How Player Desire Drives Game Design & Content

Here's a fun thing that happened: One of the players (our resident Cleric Caswell Vulscreek) wanted to create his stronghold. He chose a relatively remote location in a swamp, and asked me what types of enemies were there; according to the rules, he must clear out the entire hex before he can build there. I replied simply, "three goblins tribes."

He needed to know what kind of military force he'd need to hire to remove these goblins, so I found myself in the position of figuring out that number.

Like everything else, the rulebook contained all the information I needed: I figured that because this was so far from civilization, and these tribes would be thriving. That means I used all of the maximum values instead of rolling dice. After all, a random encounter is variable. I wanted the maximum possible because they had been allowed to breed without any (major) natural predators for decades.

My original notes are below.

Generating some goblin villages that need to be cleared out. I’m gonna make one with all the rolls, and multiply it a few times.

Goblin tribe generation (using maximum values)

Each village is made of 1d10 (10) warbands. Every village has one Chieftain, 

Each warband is 2d6 (12) gangs. Each warband is led by a sub-chieftain, so 10 of those.

Each gang is 2d4 (8) goblins, and each gang is led by a champion, so 12 champions.

8*12*10 = 960 goblin fighters + 1 chieftain, 10 sub-chieftains and 12 champions, totaling 983

There are females present equal to 60% of the male goblins, so 590.

There are young goblins equal to 100% of the male goblins, so 983.

There are 2556 total goblins in each village, of which 983 are capable fighters.

There are three villages in the area, totaling approximately 7,668 goblins, and 2,949 capable fighters.

It’s gonna be fantasy f*ckin' Vietnam. 

 

With this information in hand, the player hired a small army (costing a small fortune) and annihilated the tribes with minimal casualties to his forces. He specifically eliminated the women and children, because he's not the hero of the story, not matter what he believes.