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Goblin Slayer Discussion Thread

Mannan said:
At least there is some justification in that the gods are treating the world of Goblin Slayer as a game.

Demon Lords rise up often enough that it has become expected and monsters are often spontaneously spawned in various locations.

Who's to say that there are some gods working in the background to ensure that humans and other non-monster races can keep up with the constant attrition of the death world they live on.

The gods can be blamed on a lot of weird shit in Goblin Slayer.
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That's an excuse, not an explanation. If the gods are deliberately making humans stupid, then the whole setting can safely be judged as even more stupid.

like, I could accept that as why there are goblins everywhere. That's fine. But in a world like that walled/palisaded towns with substantial night patrols would be the standard. The roads would be patrolled by higher end troops of the king/queen to keep them clear. There'd be a network of hostels/walled inns along major trade routes. The goblins would be reduced to "daring" daylight raids against travelers and futile attempts to attack fortified towns. They would actually be the worthless nuisance that the setting's humans treats them as.
 
Like, it's fine to have a world where goblins are dangerous. I've done that. (I DM a lot). My favorite creation for that idea was a world with Classical Greek Orcs, Steampunk Goblins, and a communist necromantic nation where the state provides for the living, while the dead serve the state.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
That's an excuse, not an explanation. If the gods are deliberately making humans stupid, then the whole setting can safely be judged as even more stupid.

like, I could accept that as why there are goblins everywhere. That's fine. But in a world like that walled/palisaded towns with substantial night patrols would be the standard. The roads would be patrolled by higher end troops of the king/queen to keep them clear. There'd be a network of hostels/walled inns along major trade routes. The goblins would be reduced to "daring" daylight raids against travelers and futile attempts to attack fortified towns. They would actually be the worthless nuisance that the setting's humans treats them as.
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The problem is that Goblins Slayer is set primarily on the frontier, as in the very edges of civilization where beyond that is monster land. It is not the more developed and fortified interior but the local equivalent of the wild west only one whose development is constantly stalled by monster attacks.

The kingdom troops are busy because they are needed to fight the forces of a new Demon King so they don't have many forces to spare.

It was noted in the novel that while the Goblins are a problem they are actually fairly low level as far as threats go. They are threats to small villages and usually only lead to the deaths of a handful of individuals while things like liches, dragons, and other monsters can end entire cities if not handled quickly.

Honestly what's weird to me is that people choose to actually live in a monster infested hell hole.
 
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Frontier would be the place most fortified, because that is where the fortifications are needed.
If goblins are only a threat to small villages, then small villages can just stop existing, or more accurately, never come into being in the first place, and be replaced by medium sized villages instead.
 
Mannan said:
The problem is that Goblins Slayer is set primarily on the frontier, as in the very edges of civilization where beyond that is monster land. It is not the more developed and fortified interior but the local equivalent of the wild west only one whose development is constantly stalled by monster attacks.

The kingdom troops are busy because they are needed to fight the forces of a new Demon King so they don't have many forces to spare.

It was noted in the novel that while the Goblins are a problem they are actually fairly low level as far as threats go. They are threats to small villages and usually only lead to the deaths of a handful of individuals while things like liches, dragons, and other monsters can end entire cities if not handled quickly.

Honestly what's weird to me is that people choose to actually live in a monster infested hell hole.
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Still times like this you will have independent mercenary groups of various moral fiber taking on the work rather trying to centralize everything through an adventurer's guild. If you are desperate for Porcelain equivilants, the average farmer/merchant guard/acolyte will be good enough as fodder fighting low tier threats

The only reality is this, but in Goblin Slayer terms, the life expectacy of an independent guildless company would be shorter than the guild but with more professionally trained types who don't go out so easily

 
Dream Logic said:
Why. Why did you inform me this exists?
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I would like to redirect this question at Facebook and A22.

In what fucking universe does promoting a scene where a guy does... stuff... make fucking sense?

Someone made the add. Someone chose to highlight that scene. This isn't some thoughtless algorithm putting it together.

Facebook, which cheerfully bans people for posting slightly risque memes, is a-okay with promoting A FUCKING RAPE SCENE.

WHAT!?
 
If Goblin Slayer were set on the frontier you'd think adventurers would be less a bureaucratic administration under a firm hierarchy and work structure and more a grab bag of adventurer and mercenary factions being attracted to the area by promises of gold and glory, and they'd end up staking claims on land in the absence of any kingdom to compel them to toe the hierarchal line. Especially if that structure ends in gruesome casualties among adventurers.

Even really boilerplate western RPG fantasy does this better. Like, Pathfinding: Kingmaker (both game and module) doesn't represent good worldbuilding by any stretch of the imagination but it does acknowledge that the above is probably how a frontier full of adventurers would probably shake out.
 
More to the point rather than spending their minimal hard currency on hiring teenage idiots through the medium of a centrally organised (and expensive! Look at those uniforms and shiny headquarters with plush furniture) 'Guild' you would probably just have the local farmers form militia. A dozen healthy adult farm labourers with shields, spears, helmets, padded jacks and big knives along with a few crossbows should be able to handle a goblin nest just fine and with minimal or no risk. If monster raids are an issue you would also not have isolated farmsteads, you would have villages with walls along with fortified churches and manor houses liberally scattering the countryside.

In most areas of medieval France over ninety percent of the population would at any given time be within fifteen minutes walk (not run! Walk) of a permanent fortification and that was without the threat of diminutive rapists coming out of the woods. Just regular human bandits.
 
Packrat said:
More to the point rather than spending their minimal hard currency on hiring teenage idiots through the medium of a centrally organised (and expensive! Look at those uniforms and shiny headquarters with plush furniture) 'Guild' you would probably just have the local farmers form militia. A dozen healthy adult farm labourers with shields, spears, helmets, padded jacks and big knives along with a few crossbows should be able to handle a goblin nest just fine and with minimal or no risk. If monster raids are an issue you would also not have isolated farmsteads, you would have villages with walls along with fortified churches and manor houses liberally scattering the countryside.

In most areas of medieval France over ninety percent of the population would at any given time be within fifteen minutes walk (not run! Walk) of a permanent fortification and that was without the threat of diminutive rapists coming out of the woods. Just regular human bandits.
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Or a bunch of hardened mercenary types who fights proper wars so they are used to what the goblins can dish out. But there is zero mention of military companies making their fortunes taking down what amounts to a ruralside bandit menace when this would be one of the golden hiring opportunities in the frontier for men who have the chops for this kind of work and do Goblin Slayer's job.

But anyways, I feel like I am going to have inject my thoughts after spending several years following the series given it's almost five years since the Manga released which I feel was how all the controversy surrounding the series.

The problem I have with Goblin Slayer is that the series feels like an inside joke/reference to the works that inspired it. As someone who enjoys reading or following tabletop books for lore, the author of Goblin Slayer would draw their lore from the things that was a part of their creative influence and fantasy MMOs were a thing 10 years ago with RO being the most popular. It was also around the times doujin artists like Asanagi and Xration become infamous names in the scene for their orc/goblin doujins where female adventurers will meet their cruel ends at the hands of the enemy. This would inspire other hentai Mangaka to popularize the Greenskin victorious genre where the misogynistic understones of heroic women getting sexually and physically humiliated at the hands of orcs and goblins. This kind of story saw very few if any subversions at least until Goblin Slayer was published and specifically the manga which was more explicit in the content matter as the LN had no explicit sexual content as art

in the Manga we see the full atrocities of the goblins committed against women, rape, torture, the liberal use of war crimes are all part of the goblin MO. But if this was like the hentai that inspired the atrocities of the goblins this would have been the end of the story. But unfortunately for the Goblins, this time there was someone who can competently fight these creature and made it his personal mission to fight them. The Slayer is competent since he wore full plated armor and fights "pragmatically" compared to the dragon quest knockoff party that the priestess was a part of. He was a refreshing take and a response to the genre that gave rise to the brutal goblin menace he fights.

and that is my problem with the series is that it just reaffirm a lot of problematic tropes in media. It reinforces the views of Truffaut that you can never depict something as bad as there are artists who will depict the Goblin Slayer failing to save the women from being violated horribly. Or Templin's arguments that the civilized races are failing to defeat the Goblins and races of evil because the guild and the kingdom refused to let their own monsters out against their foes and the Adventurer system dooms parties because they don't have the stomach to fight like Hardened Men. It's a reinforcement of bad tropes in writing as my tastes change this series is proven to be poorly written in ways that havent gotten attention on because we were so focused on the shock content.
 
Honest question, does it ever really develop its themes or characters?

I remember watching the first few episodes and being (very vocally) frustrated that it didn't just pick something to focus on. Not the trauma various characters had and how they dealt with it. Not the wider systems that allowed for these tragedies to play out, not even just going 'Goblins are the absolute worst, we're going to go kill them for fun and profit'.
 
Packrat said:
More to the point rather than spending their minimal hard currency on hiring teenage idiots through the medium of a centrally organised (and expensive! Look at those uniforms and shiny headquarters with plush furniture) 'Guild' you would probably just have the local farmers form militia. A dozen healthy adult farm labourers with shields, spears, helmets, padded jacks and big knives along with a few crossbows should be able to handle a goblin nest just fine and with minimal or no risk. If monster raids are an issue you would also not have isolated farmsteads, you would have villages with walls along with fortified churches and manor houses liberally scattering the countryside.

In most areas of medieval France over ninety percent of the population would at any given time be within fifteen minutes walk (not run! Walk) of a permanent fortification and that was without the threat of diminutive rapists coming out of the woods. Just regular human bandits.
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The problem is basically that the story is brutally realistic with regards to a singular aspect of its world, and is RPG-inspired fantasy in all other aspects. The story then laughs at these RPG characters for acting like RPG characters instead of gritty tacticool Hard Men. It feels blatantly artificial.
 
no. said:
The problem is basically that the story is brutally realistic with regards to a singular aspect of its world, and is RPG-inspired fantasy in all other aspects. The story then laughs at these RPG characters for acting like RPG characters instead of gritty tacticool Hard Men. It feels blatantly artificial.
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And note the absence of Gritty Tacticool Hard Men beyond the Slayer. A small outfit of mercs with his brand of ruthlessness and none of his code of ethics could live like petty nobility in the setting.
 
I'm continually baffled why no one cares about the Goblins. Then randomly destroying towns has got to cost money. Theoretically other nonsters are worse but we never say. See the results of a dragon or a band of ogres. Hell, a big ogre thing shows up in the second arc and its considered Goblin adjacent.

Even if somehow there aren't economic reasons presumably all these people killed had friends and family. Its weird that none of the adventurers seem to know or care about this stuff.

It feels so incongruent.
 
The problem is there is supposed a larger conflict out there and the goblin slaying jobs are poor in pay so adventurers turn up their nose on it and the guild also has a screening process that removes any problematic adventurers from the guild as seen with Rhea Scout.

The fact that Goblin Slayer take these jobs exclusively. But this again triggers the bad writing trope of the Templin Humanity paradox where in a situation when dealing with existential or at least threats with a perchant of cruelty that it would create a similar reaction in response.

And Goblin Slayer also operates on the Kenshiro principle of combat, kill quickly and without cruelty if you must kill. So that is a huge point for the Slayer is he can be trusted to hold on to his morals
 
gyrobot said:
And note the absence of Gritty Tacticool Hard Men beyond the Slayer. A small outfit of mercs with his brand of ruthlessness and none of his code of ethics could live like petty nobility in the setting.
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Well, no, that does happen.

GS has to go against a band of them in one of the lightnovels.

Dream Logic said:
Honest question, does it ever really develop its themes or characters?

I remember watching the first few episodes and being (very vocally) frustrated that it didn't just pick something to focus on. Not the trauma various characters had and how they dealt with it. Not the wider systems that allowed for these tragedies to play out, not even just going 'Goblins are the absolute worst, we're going to go kill them for fun and profit'.
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It goes with "Goblin Slayer learns to appreciate friendship."

It's not the Great Gatsby I'll give you, but characters DO change and that change centers around GS developing positive relationships.
 
mithril-blade said:
Group of Adventurers who use The Guild to cover up their less socially accepted jobs like interspecies trafficking, and accept jobs on the side. Behave like evil Goblin Slayers.
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So it does exist after all, what volume does this happen in and has it been translated since I only follow the manga.
 
Politics aside. I've read Goblin Slayer, and wow is it shit. The worldbuilding makes no sense, the names make me wanna shoot a puppy.
And the worst part is that from all the hooting and hollering I heard abt this show, I was sorely disappointed and reassured that nothing can top Berserk. Just as God intended😎
 
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