The Goblins of the Faerie Woods

CE 8: Goblins of the Faerie Woods was written by Daniel J. Bishop and illustrated by Gary Dupuis and Brett Neufeld. Cartography is by Tim Hartin. The publisher is Purple Duck Games.

Disclosure: I am the author.

Like all of the Campaign Element series, this product seeks to add material to your campaign milieu that you can use over and over again. It also has obvious tie-in value to the Faerie Tales from Unlit Shores series.

Herein you will find two five-level classes for goblins, who can become goblin warriors or goblin witch doctors. as well as rules for 0-level goblins. When I was working on my own game system (Raven Crowking's Fantasy Game, or RCFG), I did some work to recast goblins, including the basis that forms the goblin witch doctor class.

Readers of the CE series will notice that, quite often, I include places where PCs can gain information for a price. This is intentional. In a game where "Quest For It" plays such a prominent role, the ability of the players to gain information is vital. Likewise, the opportunity for the judge to plant adventure seeds is extremely useful.

Some notes on things:

• Jungus the Witch Doctor began her life male, but I decided to make her female. She is named after Carl Jung. 

• The Grey Ones would have been called the Greywhethers if I hadn't used that name in Silent Nightfall. Actually, a number of the creatures in Silent Nightfall were originally pets kept by goblins in RCFG, as an homage to The Princess and the Goblin.

• Gaulmurk, Ogre-Sorcerer of the Iron Bands is modeled after the wizard of the iron bands in Longshanks, Girth, and Keen. He was made tough (and able to step into Elfland) so that low-level PCs wouldn't simply start the adventure by leaving the path, going to his tower, and ganking him.

• The Weird of Sortharl is, of course, created in loving memory of the 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons Wand of Wonder, a magic item that was always fun for the DM to include. The name recalls a magic item mentioned in an old Dragon Magazine or White Dwarf article. I can't pin down the article at the moment, but the item was the Strange of somebody or other. It stuck with me.

• The spider’s voice is supposed to perform four tasks. One, it is intended to be an entertaining encounter as is. Two, it is supposed to be an example of using "Where Spell Knowledge is Found" - just because an idea seems fanciful doesn't mean that it can't be realized in-game. Three, it gives the PCs a reason to ask questions of the Grey Ones. Finally, one of my players had hoped to learn the language of spiders.

• The idea of the twiggy men probably came from the paintings of Brian Froud and Alan Lee. In particular, those from their book, Fairies. As you may know, Brian Froud did work designing creatures in Labyrinth. The child, Toby, in the movie is actually played by Toby Froud. 

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