1) I love Volo's. I missed that reference. But it does not change the fact that mercer and his crew have done D&D a real disservice. Had he added to the customer base? Of course. But when I see people saying goblins can be a good playable character species, that is a hard no, and that is the kind of thing he and others have opened the door to.
2) Edit: Oh, and NO player should EVER be reading Volo's. It is a DM book, not a player book.
1) It's what WotC have stated in Volo's which was released in 2016, well before Critical Role dealt with anything related to goblin alignment. CR hasn't had an actual goblin PC so far either.
2) Volo's has rules that apply to character creation, which is info for players. The alignment reference comes from those rules too.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
But it does not change the fact that mercer and his crew have done D&D a real disservice. Had he added to the customer base? Of course. But when I see people saying goblins can be a good playable character species, that is a hard no, and that is the kind of thing he and others have opened the door to.
All that Mercer and 'his crew' have done is showcased the fun they have playing a certain style of D&D. Other people have looked at that style, thought "Yes, that looks fun" themselves and gone out found their own enjoyment playing that way. D&D is a game; it is meant to be fun. So saying someone who is showcasing the fun that can be had playing D&D, and disseminating a style of play that many more people find fun, is doing a disservice to D&D seems truly bizarre. Making the game more fun is the purest 'service' you can do for it; D&D isn't some sacred text or immutable monolith. It's not some virtuous principle to live by, it's a product sold by a company designed for people to play for fun. Saying "this person has shown you can have fun playing D&D a different is bad for D&D" isn't really a position I can see holding water.
I love that D&D is more flexible than it ever was previously.
Goblins can be good.
I've run a whole campaign predicated on the characters being goodly members of "monstrous races" and everyone had a lot of fun with that.
That said, this thread is asking about monster alignments, not playable races (which has more than enough pages of discussion previously), so please stay on topic for the thread. 🙂
But in this new age nonsense, when we have mercer and his crew saying anything goes, and Eberron, there is an excellent chance of some new player who got into D&D because of critical role telling me that goblins can be good.
I thought you liked Volo's Guide to Monsters?
"Goblins are typically neutral evil, as they care only for their own needs. A few goblins might tend toward good or neutrality, but only rarely." VGtM p. 119
I love Volo's. I missed that reference. But it does not change the fact that mercer and his crew have done D&D a real disservice. Had he added to the customer base? Of course. But when I see people saying goblins can be a good playable character species, that is a hard no, and that is the kind of thing he and others have opened the door to.
Edit: Oh, and NO player should EVER be reading Volo's. It is a DM book, not a player book.
People have been playing good goblins or evil elves for probably as long as the game has been around. It's a bit naive to think that Mercer is the cause of that.
And of course a player can read any book they like.
Oh, and NO player should EVER be reading Volo's. It is a DM book, not a player book.
Who are you to tell them that? Volo's is full of interesting information which many players would find interesting, to help them submerse themselves deeper into their hobby. This is also the way many people gain enough knowledge to feel comfortable DMing.
If a DM tried to tell me which books I could or could not read... Let's just say it would not go down very well.
But in this new age nonsense, when we have mercer and his crew saying anything goes, and Eberron, there is an excellent chance of some new player who got into D&D because of critical role telling me that goblins can be good.
I thought you liked Volo's Guide to Monsters?
"Goblins are typically neutral evil, as they care only for their own needs. A few goblins might tend toward good or neutrality, but only rarely." VGtM p. 119
I love Volo's. I missed that reference. But it does not change the fact that mercer and his crew have done D&D a real disservice. Had he added to the customer base? Of course. But when I see people saying goblins can be a good playable character species, that is a hard no, and that is the kind of thing he and others have opened the door to.
Edit: Oh, and NO player should EVER be reading Volo's. It is a DM book, not a player book.
It is has 12 race options it's not just a dm book.
The goblinoids are a remnant of a fallen empire that broke itself removing a great evil from the world. They are somewhat brutal and harsh in some of their groups...but they had to be to survive and stop the world from ending. They paid a hefty price and the reward they got was they were driven from their cities by other humanoid races.
Creates a wide variety of goblinoid PCs to be able to play.
A campaign can have Goblin=Evil, Goblin=Assumed-to-be-Evil-but-not-always, Goblin=Ordinary-people-with-a-bad-rap, or Goblin=Ordinary-people. No campaign is being required to even have Goblins much less define what alignment they are.
You want Evil-only Goblins? Do it. It's allowed.
You want Goblins who, like everyone else, have good and bad people with most of them just trying to get by in a medieval fantasy world? Do it. It's allowed.
A rule that is not in the sourcebooks is one saying it's okay for people to tell other tables that they can't play how they wish to play. If you do it, be ready for people to point out that it's not allowed in the rules to tell other tables how to have fun..
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Players don't "make the game". DM's do. Players only exist within the construct the DM creates. So when some player shows up at my table and tells me what alignment a goblin is, that is not going to fly. But in this new age nonsense, when we have mercer and his crew saying anything goes, and Eberron, there is an excellent chance of some new player who got into D&D because of critical role telling me that goblins can be good.
And thank you for stating that it is a straw man argument when some player says I am a racist when I state goblins are evil. You have just put to the lie the entire concept of racism with regard to orcs, drow. vistani, which of course, it is.
Wow. Miss me with this entire attitude and stance. Anyway, I think that WOTC declining to put alignments on stat blocks is fine, and definitely even good and better for beings that are supposed to be people, as long as they provide some other sort of guideline for behavior. It will be fine.
But in this new age nonsense, when we have mercer and his crew saying anything goes, and Eberron, there is an excellent chance of some new player who got into D&D because of critical role telling me that goblins can be good.
I thought you liked Volo's Guide to Monsters?
"Goblins are typically neutral evil, as they care only for their own needs. A few goblins might tend toward good or neutrality, but only rarely." VGtM p. 119
I love Volo's. I missed that reference. But it does not change the fact that mercer and his crew have done D&D a real disservice. Had he added to the customer base? Of course. But when I see people saying goblins can be a good playable character species, that is a hard no, and that is the kind of thing he and others have opened the door to.
Edit: Oh, and NO player should EVER be reading Volo's. It is a DM book, not a player book.
Matt Mercer did not write Volo's or directly influence its writing. Season 2 of Critical Role, the one with a Goblin PC, came out in January of 2018, and Volo's came out in 2016. Also, Critical Role has done D&D a huge service to the game. 5e would not be as popular as it is without them, and popularity equals more money for WotC to make more D&D books and keep the edition going. Just because you don't like Goblin PCs, or the direction D&D is moving doesn't mean that the game is getting worse, it's just moving away from your tastes.
Another point on how absolutely wrong you are, Goblins have been playable since way before 5e came out, and Eberron had non-evil goblins way before Critical Role ever existed. So, yeah, there's that.
And to address your edit, except players should be reading the Player Options section of the book that has the racial stats, which is where that quote comes from. Players definitely should read that part, or they would have no idea how to play a Goblin (and I know you don't think anyone should play a goblin, but the D&D community as a whole disagrees with you, as does WotC).
Season 2 of Critical Role, the one with a Goblin PC
Not to nitpick, but
Nott the Brave was not a goblin. She was a halfling in a goblin body who (incidentally) hated goblins, and the context of her backstory did a pretty good job of suggesting most actual gobbos are evil in (that part of) the setting.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don't allow Evil player characters. I don't allow monster races traditionally known to be Evil, no matter what WotC says about them now. I allow Tieflings, but I warn my players that the common folk will assume they are Evil and they are unlikely to find welcome or trust anywhere they go. No Drow, I don't care how popular Drizzt was. Much of Volo's is useless for me, and I only got it because someone very dear to me likes to play Tabaxi. There are a few races in there that I don't mind, so it's not a total waste. Going forward I find the removal of Alignment from monsters to be rather a nuisance and I'll be sad when it happens. I'll have to read the lore or just decide based on the picture if they look Evil to me. I don't allow player character dead things and a Necromancer will need to be careful who finds out what they are.
Planescape is going to be rather strange if they remove Alignment entirely from the game, and that's the setting I most look forward to seeing.
I think I understand why they are removing Alignment from monsters. I've seen the trend towards player character monsters evolving. Van Richten's points pretty heavily at this, with player character dead people, and the revisions on were-critters make me think we are going to see player character weres as less optional and restricted than the current ones. I think they are making a mistake. They are making a lot more work for me, since I'll have to read up on lore that may not have anything to do with my setting anyway just because I can't remember what Alignment a Bugbear is off hand. I'm an old school type, and I don't see what was so broken that it needed fixing.
Season 2 of Critical Role, the one with a Goblin PC
Not to nitpick, but
Nott the Brave was not a goblin. She was a halfling in a goblin body who (incidentally) hated goblins, and the context of her backstory did a pretty good job of suggesting most actual gobbos are evil in (that part of) the setting.
I am aware of that. I didn't want to spoil that plot point, though, and Nott the Brave indeed was a Goblin until that was revealed. (And goblins in Exandria are cursed to be innately evil, but there are quite a few that break free of that curse.)
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
The goblins of the Kryn Dynasty are as stable, civilized, and cooperative with their neighbors as any other species in the setting. The tribe that victimized Veth is certainly old-school Lulzevulz, and you did mention that, but the book outright states that almost all goblinoids outside the Dynasty are afflicted by a Betrayer God's ongoing curse. Goblinoids free of that curse are no more inclined to Lulzevulz than anybody else. Dunno 'bout anyone else, but the relentless maddening whispers of an ancient, banished god of strife and misery assailing my mind day and night, demanding I descend to Lulzevulz for the sake of both lulz and evulz, is sorta the definition of coercion. It's actually a fantastic example of the difference between "Ehhh, the whole species is Neutral Evil and that's all anyone needs to know" and "Hmm, maybe as a DM I should do some worldbuilding behind the scenes, so that if/when my players start asking questions I can answer them".
I'll have to read up on lore that may not have anything to do with my setting anyway just because I can't remember what Alignment a Bugbear is off hand.
Honest question: what does it matter what a Bugbear's alignment in the "default" setting is if you're not using that setting?
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Planescape is going to be rather strange if they remove Alignment entirely from the game, and that's the setting I most look forward to seeing.
Just requires that they define what the different outer planes actually stand for in a way that's more coherent than the alignment system. I couldn't actually tell you what the important philosophical distinctions are between, say, Arcadia, Mount Celestia, and Bytopia.
I'll have to read up on lore that may not have anything to do with my setting anyway just because I can't remember what Alignment a Bugbear is off hand.
Honest question: what does it matter what a Bugbear's alignment in the "default" setting is if you're not using that setting?
Yes, because the Default Setting in 5e (the Forgotten Realms) are what the core rulebook's lore is based around. This is hopefully going to be different whenever 6e comes, but it currently matters. If I'm playing in Eberron, and I have a group of Bugbears meet the players, a player that has read the Monster Manual (such as my 2 players that have been DMs) will know their alignment, causing them to think that this setting's Bugbears are evil, like the ones in FR.
Issues like this have come up in my campaigns, and I can attest to the fact that Alignment on Monster Stats has done more harm than good at my table, even if I can "just ignore it".
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
To Third_Sundering and Yurei1453: I'm just saying, the Nott arc of CR is a pretty poor example to use for arguing that Matt Mercer opened the door for more fluid monster alignments. The Kryn Dynasty, absolutely, but not the whole Nott thing. The larger point remains that WotC had been moving the dial on alignments long before CR blew up and became its own channel anyway. If some players want to hold that against the game developers that's their business, but WotC's business is marketing their products - in other words, any such lore/mechanics changes are informed by what WotC thinks the market wants. Those players can rail against the market all they want, but that's tilting at windmills. The player base isn't out to get a bunch of players with particular notions, the player base just wants their game to be fun.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Planescape is going to be rather strange if they remove Alignment entirely from the game, and that's the setting I most look forward to seeing.
Just requires that they define what the different outer planes actually stand for in a way that's more coherent than the alignment system. I couldn't actually tell you what the important philosophical distinctions are between, say, Arcadia, Mount Celestia, and Bytopia.
Yep. Isn't interesting how it's easy to differentiate elemental/planar evil with the Hells and Abyss (and a lot of folks just going a bit "blurry" with Hades, Carceri, etc.) where as good is sorted stuck in some vagueness to see if anything really makes them distinct from each other?
I'm ok with descriptor text telling me whether a given monster (including NPC blocks, I particularly enjoyed the alignment-less inquisitors, that gives the DM a lot of freedom in nuance and ambiguity) has basic tendencies along helpful or harmful lines toward different sorts of PCs and the likelihood of a given monster/NPC to deviate from those tendencies and go against expectation in a "standard" game world or at least the monsters "standard" setting. I mean despite any alignment marker, I'm pretty sure I know what to do with Star Spawn and I'd only go a Carl Cthulhu Little Gloomy route if I wanted to be silly. Hmm, I 'd run with that if Rime of the Frostmaiden hadn't already gone there...
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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1) It's what WotC have stated in Volo's which was released in 2016, well before Critical Role dealt with anything related to goblin alignment. CR hasn't had an actual goblin PC so far either.
2) Volo's has rules that apply to character creation, which is info for players. The alignment reference comes from those rules too.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
All that Mercer and 'his crew' have done is showcased the fun they have playing a certain style of D&D. Other people have looked at that style, thought "Yes, that looks fun" themselves and gone out found their own enjoyment playing that way. D&D is a game; it is meant to be fun. So saying someone who is showcasing the fun that can be had playing D&D, and disseminating a style of play that many more people find fun, is doing a disservice to D&D seems truly bizarre. Making the game more fun is the purest 'service' you can do for it; D&D isn't some sacred text or immutable monolith. It's not some virtuous principle to live by, it's a product sold by a company designed for people to play for fun. Saying "this person has shown you can have fun playing D&D a different is bad for D&D" isn't really a position I can see holding water.
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D&D Beyond FoundersI love that D&D is more flexible than it ever was previously.
Goblins can be good.
I've run a whole campaign predicated on the characters being goodly members of "monstrous races" and everyone had a lot of fun with that.
That said, this thread is asking about monster alignments, not playable races (which has more than enough pages of discussion previously), so please stay on topic for the thread. 🙂
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If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
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People have been playing good goblins or evil elves for probably as long as the game has been around. It's a bit naive to think that Mercer is the cause of that.
And of course a player can read any book they like.
Who are you to tell them that? Volo's is full of interesting information which many players would find interesting, to help them submerse themselves deeper into their hobby. This is also the way many people gain enough knowledge to feel comfortable DMing.
If a DM tried to tell me which books I could or could not read... Let's just say it would not go down very well.
It is has 12 race options it's not just a dm book.
Check out my homebrew subclasses spells magic items feats monsters races
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Thats why I love Eberron....
The goblinoids are a remnant of a fallen empire that broke itself removing a great evil from the world. They are somewhat brutal and harsh in some of their groups...but they had to be to survive and stop the world from ending. They paid a hefty price and the reward they got was they were driven from their cities by other humanoid races.
Creates a wide variety of goblinoid PCs to be able to play.
Good? Evil?
Meh.
Reputation? Campaign setting?
Yah!
A campaign can have Goblin=Evil, Goblin=Assumed-to-be-Evil-but-not-always, Goblin=Ordinary-people-with-a-bad-rap, or Goblin=Ordinary-people. No campaign is being required to even have Goblins much less define what alignment they are.
You want Evil-only Goblins? Do it. It's allowed.
You want Goblins who, like everyone else, have good and bad people with most of them just trying to get by in a medieval fantasy world? Do it. It's allowed.
A rule that is not in the sourcebooks is one saying it's okay for people to tell other tables that they can't play how they wish to play. If you do it, be ready for people to point out that it's not allowed in the rules to tell other tables how to have fun..
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Wow. Miss me with this entire attitude and stance. Anyway, I think that WOTC declining to put alignments on stat blocks is fine, and definitely even good and better for beings that are supposed to be people, as long as they provide some other sort of guideline for behavior. It will be fine.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I think the main reason WoTC chose not include alignments is to avoid another "Drow" incident.
Why go through the trouble of including an alignment if someone somewhere is going to find a reason to be upset about it.
Matt Mercer did not write Volo's or directly influence its writing. Season 2 of Critical Role, the one with a Goblin PC, came out in January of 2018, and Volo's came out in 2016. Also, Critical Role has done D&D a huge service to the game. 5e would not be as popular as it is without them, and popularity equals more money for WotC to make more D&D books and keep the edition going. Just because you don't like Goblin PCs, or the direction D&D is moving doesn't mean that the game is getting worse, it's just moving away from your tastes.
Another point on how absolutely wrong you are, Goblins have been playable since way before 5e came out, and Eberron had non-evil goblins way before Critical Role ever existed. So, yeah, there's that.
And to address your edit, except players should be reading the Player Options section of the book that has the racial stats, which is where that quote comes from. Players definitely should read that part, or they would have no idea how to play a Goblin (and I know you don't think anyone should play a goblin, but the D&D community as a whole disagrees with you, as does WotC).
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Not to nitpick, but
Nott the Brave was not a goblin. She was a halfling in a goblin body who (incidentally) hated goblins, and the context of her backstory did a pretty good job of suggesting most actual gobbos are evil in (that part of) the setting.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I don't allow Evil player characters. I don't allow monster races traditionally known to be Evil, no matter what WotC says about them now. I allow Tieflings, but I warn my players that the common folk will assume they are Evil and they are unlikely to find welcome or trust anywhere they go. No Drow, I don't care how popular Drizzt was. Much of Volo's is useless for me, and I only got it because someone very dear to me likes to play Tabaxi. There are a few races in there that I don't mind, so it's not a total waste. Going forward I find the removal of Alignment from monsters to be rather a nuisance and I'll be sad when it happens. I'll have to read the lore or just decide based on the picture if they look Evil to me. I don't allow player character dead things and a Necromancer will need to be careful who finds out what they are.
Planescape is going to be rather strange if they remove Alignment entirely from the game, and that's the setting I most look forward to seeing.
I think I understand why they are removing Alignment from monsters. I've seen the trend towards player character monsters evolving. Van Richten's points pretty heavily at this, with player character dead people, and the revisions on were-critters make me think we are going to see player character weres as less optional and restricted than the current ones. I think they are making a mistake. They are making a lot more work for me, since I'll have to read up on lore that may not have anything to do with my setting anyway just because I can't remember what Alignment a Bugbear is off hand. I'm an old school type, and I don't see what was so broken that it needed fixing.
<Insert clever signature here>
I am aware of that. I didn't want to spoil that plot point, though, and Nott the Brave indeed was a Goblin until that was revealed. (And goblins in Exandria are cursed to be innately evil, but there are quite a few that break free of that curse.)
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
To nitpick the nitpick:
The goblins of the Kryn Dynasty are as stable, civilized, and cooperative with their neighbors as any other species in the setting. The tribe that victimized Veth is certainly old-school Lulzevulz, and you did mention that, but the book outright states that almost all goblinoids outside the Dynasty are afflicted by a Betrayer God's ongoing curse. Goblinoids free of that curse are no more inclined to Lulzevulz than anybody else. Dunno 'bout anyone else, but the relentless maddening whispers of an ancient, banished god of strife and misery assailing my mind day and night, demanding I descend to Lulzevulz for the sake of both lulz and evulz, is sorta the definition of coercion. It's actually a fantastic example of the difference between "Ehhh, the whole species is Neutral Evil and that's all anyone needs to know" and "Hmm, maybe as a DM I should do some worldbuilding behind the scenes, so that if/when my players start asking questions I can answer them".
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Honest question: what does it matter what a Bugbear's alignment in the "default" setting is if you're not using that setting?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Just requires that they define what the different outer planes actually stand for in a way that's more coherent than the alignment system. I couldn't actually tell you what the important philosophical distinctions are between, say, Arcadia, Mount Celestia, and Bytopia.
Yes, because the Default Setting in 5e (the Forgotten Realms) are what the core rulebook's lore is based around. This is hopefully going to be different whenever 6e comes, but it currently matters. If I'm playing in Eberron, and I have a group of Bugbears meet the players, a player that has read the Monster Manual (such as my 2 players that have been DMs) will know their alignment, causing them to think that this setting's Bugbears are evil, like the ones in FR.
Issues like this have come up in my campaigns, and I can attest to the fact that Alignment on Monster Stats has done more harm than good at my table, even if I can "just ignore it".
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
To Third_Sundering and Yurei1453: I'm just saying, the Nott arc of CR is a pretty poor example to use for arguing that Matt Mercer opened the door for more fluid monster alignments. The Kryn Dynasty, absolutely, but not the whole Nott thing. The larger point remains that WotC had been moving the dial on alignments long before CR blew up and became its own channel anyway. If some players want to hold that against the game developers that's their business, but WotC's business is marketing their products - in other words, any such lore/mechanics changes are informed by what WotC thinks the market wants. Those players can rail against the market all they want, but that's tilting at windmills. The player base isn't out to get a bunch of players with particular notions, the player base just wants their game to be fun.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Yep. Isn't interesting how it's easy to differentiate elemental/planar evil with the Hells and Abyss (and a lot of folks just going a bit "blurry" with Hades, Carceri, etc.) where as good is sorted stuck in some vagueness to see if anything really makes them distinct from each other?
I'm ok with descriptor text telling me whether a given monster (including NPC blocks, I particularly enjoyed the alignment-less inquisitors, that gives the DM a lot of freedom in nuance and ambiguity) has basic tendencies along helpful or harmful lines toward different sorts of PCs and the likelihood of a given monster/NPC to deviate from those tendencies and go against expectation in a "standard" game world or at least the monsters "standard" setting. I mean despite any alignment marker, I'm pretty sure I know what to do with Star Spawn and I'd only go a Carl Cthulhu Little Gloomy route if I wanted to be silly. Hmm, I 'd run with that if Rime of the Frostmaiden hadn't already gone there...
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.