APS02 – Warrens of the Great Goblin Chief

Goblins have returned to the area of Westgate, seeking an ancient magical item constructed for their foul kind. In their search, the goblins attack an imperial convoy secretly disguised as a merchant’s wagon. The knowledge that goblins are near must be kept quiet from the public, thus a small band of adventurers is required to seek out the creatures and the stolen magic item, deep inside the warrens of the great goblin chief! But the adventure does not end there …

Do you like American Music? I like American Music. I do not, however, like the 2E style. I will now engage in hyperbole while unfairly victimizing this module while repeatedly shooting the already deceased horse. Then I shall reload and do it again. And again.

Wonder and delight do not come from an exhaustive and historically accurate listing of all the various types of screw head shapes and drive types. There is nothing whimsical about the dictionary. 1E, Unearthed Arcana, 2E, and everything that has followed have added rules and explanations. The more rules and explanations then the more you know how the world works. That is diametrical opposed to the feelings of wonder and discovery that I want to invoke in my games. This is one of the reasons that I don’t like humanoid monsters; they are generally too normal and dilute the term ‘monster.’ This is a reason I like new monsters and magic items;the players have’t encountered them yet and don’t know what to expect. When you draw the sword from it’s hidden place and the sky darkens and a flock of ravens squeak and your arm tingles while the swords runes glow red … well then the party trembles and wonders ‘WTF is going on here?!?’

The party is hired to retrieve a staff from some goblins who stole it in a raid. A search of the caravans wreckage leads to goblin warrens. That leads the group to another location where there’s a power struggle between goblin clans, and a bit of treachery. The caves are anthropoligically accurate and the DM is encouraged to let the villain get away. This is an entirely valid play style that seemed to very popular during the 2E era and I do not want to have anything to do with it.

The hook starts with the party passing under a window in town and having a man lean out and summon them. “You look like mighty fine adventurers! Want to make some coin?” The building is the estate and assay office. This rubs me wrong on in so many ways. “Adventurer” should never be an occupation in a module. It implies things like economy, and that there are lots of other adventurers, that I would prefer not exist. The bad guys have to keep hatching plots so “the Adventurers” can have something to do. Hmmm, that would be a good campaign; the powers that be, and almost everyone else on the planet, hate the trouble caused by adventurers so they fund bad guys to kill the SOBs off and get them out of the townsfolk’s hair. The whole Estates & Assays office is also a lot more Papers & Paychecks than I want in a game. No doubt there’s a business relationship manager somewhere in that building who is talking to the project managers in the code enforcement office about their problems with the new total quality program that they are undertaking.

The goblin warrens(*1) are two levels. They hallways are short and cramped, as are the maps. The scale used is 1 square =5′, which is great for tactical miniature ply but less so for creating an environment for the party to explore. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the goblin portion of this adventure. It is logically consistent and makes sense, to a degree that is no longer fun. The party finds some prisoners and eventually learns that most of the goblins are gone, the party were duped by the guy hiring them, and the shit is going to hit the fan if the party doesn’t stop the goblins. If they choose to stop he goblins then they witness the band that raided the caravan attacking the encampment(*2) of another band of goblins. The party is expected to get the staff from the chief who’s in the middle of a couple of hundred goblins intent on killing each other. That’s the most interesting part of the module to me; making available an impossible situation and letting them use their imaginations to work out a hair-brained solution is a good part of what can make a game fun. The party probably eventually goes back to town to confront the head of the Assay & Estates office, who is meeting with another NPC who shows up out of nowhere and appears to have no other role than to die. And yet he’s presented like he’s a major figure and was involved in the plot all along.

Let me be slightly less of a jerk for a bit and note some good things. The wandering monster table is extensive and while full of humanoids it does have some nice touches. Several of the entires have a sentence or two associated with them to flesh them out, several are with non-hostile such as human patrols, travelers, and merchants. In the warrens one really stands out: a hobgoblin explorer on his own in the caves. Those are all nice details. In addition several of the magic items that appear lean towards non-standard, especially a sword found in a kobold tomb. I didn’t like the tomb, but the sword was nice with a good deal of uniqueness to it.

Needless to say there’s a great deal of backstory on the town, the region, the nature of goblins, goblins as characters, and for each other major goblins and NPC’s to be found in the adventure. The module also serves as an introduction to the Westgate Campaign Setting, so I’m not sure how critical I can be of these details. This feels like some mashup of 2E, 3E, and WFRP. In particular the goblins and humanoids are presented in a kind of WFRP-lite like way. They almost have a culture the way the humanoids do in WFRP. Would I fault WFRP for having their goblins be tinkers? Maybe _I_ would, but that may be irrational since that’s once of the reasons people play WFRP; they like that atmosphere. I know what I like and this isn’t it, but I’m just some tool on the internet with too much money and time and an imagination that’s been beat down by 25 years of life. If you WANT consistent goblins and a 2E like style then this would be a great module for you.