Goblins Gonna Goblin

We’ve got a second chance on another encounter for our ongoing home game, and we thought it would be fun to share how we spiced things up a bit (given that DM Ben had more time to prepare).

This is a friendly reminder that we are loosely playing the free D&D Beyond Module Acquisitions Incorporated and interspersing a ton of home-brewed content along the way. So, if you’re a player, we understand you might have to skip our module-specific content so as not to spoil anything. However, if you’re a Dungeon Master, we sure hope to inspire thee. 🙂

This Area 6 Goblin encounter is intriguing because the players aren’t expecting to meet a peaceful goblin in an underground cavern while performing a search and rescue operation. So, the element of surprise is on the Dungeon Master’s side, but he/she has to think this through since it’s pretty unlikely for the players to trust anyone, let alone a goblin so early in the campaign.

The first time we did this encounter in our Work campaign, DM Ben did a much smaller room because table space was at a premium. Since this is for our home game, we can utilize our prized Wyrmwood game table while having our entire DnD collection at arm’s length.

Dwarven Forge Cavern terrain is some of our fav, but notice how we dropped in some heavenly 6×6 Milestone Heroes cavern floor tile and even a few passageways. Thanks to our underground paint guide, we can get reasonably close to the color scheme.

So, don’t be afraid to use your 3D Printers to enhance your store-bought terrain. We would be lost without having both DnD tile types at our fingertips. Plus, it’s just a ton of fun to expand our collections and have such a large variety of terrain-building options available.

First, let’s review the meet and greet with Gorkoh, the goblin. The poor fella got separated from his party during a vicious monster attack and ultimately lost track of his mentor (Caerhan Coalsmith). Now, our little Greeny is terrified to be alone in such a dark, spooky place. And on top of that, that menacing Carrion Crawler still wants to have him for dessert.

Notice our natural rock column here. That’s a home-brewed piece that DM Ben assembled using Hirst Arts molds. And those mining support tiles are from the Iron Mine set by Making Tlon. We love adding different dungeon-dressing pieces here and there.

For our goblin miniature, we selected this prepainted “Konkrud” mini by Pathfinder Battles. It was a Paizo 2013 Convention July Promo. The goal was to pick a goblin miniature but not one with too much “traditional goblin,” if that makes sense.

DM Ben made an NPC face card to help calm the room and nudge the players that a stab-first approach isn’t necessarily the best approach. Gorkoh has much to offer for his safety, including some extra healing potions, a Fog Cloud spell scroll, and even a little extra coin (100 GP) to barter for his safety (once he quickly realizes no one is buying his fake wand intimidation bit.

More importantly, Gorkoh can warn the players about the injured Carrion Crawler ahead of time and suggest a plan to lure him toward a weak cavern cave-in section! Sure, this lumbering monster is down to 20 HP from the previous battle (which we’re bumping to 30), but those poison tentacles are big trouble to a low-level party.

Pretty fun, right?! We’ve made a much more appealing terrain board with plenty of playable space this second time around. The devil is indeed in those details! Tomorrow, we’ll do our next “Hey, Hey, It’s Game Day” prep post so you can see the other module rooms we plan to play over the upcoming weekend.

Until next time.