This post was written partly as a response to the post 'Orcs vs Hobgoblins... Why Have Both?' over at Dragonsfoot. And partly because this kind of stuff interests the shit out of me...
I wanted to respond, despite the thread being from 2022, because I had found myself pondering the nature of Hobgoblins and in part because none of the responses I saw spoke to the element of mythology in the original post.
Basically, it strikes me that there are two reasons for having both orcs and hobgoblins, both good to a point, depending on whether you approach the question from a game-play or a mythology perspective.
Orcs are ubiquitous in fantasy RPGs. They are an easy villain and the whys and wherefores and moral impreratives of that have been written about elsewhere at length and I won't go into them here, except to say that I generally don't use them, because they are over-familiar and one dimensional. If I did use them, I am the kind of GM who would probably just have to go ahead and develop a culture of some sort for them and I just know that at that point, they would probably stop being inherently, unsalvagably evil, because that is the only way to stop them being one-dimensional. Orcs are strong and not very clever. they almost always get a substantial bonus to their strength and are competent combatants for low level foes, and in some systems take a penalty to intelligence.
Hobgoblins also get a write up in the bestiary of nearly every fantasy RPG that has ever seen the light of day. Yet often, they are disappointing in the vagueness of their initial appearance. They rarely rule the world, often don't even have a homeland , and almost never get a part in the world or associated adventures, beyond getting smacked down. Exceptions include Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's Old World setting where something called the Hobgoblin Hegemony set my imagination ON FIRE for about a decade, Eberron, which is actually pretty awesome in that regard, with its fallen Dhakaani Empire, and Greyhawk, where they inhabit the Empire Of Iuz, an evil god (who'd have guessed?). In Exandria (Critical Role), they have a homeland on the Beynsfal Plateau. That probably isn't an exhaustive list. But generally speaking the hobgoblins in question will have a high dexterity/agility and constitution. This makes them, in theory at least, different from orcs, able to use different tactics, such as ranged attacks and possibly magic.
In other words, all too often, hobgoblins are like orcs, only with slightly different stats. What this means exactly varies by edition or ruleset. In 1E AD&D I believe hobgoblins may have been tougher than orcs. In 3E they get a boost to Dexterity and Constitution instead of Strength, with no intelligence penalty. Which, ironically, made them a bit more like Tolkien's orcs...
But ultimately all of these variations are unsatisfying to me. Modest attribute modifications don't have a huge impact on the gameplay experience - mainly because the range produced has such a big overlap with other races/species/types of character in the world. So in terms of gameplay, yeah have both, for slightly different tactics in combat, or whatever, but lean into it and create a different culture around it like the best published settings do.
Or...
That relationship between hobgoblins and Tolkien's orcs is probably at the heart of the fundamental problem. Hobgoblins entered the modern fantasy genre through Tolkien, as his 'first draft' orcs, before he came up with the latter word, which, in case you didn't know, comes from the latin 'orcus', a god of the underworld, via Italian 'orco' for demon or monster and Old English 'orcneas' meaning much the same. In The Hobbit, they are presented as large goblins.
The Hobbit is much more of a child friendly or 'fairy tale' type story than The Lord Of The Rings, intended as a children's bed-time story, with goblins, elves and the eponymous Hobbit as familiar echoes of similar characters in folk tales. And when I read some of the more developed hobgoblin cultures in RPGs (and I do kinda like what I've read about these in Exandria, where hobgoblins are under a divine curse by the evil god, Bane), I do still find myself thinking yeah, this is what orcs should be...
But there was a reason Tolkien changed his mind: he realised that the 'hob' in 'hobgoblin' didn't mean 'big'.
It is, in fact, a fairly common prefix, and is thought to refer to the original 'hob' of a fireplace, which in the medieval period meant either a large hook over the fire, to hang cooking pots on, or possibly a kind of seat beside the fire, part of the hearth itself.
In other words, a hobgoblin in British folklore was a goblin that lived in the hearth. A hearth spirit. A household spirit. They were tricksters, protectors, given to getting upset if not paid sufficient respect. And largely invisible.
So to wrap up, hobgoblins are for the most part, what orcs were to Tolkien, after orcs 'wus robbed' by the RPG industry. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you could, instead, go in a different direction altogether, and make them agents of supernatural, not always antagonistic, possibly magical, and beings to be negotiated with, instead of slaughtered.
I would probably go with:
- goblin stats
- a handful of modest spell-like abilities, possibly including invisibility
- witty, lively personas that love to bargain
- access to supernatural or at least far-ranging knowledge the players value
- a network across the 'hearths of the land', to be supportive of or antagonistic towards PCs, depending on their behaviour
And that's nothing like an orc...
