lore behind Theros because I've been tinkering away at a heavily Greco-Roman influenced D&D setting.
Idk how you revealed the information of the goblins to the players but if in-game you did it with scouts you could always say there was misinformation. Green Scaled Kobolds could easily be misidentified as goblins from a distance.
Great video, as per the usual. It's always a good day when one of your videos pops up on my feed. I feel like a lot of players are so used to goblinoids and the like being used as low-level cannon fodder that there's a big rush to blow past them and move onto the crazier stuff like dragons, beholders, and so forth. These early tribal enemies have so much potential for great play, and that's often neglected. There's a favorite anecdote in DnD history about Tucker's Kobolds, and I recommend every DM and player to check it out; it's an excellent reminder that those weakling humanoids can be a real terror when put in the hands of someone with imagination, motivation, and a decent-sized mean-streak.
Very nice, in my current campaign we've been playing over a year and they initially started off being kidnapped by a contingent of a group calling themselves the Legion. After being interviewed by the Hobgoblin leader they managed to escape but didn't kill that leader. Cut to a year (real life, a month in game) later and that leader has now amassed an entire army of goblinoids. My world is a little different to what you described but you may get a kick out of knowing: Goblins - Chaotic Evil mad shock troops. Hobgoblins - Militaristic and regimented (Lawful Evil), in my own head cannon mythology they're a natural born race like Lizardfolk and Orcs are. Bugbears - Lazy and sadistic. They live for the hunt and for sneaking up on their prey. Neutral Evil and work in solo groups or when a Hobgoblin offers them enough to make it worth getting up. Orcs - Neutral race that are just more drawn to barbaric practices and living in nomadic tribes. I made that change to Orcs as I wanted to really hit home about the inherent racism in DnD specifically with the Half Orcs and to do that I wanted to make them more populous and respected. In the first Major City the players have reached it is primarily run by Elves and Humans but has a large Half Orc community that are being down trodden and treated like a sub par race. My game is a little less fantastical because my players wanted something a little more realistic in drive but still with the fun of throwing reality warping spells!
Kobolds are the weakest? Players who have run up against kobolds in my game will never think that ever again. Traps are EVERYWHERE, everything "important" is in twisting tunnels that are too small for virtually everyone except gnomes and hobbits. Hit and run tactics, poisoned EVERYTHING and during all this you are fighting against devious little varmints that make you never want to trespass against them ever again. Imagine having to fight "Predators" with Rambo level cunning, ninja poisons all while thinking "This is how Willem DaFoe felt in Platoon" as you go through their tunnels on your hands & knees or squatting to not slam your head against the ceilings of their warrens. Did I mention that the higher roofed tunnels have feces covered razor blades along the ceiling? I had one group tell me that they felt like they were trying to find their way out of a SAW inspired maze by the end of their clearing of the Kobold Warrens of Southwood. Kobolds are a nightmare if you play them like the devious little monsters they really are.
I love Hobgoblins and how they are the commanders of the goblinoid race! It makes for a very cool dynamic with different levels of intensity. You get little goblins running around trying to survive not only the PCs but the Hobgoblins, too! Then you have Bugbears that are lazy but tough. Hobgoblins make for very cool overseers of battle, and they are crafty bastards, too! Good work, Matt! I appreciated this video a lot.
As far as I know, the 2nd edition boxed set mega adventure Dragon Mountain--still not on the DM's Guild, unfortunately--had kobolds defending the eponymous mountain and may have been the first link between dragons and kobolds in D&D. In fact, it may have been the first appearance of draconic kobolds, but I'll have to check.
It's been way too long since I've seen Dragon Mountain, but I'm pretty sure it included proto-minis that still had the pug-faced kobolds. My admittedly speculative recollection is that the more draconic look started in the Monstrous Manual (at the very least, that's where I recall first seeing it). Pretty sure the art for each of those creatures was by DiTerlizzi, though.
I looked it up. The kobolds in Dragon Mountain actually looked like the goblins in the 2e Monstrous Manual, but illustrated by DiTerlizzi. I always thought the DiTerlizzi kobold in the Monstrous Manual had a peculiar look that was neither canine, draconic, nor even ratlike, which is the closest approximation I can come up with. Man, I miss DiTerlizzi doing D&D art. If WotC did a 5e Manual of the Planes or adventure featuring Sigil, they should commission him to do it all and it would be their best-selling non-core book yet. Especially if it had a new sexy cat lord.
Wow! I just watched this video as part of my ritual to get ready for my weekend game. I wasn't expecting to get a whole lot from it other than some entertainment from you Mr. Colville. HOWEVER, you really blew my mind. Which since I've been playing D&D for nearly 40 years, doesn't happen very often. Your insight about using 4th Edition rules have inspired me to look back into my 4th Ed Books for these fantastic ideas you have talked about. Using some of the abilities for monsters and to change the dynamics of an encounter is awesome. In this video you have me actually wanting to throw Goblins and their kin at my party. I haven't wanted to use goblins in a very long time as my go-to humanoid foes are usually Gnolls and Lizardmen. Thank you for this and may I suggest doing more videos on specific monsters and how to spice them up with 4th Ed abilities or their mindsets or how they use the battlefield to their advantage. I really enjoyed this and hope you do more videos similar to this. Thanks for the entertainment (as always) and inspiring an old Grognard
Hmm... Listening to this Reminded me of a Manga (Based on a Novel) called Goblin Slayer. Goblins in that aren't Bad.... no they are Vicious Little F****** that are actively malicious and evil... Adventurers tend to underestimate them and not deal with them once they have "Experience" enough to pass them by..... The protagonist is an adventurer who specializes in Hunting and Killing them, since they tend too kill off alot of Young Adventurers. Thought it was interesting and could be worth using sometime.
One of my Favorite Homebrew items i made was the Amulet of tongues. It has 1d4+1 toungues each of a diffrent race. When the player atunes to this item he understands and can speak the language of the toungue he touches. You can also cut out your new tongues adding them to your ever increasing vocabulary.
I usually describe kobolds as being more gremlin-like than draconic. I dislike having 3 different species of lizard-man running around, it's confusing.
Dude, I love you, you're a legend, you've not only inspired me to get into DnD but literally made me into a DM from scratch, if there is one thing I can say about your videos... don't wear makeup, you don't need it, you're beautiful as you are
Hey Matt, you have touched on it a bit in a number of videos, but would it be possible to make a video on running a tactical game, especially in battle? I tend to go about 50-50 or maybe 60-40 roleplay-combat and my combat ends up stale. The players don't move around much, and I cant get my monsters to move much either as I don't see much purpose to doing so in a lot of cases. It would be very helpful to get some tips on making combat more tactical using a variety of monsters. I really want to know whats in my tool box to use for this. :) Love the videos and streams.
Jabberdoodle I’m not much of a Dm but my idea is have more AoE attacks. As a player in some games we wouldn’t move much but after being hit with a few Fireballs we start to make sure and move around the battle as much as we could
Check out themonstersknow.com. A SUPER great resource. The whole premise of the blog that MONSTERS KNOW HOW TO KILL. They're monsters. That's what they have to do to survive and they've been doing it for hundreds of years. They're GOOD at it, and many of them know how to take advantage of their skills and abilities to be efficient at it. I've been browsing through this blog for articles on the creatures my players are going to be fighting soon because I am a shitty tactician, and it has really helped me gain a better understanding of how to make combat more realistic and dynamic.
Right, I try to use things like terrain and all the typical stuff the books mention. And I don't use the percentage of RP thing as a rule or anything, I was just stating the tendency of what tends to happen and how I tend to build the campaign. Even Colville has used that sorta phrasing to show how he runs things saying "50-50" combat to rp and combat. My players aren't awful or anything either, I just think we could both use some 'enhancements' to our combat logic.
This is the best advice I've seen. Recently found the blog myself, and it made the medusa encounter a lot more difficult than if I had just ran it myself.
Hey Matt! Been watching your vids for a while now. Really enjoy them, very informative. Keep up the good work! BTW looking forward to your kickstarter.
Stealth has ALWAYS been a hallmark ability of the bugbears. For really interesting bugbears, take a look at the Pathfinder lore on bugbears. There they have become trully scary boogey-men. They are sadistic, take pleasure in torturinstrument weaker individuals and eat any one… to top it off the get a kick out of the fear which drives some of their feats and abilities!
I like the idea that Orcs are kin to elves, gnomes are distantly kin to goblinoids, kobolds are spawns of dragon magic, and humans halflings and dwarves are all closely related. Just my thoughts on it.
Orcs are a twisted race of elves similar to how hobgoblins are the products of nonconsensual relations between men and goblins, through perhaps with a dash of evil wizardry in the case of orcs.
I want to break out and paint my miniatures again after binge watching all your d&d videos. On a different note a series that makes goblin/goblinoids interesting is the manga and anime Goblin Slayer. The goblins have different hierarchies in the series, and some of the most evil, and dangerous, but also overlooked monsters in that world.
I love all of your videos so much! I have been DMing for less than a year, but we are all having a great time! We are going to be starting a new campaign soon and it will be the first that I am creating from scratch. I don't think I would have had the confidence to start this without the information and encouragement in each of these videos! Thank you!
I make my orcs an water related race. They ressemble sharks in my camign and my players seem to find it really interesting. I make them like walking tribal sharks who were cursed by the gods in my games. They were evolving too fast and had the idea to overthrone the gods. The gods curses them to be the opposite of all they ever were and so became a tribal force on the land and look like sharks to resemble their ancestors. Their ideals were changed. They became agressive and lost their minds. That gives my players actual explanation of the ruins they found in one adventure underwater. Its simillar to atlantis. And when my players learned this they now looked at orcs really differently. I feel this mythology fits really good with my world but may not work for yours. Still i tought its a fun idea to share.
I love the way you've made the three goblinoids so much more interesting than they can appear from the MM descriptions. I now know what the next challenge for my players is going to be!
What great timing on these suggestions. I'm DM'ing a group that literally just discovered the nearby Hobgoblin clans are amassing to attack the town they are in. I wouldn't have even though of Bugbears or goblin servants looking through the 5th edition book. Thank you :)
Orcs and humans are roughly the same size... they are kind of just really ugly humans from a particularly primitive and savage culture. Goblins are generally seen as considerably more animalistic and have terrible hygiene... and are also child-sized (and since they physically mature twice as fast, they are also generally child aged when at the peak of breeding)
Well-- you should never underestimate human's willingness to screw just about anything. Plus, these kinds of people don't exist in the real world. But if they did exist in the world and were fundamentally a normal, mundane part of it that you were likely to encounter, they become normalized and reaction and attitude changes. It isn't exactly the same thing-- but go look back on how Asian people were depicted by Americans prior to the 1960s. Yellow-skinned no-eyed people with rabbit teeth. Try to convince any of them that by the year 2000, they will generally be considered some of the most attractive people on the planet by a not small percentage of the population... and thanks to the cartoons they make in no small part.
I love Kobolds. They're absolutely my favorite "monster" I love the lore that the immoral dragons each severed a limb in order to reproduce and the blood that hit the ground became kobolds. Easy peasy and it gives me good guy kobolds:)
One of my rules when writing adventures/worlds, the more socially/descriptively complex you make the creatures, the more the players will treat it as such. It’s why my goblins often have few unexpected descriptive or social complexity; they are more a machination of a more complex being. Their bugbear, or better yet their hobgoblin leader/s are more complex intellectually/strategically, as well as in their individualized traits (the natural extension from that being the BBEG lvl 12 sorcerer is in by far more complex than the goblins, or their leaders). It’s why I try to give some much descriptive and social complexity to my worlds NPCs that move forward the plot (with voices, adjectives, motivations, etc), so that my players treat them with worth, and not just a *shop* or *blacksmith* or *mission giver*. If you do the same thing with your baddies, one might find their players are more intrigued and challenged, both strategically and in role playing.
I prefer all my goblinoids to be chaotic or atleast neutral in outlook, and deeply inspired by things like the movie Labyrinth. There is clearly some kind of infrastructure and society, but they're still a very chaotic and cruel to themselves and their own kind. Goblins are like the evil of children, lacking a conscience. Hobgoblins in turn are like the evil of young adults. Cliques and loyalty to their own kind, reluctant obedience to authority with secret rebellion, peer pressure and succumbing to it, and wild hormones. Bugbears are the evil of the parent or adult, neglectful and abusive.
Hobgoblins in my world are basically just evil Japan. They're lead by an Oni shogunate. At some point they were goblins, but if a goblin swears fealty to an Oni shogun or samurai, they go through a ritual to become a hobgoblin and get branded in some way. Children of Hobgoblins are also hobgoblins. There are still goblins up there with the Oni, but 1/3rd of them are hobgoblins that can't change loyalties if their Oni dies.
I don't like the idea of hobgoblins being bread by combining goblins and humans. It kinda belittles their whole race. Their mind for military in some cases even surpasses that of humans.
Harakiri404 consider Tolkien for a moment. Ignoring the PJ movies, Tolkien's orcs match small, chaotic and mean D&D goblins much better than brutish orcs of D&D. Which in turn makes a larger more martial version of goblins a good match for larger, smarter and better organised (and possibly half-human) uruk-hai. Sorcerous origin is just a cherry on top. Not claiming to be a expert, just a thought
Яков Говорин I actually thought about uruk-hai when he said it. But orcs in middle earth differ greatly from those of the forgotten realms. Tolkiens orcs originated by torturing and perverting elfs. Goblins on the other hand are their own race (and sub races) saying they can only match or surpass humans when we sprinkle a bit of us in them is just arrogant. They are conquerors by their own nature which includes controlling their dumb witted cousins for that purpose. Which makes them a real considerable threat, not just almost human.
I think it makes sense... even the name "hobgoblin" seems to imply that it's some variant of goblin. It's natural for people to explore what could cause that variation. I've played in games where gnomes came from the union of dwarves and elves, hobgoblins from humans and goblins, kobolds from dragon (in humanoid form) and any bipedal race, and a couple others that I can't quite recall. But hey, you do you! That's what makes this game great!
I love these kinds of videos. Orcs and goblins get short shrift by a lot of dms, but I'd always seem them as a great canvas to paint your low level bad guys on.
hello matt! just wanted to say hi and thank you for this series. I just started getting into DnD a few months ago, but fell in love with it and recently tried DMing. You've taught me so much about creating and running fun and engaging campaigns (I made a lot of newbie mistakes my first few sessions). Especially your videos about making sure it's player centered, not rail roading, and making sure your plot/NPCs don't take precedent over the player's. I've binged watched all your videos in the past week and a half and I'm excited for more! I'll also be buying your kickstarter book (which is saying something bc I haven't even bought the official DM Guide/Player's Handbook yet bc... well.. I'm a broke college student). I'll hopefully be able to watch your twitch streams soon. Again, thank you so much for this series and I look forward to learning more from you
My mama taught me if you ain't got nothing nice to say keep your mouth shut, this is me keeping my mouth shut cause I ain't got nothing nice to say about them people!
My goodness, i'd love to watch you running a game.. Your videos have helped tremendously with my desire to and ability to run a game myself. Thanks for all the videos :)
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Years later while going back through the archives, I finally notice that the title says "Hobgobglins" and realize that everything in the video was actually about hobgobglins and not hobgoblins and now I still have to learn about hobgoblins.
Maybe Kobolds come from infertile dragon eggs. You might get 10-15 from such an egg. Dragons don't mind so much because they like their little servants. Which also means that there could be Black Kobolds, Silver Kobolds... Then a deadly insult for a Dragonborn is to call them a Kobold.
This is an awesome idea. This is now a thing in my worlds. Bravo!
Good idea
I have something like that in my campaign setting and i am going to steel the rest if you don't mind.
I will now have towns that don't like Dragonborn call them Kobold-kin
This is in my world now THANK YOU
Powerful hero in D&D: "I miss when having a grappling hook mattered."
Powerful hero in RuneQuest: "I'm going to die because I forgot my grappling hook."
In the final session of the first campaign I ever played in, we ended up fighting a dark mage inside the ribcage of a very large dracolich. My rogue and an NPC were knocked off and began plummeting to the city below. Luckily I had a grappling hook in my equipment that I managed to throw up and latch onto the dracolich - saving myself and the falling NPC! No matter how high level you are, you always need the right equipment!
@@nickbeutler He’s referring to how in even moderately levelled groups, you will have access to items like the boots of flying, or a ring of feather falling, or similar items.
I treat bugbears as "drop bears". Give them better climbing and have them fall from the ceilings of caverns where the player characters aren't paying attention.
Is their always an Aussie nearby to warn the characters to be n guard?
@@patrickbuckley7259 There has to be. Even if there's no other human for miles, the bugbears will always keep one as bait.
The Aussie frantically warns the party about the drop-bears... and while the party huddles close to listen, that's when the bears drop!
@@patrickbuckley7259 Everywhere I've travelled, there's been another Aussie in the hostel. Even when we're the only people there, and it's on the other side of the world.
It's just a Law of Backpacking - every hostel has a well-travelled Aussie. (Sometimes, they're sober.)
Aaaaand copying this!
"I'm on the Brute Squad."
《Looks up and down》
"You are the Brute Squad."
Imagine playing as a half-giant and having this interaction.
Inconceivable!
Historically, D&D Bugbears were crazy stealthy despite being massive. In one of the editions I swear they made like, no noise at all when moving around. It's always been their thing for whatever reason, though most DM's don't exploit it because they're already nasty to low level parties and getting one shotted before you even know anything is there feels kind of dirty.
From 1st Edition Monster Manual: "Although bugbears are clumsy looking and walk with a shambling gait,
they are actually able to move very quickly and with great stealth, thus
surprising opponents 50% of the time." So they've always been stealthy ambushers in D&D
ShivaX51 well, they do still have expertise in stealth
There's also a kind of bugbear that hide in trees for ambushing. Dropbears.
I like the idea of Bugbear being the source of boogy-man. Big scary thing squeezing into your room through the window then crawling under your bed. Snatching at midnight, never to be seen again.
@@Odalkor They kind of are, in a way. The word "bugbear" used to be almost synonymous with "boogeyman".
Everyone forgets about Gnolls.
In my game Gnolls are higher level badguys. I basically like Gnolls from 4E and keep them that way.
True
Everybody remembers Gnolls, but who remembers Flinds?
@@kevinsullivan3448 I know right, it is well that they've been brought back
;(
The word "orc" comes from the Italian "orco" which is equivalent to the French "ogre" which is often regarded as a kind of giant. So yes, linguistically, orcs are related to giants.
I've always associated them with ogres. So there may some kinship there. And if not I can make it! I even had one game world where "goblins" were, in actuality, adolescent orcs.
I think also in 3rd and/or 3.5 Dwarves got some sort of racial bonus against both orcs and giants so that might make them seem related.
So oddly my players are about to find orcs for the first time in the setting in an area where Ogres and Ogre mages took over and the Orc are essentially quarter Ogres.
I've allways seen ogres being a hybrid of orcs and giants.
TheSoren kinda like orc plus hill giant =Ogre makes sense in lots of settings.
For 5e I found that Volo's Guide to Monsters was a brilliant take on the goblinoids. Goblins are, well, goblins, but it made hobgoblins and bugbears really interesting. Hobgoblins are a race of disciplined soldiers who fight and die for the glory of their god, Maglubiyet. Orcs have hordes, goblins have packs, bugbears have gangs but hobgoblins have armies. Think of them as particularly dickish and bloodthirsty Mandalorians and you should have a view of what they're like. Bugbears on the other hand are more inclined to be loners or travel in small gangs. Despite their size they can be very sneaky, and their strength allows them to employ clubs and garrotes with equal lethal efficiency. They consider murder and battle sacred acts performed for the glory of their gods, Hruggek and Grankhul. The former is cunningly brutal while the latter is brutally cunning (aka the former will bash your face in with a club while the other will strangle you from behind), which likely sounds familiar. Another act sacred to bugbears is the taking of the heads of your fallen enemies, removing the eyelids and putting the heads on stakes and display them as trophies (the book has a note by Elminster suggesting that you use magic to make the heads talk, which allows you to talk the bugbears into doing just about anything). Bugbears frequently join hobgoblin armies because their gods are subservient to Maglubiyet, and by joining said armies the hobgoblins believe they follow the will of the gods.
As for kobolds... they don't fight fair. They fight from ambush employing all sorts of traps, tricks and tools in order to get the upper hand on more powerful enemies. The infamous Tucker's Kobolds are played this way, who are named after a DM named Tucker who used his kobolds to great effect this way against a high level party in an older edition of D&D. Nowadays the name is synonymous with any force of monsters engaging in asymmetric combat against the party, and they are feared for this exact reason.
So bugbear gods are just Gork and Mork?
Personally really liked volo's but hated the way it treated hobgoblins, it made no sense to me, turned them into "just another race", where before they were an interesting tribal adjunct to goblins, I've always ran hobgoblins as somehow related to goblins, either a higher form of the same species, very old goblins, goblin crossbreeds, etc
Some sorcerer somewhere is really a jerk. He keeps making all sorts of crazy monsters. He should knock it off.
Devon Jones he's just shipping different races with each other, just let him make his sweet lovin' in peace
Excuse me? You misspelled awesome. Have you heard of owl bears? Genius! :)
Game Fun man, what kinda spells do you gotta use to coerce/convince a bear and an owl to get it on?
Edited to add: it occurs to me it's probably more likely a digifusion sort of thing than setting the lights down low and turning on on some Barry White songs
Idk, but material components prob honey and tootsie pop
I like to imagine there’s some lich dude in a tower somewhere going “kaboom! The jello has life!”
Actually Goblins are more akin to Skirmishers and Scouts, while Hobgoblins are the Heavy Infantry, and Bug Bears are the Shock Troops and Assassins.
As for Orcs vs Goblins, particularly Hobgoblins, it's basically Chaotic Evil vs Lawful Evil, one raids and pillages, the other conquers and enslaves.
Profesh Videographer here, Matt.
Quick guide:
generally, 4 things control light internally in a DSLR camera, in order from lowest to highest likelihood that it's your problem.
1. NDs (neutral density filters, think sunglasses). Make sure these are flipped off. Usually DSLRs don't have them built in, but your lens might.
2. shutter speed, the speed to which your light sensor opens and closes. the lower the setting, the brighter the footage you will get, but you will get more motion blur (not a problem for what you are doing). Make sure it's at 30 or 1/30 as opposed to 1/60 or higher.
3. the F-stop of your lens. The F-stop is how much light your lens lets in. Lower numbers are better, so an f stop of 20 is terrible, but an f-stop of 3.5 is pretty good. Your lens might auto adjust, but it could have an aperture that you dial between a set range. Since you aren't moving much, dial it to as low as it can go. You might be able to see what it's at on your screen, usually expressed as "f-5.0" or "fstop:5.0"
4. ISO. This is probably your issue. ISO is the amount of light that the camera artificially adds into the image. The higher ISO you have, the more noisy your footage gets (worse quality footage), but most modern DSLRs can go to 3200 ISO or sometimes higher without any real quality change. I just did a side by side look at your RTG#51 video, and I can see that the light noise in this video increased slightly. Its likely that you accidentally told the camera to auto adjust the ISO, and it did a pretty good job, or you just bumped the ISO up higher on your own. A lot of cameras have a regular ISO and a nighttime ISO. You could have switched to nighttime, but that's unlikely, because that's usually a few button presses to get there.
Whatever the problem is: What you could do is check if you have the camera in full Auto filming or just Aperture priority mode. I think on Canons, full auto shooting is usually a green A+ symbol. It's where the camera does literally everything, and is probably the setting you want to have all the time for what you are doing. Aperture priority is usually just a white A or Av symbol. The camera does everything for you except your ISO and F-stop. I recommend not using that mode for your video format.
Thanks, dude for all the awesome content! Hope this helps. If you can tell me the exact camera you have, I could probably more easily troubleshoot the situation for you.
I want to go check the settings but I'm legit afraid to touch anything now! :D
"I'm not lazy - I'm cautious ¬_¬"
Re: orcs and giants - in the 1st edition PHB orcs were included among the list of 'giant class' creatures that Rangers did extra damage against, so that's where you probably picked it up from.
For me it goes like this:
Hobgoblins - basically evil Rome, mid-game bad guys. In battle, they are usually 2nd to 6th line and cavalry forces. Tactics used are mostly stuff I read from De Re Militari, with some changes where appropriate.
Goblins - the skirmishers in hobgoblins' war machina, they are fast but weak. They go in before the main line and pelt the enemy ranks with several volleys of light crossbow bolts and then leg it behind the main line.
Orcs - shock troops, the 1st line in hobgoblins' ranks. They charge in, cause some mayhem, and after they are broken, the hobgoblins themselves move in to engage.
Bugbears - a piece of siege equipment used by hobgoblins basically, they are used to knock down palisades and recklessly charge into the well-defended kill zones on the other side of the breach to soften up the defenders.
Kobolds - a stepping stone in an arc with dragonkin involved and the only ones in this group who have nothing to do with hobgoblins.
That said, goblin tribes, orc raiding parties and bugbear savages can still be randomly chanced upon in the wilderness. Kobolds, on the other hand, are always linked to more powerful dragonkin.
EDIT: as a side note, I ran Matt's goblin adventure once, only I put a hobgoblin deserter in command of the local goblins there. So they acted more or less tactically. Unfortunately for my players, a level 1 party at the time, having to withstand a barrage of arrows from behind a pseudo-phalanx in a narrow corridor was more than they could handle. Fortunately for them, I couldn't roll for crap and after, like, 3 volleys, a goblin archer rolled a nat 1 and hit his ally in front of him. At that point, everything went downhill for the baddies.
Hobgoblins are among my favourite monsters. They are a fantastic presence in any D&D world.
Hobgoblin Warlords always seem to be an "OH CRAP!" moment for my players... Seeing a hobgoblin in platemail scares the bejeezus out of my players!
Huh, I find it weird that people find Hobgoblins "simple", I've always loved Hobgoblins for their industrial and martial background, in a way they're very similar to say Rome . In fact my fantasyesque setting Hobgoblins are one of the major races and Humans are a byproduct of the mating of Orcs and Hobgoblins and are a relatively new race themselves. I don't know I generally see Hobgoblins as sign that as a Party you've moved up from Local Problem, to a Regional Threat.
Kenneth, I agree. I threw one at my brother and son yesterday at a last minute throw together adventure. They loved it.
Actually surprisingly enough, WOTC has done that with Eberron which has the Goblinoid Empire that only fell when Lovecraftian Horrors bled through and shattered them and the humans just showed up and kinda settled in their land.
I just commented that I use hobgoblins the same way, as a sort of legion with other goblinoids as irregulars / thralls
Interestingly the "original" 1st edition & basic art always depicted hobgoblins as using imitation samurai equipment. This was interesting because it implied a dash of culture. A cultural identity, as it were. It was easy to then envisage them as behaving like an invading Mogol horde all geared up with oriental looking equipment, foreign food, eating habits, language etc.
They didn't have to be played that way but it offered an imaginative nudge that gm's could run with if they wanted.
On a related note, the art didn't much support it but the 1st edition tactics for bugbears meant they behaved a bit like Viking goblins (big hairy goblins who could sneak quite well and could throw one handed hafted weapons like hammers, axes and maces, which was someone nobody else could do in the game at the time as unorthodox weapon sue was simply not covered in the rules).
I actually really enjoyed the unedited version, it shows how much work goes into these videos. You must be sick of hearing your voice attempt the same line 5 times.
Me too.
I have always loved giving mundane monsters pc levels and gear. Takes more time but it keeps the players on their toes. Comments like, one kobald stands out particularly. He has a well maintained breastplate and a sword that seems far too exquisite for a kobald. My players never took monsters for granted, they learned quickly to pay attention to details and treat every encounter like it could be their last.
Matt, I think it's great how you make stories by asking "how" and "why"... Your process leads to enjoyable, believable tales.
I agree. Hearing about Matt's thought process is very educational.
It's like the Socratic Method of Dungeons & Dragons.
Norcal Bowhunter the idea is elementary, in the sense that it is an essential building block, but many storytellers forget to ask those questions when making assertions. Many movies and books try to give their audience an absurd amount of assertions to make up for a lack of continuity. What I appreciate about Matt's technique is that he only makes one or two assertions then teases out the implications of those few assertions.
Totally agree! His train of thought is so interesting to follow, hearing him talk is through it is so helpful 🥰
Re-watching this 4 years later and it is SO awesome to see Matt's thoughts on making monsters "cooler" and how Flee Mortals! style monsters have their inception so early in the Coville timeline
13th warrior is totally a D&D adventure
I played a 5e recapitulation of the film at Gen Con 2017, and it was easily the most fun thing I did all weekend. DM was an old-school dude. 11/10, would play again.
One of my favorite movies and the book is awesome as well.
THAT's the movie I was thinking of the other day when people were talking about Scorpion King, thank you!
Banderas' character is the single best example of a Bard PC ever.
The 13th warrior is just Beowolf...
6 or 7? Nope. The hobgoblin commander yells “ATTACK!” and places a mask on his face which you realize is a face removed from its former human owner.
*G O B G L I N S*
I’m glad a comment like this can get so many likes
If you play your kobolds right, they can be a dangerous foe. My DM made our first quest involve a cave full of kobolds. We were outnumbered and we were in their home, they had the advantage. And we had to actually be strategic about how we would attack. It was hard and the party almost died several times, but that made it fun. In previous games we could just walk into a Goblin camp, no plans or strategy. Just walk in and kill. But fighting these kobolds we had to take our time and plan our next attack. And that made it fun...
I like using low level monsters... and ramp them up and watch my players freak out. Nothing like kobolds juiced up on titans blood.
Pack hunters!
I’m having quite a bit of fun tweaking kobolds to be a significant challenge for a mid-level party. You expect kobolds to be just little germs in the caves, but nope, these kobolds not only don’t have sunlight sensitivity but they’re powered up on Tarrasque worship and draconic sorcery, and some of them have some pretty mean equipment.
If I remember correctly in 5e Ettins (giant type) are originally orcs transformed by magic. And there are also Ogrillons that are Orc and Ogre (giant type) crossbreed, so there is definitely some relation with giants.
Tip: goblins and especially kobolds are quite short. There's no reason for them to dig lairs that have 7-foot ceilings. They may occupy natural caves with high ceilings, but the parts they dig themselves should be too short for adventurers to walk thru comfortably, so it should be very difficult to root them all out. Once the adventurers get the upper hand, have the creatures flee into their tunnels. That lets the adventurers explore the cavern/dungeon but leaves them subject to harassing attacks from time to time.
I like gnolls. Maybe I spent too much time playing Baldur's Gate? Is that possible?
No
I loved the BG gnolls, imagine my surprise when I played WoW and 5e and I discovered that they are not 7ft tall with halberds. I liked the kobolds in that too.
Butt-kicking for goodness
@@fuzzlemacfuzz SWORDS NOT WORDS
Bro gnolls are awesome
I love seeing you so excited about this, and seeing you talk so fast and nearly stumble over yourself just because of the sheer joy this seems to bring you. I’m finding myself re-watching your videos because I’m thinking about DM’ing my first campaign (or at least one-shot, and probably over the summer), and seeing you so excited is such a wonderful part of every video. Keep making amazing videos, because every single one so far has made me so tremendously happy.
I still remember our gaming group's initial forays into D&D and the module "In Search of the Unknown." Our 1st level party was nearly wiped out by hordes of Kobolds.
I love your videos, Matthew, which I just stumbled across.
Matt, I just branched out from being player only to DMing a group in 5e. I've dmed other games before, but never dungeons and dragons. Your video series "Running the game" taught me many tricks and tips to keep the game fresh and exciting. We ran our first session last night, and all of the players and myself had a great time! Your advise on tweaking monster stats for the party came in truly handy, and my only misstep was when I forgot to tweak the HP for the monster I rolled for a random encounter while the party was taking a short rest. That single instance showed me how powerful your advice had been, because the rest of my monsters provided enough of a challenge for the 7 player party of level 7 adventurers to encourage them to social their way out of an encounter when it was abundantly clear that this was NOT A FAIR FIGHT - yet another awesome tip from the "running the game" series.
"Goblins are one of the classic chaotic evil monsters."
(looks at goblin alignments throughout the editions)
1st and 2nd Lawful Evil, 3rd - 5th Neutral Evil.
Yeah, he mentioned it right before he said that
In OD&D they were "Chaotic"
As soon as Matt started talking about organised Kobolds, I immediately thought of Tucker's Kobolds. Whoo boy, now there's something that everyone needs to experience at least once.
Ogres are giantkin, and you run into Ogres as the brutes behind orcs quite often. So orcs may proceed giants following that logic.
precede. sorry.
Matt - First off, you do a really fine job with all of your videos: presentation is pitch perfect and very engaging. I especially like the "plan of no plan" approach you seem to embody in your gameplay style and this video channel. I always have a rough idea of what might be coming next, but have learned not the expect it and have learned to be patient. I tend to have podcasts, vlogs and such as my background vibe when I am working in the shop. Great way to digest it without having to sit down and focus intently.
I am launching my own channel later this month. Roleplaying advocacy, woodworking and general life will be on display and you have shown plenty of great ideas and plenty of ideas to avoid, so thanks for taking point and showing me (and the rest of us) how to grow a channel and presentation information with value.
I love this perspective, this approach, treating the wilderness like it’s both dangerous and exotic, with creatures in it that our medieval ancestors feared. It’s brilliant!
I don't usually comment, but I have to say that it was really cool seeing the unedited version of this video earlier, even though it might have been a mistake. Interesting to watch you work and see how much effort goes into a video.
I like Web DM's take on Kobolds as the ultimate guerilla fighters. They know their warrens and their woods perfectly and have set up all sorts of traps and vantage points to whittle down the players, all the while taking pot-shots with slings and arrows whenever the players stop to take a breather. They move with practiced coordination and attack/retreat in synchronized rhythm. They never face the PCs directly untill they've been cornered. By the time the players even get to the point where they have them out in the open, the party has been drained of hit points, spells, and items to just make it through the preceding gauntlet. Even if the players then proceed to wipe out the buggers easily, they'll view Kobold territory as dangerous and best avoided.
I watched The Red Hand of Doom yesterday and when I finished watching the stream I opened TH-cam, I saw colville uploaded a cut version exactly then, Im glad I saw the entire thing though, I like watching whole stuff.
I always picture bugbears as nocturnal, stealth oriented like the special forces of goblinoids. While the goblins surround the village, led by hobs, there's already a bugbear under the mayor's bed and another skulking out of the captain of the guards closet with a long blade.
Saw the unedited version of this and thought...wait... did Matt upload that by mistake?
In any regard, I’m a huge fan of Orcs and orc culture, and a big proponent of using a Hobgoblins correctly.
I see Orcs like Vikings, whereas the Hobgoblins and more like Mongols or dark Samurai. Each approaches War differently.
One on one, Hobgoblins should win more. More disciplined, better organized, better equipment, smarter, and just as ruthless.
That established, I believe lower CR monsters like these could easily scale with the Heroes. A Hobgoblin Khan or Shogun would be a devastating opponent.
And Orc Barbarian Overlord commanding a horde that not only fears no death, but wishes to mark their place and rank in Archeron in blood and glory would be terrifying.
One foe got overlooked that is truly terrifying.
Gnolls. Gnolls are a kill-you-or-eat-you-alive Aliens equivalent. Evil to the core and unafraid of death. Cutting, chewing, rending every living thing in their path. Propagating through carnage and feeding the flesh of the fallen to hyenas.
That’s fear. That’s carnage.
It’s one both Hobgoblins and Orcs would turn on to survive, despite their own unending war on Archeron.
With Volos out, the ranks of Gnolls, demons, and undead all associated with Gnolls is huge.
Glad to see some people are enjoying 5e's take on gnolls. I prefer the older version of ravenous beastmen that weren't virtually demons, the ones presented in 3.5's "Playing Gnolls" Dragon article. I understand the demand for a humanoid race uncompromisingly hostile but wish they had kept the gibberlings from 2e around for that purpose.
In my campaign, goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears are all battling each other over territory.
The smaller, weaker goblins are getting displaced and are moving into human lands. The hobgoblins have well-established lairs and military structure and are pretty secure. The bugbears are getting help from the humans to fight the goblins and hob's.
Each faction has relatively equal power, and the choices of the PCs will determine how the balance of power swings.
Bugbears ARE stealthy rogue/ranger like.
Also I really like the new lore for Bugbears in Volo's Guide. Makes them feel a lot more like a monster of folklore, rather than just a barbarian species.
I see them as fitting the "thug" rogue archetype.
Yeah, I have always seen Bugbears as the 'boogeyman' of the goblinoids. If you're going with a kind of dark fairytale feel, which I quite like in D&D, goblins make excellent child-snatching open-window-scuttling-scurrying monsters for villagers to fear, whilst the bugbear makes an amazing hulking-monster-hiding-in-the-closet.
Your material is a delightful watch, Matt. Really appreciate everything you do. Thank you.
Personally I made my Hobgoblin the "prime" race of Goblinoid with Goblin and Bugbear and... whatever else being the result of selective breeding in order to meet the unit's needs when it comes to fighting and general survival. They normally test themselves in combat against all sorts of creatures and if I were to compare them to any culture of the real world? Think of them as a mix of Spartans and Samurai.
Sardaukar?
I love playing low level tier D&D, both as a player and DM. The squishiness is wonderful and I love seeing the characters' personality come together and their personal history beginning to emerge and form the story.
I haven't had a chance to do a hobgoblin encounter as a DM yet.
So you hobgoblins are basically Saruman's Uruk'hai?
I feel like Uruk'hai would decapitate you for comparing them to goblin-kin, lol
Uruk'rai used to be hobgoblins, but Tolkien changed his mind and renamed it
@@Jackesfox Is correct, in the Hobbit appendices/lore, it's noted that the smaller orcs are nicknamed 'goblins' by humans and the bigger soldier orcs are similarly known as 'hobgoblins'. In LOTR they're more commonly referred to by their own words, Snaga ('slave') and Uruk-Hai.
So yeah orcs, goblins and hobgoblins are all based on Tolkien's work, except in Tolkien's world they were all variants of the same kind of creature.
Matt, there's a awarded Pathfinder supplement that propose a change of view of exactly those monsters. It's called "Pathfinder Chronicles: Classic Monsters Revisited". In there you will find an array of things, 'pumping up' our beloved low level monsters, such as a chart of random actions a goblin does in battle or a secret "graffiti" language that the orcs use to comunicate. Very nicely done.
When it comes to using low-tier monsters, such as Goblins & Kobolds, I like the idea that every monster is not necessarily the same.
So if I throw a pack of 20 Kobolds at the party, among the rabble there might be one or two, unstable Kobold sorcerer or something, poor stats but access to high level spells; basically like idiotic children given access to powerful magic through the virtue of their odd birth. Dies easily but can deliver a truckload of pain if given the chance to cast.
A single well placed fireball/ray of disintegration can turn what would otherwise be an orderly massacre into a chaotic battle for survival for even mid-tier adventurers.
I do avoid buffing the average baseline creatures themselves, or giving them all access to magical weapons, as I don't want to ruin their core theme. If I throw a 10th level goblin rogue at the party, I usually give that goblin some 15 normal goblin helpers to remind players that goblins are still shit, except some can still be deadly :P
I do remember reading something (Sage Advice?) from the mid 80s about how useless Kobolds were against even a mid-level party, and one DMs solution was to make no changes except give them a +4 to hit when charging (a horn attack). You could still just about kill them by breathing on them, but a wave of 20 or so could actually do a bit of damage on that first attack.
i like the escape from the bloodkeep rule of "every goblin has a chance of having a bomb in them that explodes when they die", keeps the players on their toes
I feel like there are better spells that are more fair to give to your goblin casters: Resilient Sphere, Conjure Animals, Polymorph (self only), Conjure Fey, Planar Ally (allows the goblin to summon literally any extra planar creature that shares its alignment, also doesn’t require concentration (as the sole creature conjuration spell that does not require concentration), main drawback is that it takes 10 minutes to cast).
I imagine Matt's not happy about the unedited video slipping out, but I agree with others that it was absolutely fascinating. I have even MORE respect for Matt after seeing how much work is involved in these things. I knew it was tough, but it's different to actually see it.
What are your morale rules? Can we see them sometime? I would love to try to integrate such a thing into my campaign
Rumo Crytuf, 2nd ed. DMG has rules for morale that I still use.
Glad to see this uploaded in all its edited glory. I was about halfway through the unedited version (which I didn't mind) when the page decided to refresh itself and the video disappeared. This is some awesome stuff as usual and I can't wait to finish it and become enriched by its knowledge, that it may further inform my own campaign(s)
Kobolds are scary when you play with a DM that loves strategy and reads up on tactics and such. It's truly terrifying.
I actually really like the idea of Hobgoblins being Half-Human/Half-Goblin hybrids. I've watched this video maybe 7-8 times since it came out and I never really liked that idea because I didn't have a way to work it with my game. But recently I've been trying to figure out what a good magically spawned/bred creature would be for my Big Bad Evil King's army and this altered nature of hobgoblins fits the bill perfectly. Thanks Matt, even a year and a half later your videos are still providing me with fresh ideas/suggestions to mine.
Crap, I've already sent out a pitch document identifying the dragon as having a goblin army (stupid Magic: The Gathering influence), but I really want to switch them to Kobolds after watching this video.
It's cool even if you're doing a setting heavily MTG influenced- are you using any of the supplements that WOTC released for the various MTG settings? I want to read-up on the lore behind Theros because I've been tinkering away at a heavily Greco-Roman influenced D&D setting.
Idk how you revealed the information of the goblins to the players but if in-game you did it with scouts you could always say there was misinformation. Green Scaled Kobolds could easily be misidentified as goblins from a distance.
There’s a dragon in one of the commander sets who creates kobold tokens.
Anthony Sladky Just use Kobolds and call them goblins
I once used Imps and called them goblins, my metagaming players were very surprised
Great video, as per the usual. It's always a good day when one of your videos pops up on my feed.
I feel like a lot of players are so used to goblinoids and the like being used as low-level cannon fodder that there's a big rush to blow past them and move onto the crazier stuff like dragons, beholders, and so forth. These early tribal enemies have so much potential for great play, and that's often neglected. There's a favorite anecdote in DnD history about Tucker's Kobolds, and I recommend every DM and player to check it out; it's an excellent reminder that those weakling humanoids can be a real terror when put in the hands of someone with imagination, motivation, and a decent-sized mean-streak.
My players fear Goblins and Kobolds...
At every level of play.
Very nice, in my current campaign we've been playing over a year and they initially started off being kidnapped by a contingent of a group calling themselves the Legion. After being interviewed by the Hobgoblin leader they managed to escape but didn't kill that leader. Cut to a year (real life, a month in game) later and that leader has now amassed an entire army of goblinoids.
My world is a little different to what you described but you may get a kick out of knowing:
Goblins - Chaotic Evil mad shock troops.
Hobgoblins - Militaristic and regimented (Lawful Evil), in my own head cannon mythology they're a natural born race like Lizardfolk and Orcs are.
Bugbears - Lazy and sadistic. They live for the hunt and for sneaking up on their prey. Neutral Evil and work in solo groups or when a Hobgoblin offers them enough to make it worth getting up.
Orcs - Neutral race that are just more drawn to barbaric practices and living in nomadic tribes.
I made that change to Orcs as I wanted to really hit home about the inherent racism in DnD specifically with the Half Orcs and to do that I wanted to make them more populous and respected.
In the first Major City the players have reached it is primarily run by Elves and Humans but has a large Half Orc community that are being down trodden and treated like a sub par race.
My game is a little less fantastical because my players wanted something a little more realistic in drive but still with the fun of throwing reality warping spells!
Kobolds are the weakest?
Players who have run up against kobolds in my game will never think that ever again.
Traps are EVERYWHERE, everything "important" is in twisting tunnels that are too small for virtually everyone except gnomes and hobbits. Hit and run tactics, poisoned EVERYTHING and during all this you are fighting against devious little varmints that make you never want to trespass against them ever again.
Imagine having to fight "Predators" with Rambo level cunning, ninja poisons all while thinking "This is how Willem DaFoe felt in Platoon" as you go through their tunnels on your hands & knees or squatting to not slam your head against the ceilings of their warrens. Did I mention that the higher roofed tunnels have feces covered razor blades along the ceiling? I had one group tell me that they felt like they were trying to find their way out of a SAW inspired maze by the end of their clearing of the Kobold Warrens of Southwood.
Kobolds are a nightmare if you play them like the devious little monsters they really are.
Thanks for the tips and ideas
*when the trees start speaking Draconic*
I love Hobgoblins and how they are the commanders of the goblinoid race! It makes for a very cool dynamic with different levels of intensity. You get little goblins running around trying to survive not only the PCs but the Hobgoblins, too! Then you have Bugbears that are lazy but tough. Hobgoblins make for very cool overseers of battle, and they are crafty bastards, too!
Good work, Matt! I appreciated this video a lot.
As far as I know, the 2nd edition boxed set mega adventure Dragon Mountain--still not on the DM's Guild, unfortunately--had kobolds defending the eponymous mountain and may have been the first link between dragons and kobolds in D&D. In fact, it may have been the first appearance of draconic kobolds, but I'll have to check.
bjhale, Dragon Mountain also had half-dragons ('dragonkin' I think they were called).
The kobolds there were also extra tough and extra smart.
Was thinking the same thing. Got the adventure and love to run it again...
It's been way too long since I've seen Dragon Mountain, but I'm pretty sure it included proto-minis that still had the pug-faced kobolds. My admittedly speculative recollection is that the more draconic look started in the Monstrous Manual (at the very least, that's where I recall first seeing it).
Pretty sure the art for each of those creatures was by DiTerlizzi, though.
I looked it up. The kobolds in Dragon Mountain actually looked like the goblins in the 2e Monstrous Manual, but illustrated by DiTerlizzi. I always thought the DiTerlizzi kobold in the Monstrous Manual had a peculiar look that was neither canine, draconic, nor even ratlike, which is the closest approximation I can come up with.
Man, I miss DiTerlizzi doing D&D art. If WotC did a 5e Manual of the Planes or adventure featuring Sigil, they should commission him to do it all and it would be their best-selling non-core book yet. Especially if it had a new sexy cat lord.
Wow! I just watched this video as part of my ritual to get ready for my weekend game. I wasn't expecting to get a whole lot from it other than some entertainment from you Mr. Colville. HOWEVER, you really blew my mind. Which since I've been playing D&D for nearly 40 years, doesn't happen very often. Your insight about using 4th Edition rules have inspired me to look back into my 4th Ed Books for these fantastic ideas you have talked about. Using some of the abilities for monsters and to change the dynamics of an encounter is awesome. In this video you have me actually wanting to throw Goblins and their kin at my party. I haven't wanted to use goblins in a very long time as my go-to humanoid foes are usually Gnolls and Lizardmen. Thank you for this and may I suggest doing more videos on specific monsters and how to spice them up with 4th Ed abilities or their mindsets or how they use the battlefield to their advantage. I really enjoyed this and hope you do more videos similar to this. Thanks for the entertainment (as always) and inspiring an old Grognard
Tucker's Kobolds
Always the worst.
In my setting , Orcs came from a confronation between two gods - the blood that spilled on the ground in that battle gave life to the first orcs .
Hmm... Listening to this Reminded me of a Manga (Based on a Novel) called Goblin Slayer. Goblins in that aren't Bad.... no they are Vicious Little F****** that are actively malicious and evil... Adventurers tend to underestimate them and not deal with them once they have "Experience" enough to pass them by..... The protagonist is an adventurer who specializes in Hunting and Killing them, since they tend too kill off alot of Young Adventurers.
Thought it was interesting and could be worth using sometime.
One of my Favorite Homebrew items i made was the Amulet of tongues. It has 1d4+1 toungues each of a diffrent race. When the player atunes to this item he understands and can speak the language of the toungue he touches. You can also cut out your new tongues adding them to your ever increasing vocabulary.
Kobolds > Dragonborn
I will keep spreading my discipline until we get them as a base race in the 6th edition player's hand
Erez Amir we could use a monsterous small race as a standard PC race. I'd vote to replace those nasty gnomes
I usually describe kobolds as being more gremlin-like than draconic.
I dislike having 3 different species of lizard-man running around, it's confusing.
@calevenice don't you bad mouth gnomes! They are precious and pure!
Oh no. I just got a new idea for my campaign. What a problem.
I just think of them as Gremlin Dragonoids
Really like the new lighting setup and whatever changes that you made to the camera settings. Please keep on making these videos!
If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend checking out Volo's guide to monsters.
I knew someone had to have mentioned this. There's a big section in Volo's guide on how the different goblonoid races relate to one eachother.
Dude, I love you, you're a legend, you've not only inspired me to get into DnD but literally made me into a DM from scratch, if there is one thing I can say about your videos... don't wear makeup, you don't need it, you're beautiful as you are
Hi matt. I didn't know what to comment so just decided to say hi. Lol. Love your stuff.
"I have no idea if this will be a long video or not."
Oh mr colville. You know we love them either way.
Hey Matt, you have touched on it a bit in a number of videos, but would it be possible to make a video on running a tactical game, especially in battle? I tend to go about 50-50 or maybe 60-40 roleplay-combat and my combat ends up stale. The players don't move around much, and I cant get my monsters to move much either as I don't see much purpose to doing so in a lot of cases. It would be very helpful to get some tips on making combat more tactical using a variety of monsters. I really want to know whats in my tool box to use for this. :) Love the videos and streams.
Jabberdoodle I’m not much of a Dm but my idea is have more AoE attacks. As a player in some games we wouldn’t move much but after being hit with a few Fireballs we start to make sure and move around the battle as much as we could
Check out themonstersknow.com. A SUPER great resource. The whole premise of the blog that MONSTERS KNOW HOW TO KILL. They're monsters. That's what they have to do to survive and they've been doing it for hundreds of years. They're GOOD at it, and many of them know how to take advantage of their skills and abilities to be efficient at it. I've been browsing through this blog for articles on the creatures my players are going to be fighting soon because I am a shitty tactician, and it has really helped me gain a better understanding of how to make combat more realistic and dynamic.
Right, I try to use things like terrain and all the typical stuff the books mention. And I don't use the percentage of RP thing as a rule or anything, I was just stating the tendency of what tends to happen and how I tend to build the campaign. Even Colville has used that sorta phrasing to show how he runs things saying "50-50" combat to rp and combat. My players aren't awful or anything either, I just think we could both use some 'enhancements' to our combat logic.
Thanks so much for that reference! Its great! though, it may take a very long time to do this with every single monster haha.
This is the best advice I've seen. Recently found the blog myself, and it made the medusa encounter a lot more difficult than if I had just ran it myself.
Hey Matt! Been watching your vids for a while now. Really enjoy them, very informative. Keep up the good work! BTW looking forward to your kickstarter.
so basically grunts, jackals and elites lmao
I just enjoy listening to Matt talk about anything. Always inspiring.
The Colville abides.
If only we could get him to do a video in a bathrobe and holding a white Russian!
Fuckin' A
Stealth has ALWAYS been a hallmark ability of the bugbears. For really interesting bugbears, take a look at the Pathfinder lore on bugbears. There they have become trully scary boogey-men. They are sadistic, take pleasure in torturinstrument weaker individuals and eat any one… to top it off the get a kick out of the fear which drives some of their feats and abilities!
Your voice is so soothing :')
Seán Masterson almost asmr
That new lighting really is topnotch. Love all the videos you put out. Thank you.
I like the idea that Orcs are kin to elves, gnomes are distantly kin to goblinoids, kobolds are spawns of dragon magic, and humans halflings and dwarves are all closely related. Just my thoughts on it.
So your gnomes aren't related to either elves nor dwarves? That seems a bit odd.
I like this too. Yet I attempt to link them all to one proto-race.
TheHobgoblyn
I’ve been thinking about it, and I would put Elves Orcs Gnomes and goblinoids all together.
Orcs are a twisted race of elves similar to how hobgoblins are the products of nonconsensual relations between men and goblins, through perhaps with a dash of evil wizardry in the case of orcs.
I want to break out and paint my miniatures again after binge watching all your d&d videos.
On a different note a series that makes goblin/goblinoids interesting is the manga and anime Goblin Slayer. The goblins have different hierarchies in the series, and some of the most evil, and dangerous, but also overlooked monsters in that world.
Tuckers Kobolds also.
I love all of your videos so much! I have been DMing for less than a year, but we are all having a great time! We are going to be starting a new campaign soon and it will be the first that I am creating from scratch. I don't think I would have had the confidence to start this without the information and encouragement in each of these videos! Thank you!
I make my orcs an water related race. They ressemble sharks in my camign and my players seem to find it really interesting. I make them like walking tribal sharks who were cursed by the gods in my games. They were evolving too fast and had the idea to overthrone the gods. The gods curses them to be the opposite of all they ever were and so became a tribal force on the land and look like sharks to resemble their ancestors. Their ideals were changed. They became agressive and lost their minds. That gives my players actual explanation of the ruins they found in one adventure underwater. Its simillar to atlantis. And when my players learned this they now looked at orcs really differently.
I feel this mythology fits really good with my world but may not work for yours. Still i tought its a fun idea to share.
I love this - it's something else from the tried-and-true corrupted elves. It feels novel without feeling contrived.
I love the way you've made the three goblinoids so much more interesting than they can appear from the MM descriptions. I now know what the next challenge for my players is going to be!
Beastmen.
Tyler H what??
Beastmen like from Warhammer FRPG?
What great timing on these suggestions. I'm DM'ing a group that literally just discovered the nearby Hobgoblin clans are amassing to attack the town they are in.
I wouldn't have even though of Bugbears or goblin servants looking through the 5th edition book. Thank you :)
Not sure how goblin and human breeding is disgusting, but orc and human is fine.
Orcs and humans are roughly the same size... they are kind of just really ugly humans from a particularly primitive and savage culture.
Goblins are generally seen as considerably more animalistic and have terrible hygiene... and are also child-sized (and since they physically mature twice as fast, they are also generally child aged when at the peak of breeding)
Sounds a bit of a stretch. I don't find much difference in putting it in orc or goblin, yack.
Well-- you should never underestimate human's willingness to screw just about anything.
Plus, these kinds of people don't exist in the real world. But if they did exist in the world and were fundamentally a normal, mundane part of it that you were likely to encounter, they become normalized and reaction and attitude changes.
It isn't exactly the same thing-- but go look back on how Asian people were depicted by Americans prior to the 1960s. Yellow-skinned no-eyed people with rabbit teeth. Try to convince any of them that by the year 2000, they will generally be considered some of the most attractive people on the planet by a not small percentage of the population... and thanks to the cartoons they make in no small part.
But goblins ladies are smol!
He is just racist.
I love Kobolds. They're absolutely my favorite "monster"
I love the lore that the immoral dragons each severed a limb in order to reproduce and the blood that hit the ground became kobolds. Easy peasy and it gives me good guy kobolds:)
*Hobgobglins*
One of my rules when writing adventures/worlds, the more socially/descriptively complex you make the creatures, the more the players will treat it as such. It’s why my goblins often have few unexpected descriptive or social complexity; they are more a machination of a more complex being. Their bugbear, or better yet their hobgoblin
leader/s are more complex intellectually/strategically, as well as in their individualized traits (the natural extension from that being the BBEG lvl 12 sorcerer is in by far more complex than the goblins, or their leaders).
It’s why I try to give some much descriptive and social complexity to my worlds NPCs that move forward the plot (with voices, adjectives, motivations, etc), so that my players treat them with worth, and not just a *shop* or *blacksmith* or *mission giver*. If you do the same thing with your baddies, one might find their players are more intrigued and challenged, both strategically and in role playing.
I prefer all my goblinoids to be chaotic or atleast neutral in outlook, and deeply inspired by things like the movie Labyrinth. There is clearly some kind of infrastructure and society, but they're still a very chaotic and cruel to themselves and their own kind. Goblins are like the evil of children, lacking a conscience. Hobgoblins in turn are like the evil of young adults. Cliques and loyalty to their own kind, reluctant obedience to authority with secret rebellion, peer pressure and succumbing to it, and wild hormones. Bugbears are the evil of the parent or adult, neglectful and abusive.
Hobgoblins in my world are basically just evil Japan. They're lead by an Oni shogunate. At some point they were goblins, but if a goblin swears fealty to an Oni shogun or samurai, they go through a ritual to become a hobgoblin and get branded in some way. Children of Hobgoblins are also hobgoblins. There are still goblins up there with the Oni, but 1/3rd of them are hobgoblins that can't change loyalties if their Oni dies.
I don't like the idea of hobgoblins being bread by combining goblins and humans. It kinda belittles their whole race. Their mind for military in some cases even surpasses that of humans.
Harakiri404 consider Tolkien for a moment. Ignoring the PJ movies, Tolkien's orcs match small, chaotic and mean D&D goblins much better than brutish orcs of D&D. Which in turn makes a larger more martial version of goblins a good match for larger, smarter and better organised (and possibly half-human) uruk-hai. Sorcerous origin is just a cherry on top.
Not claiming to be a expert, just a thought
Яков Говорин I actually thought about uruk-hai when he said it.
But orcs in middle earth differ greatly from those of the forgotten realms. Tolkiens orcs originated by torturing and perverting elfs.
Goblins on the other hand are their own race (and sub races) saying they can only match or surpass humans when we sprinkle a bit of us in them is just arrogant.
They are conquerors by their own nature which includes controlling their dumb witted cousins for that purpose. Which makes them a real considerable threat, not just almost human.
I think it makes sense... even the name "hobgoblin" seems to imply that it's some variant of goblin. It's natural for people to explore what could cause that variation. I've played in games where gnomes came from the union of dwarves and elves, hobgoblins from humans and goblins, kobolds from dragon (in humanoid form) and any bipedal race, and a couple others that I can't quite recall. But hey, you do you! That's what makes this game great!
I love these kinds of videos. Orcs and goblins get short shrift by a lot of dms, but I'd always seem them as a great canvas to paint your low level bad guys on.
Matt, Be my valentines date ❤️
Dyslexio, if I may offer a tip. (Change your profile picture if you want someone to randomly date you off the internet.)
hello matt! just wanted to say hi and thank you for this series. I just started getting into DnD a few months ago, but fell in love with it and recently tried DMing. You've taught me so much about creating and running fun and engaging campaigns (I made a lot of newbie mistakes my first few sessions). Especially your videos about making sure it's player centered, not rail roading, and making sure your plot/NPCs don't take precedent over the player's. I've binged watched all your videos in the past week and a half and I'm excited for more! I'll also be buying your kickstarter book (which is saying something bc I haven't even bought the official DM Guide/Player's Handbook yet bc... well.. I'm a broke college student). I'll hopefully be able to watch your twitch streams soon. Again, thank you so much for this series and I look forward to learning more from you
Who the fudgedice dislikes Matt Colville videos?
My mama taught me if you ain't got nothing nice to say keep your mouth shut, this is me keeping my mouth shut cause I ain't got nothing nice to say about them people!
they’re wangrods
My goodness, i'd love to watch you running a game.. Your videos have helped tremendously with my desire to and ability to run a game myself. Thanks for all the videos :)