From publisher blurb:
Growing up on Tolkien, I always thought of goblins as lesser orcs. More recent interpretations have cast them as comic relief, the villains that act goofy and do stupid things while you merrily slay them by the dozen. To find a proper place for them in my own Desteon campaign world, I’ve had to turn to folklore. Where orcs are raiders, sending an army to burn and pillage your town, the goblins pick around the edges. They sneak around, and steal food, and finished goods, and babies. They rely on tricks and annoyances to count coup against larger foes. They’re scary because they won’t ever come straight at you unless cornered, but they will find sneaky, underhanded ways to hurt you even if they’re too weak to kill you. Goblins will screw with your head.
My goblins are scavengers. They’re not mighty hunters. They aren’t particularly brave. They’re craven cowards, actually. They live on the fringes of the civilized world, in tapped-out mine tunnels abandoned by dwarves, in the swamps and caverns near villages and settlements, in the sewers underneath large cities. They don’t show themselves willingly, they don’t interact with other races unless the situation forces them to, and they generally hide from the light of day so they aren’t exterminated for acting like the vermin they are.
Goblin Hide is a bit different from other Monster Hide supplements, then, in that I make no attempt to instill this race with any noble qualities, or make them in any way sympathetic, or try to redeem them. Goblins are creepy, and disgusting, and a blight. They are the cockroaches of humanoids.