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These Goblins Won't Kill Themselves
by James M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/12/2015 23:48:16

TL; DR: These Goblins Won’t Kill Themselves (TGWKT) is a fun, one-shot dungeon delving adventure in the classic, humorous style reminiscent of the early days of fantasy gaming. If you liked Keep on the Borderlands and the April issues of Dragon, this is right up your alley…

In Short: TGWKT is a fantasy adventure module written in a classical style; that is to say, it deals with a fairly standard type of adventure (Seek the Treasures Lost in the Bad Guys Lair), and to this it adds a heaping helping of another classic element – humor. TGWKT isn’t anything new – it evokes the same style of adventure classic in TSR modules in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, down to Gygaxian naturalism, flavor text, puns, and in-jokes. But for this reviewer, that is very much a feature, not a bug. Much like In Search of the Unknown, Keep on the Borderlands, and Horror on the Hill, it is a light dungeon crawl adventure, suitable for play in one to three sessions. So if that is what you are into, it will be right up your alley.

The Look: TGWKT evokes the classic look; most of the interior art by Dave Peterson would be at home in any classic OSR style adventure. The art mostly depicts scenes and characters in the module, so you can print those separately to show to your players. The maps are simple, but well done and utilitarian. The font is simple and easy to read. Flavor text is in bold. Like many of the old modules, it’s not fancy, but it works, and unlike a lot of modern works, it won’t kill your printer cartridge to print it up to have a paper copy at the table.

The Feel: TGWKT definitely falls within the “classic punster” or “tongue-in-cheek” style of adventure; the fact that it is the first in a series of adventures taking place in the “Lands of Igpay” should give anyone reading the cover fair warning of the style of play expected. It feels like something one would find as an insert in a classic April issue of Dragon Magazine. However, while the adventure certainly works well with the humor style of play, if that’s not your thing, the core elements can also be used with a more heroic style of play with minimal work. Minus the humorous elements, TGWKT fall solidly in the “heroic fantasy” style of play, with a dash of Faerie style (as Igpay is a “land apart” from the character’s normal homeland).

The System: TGWKT uses a generic system, much like the various Eldritch Enterprises adventure modules that Clark has published with Frank Mentzer, Jim Ward, and Tim Kask. This is really a non-issue; most of the monsters can simply be lifted from whatever system you are using by simply looking for the monster name or a similar type in your core rules. A little conversion might be needed on the fly, but even for an inexperienced game master, the conversion needed is minimal.

The Adventure: The characters, removed from their own natal lands, somehow end up in the Land of Igpay, a fairy-tale land where the Elves have been at odds with the Goblins over an unfortunate misunderstanding. Elven heroes put a stop to the Goblin War some time ago, but now the Goblins are back, and the Elves today have no defenses, being pacifists. Thus they offer their treasures to the adventurers if they will go into the Goblin caves and rout out the enemy, or at least, return to the Elves their lost weapons of power so that the Elves can once again defend themselves. After a short wilderness trek, the adventurers must delve into the lair of the goblins, where several fearsome tricks and traps await, in addition to the martial menace of the goblins. There is also a lead-in to the sequel, though this can be ignored if the game master simply wants to run the adventure as a one-shot.

Some of the traps in the module are outright lethal… which again, to this reviewer is a feature, not a bug. So if you do not like the “Save or Die” style of gaming (or worse, the “No Save and Die” style), you might need to tone down a few things.

NB: Back when TGWKT was originally released, Inner City Games sent me a complementary copy of the PDF to review. As they have now released the sequel Why Are We Here? These Things Are Already Dead! I was reminded of TGWKT and went to find it to finally write the review… and discovered that at some point in the previous year, I had lost it in a purge of my computer. So I went and bought a copy of the PDF in order to review it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
These Goblins Won't Kill Themselves
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Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
by Todd D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/11/2015 20:16:52

Great rules for a fun game. Has a good storyline and great if you want to take a break from more intense war gaming like Warhammer 40k. Its a great deal too.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
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These Goblins Won't Kill Themselves
by allan w. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/31/2014 05:26:45

I picked up this scenario earlier this year purely with the intention of running it on a Saturday evening at a weekend game convention. I was looking for something that could ideally be played through in one session and had some good humour to it.

I'm pleased to say that These Goblins Won't Kill Themselves (TGWKT) delivered on all levels. The scenario itself is pretty standard fodder; a group of heroes go on a quest to recover magical items to defeat evil. This is no bad thing, particularly for a one-shot at a convention.

We decided to spice it up a little so I wrote a pre-game scene setter whereby the players had met up on a rainy Wednesday evening in Manchester for their usual RPG session. This week they were starting a new game so they generated their chcarcters and were then "magically" transpoted to the in-media-res start of the scenario. This resulted in characters who were fantasy characters but with the personality traits of the players. This happens a lot in RPG's in any case but on this occasion it was encouraged and it raised the comedy level a couple of notches, particularly once the players had got the hand of Eakspay.

The scenario itself is well written and easy to follow. We played using Savage Worlds with the SW Fantasy Companion as a ruleset and so it was easy for me as a GM to use the guidelines in TGWKT to create appropriately powerful NPC's for each encounter. Since it was my intention to run this as a one shot I wanted to be as well prepared as possible and after a couple of read throughs I was ready to go. This is not necessarily a critisism of TGWKT but I decided to recreate the map of the Arkday Caves using Tiamat so that we would have a minitures ready map for use at the convention. The writers might want to consider including a scalable / printable map for this purpose.

In terms of flow, things went really well. The cut scenes and NPC dialogue are well written and the prepared GM can seemlessly integrate these into the session to keep the game moving. NPC's are well concieved and the GM has enough information to play them apprpriately whilst having some flexibility as well.

Overall, this scenario was excellent for the situation in which we wanted to use it. It has a great blend of peril and comedy, the artwork is spot on for a non serious game and it was very easy to convert to use with SW. We had a lot of fun playing this scenario, so much so that we didn't actually get to the end. This said, all of the players have pledged to get together at the next installment of the convention on January so that we can finish it off. I'm really looking forward to completing the scenario and picking up the next installment of what I believe will be a trilogy.

GM's wanting a quick to pick up and run scenario could do a lot worse than invest a few pounds / dollars in this.

I will sign off with a top notch bit of conversation from the game:

Player a: So, we've found ourselves in a heavily wooded area where the locals speak a wierd language, have no sense of humour, the food and wine are average at best and the women are unresponsive. Player b: We're in Germany!!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
These Goblins Won't Kill Themselves
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Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
by Graeme C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/02/2011 17:36:06

An excellent system to both introduce new gamers to the world of gaming, yet has enough meat to it to keep the wily ol' veteran games happy. I now have to deal with my 6, 8, and 10 year old kids running house wide stuffy campaigns.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
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Plastic Ships and Fuzzy Men
by Paolo V. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/07/2009 04:04:06

This Review is for the whole Fuzzy Universe : Heroes 2nd Ed.,Fuzzy Knights , Plastic Ships and Fuzzy Men. The Setting and Story are excellent and funny.(if you like toys) The rules are quite simple and allow for a lot of customization and scratch building. As a whole it is fantastic to read, but i doubt someone will seriously enjoy more game sessions than the ones you play to get full understanding of the game system.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Plastic Ships and Fuzzy Men
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Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
by Paolo V. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/07/2009 04:03:22

This Review is for the whole Fuzzy Universe : Heroes 2nd Ed.,Fuzzy Knights , Plastic Ships and Fuzzy Men.

The Setting and Story are excellent and funny.(if you like toys)

The rules are quite simple and allow for a lot of customization and scratch building.

As a whole it is fantastic to read, but i doubt someone will seriously enjoy more game sessions than the ones you play to get full understanding of the game system.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Fuzzy Heroes 2nd Edition
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