Work In Progress Backgrounds for my Muppet D&D game.

I had been planning on saving these until I got them finished (those tables are what's holding them up so far, but since +Jez Gordon declared today to be “Awesome Gamer Day, then I should least toss up a preview for the folks that are interested in this.

First up, and the most completed, the Mad Bomber. Since I'm going for a Muppet Show feel for some aspects of this game, I should mention that goblin bombs are not particularly dangerous, partly due to the goblins immunity to blunt damage. (it knocks out, rather than actually injures). When a goblin bomb goes off, there's a smokey cloud of soot, and most within its radius (around 5 feet) are knocked back or sent flying a short distance.

The inspiration for this background is Crazy Harry from the Muppet Show. This charming fellow would show up, and set off an explosion, and then there'd be some laughter.

Bombers do more than blow things (and goblins) up for humorous purposes, They also contribute to the well-being of Flopsburg by going fishing. A few well-placed bombs, and there's enough fish for a few days. The fish is the nearby Tenebrous Loch have adapted by multiplying on a larger scale than normal, thus preventing a potential loss of food for the goblins.

Up next are the Stick-Pokers, whose (potentially dangerous) job is to poke at things with sticks. (the areas around Flopsburg have a certain deadliness to them that can not be understated).

Many of them start out with long sticks, and those that aren't suddenly gobbled up by any number of unsavory things soon move on to shorter sticks, learning to rely on quick reflexes to avoid danger. Since most of them provide assistance to hunters and woodcutters (the goblins are constantly rebuilding Flopsburg), most soon learn how to field strip an animal, thus gaining the proficiency in the Survival skill.

While that's the general idea of what I have thus far, I'm still considering other Backgrounds for the goblins, including a Storyteller/Performer Background.

The initial hexmap for my Muppet D&D setting.

Here's where it starts to come together.

It's still pretty rough, but most of the areas are there. This version is a DM map, as it shows a few locations that I'm thinking of using as adventure spots. Flopburg is in an area with scrubs and small hills, and the goblins only go there if they get bored and decide to hunt there, as the wood does not work well for building.
Most of their wood comes from the Gibbering Bog, or better yet the Gloomy Thickets (though they rarely go too deeply into the Thickets). Each hex is roughly a human league (as per Jeff Rients, but since most goblins are small, it takes them a little longer to get through them).

Now with added river.

Muppet D&D: first thoughts and an inkling of a setting.

 Recently, an idea came to me, and while still currently raw and unrefined, has something that I can work with and add onto. My working title for this is Muppet D&D.

What Muppet D&D isn't is Muppet characters reenacting the Lord of the Rings or the Dragonlance Saga. What it is, however, is an attempt to craft a setting that takes the feel of the Muppet Show, and adapt it to the D&D milieu. (Your Muppet D&D may be different from mine, however).

South of the Barbed Crags, and the Gloomy Thickets, past the Nebulous Moors and the Gibbering Bog, the Exuberant Runnel flows southward, going past the goblin village of Flopburg

(though calling that fiasco a village is kind of pushing it) towards the dark waters of the Tenebrous Loch.

Flopburg, while a chaotic mess most of the time, somehow thrives regardless of whatever natural rules that may be followed elsewhere. The goblins spend most of their days building or repairing houses (or what passes for them at times), collecting food, tuning instruments, cooking or making things to blow stuff up with.

It is with bombs that the goblin begin to excel. While the method of bomb making is generally known to to the Mad Bombers of Flopburg, they will teach anyone who asks (and in many cases, didn't ask). The bombs tend to have two general purposes in goblin society; fishing and entertainment.

Every night, the goblins of Flopburg gather, and have a wild party, glad to have survived yet another day. These parties are accentuated with music, laughter, feasting, explosions and more laughter.

An interesting feature of goblin explosives is that they really don't injure anyone-- even when one is sent flying and hits something, it laughs, and runs back to the party. It had been discovered that blunt force trauma had little effect on anyone, other than perhaps knocking someone out for awhile. While goblins are curious and inquisitive, they long ago learned to shrug and get back to whatever they were doing, but did note that this effect only carried over to other sapient races, not to animals and many of the monsters (goblin explosives, however, had no ill effect on anything)

It is to this almost idyllic setting that I intend to introduce science fiction energy weapons, because such weapons in the hands of the goblins would be funny, even if they do happen to inflict serious damage.