What the heck, a full color GURPS book? In the ’90s? This seems bizarre. And for such a strange book! GURPS Goblins (1996) is…wild. It almost certainly isn’t what you think.

What we have here is an unflinching social satire of Regency London, circa 1830. Except, instead of English humans, everyone is a goblin. Except, they aren’t really goblins in the D&D sense. They’re…if you’re familiar with political cartoons of that era, or even in the Victorian period, the twisted figures whose physical traits so often visually depict their inner failings and moral decay? They’re that. Sort of like the ugliest of people crossed with Joe Dante’s gremlins. A city of millions of sentient deadly sins walking around, being the worst they can possibly be (and brought to a semblance of life through Guy Burwell’s grotesque illustrations).

Players, of course, take the role of goblins from the lowest class strata, the poor, the desperate, the criminal. The point of the game is to get a leg up. The introduction says, “The aim of every goblin should be to gain security and power with improved social level, faster than he degenerates through disease, age and the aforementioned maiming.” I should mention that the text is scathing, unflinching, strident and regularly very funny. I find it hard to find the correct words to convey my awe at this game, that in addition to pillorying Regency society of nearly two centuries ago, also somehow sees into the dark heart of 21st century life.

To wit: “The ruins and dungeons are far from uncharted — the only creature who never explores them is the landlord who rents them out.” I mean, damn. That’s some Ambrose Bierce shit right there.

Honestly, the goblins are kind of a red herring — remove their desperate parodying and you basically have an incredibly detailed source book for London in the 1830s, rife with poverty, disease, exploitation, crime and inequity. The goblinoid veneer makes it into something playable (though I would be surprised if something with this tenor found much of an audience in 1996) and brings the laughs, though I suspect they’d be the uncomfortable sort that issue when a gag hits too close to home.

A forgotten classic.