A Goblinoid Family Tree

(Or really a phylogenetic tree.  I just liked the sound of family tree more in the title.)

So, in reading a post by James over at Grognardia, about Dragon articles on fantasy languages, I started to wonder if sometimes I just don't fly my geek flag high enough.  As in...maybe I'm not appropriately minmaxing the fun I could get out of the RPG hobby by not allowing myself to just go nuts like I want to as a nerdy scientist who also loves games about elves and goblins.

James posted a tree of language families, originally appearing in Dragon #66, that shows the development of the Middle Elfin tongue into a variety of fae languages.  And it's awesome.  I love that sort of stuff, so why don't I do more of it?  I wonder sometimes if I remain so focused on having an "anything goes" attitude about the world(s) I game in (like the setting for the Monstrous Matters campaign) that I miss out on creating things that would genuinely make me smile, even if I don't completely buy into all of the specifics.

With that in mind, I'm going to consider this a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes.  Here's a phylogenetic tree of a few goblinoid species, along with a few creatures from that galaxy far, far away that I suspect might be closely related.  (If you have access to genetic data, please let me know; this is just based on physical characteristics.)

Images from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookieepedia, and Scryfall

I feel like this just opens up a whole world of stories for how these species became distributed as they are.  Maybe I'll follow up there.  (If you'd like to see some of my related ramblings, please check out the stuff I've written about the Fantaspora Hypothesis and #WookieesAreBugbears.)

Thanks for looking!  Now, for a character (cribbed from RPGGamer.org):

Image from Wookieepedia

Wicket

Full name:  Wicket Wystri Warrick

Species: Ewok

Home: Endor

15 HP, 12 Defense (small size)

Strength 3
Dexterity 3
Knowledge 2
Presence 4

Skills: Survival +4, Thrown Weapons +3, Languages +2, Climb +1

Goals: Helping and protecting his friends

Quote: "Goodbye.  Good-bye."

The Monstrous Matters Campaign, Part 2: So this is how goblin genocide starts.

A little while back, Father Josh threw me another tabletop bone by playing as the sole PC (with a supervisory role over the other protagonist) in Session 2 of the Monstrous Matters campaign.  (For my Session 1 ramblings, check out the post HERE.)

The high points of this session:

    1.  The first pieces were planted to tie into what might turn out to be a meta-narrative that makes its way through multiple adventures.  I say "might" because I'm committed to not railroading this thing...BUT I can have the overarching story in the back of my mind that MAY become obvious to the game's player(s) over time.

    2.  We returned to a more "standard" dice pool resolution mechanic for the D6-based system we're playing with.  I see this being The Way going forward, but I've honestly never determined what I find to be the optimal approach to the Wild Die/Ghost Die in these games, so I'll probably still play with that over the coming sessions.

    3.  The importance of player motivations with respect to the goals of the game itself came to the forefront, as one of the characters shifted into murder-hobo mode in a game that is, ostensibly, very much not about murder hobos.  The thing is, it really worked narratively, so it's drawing our attention to the value of determining the PCs' ethical views of creatures that have made their way to our world via connections to magical fantasy realms.  I'm sure there's also some political commentary that could be dropped into this exploration, but I'm going to do all I can to avoid that because (1) it seems cheap and exploitative, and (2) this is very much meant to be escapist entertainment.

So, here we go...

To begin the session, the team (Fingers Watson and Bobby Flech) move down the staircase from Level 1 to Level 2.

From the free and excellent Dyson's Delve mega-ish-dungeon...check out this level HERE.

Moving east, they peer into a room with six goblins; none notice them outside the cracked door. Five of the goblins are dressed in tattered rags, while one is in much nicer attire (including some fancy brass-ish goggles). He seems to be in the middle of a chemistry experiment. (When questioned, he says that he is “just trying to make it explode.”) He looks something like this:

On his wrist, there is a striking signet:

When asked, the goblin says that the signet is the symbol of his guild, the Izzet.

It doesn’t take long now for Watson’s long-harbored hatred of planar outsiders to show itself. He first tricks a few of them into falling into a carefully deployed portable hole. As they attempt to recover, he kills one with a dagger thrown into its eye. He then pulls out his sidearm and shoots four more dead. Finally, the chemist – by now the dozing victim of a scroll of Sleep – is strangled by Flech at Watson’s direction.

The protagonists have now shut themselves in the goblin den. There are other dungeon inhabitants outside, alerted by the noise and trying to get in. It doesn’t look great for the Monstrous Matters pair. There is a wildcard here, though: Fingers would happily kill every last one of them...