Small Goblin lair

[DM Michael]

This weekend I was preparing to run part three of Lost Mine of Phandelver.

When I prepare a written adventure, I make what I call "battle sheets". The Idea originates from when I was playing Warhammer, where you would have your army lists with all the pertinent information on. And you can write notes on it, such as damage, disabled traps, loot taken etc.

So I went through the random encounter table, rolled up how many opponents there would be in each encounter, rolled their Hit points and loot. Then I copy the stat block from the Monster manual. In certain situations I will also swap out some equipment, and give the villains names. I will even roll the initial stealth checks.

When I came to the goblin entry I rolled nine goblins. Then it occurred to me, that's enough for a small goblin lair, - I'll make one. So I went through all the terrain I already made and threw this one together. I think it came out rather well. I took the liberty of substituting two goblins with three giant rats locked in a cage in the main chamber.



The normal entrance is through a big hollow tree on a hill top. But when the players come walking the ground disappears under their feet, and they find themselves in the high chamber, after taking a 20 feet fall, surprising a goblin cook who runs off screaming.

Two sentries are stationed in the tree, return to the main chamber. Here the boss is feeding the giant rats. Three goblins are sleeping in the barracks. The goblin boss will unleash the giant rats, and somebody will wake the sleeping goblins.

Now the players will hear goblin screeches from all directions (just like in Lord of the Rings). The players will also notice that there are only room for about ten goblins at the table, so they will know it is a small lair.

What happens next, I don't know I'll have to see how my players react? They could try to climb up, barricade the room, loot the treasure chest behind the throne, kick over the cauldron and fill the corridors with smoke, run out of the room, hide...

[DM Michael]

I decided to spend a couple of hours making the hollow dead tree. Even if it sees no action now, I will probably use it later on.


I made the basic structure out of a cardboard tube, and added some toilet paper rolls as roots. I used hot glue to glue it all together. I deliberately made it a little crooked.



Then I sculpted the tree on top of the cardboard using polyfilla, the cheapest stuff I could find.


Once it had settle a bit I smoothed it out by "painting" it with water.


When it was dry I decided that I would have holes in it rather than a raised platform on the high side, so I drilled some holes in it and smoothed the edges out. Then I painted the whole thing dark brown.


I drybrushed it using first a light brown and then grey.


Finally I gave a paintwash with watered down black and dark green. When it was all dry, I added the green flock. The green flock is the most expensive part of the build. I used for 2$ worth of Games Workshop green flock.

All in all I probably spent about 4 hours making and painting the whole thing.

[sotf]

One thing you ought to do to it is to get some bags of cheap green tea and open the packets to add more of a leaf litter look to it.

You might also want to skip the GW flock and look into the railroad flock which tends to look better and is far cheaper than the GW options.

[DM Michael]

Thanks. I'll do that.

[SpielMeisterKev!]

Howdy,

Dude... That is fantastic!

EXALT BUTTON!!!,

Kev!

[DM Michael]

I ran the encounter this weekend, and this is how it went.

One of the players did make a remark about railroading, which is fair enough. I did literally drop the characters into this dungeon, so it is kind of railroading.

I had them go into initiative from the start to avoid having the players have a 20 minute discussion about whether they go south, east, up, barricade the room or hide.

After some initial perception checks they all went into the main chamber. Before the goblins could get organized they started ploughing through the lair. The goblins didn't even get to release the giant rats. Towards the end one of the goblins threw a vase containing a wasp hive. The stinging from the wasps dropped their goblin companion, Droop.

The picture was taken just after the last goblin had died. The green d4 is the marker for the broken vase with the wasp hive. The blue d12 is a flaming sphere trailing the wizard. The rogue has just dragged Droop to the main chamber, and the cleric is about to heal him.

This would have been a deadly encounter for a first level party, but they are third level now, and there was no challenge at all. I should have added a couple of goblins more and have a goblin boss be charge of the lair. That would probably have been more fun.

I had all the goblins individually equipped. One of them had 4 buttons, a piece of red glass and a string in his pockets; another had ace of spades and queen of hearts from two different card games. One even had a drawing of a naked female goblin. That was quite amusing. (Yes, all the players at my table are adults.)