Hobgoblins and the Book of Clear Fighting

Way back in the 1st edition AD&D era, the Monster Manual was filled with bizarre critters that fired the imagination. Among the most fascinating to me were the hobgoblins. Tougher than orcs, prone to wearing samurai-like armor, and with an implied organization greater than that of their fellow goblin-types, hobgoblins always struck me as having among the most potential as fantasy-world-threatening foes.

Hobgoblins on the move, from the 1st edition Monster Manual, with art by iconic D&D artist, the late David C. Sutherland III

With each successive edition of D&D, it became clearer that I wasn't the only one with this concept of the strong, organized hobgoblins floating around in my head. 5th edition D&D continues that "civilizing" of the hobgoblins.

The "modern" hobgoblin, from the 5th edition D&D Monster Manual.

Over the years, I worked out an idea of what hobgoblins were like in my campaign worlds. I figured I'd dust off those notes and toss 'em here on the blog.

Hobgoblins of Callexerna

Cool. Efficient. Professional. Three words that epitomize the hobgoblins.

Hatred against them is born of fear fostered by their discipline.

When hobgoblins are on the move, they are not a mob, they are not a tribe - they are an army. They have a rigid chain of command, they take orders readily, and they are not subject to the kind of infighting that tears apart most goblinoid armies before they can really do damage.

Even the doughtiest dwarf grinds his teeth and grips his axe more tightly at the news the hobgoblins are on the move.

Hobgoblins have structure, they have discipline, they have strength; what they don't have is mercy. They put town populations to the sword in order to make sure no uprisings occur. Perhaps most unnerving of all is that they do not revel in the slaughter, not letting it go to their heads and distracting them into making a mistake. No, the hobgoblins destroy simply and efficiently, like everything else they do. They cannot be bribed, they cannot be begged, they cannot be intimidated. They only care about what will benefit the hobgoblin nation - everything else is simply irrelevant, at worst an impediment to be destroyed.

Hobgoblins are trained to act as a team, drilled to regard their shields as protecting their shield brother, not themselves. Hobgoblins get to learn from their experiences, unlike most goblinoids, because their discipline and loyalty to each other ensures the survival of even grievously wounded soldiers. Hobgoblin armies have a proportionately high number of experienced soldiers because of this.

Hobgoblins are cooperative amongst themselves. They are organized into clearly defined units. The rivalries that exist between units are fierce but disciplined, serving to keep the hobgoblin nation in fighting form, but rarely devolve into actual bloodshed.

Hobgoblins are prized as mercenary units due to their prowess, reliability, and willingness to follow the orders of their employers. Once they have undertaken a contract, they will not break it. Should an employer betray one hobgoblin mercenary unit, they will have effectively betrayed them all, in hobgoblin eyes. From that point on, the betrayer is the focus of the wrath of all hobgoblins.

Hobgoblins find other goblinoids distastefully barbaric and unprincipled. Goblins try to emulate the structure and discipline of the hobgoblins, but are generally unsuccessful at this. In fact, goblin tribes seem to be almost a parody of hobgoblin organization and discipline – hobgoblin equipment shines and functions; goblin equipment is rusted and, more often than not, almost non-functional. The ubiquitous and more numerous orcs have clashed often with hobgoblins, though the discipline of hobgoblins has meant that even greatly outnumbered forces easily shrug off orc attacks. Hobgoblins will serve as mercenaries for an employer who also hires orcs, but will never be subordinate to orcs under any circumstances.

Although hobgoblins have no compunction against killing, they do have an unnerving calm about them.  When they are not drilling, they meditate. This meditation helps them achieve what they call “The Warrior’s Calm,” a state of mind that keeps them collected and focused on the battlefield. This strange, alien calm that they project can strike fear into even the stoutest warrior. 

Hobgoblins have a surprisingly rich tradition of literature. With books written by hobgoblins ranging from poetry to history to engineering, they are far and away the most literate of the goblinoids. They also freely read and learn from the literature of humans, elves, dwarves, and any other intelligent species that has a literary form. Hobgoblin literature is crude, dark, and violent in comparison to the literature of humans or elves, but its variety is unsettling to those who tend to view the goblinoids as without interest in intellectual pursuits.

No self-respecting hobgoblin warrior on the march is without his copy of The Book of Clear Fighting, a collection of ancient treatises on hobgoblin tactics and strategy. It is not unusual to see hobgoblins sitting silently, reading or meditating, immediately before and after a battle. The Book of Clear Fighting is much like a combination of The Art of War, von Clausewitz's On War, an infantry tactics manual, and, oddly enough, a smattering of folktales, parables, and, most strangely, jokes.

The hobgoblins acknowledge, but do not worship Maglubiyet. They do not believe the patron deity of goblinoids to be a true god. Instead, they see Maglubiyet and other “gods” as merely beings of great personal power with no regard for those weaker than themselves.

The hobgoblins do have a belief system concerning a higher power. This belief system revolves around the concept of an empty, uncaring universe in which the individual imbues meaning into existence. In the case of the hobgoblins, they find meaning in strengthening their nation's position in the world. 

Hobgoblins have few heroes, per se, but there are figures from their history whom they venerate. Chief among these is Erez-Kazg, the legendary Hobgoblin King, the Three-Fingered Lord, King of Evil’s Nest – First made a name for himself during the Great Revolt which thrust back the borders of the Kingdom of Peace and the Centaur Empire from the Southern Polar Sea to their present borders. Shrewd, cunning, and evil to the core, he and his huge companion, the sabretooth cat Kurguz, hacked their way to the throne of Callexerna, deposing the human warlords. Erez-Kazg brought discipline to the hobgoblins, and that has made them some of the most dangerous foes the forces of good have faced.

Peter Mullen and the Ten-Foot Mule

I want to take the time to point out the cool art for the header image of this blog, by the inimitable Peter Mullen. Peter's art for games like Dungeon Crawl Classics is the quintessence of Old School-style gaming art. I rank him the equal of luminaries from the Golden Age of D&D, guys like Erol Otus and Dave Trampier, bringing that type of mood and sensibility into the present. When I considered commissioning a piece for this blog, his art was the first to leap to mind. It is both fresh and immediate, yet evoking the spirit of that bygone era of dungeon delving for its own sake, and mules dragged into the underworld to haul equipment in and treasure out. And, of course, some adventurer or other is bound to have concocted some spell or potion of growth or enlarge to conjure up a single pack animal that could take the place of many, thus saving a few gold pieces...though, perhaps, the implications of trying to squeeze such a large animal into a dungeon were not closely considered.

About the Mule: A Mission Statement, and Introduction

When I was introduced to D&D in 1979, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I was 13, and the world seemed vast and colorful, full of surprises. D&D had floated into my consciousness gradually; I'd heard of it, but had no clue as to where to find it, or, really, to even know what it was, exactly. Where I lived was a rural town becoming suburban, and hobby shops and bookstores were few and far between. Besides, I wasn't even sure what I would be looking for.

So it was like a bolt from the blue when a kid at school showed up with the Monster Manual. I didn't even know the kid, really, but I borrowed the book and took it home that night. I wasn't in the habit of borrowing anything, but this was too intriguing to pass by. That night, I was immersed in the book. I couldn't quite glean how to play the game using this book, but I knew I wanted to. I dutifully, and gratefully, returned the book the next day. That was my introduction to D&D "in the flesh," so to speak, and I was hooked.

Thinking back, it strikes me as odd that I never ended up gaming with the guy from whom I borrowed the Monster Manual. In fact, today I have no clue who it was, his name lost in the mists of time. I wonder if he stuck with it.

My imagination thus fired, I tried to figure out how to actually play. I had none of the books, and just a glimpse at this strange bestiary. I sat down and tried to recreate the monsters I'd seen in the Monster Manual, listing out all the creatures I knew from my already-ingrained love of mythology, fantasy, and science fiction. I thought I could divine the answers to my questions by doing so. That project soon proved fruitless. It was like back-engineering the Roswell saucer.

Luckily, I fell in with a few classmates who were similarly intrigued. Those early days were chaotic. What we started out playing was what would eventually be called Holmes Edition D&D. We tried to make sense of how the Monster Manual and the succeeding hardback books  - the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide - fit in. It wasn't long before we abandoned Holmes Edition and moved on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, embodied in those accumulated hardbacks. Oddly enough, though, I wouldn't get my very own copy of Holmes Edition until late 1979 or early 1980.

While each of us eventually had our own books, acquired at different times, it took me an agonizingly long time to get copies of my own. I finally got my hands on all three, completing the trilogy by early 1980. Still, by the end of 1979 we were playing full-on AD&D, or as close to it as we could get. Toss in some of the miscellaneous games we stumbled on then, from the Wild West of Boot Hill to the nutty post-apocalypse of Gamma World to the decidedly different "hard" scifi of Traveller, and it was an eventful introduction to roleplaying games. 

Let me swerve aside to mourn for the unmourned for a moment: I miss the late and apparently little-lamented Waldenbooks. That bookstore, the only one I had regular access to due to its presence on a mall that my parents were willing to frequent, opened up such a vista of learning and enjoyment for me. That was where I managed to lay hands on those three hardback D&D books, as well as many of the adventures, known then almost always as modules. A family-owned bookstore, the late and, around here, more lamented Baluk's, also became a conduit to further D&D books and, eventually, Dragon Magazine, as well as other games - it's where I found Traveller. But Waldenbooks was a stalwart part of my book-loving life for many years. And while it eventually succumbed to larger and more successful chains, for a while it could, and did, exist without also driving all the indie bookstores out of business.

Those early years had me scouring the bookstores and hobby shops I could get to, looking for whatever next book or module that would appear out of seemingly nowhere. I don't know who ordered the gaming stuff in these places, or what their method was. Looking back, it was pretty random. D&D exploded in popularity, so TSR's official material for the game was usually a sure bet to find. But more importantly, the game encouraged one's own creativity. The books became more inspiration for homebrewed material than holy writ to be adhered to.

So, now, this blog. Motivated by nostalgia for all of the above, as well as the advent of a new and widely-praised edition of D&D, I thought I'd jump into the D&D blogosphere. As the subtitle above says, this will consist of ruminations, as well as the exploration of memories and a few new ideas here and there. Why, as it also says above, "Old School"? Because that's a style of play I like, an era of gaming I look back on fondly. However, "Old School" means something different to everyone, and I'd like to try to define it for myself here, to perhaps grasp what it was that still appeals to me. Oh, sure, there's a ton of nostalgia involved. I know that. But there's something about fragile player characters, hog-nosed orcs, life-energy-draining undead, ten-foot poles, and (of course) pack mules, all inhabiting a dark and mysterious underworld, that fires my imagination more than almost any other game milieu. My intent here is to think back on what "Old School" is to me, and why I have that idea of what it is, and why it differs from that of others. But more on that later.