Anti Canon Ancestry II: There Be Goblins!
Throughout this article, I’ll be showcasing some of my favorite #GoblinWeek art I saw this week. This and the one for the thumbnail are from Drew Shields, who is @thegnarlyghost on twitter!
It’s #GoblinWeek! I am, unfortunately, not much of an artist so my contribution is detailing how goblins fit into the Prismatic Wasteland. This wasn’t something I’ve addressed in my in-progress rules or setting guide, so this is equal parts challenge and thought experiment. This post follows up on my earlier post on ancestry, which discusses those staple ancestries of fantasy and how I incorporate them into the Prismatic Wasteland. My first thought was that goblins, like orcs or elfs, are yet another flavor in the Neapolitan ice cream that is humanity in the post-post-apocalyptic future. But, that is just boring and far too easy.
Art by @Ramonkey_art on twitter. Check out his web comic!
Goblins are an alien meta-species. Like humanity, they expanded across the stars, developed a variety of cultures and phenotypes. Unlike humanity, they hail from some far-flung planet on a distant star. The goblins in the Prismatic Wastelands are just the descendants of those left behind on the continent of Ro on the planet that was once Earth. This might be a good time to bring up the continent of the Prismatic Wastelands, Ro.
Art by Me (I mentioned I’m not an artist, right?)
Ro is a supercontinent that resembles the letters R and O pressed together. Ro was created by an impossibly ancient and advanced pangalactic empire that mastered planetary engineering. A member of this ancient civilization used the planet we call Earth as an elaborate prom-posal whereby the planet’s continents were shifted to spell out “Prom?” The intended recipient declined. Over the eons, the continents have shifted somewhat, and Ro, if viewed from above, has a vaguely cranial appearance.
Goblins are not a monolith. In fact, not all goblins are goblins. There are retro-goblins, those closest in resemblance to today’s goblins (as they exist in a far-away solar system), hobgoblins, bugbears and nilbogs. There is no more of a pan-goblin culture than there is a pan-human culture, and even among the subgroups, there are all sorts of ways goblins identify. Bugbears and hobgoblins are just as likely to view each other as kin as are dwarfs and elfs. As I stressed in part I, there are no mechanical impact of ancestry. I prefer to avoid bioessentialism, please and thank you. Like with humans, players with goblin characters get to determine what this ancestry is like, aided by rolling on the below table:
Goblins lean more in the science direction within this science fantasy setting. A lot of these are “inspired” (i.e., lovingly ripped off) from science fiction classics. Because each goblinoid ancestry is “alien”, i.e., not immediately tied to Earth, I would definitely have more follow up questions for a player with a goblin character about how their family or ancestors arrived on Ro. Their answer would also help inform how I use goblins throughout the campaign; are goblins rare because a few goblins were stranded here centuries ago or are they prevalent because of mass migration of goblins millennia ago? When I ask players questions, I like to meaningfully incorporate their answers into the setting. This is something I picked up from running more narrative games like Dungeon World, but I don’t think it should be taboo in OSR-style play. The great thing about this type of collaboration is that the players immediately know a lot more about the setting than they would otherwise. This is much more effective than trying to get players to read setting material (gross).
Art by @cosmignon on twitter. More of her art on her website!
I hope everyone had a happy Goblin Week!
Art by @Alaingruetter on twitter. They have lots of goblins you can buy here!
