Growing Pains for Goblins
How the “Goblin” project tested our resolve—and how dungeons are worlds within worlds
Welcome to the first installment of the making of Codename Goblin (let’s call it Goblin from now on for brevity’s sake), where we reveal some behind-the-scenes details about its production and how we must hate ourselves to embark on such a perilous journey.
Since we don’t think our personal affairs are all that interesting, we’ll also take the opportunity to share some reflections on game design or, as in this case, recurring game concepts like the “Dungeon.”
Goblin Mode
Goblin is our first major project following Epigoni, and it leverages the CopperHead System ruleset. For those familiar with Epigoni (available in its Essential form here), Goblin might be a bit of a shock. Our design philosophy revolves around pushing the boundaries of the engines we create, experimenting with every possible option within the fictional constraints of our design settings. In short, we love to play with our own rules.
Goblin is also Oddplan’s first paid product, marking a significant milestone for us. It’s a substantial project in terms of page count and production costs, and charging for it is essential to recoup our expenses.
The project began years ago under the working title “Goblin: Live, Evolve, Die” and was developed in parallel with the Epigoni Kickstarter campaign. It served as a creative outlet, allowing us to explore new directions while ensuring the CopperHead System retained its cinematic and theatrical essence.
From the outset, Goblin was labeled a “Dark Slapstick Comedy,” blending cartoonish elements with a touch of seriousness. We aimed to adapt the CopperHead System for a more traditional fantasy experience, introducing structured magic, classes, and talents while maintaining an Old-School Renaissance (OSR) flavor.
The Dungeon as a Living World
The setting is not highly detailed, as we chose to focus on the true protagonist of the story: the Dungeon, a vast and intricate cave system teeming with a variety of biomes.
In the Dungeon, magic is a fundamental part of the ecosystem, to the point where many of the creatures that inhabit it are naturally born from its magic. These creatures can even evolve under certain conditions, drawing inspiration from the now widespread dungeon trope in mangas, where the dungeon is a self-contained world with its own rules. The Goblins are a byproduct of stagnant magic in certain areas (yes, it functions much like the Winds of Magic in Warhammer). Because of this, their nature is unstable and prone to uncontrollable mutations, even though they remain one of the weaker and lesser species in the Dungeon.
“They’re just goblins.”
The journey of Goblin has been laborious, to be honest. Early on, the project caught the attention of a small publishing house, and we were honestly elated: a project where we didn’t have to do everything by ourselves with proper backing and support!
However, after initial enthusiasm, communication abruptly ceased—a frustratingly common occurrence in the publishing world. It’s like ghosting but done by people you don’t like that much to be hurt by it. If we have to look on the bright side, this experience led us to an idea for a game that we hope to release in 2026. We don’t believe creativity requires discomfort and pain to flourish—quite the opposite—but spite is, in fact, a potent engine for change.
Around Goblin, a dedicated group—some now part of Oddplan—came together to refine the project. We created a pitch and quickstart guide to present to other publishers, though the process was challenging.
The author’s initial ideas were interesting but unfocused, partly due to the demands of the Epigoni Kickstarter campaign and partly due to the constant need to adapt the project to suit publishers’ tastes.
While we believed Goblin had the potential to be a professional-grade product, promoting its value—both as a game and a commercial venture—proved difficult. After a promising contact with another Italian publisher, we were ultimately dismissed after long weeks of no contact. They were the ones who asked us to change the core engine to be more accessible, switching the base die (don’t ask), and we laboriously worked on it for a month to be ultimately stonewalled. After politely insisting, we scheduled a follow-up via phone, even to have a semblance of closure, that ended with some unflattering personal remarks about the author; the publisher forgot to hang up before insulting him like a drunken sailor. It was so comically out of pocket he wasn’t even mad about it.
“Oddplan, why are y’all so bitter?” Here you go; you just read our villain origin story.
You can kill some goblins, but not all of them.
At the beginning of 2021, we found ourselves with a game draft, ready-made artwork, about sixty pages of written design, and a defined brand that didn’t quite convince us. Goblin was too big of a project to handle independently, but there was something about those brash, slightly suicidal greenskins that kept calling us back. Over the next two years, it was updated—and even somewhat nurtured—by the Oddplan team, of course, but also by a small group of friends and enthusiasts who chose to invest their time and energy into this project.
Next month, after this long preamble, we’ll dive more specifically into what has changed in the game’s design since we started working on it collectively. If you want to prepare for it, you should read Epigoni Essential to understand how much—and how deep—we are adapting its game engine to this experience.
The Dungeon as a synecdoche
Since the first edition of the world’s most famous role-playing game, the concept of the dungeon has been a topic of discussion, to the point that the word has now become a term detached from its original definition (especially for non-English speakers like us Italians, for whom even words like Beholder refer to that specific type of monster).
Suppose you’ll allow me this small digression into the philosophy of language. In that case, observing how the Dungeon (which we will henceforth capitalize to avoid confusion) has become a standalone term in the TTRPG field is fascinating. It generally refers to a self-contained underground ecosystem that follows its own internal rules and tends to develop vertically, primarily from the surface downward. The Dungeon thus becomes a world within a world, transcending its original meaning as a term for “this week’s place to explore” to evolve into a more complex concept. And when D&D moved its adventures outdoors—previously just a space where things happened between dungeons—the world of “TTRPG semiotics” began questioning whether any explorable location, defined by a series of zones and connections, might ultimately be a Dungeon. This idea is best exemplified in the pointcrawl structure.
Additionally, experiences like Castle Greyhawk and Undermountain—two of the most famous examples—have demonstrated how a Dungeon can be structured like a stack of pancake-like levels, each different and not necessarily coherent with the others, yet bound together by a common theme: what we might call the “Heart of the Dungeon.” This fascination has never been overshadowed by attempts to turn the underground into another type of surface to explore with different rules.
As compelling as ideas like the Underdark are, it is highly likely that our species is simply incapable of conceiving a world without a sky—one where movement in three dimensions is necessary—as functioning in the same way as the surface. As humans, when we play role-playing games, the exploration of the surface carries a different narrative weight and meaning compared to that of wholly alien and hostile environments like the underground or the ocean.
In a way, anything with a ceiling, walls, and an exploratory element is hard for a role-playing player not to imagine as a Dungeon. It shouldn’t surprise us if we consider that, as a species, we have almost always placed the realms of the dead underground in our collective imagination—from the Greeks’ Hades to the Christians’ Hell—reserving the heavens only for the purest and noblest souls. Since ancient times, the underground has been where we consign secrets and monsters; in our imagination, it is difficult to think of it as something comparable to a forest or a mountain.
From these reflections, we can observe a fascinating evolution of the Dungeon in mangas, where it becomes something unique—something connected to the world’s rules but in no way comparable to a common biome. The Dungeon almost takes on the qualities of a living organism, sometimes possessing its own consciousness and awareness—an entity independent of the world that created it, at times more akin to a demi-plane. In some cases, it is an inherent part of the world, tied to a balance gradually uncovered over time. In others, it is almost a parasite attaching itself to reality for various reasons. In yet others, it is a prison that has long lost its original purpose and has since expanded—almost as if attempting to replace the world that serves as its trap (and undeniably, even Duskmourn, the latest MtG setting, falls into this category, in my opinion).
From these reflections emerges the game world behind Goblin: a true Dungeon, which its inhabitants simply call the Dungeon—a place that makes no sense and follows no logic except to those who dwell within it. Everything not part of it, be it the surface or other planes, is “the Outside.”
And if you think that this vision of the Dungeon as a “world within a world” isn’t becoming more and more evident, I refer you to the Quickstart of the 5E supplement Massive Darkness: Shadowreach by CMON, a module included in the crowdfunding campaign for the new expansion of the famous board game.
I quote directly from the setting description:
A Labyrinth of Sandbox Biomes
The Shadowreach is an intricate network of caves, chasms, and tunnels. Some areas are small and narrow, while others are vast, containing lakes and seas. Its immense size allows for a variety of environments, from toxic fungal jungles to ancient cities beneath shimmering crystal vaults. Each area is designed as a sandbox, offering players the freedom to explore.
And with that, I leave you to your own musings. There is much more to discuss; I know I’ve been relatively concise. But for now, tell me: what aspects of this dark world would you like to explore further?
Goblin is a stupid name.
Next month, we’ll take a look at what we’ve done to the game engine to adapt it to the perilous and hilarious adventures of Goblin, and how a few simple tweaks have given CopperHead a whole new flavor. We might even reveal the actual name of the game—which, of course, won’t be Goblin, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of SEO or who has ever come across Grant Howitt’s game (with which we have little in common—though not with Grant himself, whom we assume to be a great person).
We’ve opened a discussion in the chat to gather ideas; if you’d like to join in and share your thoughts, feel free!
Oh, and next week, we’ll be sending out a game full of sugar and bad feelings to our subscribers’ inboxes. You know how to get it for free—no fuss, no strings attached.