Gobbos, Goozs, Boblims

Short, obnoxious, beligrant, capricious, numerous. Deal with one and five more will appear. They have many names: boblims, goozs, goblins, or the more widespread gobbos. Short, mean, serrated teeth, fiery red eyes, altered skin: buggy green, vomit yellow.

Sunlight makes their eyes weep and skin burn, sprouting festering boils. So they dwell underground, rarely venturing out at night, only on disorganized guerilla raids. Their red eyes are accustomed to darkness, perfectly seeing in the dimmest of lights.

Their origin, a mystery for all but the fiercest sages or academics. (Keep this secret from your players unless there's a reason not to). A gobbo sprouts when a child is exposed to continuous inhalation to an underground mushroom's spores called the Green Dream. Makes them to stop growing, developing the characteristic qualities of a gobbo. Adults don't suffer this effect, instead giving them a mild hallucinogenic effect. Something to do with hormones, or lack thereof? Any big city pays good coin for a sack of fresh Green Dream, priced drugs and all that.

So how do kids end up in mushroom infested caves? Delusions of grandeur from a minor Fae, who self-proclaim themselves King. Or Queen, Prince, Duchess or another made-up righteous title. Let's stick with King for simplicity for now. A king without subject is like a land without water. So they do the deed. A few children go missing from the local village. Kidnapped by their soon-to-be King.

Underground calories are a premium, however. Subsistence is met on a diet of mushrooms, roots and cabbage. In terms of preference, however, gobbos get ecstatic on the thought of raw pink flesh. Cattle and dogs are ok. Pigs and humans are best.

Despise cats, they think them devils in disguise. Will hunt them, skin them, and burn their bodies, leaving the pelts as warning for other cats all throughout their lair's entrance. (side note: sometimes right, 1:666 chance of cat being a minor devil).

Gobbos don't respond well to authority. At all. Actually, a good strategy when running into the buggers is to ask who's in charge. Has a 1:6 chance of starting a heated argument, often escalating into fisticuffs among the little ones (allowing the clever PCs to flee). Obey the priests of the great grub, and of course the gobbo King, who's above all orchestrating this madness.

Worship the great grub, a worm that should grow in size like gobbos do in numbers. Looking for a Burrowwurm, yet gobbos don't really know what they're doing. It's a certainty that past some days their current grub will die, no matter the care taken. Gobbos clench to their unworthiness as the plausible cause. But the cycle repeats with a new grub. Who knows, perhaps someday they might be right? Few priests of the great grub oversee this fanfare.

Gold, silver, coins and gems will get indifferent stares from a gobbo. Value is in what's actionable: food (flesh), booze, weapons, toys. Their currency comes in three forms: teeth, toenails, dried dungs. Conversion rate is 7 to 15 to 1 (yes, you need a heavy sack of dried dungs for a single tooth). Gobbos hardly know how to count past five, so most exchanges are just eyeballed.

Gobbos are numerous like a colony of ants. Instead of relying in the local children supply, they use their hard-earned currency to sprout more siblings. More to that below. Kids Gobbos love the idea of siblings until it becomes a reality and it turns into a huge jealousy-ridden mess.

Paizo's gobbos are more interesting than the Ha$bro ones

Gobbo
HD: 1 (3hp)
Armor: as leather (they're naked, but smol and fast), maybe shield
Weapon: serrated bone, rusted dagger, club (d4), sling (d4) or bow (d6)
Number appearing: patrol (d6), 2d6, 5d6
Morale: 7 (9 with King)
Intelligence: capricious toddler to teenage brat.
Speech: like a 5 year old child who mispronounces their "s" as a "z".
Drama die*: d6 new gobbos appear through cracks on the walls, hidden trapdoors, out of crates, etc.
Want: fresh meat, grubs, shrooms, teeth, toenails, dried dung.

Priest of the Great Grub
(Otherwise like a regular gobbo.)
HD: 2 (6hp)
Morale: 8 (9 with King)
Intelligence: entitled/spoiled child.
Spells: cause fear, darkness (no light). Improvise some spell effects from the following: dancing bowels, castle of sand, spoil food & water.

d6 Gobbo Trickz
1. Bone Netz - 20' x 20' area, save vs petrification to avoid being trapped.
2. Dissonant Bagpipes - bloody annoying, they have no clue how to play. Any attempt to cast a spell needs a successful save vs devices.
3. The Hot Stick - a branding stick they stole from the latest farm raid. Glowing hot. Deals d8 damage, and if the target is hit they are either marked or if wearing metallic armor receive 2 extra damage (player's choice).
4. Thunderplate - actually a big flat stolen shield. Acts like a deafening gong if struck. Reverberates, causing part of the ceiling to collapse. Applicable damage.
5. Grabby Shiny Rock - cartoon-like oversized magnet. Takes metallic weapons, coins and other valuables from the PCs.
6. Black powder - improvised or stolen, terrible quality. All flash, little bang. But deafening and obnoxious. Makes animals, beasts of burden, dogs or torchbearers flee.

Fighting gobbos should always be a messy business, shenanigans ensuring. Spice up the encounter. There's tons of them, and more if PCs stay to fight back. They go for the kneecaps, balls, and toes (mmm juicy toenails). Good chances they'll bring their newest eccentric toy to the fray. Or whatever big and nasty creature they captured this week.**

d6 Gobbo Shrooms & Plants
1. The Green Dream - if inhaled by an adult has hallucinogenic effects. Save vs poison -2 to hit and AC. No effect on animals. For children see above.
2. Tummy spore bomb - 30 ft cone. Save vs poison or vomit uncontrollably for a round, unable to act.
3. Sweet Baby Blue - tiny plant that only grows underground. Mild sedative, any respectable barber is aware of it, paying up to 3d20gp for a sack of these dried plants.
4. Firefly - an orange shroom that glows in the dark with fluorescent light. Treat like a lantern, but light is dim.
5. Broomz - explode in d3 rounds after ingestion, causing 2d6 damage to anyone within 10' radius.
6. Yellow Phoenix - put in teeth, nails, dung (or any fuel) to get a replica of a humanoid after d20 hours. Only a child fits in the flower. Extremely delicate, worth 1000gp to the right buyer.

d6 Gobbo Kings
Assume they all have the same stat block***, plus a couple special abilities.
1. Erimea - face like a porcelain doll. Body of a fox, the size of a horse, with blue fur. Speaks in whispers. Wants to be the most beautiful thing in existence.
2. Mooog - strong, muscular, dim-witted. Actually, Moog is just a troll.
3. Fuh - Fae patron of untied shoelaces and other bitter annoyances. Likes to turn invisible and go to town with the latest prank. Probably the least dangerous of the lot.
4. Bowie
5. Three Nights - slick and elegant. Mysterious and dangerous. Deals in gossip and secrets. Seeking more capable minions, to step up the competitive fae political ladder.
6. The Green Man - an actual honorable fae, worshiped in some human settlements. Religious roots. Wanted to stir things up a bit, start some mess to then clean it up his-self. Backfired tremendously, is now trapped within the colony of gobbos.

* This is what ICRPG does, I think? Don't remember what it's called there. You essentially roll a d4 when combat starts, and after that many rounds shit hits the fan.
** Ogres. Domesticated giant centipedes, rats or badgers. Trolls. Ravaging swines. Geese. You name it.
** Don't have one at hand right now. Might add later. 4HD or so? Decent saves, few trickery spells?

Reading List  

This post is fueled by the most recent sleepless night (yesterday). With little research or care for coherence, I decided to just spitball those ideas. It might come in handy for a future campaign, or something. Here some sources that were rummaging in my mind:

• A lot of the above was lifted from the Dungeon Craft youtube videos.
  
• There's also been a few interesting recent takes within the OSR, like the one at Lost Pages or the one in the Knock#1 zine.
• Terrible Beauty for Shadow of the Demon Lord.
• I'm probably missing a gazillion excellent blog posts on goblins. Have any interesting take? Let me know.