Expanded Goblinoids — A Shadowdark Supplement (by James Mishler and Jodi Moran-Mishler) is a 60-page third-party tabletop expansion designed for Kelsey Dionne's Shadowdark RPG.
Where Shadowdark’s base rules focus on lightweight, streamlined dungeon crawls, this supplement intentionally dials up the mechanical depth and campaign options, shifting the system's feel from simple "Basic" style rules toward an "Advanced" OS/OSR framework.
Key Mechanics & System Impact
1. Advanced Complexity Scale
The creators include a clear design notice: this book explicitly adds complexity.
2. Player Character Options
Goblin-Blood Ancestries & Backgrounds: Expands character creation options for players wanting to run goblinoid PCs or characters with goblinoid lineage, featuring unique backgrounds and mechanical quirks.
Fiend-Speaker Class: A full spellcasting class centered on pacts, dark rites, and fiendish patrons tailored for dark fantasy settings.
Goblinoid Weapons: Specialized weaponry crafted for and by various goblinoid tribes.
Expanded Bestiary & Factions
The core of the book provides structured stat blocks, societal details, and mutation tables across six distinct goblinoid sub-types (including Kobolds, Goblins, and Orcs).
Enemy Hierarchy Archetypes
For each sub-type, the book provides scaling combat options:
Whelps & Commoners: Minion and baseline variants.
Bullies, Bosses, Clan Chiefs, & Tribal Kings: Tactical leaders and elite variants designed for high-stakes lair encounters.
Mutants & Fiend-Speakers: Three unique mutant variations and dark spellcasting commanders for each sub-type.
Additional Monsters & Hazards
Slimes & Oozes: Includes entries for Gloops, Green Slime, and Sanguine Slime.
Mounts & Beasts: Stat blocks and rules for Worgs and war beasts.
Tables & DM Toolkit
Clan, Tribe, & Horde Generators: Procedural tables for building unique goblinoid factions, including a Non-Goblinoid Leader Table (e.g., ogres or evil magic-users ruling over a horde).
Lairs & Treasures: Specific hoard structures and loot tables customized to goblinoid cultures.
Names, Epithets, & Quirks: Quick-roll tables to instantly flavor NPCs during live play.
Wilderness & Dungeon Encounter Tables: Ready-to-use random tables formatted for Shadowdark's exploration mechanics.
Compatibility
Although written specifically for Shadowdark RPG, the stat profiles and tables are built on classic OSR math. They can be easily adapted to AD&D 1e, Basic/BECMI, B/X, Castles & Crusades, or similar retroclones with minimal effort.
Ever since I was a snot nosed kid and I started playing original Dungeons & Dragons I've loved Goblins. Expanded Goblinoids — A Shadowdark Supplement (by James Mishler and Jodi Moran-Mishler) takes the premise and really gives the DM a whole cloth well written tool kit for taking his or her player's PC's right down to Goblin town.
This classic take on the goblin as monster and more really brings home some of the well known tropes of the goblins then makes them usable at the table top levels. This is an excellent supplement if a DM wants to allow the goblins some depth at their Castles & Crusades rpg. Why because we get an entire slice of goblinoid society to play with:
Details on all six goblinoid sub-types, including Description, Society, and sub-type Mutations, plus stats for Whelps, Common Goblinoids, Bullies, Bosses, Clan Chiefs, Tribal Kings, three distinct Mutants, and Fiend-Speakers for each sub-type:
Goblins
Orcs
Hobgoblins
Gnolls
Bugbears
Worgs
