Netwhack

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= Goblin
* [[m:Monster of the Week]]

Welcome to Goblins.

Goblins were added because they are one of the consistently most popular monsters in D&D style fantasy games. I placed them as the 'battle ready nuisance' that sits in order between kobolds and orcs. Right now I've placed goblins as more difficult than kobolds. This is a D&D trope. You'd rather fight a kobold than a goblin.

Kobolds are more like cowardly bandits, they're stronger in groups. Goblins are dangerous alone or in pairs because they are driven to their cause, possibly by devotion to a sort of goblin-king type figure.

I am considering making goblins a bit weaker -- more like a labyrynth goblin. Nethack seems to follow this idea of a weaker goblin too. Currently the 'labyrynth golbin' is essentially a Croky monster. But for now, if you see a Goblin early on, make sure you have come prepared!

== Nethack
NetHack treats goblins as the weakest member of the orc family (o, gray, level 0, 1d4 weapon, speed 6, AC 10, chaotic −3). They have infravision, pick up items, and are genocidable. They are often among the first things you meet; they commonly carry an orcish dagger or helm. Peaceful to chaotic PCs. They count as orcs for Sting and Orcrist. Their encyclopedia entry is the Hobbit paragraph: cruel, wicked, bad-hearted, clever makers of ugly useful things, good miners when they bother, usually filthy.

There used to be a unique Goblin King who was the Elf quest nemesis (guarding the Palantir of Westernesse) until the Elf role was removed in 3.3.0 when race became a separate choice. Variants still have him.
NetHack’s goblin is Tolkien’s goblin/orc mashup wearing a D&D name. D&D itself split the two: orcs are Gruumsh’s people; goblins are Maglubiyet’s underclass. That split is one of the ways D&D stopped being a Tolkien clone.

== AD&D vs. Labyrynth
While AD&D's split into "Maglubiyet's people" is interesting, in popular culture Henson and Bowie's depiction of a Goblin King and Goblin Castle did more to cement the idea of goblins in the mind of fantasy genre players than anything else. The "Goblin Castle/Goblin King" zone immediately appeared in MUDs and other games; codebases like Merc, Envy, and ROM shipped with variations of the zone.

I think what made Labyrynth stick is that it did not make D&D goblins prettier. It respected the trope; it put a face on what everyone was thinking and showed how it could be fresh and exciting. It gave a depth to goblins and it gave them a purpose; their King. Who even he himself was full of depth and character.

The film locked in the baby-stealing motif for a mass audience. D&D goblins kidnap for slaves and food. //Labyrinth// goblins kidnap because a girl said the wish out loud. That comes from older folklore, but the movie is how millions of people learned it.

The lasting impact is that if you drop a Goblin King and a Goblin Castle into a campaign, most players will assume it's Jareth without thinking. That assumption is so hard to shake because Labrynth seems to define what Goblins are out of giving the original legends such a charming face.

=== Jareth vs Maglubiyet
Jareth. The "goblin king who is not a goblin" defines goblins moreso than the goblins give purpose to Jareth as their king. Brian Froud designed him as Sarah’s inner collage: Heathcliff, Rochester, a leather-jacket rebel, a German knight with “worms of death” in the armor, a ballet dancer, and a pop star whose crystal-topped scepter is a visual microphone. Bowie played him as a reluctant, vain, temperamental rock-star landlord who inherited a kingdom of goblins and rules it under duress—then becomes obsessed with the girl who walked in. What this really adds to goblins is depth.

That is a different archetype from Maglubiyet. Maglubiyet is a conqueror-god who broke other gods and drafts the dead into Acheron. Jareth is a faerie-lord *Demon Lover*: he offers the dream (the ball, the crystals, “just fear me, love me, do as I say”) at the price of a child and a self. Henson said out loud that Bowie was there to embody adult sexuality and the disturbing side of growing up. The film flopped in theaters and then became a VHS-and-TV cult object, so a generation of kids met “Goblin King” as *that* man first.

In a way this makes goblins something that they aren't in a game like NetHack or AD&D and I think that's great.