Logical goblin slayer

[ATP]

GS is good manga - but totally inlogical,becouse we have:

1.Immortal elves who have children after 8.000 years,one per200-300 years./HRE sister/ ,and which best archers/HRE/ could schoot very good,but in melee ardinary goblins disarmed her after she killed one with dagger,and almost gang-raped.
They need to be stronger and had more kids.

2.Humans - who could fight one ordinary goblin,have kids like in OTL medieval times.And their average adventures fell after taking few goblins.
They need to be stronger,too.

3.Goblins which could mature after weeks or at best month,and take on average human cyvilian.And overpower elven archers loosing no more then 20.
They also kill most taken womans after raping them,but before they born any goblins.
They should take all available females long ago killing their race males,and get excint one generation later.

So,what to do?

1.Elves - made them not immortal,but live,let say,1000 years and have up to 20 -30 childrfen in that times.
Also made them supersoldiers,even cyvilians,so avarage goblins could take one womans after loosing at least 200 of their own.

2.Humans- better security and weapons for both cyvilians and adventures.Average cyvilian could take at least 5 goblins,adventurer - 30.

3.Goblins - more stronger variants,all taken womens live for months or years breeding new goblins.They take few and then hide.

And,DO NOT SEND ANY FEMALE ADVENTURERS TO FIGHT GOBLINS !

If somebody have more ideas,please say it.

 

[Bear Ribs]

So I dropped that one pretty quickly, my knowledge of the series is limited and most of what I'll comment on is going to be those first coupla' chapters.

Architecture in Goblin Slayer should reflect the nature of the threats the population deals with. I recall the farm having an ordinary pastoral post-and-board fence you might find in any midwestern American farm, the town having regular buildings, etc. The farms are the most vulnerable (I believe Goblins still need to eat so they must be raiding farms like crazy to support that growth rate, a goblin putting on 40 pounds in a month is going to need to somehow eat close to a quarter-ton of food in the same timeframe if we presume they have the same feed efficiency as a cow.

Consequently, the best way to actually cull goblins would be to protect the food supply, not depriving them of women. That's not to say protecting the women isn't important, of course, but a goblin hive that's got, say, a hundred new goblins growing up this month is going to need 25 tons of food for them, nearly a ton a day. That's a heck of a lot of raiding, and farms should be appropriately defended.

Now Goblin Slayer farms are already anachronistic, rather than looking anything like medieval/early modern farms they resemble modern day operations, isolated in the countryside away from any town, not next to a convenient fortress, and the farmers seem to live along instead of in groups. They also look to practice monoculture and modern growing methods that medieval farmers would shun as insane.

In a more realistic setting, their farms would be a patchwork of many different crops. The best bottomland would have clusters of many farmers working small fields of different crops for mutual support, in this case surrounding by fences covered in stakes and possible planted heavily with the rosebush's much nastier and thornier cousin to make entry more difficult for goblin raiding parties. There'd be at least some sort of defensive shelter, at least a palisade or crannog for the smallest villages going up to full-blown castles for the bigger ones. There simply aren't going to be any settlements that aren't walled because raids are going to be more common than a politician lying. Houses similarly won't have any windows or else will have heavy shutters that can be bolted from the inside, with an arrow slot in them. Definitely not those large glass windows I recall.

A farm in canon Goblin Slayer. Notice the anachronistic modern-style decorative fence of stop absolutely no goblins whatsoever, a tree growing right next to the house that will let goblins climb up onto the roof and enter the upper story windows, and large inviting ground-level windows, all highly suitable for letting swarms of goblins attack the inhabitants from every direction at once. The idiotic defenders are standing on the wrong side of the fence instead of taking advantage of the protection, though it's a fail of a fence it should at least buy a half second or so while the goblin ducks under it, plenty of time for a defender to get in one free spear thrust.

A better farmhouse is the Bastle House. Two stories with the bottom being a barn/storage and living quarters on top, accessible only by a ladder which is pulled up at night, and tiny windows suitable for throwing things at assholes who brought their own ladder, but not suitable for letting goblins inside to swarm the defenders from all directions at once.

A more suitable fence, this one is living acacia thorns used in Africa to protect from raiders. Goblins can't get through without either entering a predetermined killbox or using fire/magic that will alert the inhabitants and bring an immediate response of angry farmers and their dogs. Defenders with an IQ higher than their shoe size will stand inside the fence and spear goblins attempting to get in through the gap, with a few watching for attempts to scale or burn the fence.

Everybody would have to learn to fight, and nobody would go unarmed... ever. There's just no way around it, AIUI even their most well-defended fortress surrounding their sword-saint had a goblin invasion while Goblin Slayer was visiting, and that was the capitol! Even their Fantasy!Pope has been raped by goblins, goblins get everywhere and are a threat even to the highest-ranked, most well-defended people. There's no keeping goblins out, the chance that any settlement's been hit by goblins recently approaches 1. The probability that anybody reaching 18 years old has had to kill some goblins at some point is Yes. Farmers may not train to be soldiers and won't have the expensive kit a soldier does, that's just not possible. They would, however, always have a club, spear, bow, couple of javelins, an axe, or the like on them and most would spend at least some time training with it because, again, even a small goblin nest is going to launch weekly raids and even the most fortified town seems to get regular goblin invasions, so knowing how to stab a goblin with a spear is basic common sense and anybody who doesn't learn that kind of skill is probably not going to live long enough to reproduce. Farmers would likely gravitate either to weapons useful for hunting or to weapons similar to their farming implements, such as tridents and axes. Animal use may go up considerably, farms IRL already frequently employ dogs to increase security and protect livestock. Huge dogs trained to alert Master to the presence of goblins, immediately followed by savaging the goblins, are likely to be very common and very popular with farmers. There's a fair chance there will be specialized breeds of "Goblinhounds" bred specifically to be good at killing goblins and having a very high protective instinct.

There may be a strong social pressure on women to kill themselves if they're in an inescapable position and surrounded by goblins. There may even be a ceremonial knife women carry for this purpose. It would simply be accepted that it's part of any woman's duty and any strong woman would be ready to open her veins rather than birth another generation of goblins.

In turn, goblins would have to adapt their tactics to deal with this reality, likely employing more advanced tool use to cut fences and they're going to have to have draft animals and carts in order to move their supplies of food. Since this means leaving tracks back to their nest, goblins are going to necessarily have their own spiked walls and defenses since they're going to have retaliatory raids on the regular. Humans may, tactically, prefer to siege goblin hives rather than assault them. Goblins should work intelligently to make tunnels too small for human-sized adventurers to easily invade, but their need for enormous amounts of food would mean they can't survive long if they're trapped. Goblin hives will consequently adapt by having many exits so they can escape more easily.

Magic is going to change the equation considerably but I don't really have a clear grasp on Goblin Slayer magic. Near as I can tell it's Vancian (that is, the style used in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons) but aside from a few basic spells like create light and cure light wounds, I'm not sure what we might reasonably expect both humans and goblins to throw at each other magically. In general, it seemed to me that magic was very limited and it was mostly about stabbing each other.

 

[ATP]

So I dropped that one pretty quickly, my knowledge of the series is limited and most of what I'll comment on is going to be those first coupla' chapters.

Architecture in Goblin Slayer should reflect the nature of the threats the population deals with. I recall the farm having an ordinary pastoral post-and-board fence you might find in any midwestern American farm, the town having regular buildings, etc. The farms are the most vulnerable (I believe Goblins still need to eat so they must be raiding farms like crazy to support that growth rate, a goblin putting on 40 pounds in a month is going to need to somehow eat close to a quarter-ton of food in the same timeframe if we presume they have the same feed efficiency as a cow.

Consequently, the best way to actually cull goblins would be to protect the food supply, not depriving them of women. That's not to say protecting the women isn't important, of course, but a goblin hive that's got, say, a hundred new goblins growing up this month is going to need 25 tons of food for them, nearly a ton a day. That's a heck of a lot of raiding, and farms should be appropriately defended.

Now Goblin Slayer farms are already anachronistic, rather than looking anything like medieval/early modern farms they resemble modern day operations, isolated in the countryside away from any town, not next to a convenient fortress, and the farmers seem to live along instead of in groups. They also look to practice monoculture and modern growing methods that medieval farmers would shun as insane.

In a more realistic setting, their farms would be a patchwork of many different crops. The best bottomland would have clusters of many farmers working small fields of different crops for mutual support, in this case surrounding by fences covered in stakes and possible planted heavily with the rosebush's much nastier and thornier cousin to make entry more difficult for goblin raiding parties. There'd be at least some sort of defensive shelter, at least a palisade or crannog for the smallest villages going up to full-blown castles for the bigger ones. There simply aren't going to be any settlements that aren't walled because raids are going to be more common than a politician lying. Houses similarly won't have any windows or else will have heavy shutters that can be bolted from the inside, with an arrow slot in them. Definitely not those large glass windows I recall.

A farm in canon Goblin Slayer. Notice the anachronistic modern-style decorative fence of stop absolutely no goblins whatsoever, a tree growing right next to the house that will let goblins climb up onto the roof and enter the upper story windows, and large inviting ground-level windows, all highly suitable for letting swarms of goblins attack the inhabitants from every direction at once. The idiotic defenders are standing on the wrong side of the fence instead of taking advantage of the protection, though it's a fail of a fence it should at least buy a half second or so while the goblin ducks under it, plenty of time for a defender to get in one free spear thrust.

A better farmhouse is the Bastle House. Two stories with the bottom being a barn/storage and living quarters on top, accessible only by a ladder which is pulled up at night, and tiny windows suitable for throwing things at assholes who brought their own ladder, but not suitable for letting goblins inside to swarm the defenders from all directions at once.

A more suitable fence, this one is living acacia thorns used in Africa to protect from raiders. Goblins can't get through without either entering a predetermined killbox or using fire/magic that will alert the inhabitants and bring an immediate response of angry farmers and their dogs. Defenders with an IQ higher than their shoe size will stand inside the fence and spear goblins attempting to get in through the gap, with a few watching for attempts to scale or burn the fence.

Everybody would have to learn to fight, and nobody would go unarmed... ever. There's just no way around it, AIUI even their most well-defended fortress surrounding their sword-saint had a goblin invasion while Goblin Slayer was visiting, and that was the capitol! Even their Fantasy!Pope has been raped by goblins, goblins get everywhere and are a threat even to the highest-ranked, most well-defended people. There's no keeping goblins out, the chance that any settlement's been hit by goblins recently approaches 1. The probability that anybody reaching 18 years old has had to kill some goblins at some point is Yes. Farmers may not train to be soldiers and won't have the expensive kit a soldier does, that's just not possible. They would, however, always have a club, spear, bow, couple of javelins, an axe, or the like on them and most would spend at least some time training with it because, again, even a small goblin nest is going to launch weekly raids and even the most fortified town seems to get regular goblin invasions, so knowing how to stab a goblin with a spear is basic common sense and anybody who doesn't learn that kind of skill is probably not going to live long enough to reproduce. Farmers would likely gravitate either to weapons useful for hunting or to weapons similar to their farming implements, such as tridents and axes. Animal use may go up considerably, farms IRL already frequently employ dogs to increase security and protect livestock. Huge dogs trained to alert Master to the presence of goblins, immediately followed by savaging the goblins, are likely to be very common and very popular with farmers. There's a fair chance there will be specialized breeds of "Goblinhounds" bred specifically to be good at killing goblins and having a very high protective instinct.

There may be a strong social pressure on women to kill themselves if they're in an inescapable position and surrounded by goblins. There may even be a ceremonial knife women carry for this purpose. It would simply be accepted that it's part of any woman's duty and any strong woman would be ready to open her veins rather than birth another generation of goblins.

In turn, goblins would have to adapt their tactics to deal with this reality, likely employing more advanced tool use to cut fences and they're going to have to have draft animals and carts in order to move their supplies of food. Since this means leaving tracks back to their nest, goblins are going to necessarily have their own spiked walls and defenses since they're going to have retaliatory raids on the regular. Humans may, tactically, prefer to siege goblin hives rather than assault them. Goblins should work intelligently to make tunnels too small for human-sized adventurers to easily invade, but their need for enormous amounts of food would mean they can't survive long if they're trapped. Goblin hives will consequently adapt by having many exits so they can escape more easily.

Magic is going to change the equation considerably but I don't really have a clear grasp on Goblin Slayer magic. Near as I can tell it's Vancian (that is, the style used in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons) but aside from a few basic spells like create light and cure light wounds, I'm not sure what we might reasonably expect both humans and goblins to throw at each other magically. In general, it seemed to me that magic was very limited and it was mostly about stabbing each other.

Yes,i forget about buildings.In 16-17th century Poland basically all eastern villages was kind of small fortress capable of repelling average small tatar raid.
Wooden buildings connected to each other with small windows,and good fences.Some mobile,to use on roads to village.

Earlier,after 966AD,almost every village had "gród" - stronghold with earth walls and well,for all village people.

And - goblins,thanks to magic,could need less food to live.

P.S Future pope baby was still adventurer when she get gangraped.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Everybody would have to learn to fight, and nobody would go unarmed... ever. There's just no way around it, AIUI even their most well-defended fortress surrounding their sword-saint had a goblin invasion while Goblin Slayer was visiting, and that was the capitol! Even their Fantasy!Pope has been raped by goblins, goblins get everywhere and are a threat even to the highest-ranked, most well-defended people. There's no keeping goblins out, the chance that any settlement's been hit by goblins recently approaches 1. The probability that anybody reaching 18 years old has had to kill some goblins at some point is Yes.

For what it's worth, the anime strongly suggests that the huge, village destroying raids like the one that wiped out GS village are a rarity partially tied to the global war between Chaos and Order occurring in the background of the narrative. GS even mentions that many would-be adventurers think a Goblin quest would be easy *because* their only experience with goblins is scaring off the odd straggler forced from it's nest/den who wasn't interested in fighting in the first place. Even Sword Maiden rape occurred when she was a rookie adventurer not before or after when she became the "Fantasy!Pope".

We also have a farmer posting a goblin quest ask the Guild Lady if what he *heard* Goblin do to women is true suggesting for most people Goblin reproduction is more a matter of speculation and rumor than a daily threat.

The implication is that for years, if not decades, your random village farm really is that peaceful and placid then in the middle of the night the Goblins amass and attack killing the men and raping the women only to vanish once day break comes. So while Goblins are known not to be completely harmless there's likely a strong "Not my problem" situation going on as everyone out on the frontier assumes that Goblins are something that happen to other people.

Obviously the events of Water Town and the like show Goblins are more dangerous than most people give them credit for especially when they have outside help from the larger Demon Lord's army such as Ogre-Mages, Beholders or instructing the Goblins how to build boats. Through even then they are still just a small part of a much larger threat.

Consequently, the best way to actually cull goblins would be to protect the food supply, not depriving them of women. That's not to say protecting the women isn't important, of course, but a goblin hive that's got, say, a hundred new goblins growing up this month is going to need 25 tons of food for them, nearly a ton a day. That's a heck of a lot of raiding, and farms should be appropriately defended.

Potentially and appropriately defending farm and ranch land would be a big help but most Goblin nests appear situated out in the wilds with plenty of vegetation and presumably animal life. We Know Goblins can domesticate wolves which presumably could be used to help hunt as well as traps and snares the Goblins could likely act like a roaming plague of locust stripping the area bare before moving on.

 

[Bear Ribs]

For what it's worth, the anime strongly suggests that the huge, village destroying raids like the one that wiped out GS village are a rarity partially tied to the global war between Chaos and Order occurring in the background of the narrative. GS even mentions that many would-be adventurers think a Goblin quest would be easy *because* their only experience with goblins is scaring off the odd straggler forced from it's nest/den who wasn't interested in fighting in the first place. Even Sword Maiden rape occurred when she was a rookie adventurer not before or after when she became the "Fantasy!Pope".

We also have a farmer posting a goblin quest ask the Guild Lady if what he *heard* Goblin do to women is true suggesting for most people Goblin reproduction is more a matter of speculation and rumor than a daily threat.

This is true, in the show, but is a slap to realism for the exact reason you mentioned: "Guild Lady."

The adventurers guild has a large headquarters, a full-time staff, a DMV-like registration and ranking system with a complex bureaucracy, and appears to have at least a dozen or two adventurers who make a living taking and doing quests. Some might be herb-picking quests but we see pretty much every adventurer decked out in armor and carrying weapons, and it's pointed out that weapons are expensive and Goblin Slayer is actually poorly equipped for his level. These are a dozen or two people who take the idea that they might be fighting against monsters at any moment very seriously and have invested a large amount of their available wealth into making sure they're ready when it happens.

This necessitates that even this small, lazy rural town has so many monster attacks that a dozen or two people are able to make a full-time living killing them, with enough surplus left over to support Guild Lady and a few other people making a living purely as middlemen running the guild itself and riding herd on the adventurers, and paying for their headquarters and such. Small sleepy farming village has a full-time weaponsmith and armorsmith (maybe more than one) just to support the adventurer's gear breaking as it needs constant repair from frequent combat. There are social structures that would allow for soldiers "on standby" in a peaceful area but the guild explicitly pays piecemeal by the job, not paying a salary for twenty-odd dudes to hang around just in case, and in any case those twenty-odd dudes wouldn't need full-time weaponsmiths keeping their gear in tip-top shape if they weren't using it often.

The implication is that for years, if not decades, your random village farm really is that peaceful and placid then in the middle of the night the Goblins amass and attack killing the men and raping the women only to vanish once day break comes. So while Goblins are known not to be completely harmless there's likely a strong "Not my problem" situation going on as everyone out on the frontier assumes that Goblins are something that happen to other people.

Obviously the events of Water Town and the like show Goblins are more dangerous than most people give them credit for especially when they have outside help from the larger Demon Lord's army such as Ogre-Mages, Beholders or instructing the Goblins how to build boats. Through even then they are still just a small part of a much larger threat.

Goblin Slayer rather has the issue that the gods explicitly will change reality and drop monsters wheresoever they please, regardless of causality of sense. This is made especially clear at one point when we have the POV from the gods as the party goes through a dungeon, and one god decides the run is too easy so they drop a troll instead of a goblin in the next room to raise the challenge.

This means that in some ways, causality in Goblin Slayer flows exactly backwards from how we might expect. There's a distinct possibility the goblins attacking Watertown and threatening the Fantasy!Pope would never have existed in the first place if Goblin Slayer and his party weren't visiting, instead the DM didn't want to waste the encounter so spawned hundreds of goblins in the sewers. If a party with a less direct focus than Goblin Slayer's was visiting, perhaps it would have been myconids, or demons, or fishmen instead.

They may even edit people's backstories and Fantasy!Pope wasn't raped by goblins until she met Goblin Slayer and the gods decided it would be a good bit of drama. I know some fans theorize that whatever power Goblin Slayer has to repel dice represents that the gods can't change his specific backstory (Whatever the power is, it relates to his Fate) but can change everybody else's.

Areas are peaceful as long as no gods are paying attention and then there can be a massive thousand-goblin horde that was "always there" the next day because the gods altered things.

As far as the modifications I've suggested, those should be normal (assuming the gods don't go and alter the farmhouses too) regardless. The Bastle House is a design from real life used just to deal with ordinary and relatively light banditry in peacetime. The decorative fencing they use is a modern-day contrivance that's totally inappropriate for any purpose they would have, farmers shouldn't be maintaining lawns and fences to mark their lawns instead of putting that work into protecting their fields and homes. Even ignoring that, glass is hella expensive and rare at the technology level we're looking at, and extra plus rare in larger sheets requiring specialized industrial equipment, so barring magic glass makers (I'll own this is possible, didn't watch everything), the huge glass windows we see everywhere are a no-no for realism either way.

Spoiler: Pictured: How much glass do these people have?

Potentially and appropriately defending farm and ranch land would be a big help but most Goblin nests appear situated out in the wilds with plenty of vegetation and presumably animal life. We Know Goblins can domesticate wolves which presumably could be used to help hunt as well as traps and snares the Goblins could likely act like a roaming plague of locust stripping the area bare before moving on.

Even for Goblin Slayer itself this makes no sense though. Goblins can't have nests out in the wilds, because they're incapable of reproducing without a steady supply of captured human/elf/prolly other humanoid women to rape. If they had some kind of detailed, complex slave trade network or such, perhaps it could be done but they clearly don't and also don't care for captives long-term.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If Goblins are such an omni-present existential threat to civilization, you would think that the adventurers at the guild would take goblins seriously. Goblin Slayer had to beg for their help. The only way goblins can be a low priority for adventurers is if there are even scarier things out there than goblins that are more prestigious to kill (ie dragons), and there are so many of them that the adventurers aren't running out of targets and thus don't have to stoop to fighting goblins, but if that's the case then civilization should be utterly screwed.

 

[Bear Ribs]

If Goblins are such an omni-present existential threat to civilization, you would think that the adventurers at the guild would take goblins seriously. Goblin Slayer had to beg for their help. The only way goblins can be a low priority for adventurers is if there are even scarier things out there than goblins that are more prestigious to kill (ie dragons), and there are so many of them that the adventurers aren't running out of targets and thus don't have to stoop to fighting goblins, but if that's the case then civilization should be utterly screwed.

I'm pretty sure that's the point of the thread, the worldbuilding in Goblin Slayer is extremely nonsensical, partly justified by having the gods actively retconning reality, but no world that actually has any kind of logical cause-and-effect should look anything like Goblin Slayer. Goblins are simultaneously vermin suitable only for the lowest-level adventurers to blood themselves and able to easily pull off total party kills with ease, and be the monsters of Fantasy!Pope's nightmares who pose a serious threat and mounted an invasion into their holy city.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

This is true, in the show, but is a slap to realism for the exact reason you mentioned: "Guild Lady."

Larger, more powerful monsters/foes certainly exist in the setting through they appear less likely to be a direct threat to the frontier farms and villages. Likely, in part, because there's little a sleepy village or small town has to entice a Dragon for example. And when one does come there's little your typical village could do but run and die. Which again likely fosters a "someone else's problem" attitude since there's nothing you can do to stop it and no point worrying about it.

There's also the issue that because Dragons are a major threat, and disproportionately a major threat to people with money, that there is, as you say, dozens of guys chomping at the bit to kill them and thus dragon numbers are constantly being thinned and the instant one is reported every guy wanting to make a name for himself races to find it. Which would paradoxically lead to the more dangerous foes being less of a threat.

Another factor is, rather than mindless animals, most of the monsters appear to be connected to the Demon Lord's army in some way and thus are more likely to be interested in the wider war and thus directed towards the capitol or other objectives than just aimless pillaging.

I'd also point out Goblin Slayer, like a lot of fantasy, has a very casual travel so its unclear just how wide an area the small, rural town actually serves. We know its area includes the Goblin Cave where the Rookie adventurer team perished, an abandoned fortress taken over by the Goblins and a third nest which GS chose not to take that day so it appears to cover a wide area.

Goblin Slayer rather has the issue that the gods explicitly will change reality and drop monsters wheresoever they please, regardless of causality of sense.

I can't speak to that. I don't think that's ever been included in the anime which is what I'm more familiar with.

As far as the modifications I've suggested, those should be normal (assuming the gods don't go and alter the farmhouses too) regardless. The Bastle House is a design from real life used just to deal with ordinary and relatively light banditry in peacetime. The decorative fencing they use is a modern-day contrivance that's totally inappropriate for any purpose they would have, farmers shouldn't be maintaining lawns and fences to mark their lawns instead of putting that work into protecting their fields and homes. Even ignoring that, glass is hella expensive and rare at the technology level we're looking at, and extra plus rare in larger sheets requiring specialized industrial equipment, so barring magic glass makers (I'll own this is possible, didn't watch everything), the huge glass windows we see everywhere are a no-no for realism either way.

I think we're looking at this from cross-purposes. To me one should judge an action based upon the underlying assumptions of the universe whether we're talking about the availability of glass or frequency of monster attacks while you want to judge an action based not on the universe in question but how you feel the universe should be.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Larger, more powerful monsters/foes certainly exist in the setting through they appear less likely to be a direct threat to the frontier farms and villages. Likely, in part, because there's little a sleepy village or small town has to entice a Dragon for example. And when one does come there's little your typical village could do but run and die. Which again likely fosters a "someone else's problem" attitude since there's nothing you can do to stop it and no point worrying about it.

There's also the issue that because Dragons are a major threat, and disproportionately a major threat to people with money, that there is, as you say, dozens of guys chomping at the bit to kill them and thus dragon numbers are constantly being thinned and the instant one is reported every guy wanting to make a name for himself races to find it. Which would paradoxically lead to the more dangerous foes being less of a threat.

Another factor is, rather than mindless animals, most of the monsters appear to be connected to the Demon Lord's army in some way and thus are more likely to be interested in the wider war and thus directed towards the capitol or other objectives than just aimless pillaging.

I'd also point out Goblin Slayer, like a lot of fantasy, has a very casual travel so its unclear just how wide an area the small, rural town actually serves. We know its area includes the Goblin Cave where the Rookie adventurer team perished, an abandoned fortress taken over by the Goblins and a third nest which GS chose not to take that day so it appears to cover a wide area.

I'll absolutely agree with you that there are other monsters, however the basic measures I've suggested such as Bastle Houses, hedges of thorns, not growing large trees next to your building that raiders can climb, and not having utterly massive glass windows at ground level are all going to be just as useful against orcs, rabid wolves, dire rats, kobolds, zombies, or what have you. By contrast, decorative non-blocking fences and expansive openings into your home will get you killed by all those creatures. Certain specific monsters like oozes or ghosts would require specific counters but we don't see much of such creatures and that would require tons more speculation.

Regardless, tougher monsters certainly don't justify huge ground-level glass windows on isolated vulnerable houses or fences that won't stop anything.

I can't speak to that. I don't think that's ever been included in the anime which is what I'm more familiar with.

This will get you started.

Illusion

Illusion (幻想) is a "sweet-natured" Goddess in the Goblin Slayer world, usually paired with a male god named Truth in their dice games to influence the fates of Adventurers. Illusion takes on the appearance of a small girl. With a lively personality, Illusion takes great delight at arranging...

goblin-slayer.fandom.com

Illusion is one of the "main" gods in the series, she manifests as a little girl and creates dungeons, populates them with monsters, and then creates heroes to run the dungeons. She prefers to build female heroes and likes mary-sue backgrounds for them. I don't think it's absolutely stated but it's generally accepted that the starting party: Priestess, Warrior, Wizard, and Fighter, didn't exist before the first episode. The goblin hive explicitly didn't exist because she noted she'd just made it. Illusion created them all herself, created the goblin hive, and then dropped them into the world to go run it and see what would happen (Truth interfered as usual and got the party wiped). That's why the party was mostly female, Illusion prefers making females to run her dungeons.

In a fundamental way, it's impossible for heroes to perform actions like "clearing" an area because even if you kill every last goblin in the region, the gods will just create an intact fully-populated goblin hive and plop it down in the empty space. Training also does no good, the gods will simply make the monsters tougher if you're more able to fight monsters, sometimes in real-time by dropping larger monsters into existence right behind you if they're feeling dickish. The gods are willing to create new people so if avoid having dependents to keep yourself safe and avoid fighting, good news, the gods just made you a new sister and plopped her down in the world... inside a goblin hive they also plopped down right next to you and they just wrapped a suit of armor around you and put a longsword in your hand.

Truth

Truth (真実, Shinjitsu) is a God in the Goblin Slayer universe, who is usually paired with the goddess Illusion in rolling dice to influence the lives of various Adventurers of the Four-Cornered World, preferring to make life harder for all of them, "just because". Truth, like the rest of the...

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Truth tends to dick over Illusion's dungeons, messes with dice rolls to get her created heroines raped, and he's the one that dropped a troll in one of her adventures when he thought she was being too easy on the heroes, leading to a total party kill.

It's rather notable that the entire Chaos vs. Order deal in Goblin Slayer doesn't actually exist, that's purely some backstory the humans believe. The gods are playing both sides, they create both the heroes and monsters and ram them into each other like a kid having his Death Vader action figure fight a model T. Rex. Truth and Illusion both celebrate together when a party survives a dungeon in volume 5, and celebrate a total party kill in volume 6. The same gods that create the heroes create the monsters and they have fun watching them kill each other no matter the outcome. There does seem to be some competition between the gods. They like to wreck each other's campaigns and Life and Death protected Illusion's newly created campaign when Truth and Abundance came over planning to shitpost in it. This isn't developed enough yet to be sure of what was going on but I have the distinct impression the gods are basically some fantasy Discord all playing a quest together and sometimes spamming each other's threads.

I think we're looking at this from cross-purposes. To me one should judge an action based upon the underlying assumptions of the universe whether we're talking about the availability of glass or frequency of monster attacks while you want to judge an action based not on the universe in question but how you feel the universe should be.

I'll grant we have different perspectives, probably because I'm looking mostly at a different slice of lore than you are. I don't feel I'm judging on how the universe should be, I'm judging by a different set of criteria because I know about how the gods operate in the setting. I'm judging that adventurers guild necessitates enough monsters to keep adventurers in business killing them and that an isolated vulnerable farm necessitates the farm having at least some very basic-bitch means of securing itself from monsters that are self-evidently present due to the aforementioned adventurers.

These assumptions are not necessarily true in-setting because of the issue with the gods, I'm mostly ignoring that aside from pointing out that it exists. because the world of Goblin Slayer is actually causal and does not conform to our notions of logic due to causality not existing.

I'll grant my rantings on glass might be a bit much, I was more concerned with how large and easy to enter the windows tend to be in the setting and the lack of any kind of sane fortification anywhere.

Playing on the notion of acausality, it could be that the winning move in Goblin Slayer is to be boring enough that the gods don't want to play with you and thus won't throw monsters are you. However they could just decide to delete boring people, or edit your personality to make you more interesting too. Fundamentally the horror of the setting isn't the goblins raping women, it's that the gods can change any aspect of any person (except Goblin Slayer himself) and can create or destroy human souls on a whim, can simply change your entire personality into one more suited to their current plan, and there isn't the slightest thing anybody can do about. They can't even realize it's happening since the gods will also simply change the people's memories and erase any other evidence of what they've done.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

I'll grant my rantings on glass might be a bit much, I was more concerned with how large and easy to enter the windows tend to be in the setting and the lack of any kind of sane fortification anywhere.

This is kind of what I mean by cross-purpose. You look at the large, glass windows and argue the people are insane to not fortify against the threats they are facing while I look at it and argue their personal threat must be viewed low enough such large, open windows are a reasonable cultural development. That, for whatever reason, dire wolves, orcs and zombies aren't attacking farms in appreciable numbers.

 

[Bear Ribs]

This is kind of what I mean by cross-purpose. You look at the large, glass windows and argue the people are insane to not fortify against the threats they are facing while I look at it and argue their personal threat must be viewed low enough such large, open windows are a reasonable cultural development. That, for whatever reason, dire wolves, orcs and zombies aren't attacking farms in appreciable numbers.

Well, lets look at it from that perspective then. We know the monsters are there, in abundance, we've already covered the adventurers guild and the fact that a couple dozen guys feel it's reasonable to be walking around wearing full armor and carrying a weapon at all times, and these guys make a good living by killing those monsters with enough surplus to make sure Guild Lady and her compatriots don't starve after taking their cut.

So what explanation do you propose that justifies both of those things? You can't have it peaceful because then the guild is insane. You can't have it violent because then the farmhouse is insane. We could, perhaps try to justify it with monsters simply not wanting to attack farmhouses but that seems pretty weak and flies in the face of us seeing a massive attack on the farmhouse. The point of the thread is literally that the given world makes no sense in the first place and how could we change it to make sense? How do you rectify these two impossible contradictions in the series?

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Well, lets look at it from that perspective then. We know the monsters are there, in abundance, we've already covered the adventurers guild and the fact that a couple dozen guys feel it's reasonable to be walking around wearing full armor and carrying a weapon at all times, and these guys make a good living by killing those monsters with enough surplus to make sure Guild Lady and her compatriots don't starve after taking their cut.

So what explanation do you propose that justifies both of those things? You can't have it peaceful because then the guild is insane. You can't have it violent because then the farmhouse is insane. We could, perhaps try to justify it with monsters simply not wanting to attack farmhouses but that seems pretty weak and flies in the face of us seeing a massive attack on the farmhouse.

Well I would argue there isn't a single factor or something as binary as peaceful/ violent. I do think the fact there are dozens of guys daily looking for quests, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of new recruits, helps to keep the monster population "in check" with the vainglorious and fortune seeking adventures naturally selecting towards wiping the more powerful for prestige/loot. We know for instance fighting banditry "pays well" and implied to be a relatively easy quest, at least compared to a Dragon, so even in the rather sleepy, rural area of GS there seems to be no shortage of people preying on bandits.

I also think the fact all "chaotic" races seem to be allied with the Demon Lord, whether he's actually real or just an AI script for the God's table top game, which would preselect things towards bigger, more important and flashier targets than say the Warhammer setting where an Ogre, on his own initiative would likely beeline for a farm rather than fight the King's army out in the field much like an invading army wouldn't necessarily prioritize pillage farmland over securing the capitol.

Further I kind of even see a in-universe justification from the above for why the farms appear so dispersed and isolated rather than grouped together. From what we've seen even silver-ranked adventurers, the highest who can still take the field, are almost comically inept against one of the Demon Lord's Generals, one assigned over a bunch of Goblins so he likely wasn't highly placed among the formers inner circle, so it is unlikely anything farmers could manage would slow a determined attack.

So instead of cloistered, fortified farms that would be easily overran and make a juicy target you exploit the vast tracts of untamed but seemingly verdant countryside to create hundreds if not thousands of individual farms. Each one hardly worth the time and effort it takes to track down and destroy and forcing the various evil races to either divert an inordinate amount of time and resources to this endeavor, rather than putting that effort into say attacking the Capitol for instance, or shifting to attacking the less numerous but more defensible cities the farmers bring their harvest too.

Each farm could only grow a fraction of what a roving army might need to survive further making each individually less tempting targets and their conspicuous lack of wealth would discourage even bandits compared to easier pickings of towns or picking off the caravan of goods being moved to and from the cities.

Coupled with the Guild playing exterminator picking off what threats are in the area and most farms are likely too unimportant, too out of the way and, if only indirectly thanks to the Guild, just a little too well protected to be worth the bother. Exceptions happen of course. The occasional Goblin horde pops out of the shadows or other worse beastie may come crashing down over the farmers' head but its infrequent enough it becomes something you hear about rather than expect to experience. Something compounded by the fact that when it does happen there are so few survivors there is less incentive to learn and adapt.

I would also suspect that, being as the farmers inhabit an area where the king's rule and armies seem weak, it's quite possible the ruling authority prefers its peasantry to be weaker and less capable of resisting their rule as well as the local Goblin horde. With losing the occasional farmstead more acceptable than the risk of a bunch of peasant-barons suddenly declaring their independence while the King's armies are engaged with the Demon Lord's.

 

[ATP]

This is kind of what I mean by cross-purpose. You look at the large, glass windows and argue the people are insane to not fortify against the threats they are facing while I look at it and argue their personal threat must be viewed low enough such large, open windows are a reasonable cultural development. That, for whatever reason, dire wolves, orcs and zombies aren't attacking farms in appreciable numbers.

I think,that you are both right.

But,it do not change fact,that elves should have been stronger and have more kids,humans were stronger with better fortified places,and goblins treat captured womans better,so they could produce more goblins before dying.
When in one chapter goblins raided some shrine,raped and killed all womans except one,and even she lost her hand becouse other goblin wanted eat it.
That is bulsshit.
Shrines would be well-defended,and at least part of raped womans would be not chopped before breeding goblins.

P.S i still follow manga to :
1.Laugh how stupid it is
2.Laugh gow dense GS is when every girl is after him and he do not see that.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

I think,that you are both right.

For what little it is worth it isn't my intention that Bear Ribs is wrong and indeed I see why he feels the way he does and think it's a perfectly logical stance to take. Rather my stance is that in Goblin Slayer, like Star Wars, what makes "sense" depends on which of the universes contradictory starting assumptions you focus on.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Well I would argue there isn't a single factor or something as binary as peaceful/ violent. I do think the fact there are dozens of guys daily looking for quests, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of new recruits, helps to keep the monster population "in check" with the vainglorious and fortune seeking adventures naturally selecting towards wiping the more powerful for prestige/loot. We know for instance fighting banditry "pays well" and implied to be a relatively easy quest, at least compared to a Dragon, so even in the rather sleepy, rural area of GS there seems to be no shortage of people preying on bandits.

I also think the fact all "chaotic" races seem to be allied with the Demon Lord, whether he's actually real or just an AI script for the God's table top game, which would preselect things towards bigger, more important and flashier targets than say the Warhammer setting where an Ogre, on his own initiative would likely beeline for a farm rather than fight the King's army out in the field much like an invading army wouldn't necessarily prioritize pillage farmland over securing the capitol.

Further I kind of even see a in-universe justification from the above for why the farms appear so dispersed and isolated rather than grouped together. From what we've seen even silver-ranked adventurers, the highest who can still take the field, are almost comically inept against one of the Demon Lord's Generals, one assigned over a bunch of Goblins so he likely wasn't highly placed among the formers inner circle, so it is unlikely anything farmers could manage would slow a determined attack.

So instead of cloistered, fortified farms that would be easily overran and make a juicy target you exploit the vast tracts of untamed but seemingly verdant countryside to create hundreds if not thousands of individual farms. Each one hardly worth the time and effort it takes to track down and destroy and forcing the various evil races to either divert an inordinate amount of time and resources to this endeavor, rather than putting that effort into say attacking the Capitol for instance, or shifting to attacking the less numerous but more defensible cities the farmers bring their harvest too.

Each farm could only grow a fraction of what a roving army might need to survive further making each individually less tempting targets and their conspicuous lack of wealth would discourage even bandits compared to easier pickings of towns or picking off the caravan of goods being moved to and from the cities.

Coupled with the Guild playing exterminator picking off what threats are in the area and most farms are likely too unimportant, too out of the way and, if only indirectly thanks to the Guild, just a little too well protected to be worth the bother. Exceptions happen of course. The occasional Goblin horde pops out of the shadows or other worse beastie may come crashing down over the farmers' head but its infrequent enough it becomes something you hear about rather than expect to experience. Something compounded by the fact that when it does happen there are so few survivors there is less incentive to learn and adapt.

I would also suspect that, being as the farmers inhabit an area where the king's rule and armies seem weak, it's quite possible the ruling authority prefers its peasantry to be weaker and less capable of resisting their rule as well as the local Goblin horde. With losing the occasional farmstead more acceptable than the risk of a bunch of peasant-barons suddenly declaring their independence while the King's armies are engaged with the Demon Lord's.

We know farms aren't small or isolated, the guild was able to send an army of adventurers to (Cowgirls?) farm on notice that was minutes, hours at the outside.

We also see that farms aren't small, non-juicy targets. Scroll back up to my image of that farmhouse. It's two stories tall, would nearly qualify as a USA McMansion for size, and is brilliantly lit.

What we see of the guild indicates they're barely keeping up with monster attacks. Further, they can't be keeping the bandits "culled" because before attacking some farmer, said person wasn't a bandit. Unless the adventurers are somehow going full minority report, there must be at least as many bandit attacks as there are bandits, probably several times more, so if they're that well known, there's a crapload of banditry going on.

The guild board is covered in notices, and we see (I count 19 in this frame alone) lots of people in full gear looking for their day's adventuring work. People should not be spending the time to wrap themselves in a full-plate harness unless they're expecting some action. We see the adventurers chatting with each other about large numbers of various monsters all hitting simultaneously. Remember, this is a tiny, sleepy rural town. It still has this much action going on.

Spoiler: The Guild

Guild Girl gets three goblin quests in a single afternoon. This is, again, tiny lazy rural town but it still has three goblin raids a day. We also see this isn't goblins hitting a single isolated hut, the goblins are raiding and burning entire villages. There are so many goblin attacks that Guild Girl can't fill them all and is reduced to begging adventurers to take them, while being refused by everybody but Goblin Slayer. It is impossible that these monster attacks are rare and unusual, this is all happening in the space of a single afternoon.

Spoiler: Guild Girl

The third page is a few minutes later, after a silver rank comes in boasting he just killed 20 brigands.

On the subject of small, non-juicy targets, farms are not isolated and distant, we see clusters of large homes together. Also, take a gander at how they transport food. It's utterly ludicrous to think that farms could be distant, isolated, and tiny and also somehow able to ship their goods to town via a petite girl pulling them in a handcart. That system would require a either near-industrial era logistics or else something like the Mediterranean Sea and Rome's immense grain shipping operations, neither of which are present.

Spoiler: Farms

You're also sorta arguing yourself into contradictory positions here, you were going with "Bandits are extremely common" in your first paragraph but then think the King, who isn't capable of keeping large groups of bandits from forming, is simultaneously strong enough to keep peasants from fortifying their houses and is somehow forcing these peasants to put huge glass windows in. You can't have it both ways, if the King's afraid of his farmers organizing he should be downright terrified and throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the large organized bandit gangs defying his laws and rule. If he's not capable of keeping the brigands down he also shouldn't be capable of telling the peasants they can't put up a sturdier fence and avoid windows at ground level.

 

[Husky_Khan]

For the Manga to be truly realistic it should be the Humans invading the ancestral lands of the indigenous Goblin-folk, raiding, killing, pillaging and raping (this will necessitate a high proportion of degenerate Goblin waifus) at the behest of Elven elitists and Dwarven financial interests (to take over Goblin mines). And instead of Goblin Slaying, it would be a Goblin engaging in Primate slaying and talking about how we shouldn't mix with these colonizers.

Then you can have a dialogues between the Humans and the Primate Slayer where some unrepentant Human (or maybe a Dwarf tbh) after the Goblins destroy his illegal mining camp, can have an exchange like below:

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

We know farms aren't small or isolated, the guild was able to send an army of adventurers to (Cowgirls?) farm on notice that was minutes, hours at the outside.

We also see that farms aren't small, non-juicy targets. Scroll back up to my image of that farmhouse. It's two stories tall, would nearly qualify as a USA McMansion for size, and is brilliantly lit.

What we see of the guild indicates they're barely keeping up with monster attacks. Further, they can't be keeping the bandits "culled" because before attacking some farmer, said person wasn't a bandit. Unless the adventurers are somehow going full minority report, there must be at least as many bandit attacks as there are bandits, probably several times more, so if they're that well known, there's a crapload of banditry going on.

The guild board is covered in notices, and we see (I count 19 in this frame alone) lots of people in full gear looking for their day's adventuring work. People should not be spending the time to wrap themselves in a full-plate harness unless they're expecting some action. We see the adventurers chatting with each other about large numbers of various monsters all hitting simultaneously. Remember, this is a tiny, sleepy rural town. It still has this much action going on.

Shrug. I'd consider Cowgirl's farm to be small and isolate since it appears to be a solitary farmstead and quite possibly the only farm between them and the town. It is within a day's travel from the town, much less so considering GS could go there and convince the Adventurers to help save the farm, but like I mentioned travel time is always wonky in these kind of Fantasy settings. Most writers take our modern, casual travel for granted and transplant it onto their worlds even if it otherwise wouldn't make sense.

As I alluded to earlier the small, rural guild hall services an area wide enough to contain no less than three goblin nests which if each is going to need something approaching a ton of food daily, with variance depending on how large each nest is, pretty much necessitates they not be close to each other, and we know the river village nest and the old fortress from episode 2 are far enough apart GS couldn't destroy both during the same mission. So the guild hall appears to cover a wide area and may in fact be a central hub for reports for the country side. Which may be overstating the "action" going on in the world to an extent. And thus 19 quests which can range from killing rats to bandits to anything else isn't that overwhelming.

Also guys like Spear Guy seem to spend 90% of their time at the Guild avoiding getting into fights so the 24-hour armor, outside of out of universe reasons, seems to be as much for the prestige of being adventurers as need.

As well as the issue that not every quest/threat is going to be directed at the farms and its indeed a plot point things like fighting banditry pay better because they threaten more important people. More to the point with the "easy money" of being an adventurer or the steady pay of being in the King's army fighting the seemingly omni-present threat of the Demon Lord there is likely less pressure to turn to banditry and some incentive not too. After all why attack a farmer and get nothing for your trouble but a bullseye on your back when you can become an Adventurer and be paid handsomely for brutally murdering a bridge troll or clearing out an mine of monsters.

On the subject of small, non-juicy targets, farms are not isolated and distant, we see clusters of large homes together. Also, take a gander at how they transport food. It's utterly ludicrous to think that farms could be distant, isolated, and tiny and also somehow able to ship their goods to town via a petite girl pulling them in a handcart. That system would require a either near-industrial era logistics or else something like the Mediterranean Sea and Rome's immense grain shipping operations, neither of which are present.

Isn't that GS village? I didn't realize that was supposed to be a farm as well. I assumed the fact Cowgirl had to travel to visit her Uncle suggested it wasn't a farmstead like his was through I suppose they were supposed to be farmers while he was the cow rauncher.

As for Cow Girl and the feasibility of her pulling a handcart Goblin Slayer is an anime. Cow Girl likely is stronger than most men, at least when it would be funny, so I don't find it that incredulous within that context. Coupled with the fuzzy distances of fantasy in general.

you're also sorta arguing yourself into contradictory positions here, you were going with "Bandits are extremely common" in your first paragraph but then think the King, who isn't capable of keeping large groups of bandits from forming, is simultaneously strong enough to keep peasants from fortifying their houses and is somehow forcing these peasants to put huge glass windows in.

Well for starters I never said "bandits are extremely common" and in fact argued something to the affect of the inverse. That it's extremely profitable to kill bandits and thus their population, while certainly never ending, is also being curtailed. With those that do exist likely being interested in more profitable targets than simple farmers who likely offer a poor risk vs reward.

But yes, I think its a possibility that farmers who started making it seem they were preparing for a siege might get a knock at the door from the local Lord and a half dozen Adventurers explaining how this tith of land has been transferred to a different nameless peasant and they can either leave quietly or be arrested.

You can't have it both ways, if the King's afraid of his farmers organizing he should be downright terrified and throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the large organized bandit gangs defying his laws and rule. If he's not capable of keeping the brigands down he also shouldn't be capable of telling the peasants they can't put up a sturdier fence and avoid windows at ground level.

Well, like I said, its because he's throwing all his resources at the bandits, and wider chaotic forces, that he likely can't afford to fight a pointless war against his own peasantry. So I view it more as two complimentary positions rather than either/or.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Shrug. I'd consider Cowgirl's farm to be small and isolate since it appears to be a solitary farmstead and quite possibly the only farm between them and the town. It is within a day's travel from the town, much less so considering GS could go there and convince the Adventurers to help save the farm, but like I mentioned travel time is always wonky in these kind of Fantasy settings. Most writers take our modern, casual travel for granted and transplant it onto their worlds even if it otherwise wouldn't make sense.

If we take the Manga chapter 3 we have a general idea though. Goblin slayer gets up (It's not dark outside so this must be at or near sunrise at the earliest) and checks for signs of goblin scouts near the farm. Then he eats breakfast with the host family. Afterward he walks to the village where the guild headquarters is accompanied by Cowgirl and her handcart. Before he gets there, there have already been three different old men who submitted goblin quests to the guild. He then takes a goblin extermination quest, finishes it, and returns home in time for supper and gets a night's rest before starting over the next day. The hosts specifically mention he checks for goblin scouts every morning so he's not commonly gone for days on end, this is his regular routine.

Consequently, the farm is close enough to travel to and from it daily, on foot with a handcart, with enough time for Goblin Slayer to get a job, track down and murder a hundred goblins, and walk back to get paid in between. It can't really be more than five miles, ten at the most extreme. At ten miles, Goblin Slayer's spending five hours a day just walking to and from Cowgirl's farm and the Guild, how many hours are left for him to get his goblin mission, walk to the nest, kill all the goblins, and walk back? I find it unlikely that the Goblin nests are a ten-minute stroll away from the guild hall. So it's much more likely that we're talking a mile or two.

As I alluded to earlier the small, rural guild hall services an area wide enough to contain no less than three goblin nests which if each is going to need something approaching a ton of food daily, with variance depending on how large each nest is, pretty much necessitates they not be close to each other, and we know the river village nest and the old fortress from episode 2 are far enough apart GS couldn't destroy both during the same mission. So the guild hall appears to cover a wide area and may in fact be a central hub for reports for the country side. Which may be overstating the "action" going on in the world to an extent. And thus 19 quests which can range from killing rats to bandits to anything else isn't that overwhelming.

Also guys like Spear Guy seem to spend 90% of their time at the Guild avoiding getting into fights so the 24-hour armor, outside of out of universe reasons, seems to be as much for the prestige of being adventurers as need.

As well as the issue that not every quest/threat is going to be directed at the farms and its indeed a plot point things like fighting banditry pay better because they threaten more important people. More to the point with the "easy money" of being an adventurer or the steady pay of being in the King's army fighting the seemingly omni-present threat of the Demon Lord there is likely less pressure to turn to banditry and some incentive not too. After all why attack a farmer and get nothing for your trouble but a bullseye on your back when you can become an Adventurer and be paid handsomely for brutally murdering a bridge troll or clearing out an mine of monsters.

The Demon Lord has been dead for years at the start of Goblin Slayer. He was killed two years before the first episode, by Sword Maiden, then killed again by Hero when the demon generals attempted a revival.

Spearman is explicitly stated to be the strongest warrior they have, he can't possibly only be sitting around drinking. Again, his introduction has him noting that he just finished a bandit extermination quest and killed 20 brigands, he's actually doing quests.

On the subject of not every attack being directed at farms, while this is true let's do a little math. This can't really be a vast hub because we've seen their transport system, the distance they might send messages by walking or riding carts precludes multi-hundred-mile mission radii, and again, Goblin Slayer is able to walk from farm to guild to goblin nest to guild to farm every single day.

We'll assume that only goblins attack farms and nobody else. All the brigands and demons and manticores and the like just go off and have tea parties or whatever. We know there were three goblin quests at the guild in one day early enough that Goblin Slayer hadn't gotten there to do his daily extermination yet. We see at least two more goblin quests show up after that. At least one is a raid large enough to threaten an entire village, not every attack is totally spelled out. The village-threatening raid also states goblins are burning it down.

Let's presume that's average. So five goblin raids a day (this is actually probably a low estimate since this is still the early part of the day), and least one raid will wipe out a whole village (We see other village-wiping raids so this can't be uncommon). That's over 1800 goblin attacks a year and over 350 villages burned down a year. Again, this is in walking distance. Assuming an overland speed of 4 miles an hour, and presuming people don't walk more than ten hours a day, this would give us a radius of 20 miles, about 1256 square miles of land. In reality, most land isn't suited to cultivation in that manner, we see a lot of travel through dense forests and the like. A radius of only a few miles is more likely because, again, Goblin Slayer is able to walk to and from the farm to the guild with enough time to also walk to and from a goblin nest as well, every single day.

Just how many farms and villages are there in walking distance of this guild? Let's assume there's a village or farm per square mile, somehow. This is crazily dense considering how often we see them taking strolls through uncultivated lands, forests, and other unused areas. We should be looking at more like a quarter of this at best.

This yields a general idea that most people are attacked by goblins about every nine months. In a logical world, with this frequency of attacks, there's only going to be fortified buildings and armed compounds because nothing that isn't a fortress can possibly survive more than a year or two before being destroyed. And remember, we're just using those small number of goblin attacks, not the full brunt. If we presume only half of your suggested 19 quests a day, the number of attacks per year is close to double this rate. If we also assume a more reasonable placement of villages, most places are being hit by goblins every couple of months, or by an assortment of monsters every couple of weeks.

Isn't that GS village? I didn't realize that was supposed to be a farm as well. I assumed the fact Cowgirl had to travel to visit her Uncle suggested it wasn't a farmstead like his was through I suppose they were supposed to be farmers while he was the cow rauncher.

As for Cow Girl and the feasibility of her pulling a handcart Goblin Slayer is an anime. Cow Girl likely is stronger than most men, at least when it would be funny, so I don't find it that incredulous within that context. Coupled with the fuzzy distances of fantasy in general.

The cart does not appear to be massive nor is it heavily loaded. I mean, maybe if she's hauling sacks of Uranium instead of food, but the volume doesn't support the idea that she's using superstrength to haul vast quantities of farm-produced goods in her hand cart. As far as what she's hauling, it pretty much has to be a narrow category of foods. If she were actually ranching she'd be herding animals and having them walk themselves to the butcher rather than butchering them herself and then hauling meat that's rapidly rotting in the sun in her cart. It's not leather because, again, she'd have the animals transport themselves. There's no mill in the village so textiles are exceedingly unlikely, those would come from town to a village. The packages are tied and wrapped in some kind of cloth so they aren't a liquid like wine or semisolid like butter that would need to be transported in barrels or casks, nor is it something like firewood that wouldn't be wrapped at all. Her small village would not be manufacturing finished goods and hauling them to a town, it works the other way around with the crafters and artisans being in larger towns and exporting to smaller ones. By process of elimination, she's almost certainly hauling either grain or vegetables, ergo it must be a farm.

Fuzzy distance is a bandaid that can't really cover it when the entire point of discussion is "What if things actually made sense instead of being so fuzzy?"

Well for starters I never said "bandits are extremely common" and in fact argued something to the affect of the inverse. That it's extremely profitable to kill bandits and thus their population, while certainly never ending, is also being curtailed. With those that do exist likely being interested in more profitable targets than simple farmers who likely offer a poor risk vs reward.

But yes, I think its a possibility that farmers who started making it seem they were preparing for a siege might get a knock at the door from the local Lord and a half dozen Adventurers explaining how this tith of land has been transferred to a different nameless peasant and they can either leave quietly or be arrested.

Well, like I said, its because he's throwing all his resources at the bandits, and wider chaotic forces, that he likely can't afford to fight a pointless war against his own peasantry. So I view it more as two complimentary positions rather than either/or.

You can't have it both ways. If bandits are uncommon they can't be drawing all that manpower away from other jobs (plus the dude in the guild saying he killed 20 brigands just that morning. This might not be an absolute average but it wasn't drawing massive awe so it couldn't have been that unusual either). It makes no sense that the King is unable to spare anybody for these tens of thousands of annual goblin hunts and has his entire army hunting bandits but also can hire a dozen adventurers to go hassle some farmer for not having windows on their ground floor after his house was repeatedly attacked by goblins. Also recall, you're trying to use this idea to justify the notion that farms are extremely small, widely separated, and survive by obscurity so how does the King even know these farms exist, much less have time to go individually hassle thousands and thousands of tiny spreads hidden all over creation?

This is beyond the fact that at the ludicrous rate of goblin attack we see, the King won't be showing up with a dozen adventurers to hassle a farmer for building a secure home, because anybody without a bastle house surrounded by spikes, a minefield, and razor wire is going to be dead within a few months anyway.

Seriously, where's the king even getting his replacement peasants from? "Hail young lad, I'm sending you and your family off to own your own farm! The last 85 peasants we sent there were all murdered and their wives and daughters raped by goblins in less than a month except for the last guy, he put up a solid fence to protect the property and I didn't like that so I'm evicting him and sending you, your wife, and your young daughter to live there with no protections whatsoever! Aren't I generous?"

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

Fuzzy distance is a bandaid that can't really cover it when the entire point of discussion is "What if things actually made sense instead of being so fuzzy?"

Except the universe is based around that fuzzy distance. So if that distances traveled are larger because of that fuzzy logic then that has to be accounted for. At the moment your position is GS could only realisticly walk X miles per day and therefore there must be Y goblins per mile. Which I'm not sure is the intention the author was going for.

Or, to put things more simply, the number of goblin/monster quests is as unrealistic based upon how the world is presented as the fuzzy logic distance traveled. That a 'realistic" Goblin Slayer would just as likely see GS either a nomadic traveler going where the trouble is or a cow farmer who moonlights as an Adventurer the odd month someone reports a Goblin Nest.

The cart does not appear to be massive nor is it heavily loaded. I mean, maybe if she's hauling sacks of Uranium instead of food, but the volume doesn't support the idea that she's using superstrength to haul vast quantities of farm-produced goods in her hand cart. As far as what she's hauling, it pretty much has to be a narrow category of foods.

Cowgirl's strength was more about the feasibility of her pulling a cart any notable distance, not that her cargo was Uranium dense. For the record it should be cheese, GS gives one to Lizard Priest when they go on their first adventure together.

The Demon Lord has been dead for years at the start of Goblin Slayer. He was killed two years before the first episode, by Sword Maiden, then killed again by Hero when the demon generals attempted a revival.

If you say so. I could have sworn the anime changed it so he was revived and then killed by Hero mid-way through the season but I could be misremembering. The point remains there's the threat of this chaotic army periodically rising back up to destroy the races of Order.

Spearman is explicitly stated to be the strongest warrior they have, he can't possibly only be sitting around drinking. Again, his introduction has him noting that he just finished a bandit extermination quest and killed 20 brigands, he's actually doing quests.

Only sitting around and drink? Of course not. But he does spend an inordinate amount of time doing that and he's always shown in his armor. Its clearly not because he expects to fight or fears he is in mortal danger ect.

You can't have it both ways. If bandits are uncommon they can't be drawing all that manpower away from other jobs (plus the dude in the guild saying he killed 20 brigands just that morning.

Okay, I feel banditry is not a pressing issue for Goblin Slayer peasants due in part that every Adventurer who's able likely sees them as easy money and most bandits not viewing peasants as worth the trouble/effort in part due to the aforementioned risk.

I do assume the King makes some effort to combat banditry beyond just relying on adventurers and there presumably is some army engaged with fighting the Demon Lord's army with is tying up Imperial resources and thus allowing the peasants on the frontier to arm and fortify themselves when their already on the edges of your control and seemingly operate without any lord or noble oversight is likely not desirable.

 

[Crom's Black Blade]

I suppose this is going to be more of a general world building and my own personal rumination post. My goal is to look at the manga/anime Goblin Slayer and try to work out a semi-"realistic" way for the world to work as presented. And up front I want to admit that Goblin Slayer, like most fictional worlds, is more focused on presenting a general "image" and once you peer past the hood things quickly become a mess of contradictory assumptions the author wove to create the setting they wanted.

I fully agree with Bear Ribs take that the more probable outcome of an "easy adventurer world" is that it would look more like an apocalypse with battle scarred farmers huddled in Bastle Houses with militia watching a sentries from behind fences and thorn bushes and the king's army making patrols further out for Goblin, zombie, Troll encounters.

But for me the fun has always been acknowledging the contradictions but trying to work out a way that makes sense, for a relative use of that word, anyway. With that out of the way I suppose I should get started and my apologizes if this is even more rambling than my usual posts.

The Goblin Threat

The meat and potatoes of this discussion. Just how dangerous are Goblins and how frequent are their raids. Something the anime gives us competing ideas about. On one hand on a single day the Guild Hall, as Bear Ribs so elegantly observed, got three separate quests for Goblins before he'd even arrived for his daily check with two more being mentioned later. And he's quite right this is alarmingly high if these are all occurring within a few miles radius of the Guild Hall. If that scale was representative of all Goblin attacks people would be up neck deep in the critters. Yet people act like the exact opposite and we're explicitly told most people only experience with Goblins is frequently chasing off the odd day wanderer.

Now it's possible the Guild Hall example isn't representative. Earlier in the episode Goblin Slayer makes the comment he's had a lot of work lately in response to his rent payment being heavier than normal and later makes a comment about their being an unusual amount of Goblins. Which suggests Goblin infestation is on an uptick possibly connected to the wider war between the Races of Order and Chaos...or just some Gods being dicks with their tabletop game and finding GS of interest.

Further not all Goblin quests are of the same severity. The old man who posts a quest in episode 2 states

Please, you gotta help me.

Those goblin critters
came to my village.

If somethin’ don’t happen,
they’ll eat my cows

an’ burn my fields to ashes!

From the sound of it the Goblins didn't attack the man's village, otherwise his worry the goblins would eat his cows and burn his fields sound kind of callous, so much that he's found tracks that Goblins came to or near his village, much like GS searches for each day, and now he's afraid not so much for his life persay as his livelihood. Making the Goblins sound more like a pestilence who will destroy/devour your stock and harvest rather than a village razing doom.

This is also the man who acts as if Goblin rape is more a rumor gossiped about than a daily fact of life.

Later Guild Girl gives GS the three Goblin quests she has which would no doubt include the old man's quest from earlier in the day. The details we're given is that one is a "swarm in the western river village", possibly the old man's from earlier, a second is "a small nest in the southern forest" and the third is "an old mountain fort that's been claimed by the goblins". This last one we're told has kidnapped at least one girl and a previous adventurer has already failed to save her. Which may indicate neither of the previous two quests involved actual raids and kidnapped girls.

Further it suggests that even "new" quests at the Guild Hall aren't really that new. Someone has already taken the quest, died and been gone long enough for people to realize he isn't coming back. We might surmise the original quest-giver first posted this quest at a smaller, more rural Guild Hall and when that failed to get traction he then hoofed it to the town in hopes of reaching a broader range of Adventurers.

Further the quest themselves seem to spread across a very diverse topography with the mountain region in particular almost certainly a fair distance away across difficult terrain from either the Guild Hall or Cowgirl's farm.

Lastly the fact the mountain fortress quest was given by the brother of the kidnapped girl likely indicates that this wasn't a full on village destroy attack otherwise it would be doubtful anyone would be around to post a quest or at the very least Guild Girl would have brought it up when mentioning there has been a "few casualties".

Taken all together we might conclude that your typical Goblin quest is a relatively preemptive affair with farmers posting bounties in hopes of preventing loss and destruction. Either discovering tracks near their villages or discovering where a nest of Goblins have made their home and wanting the fantasy equivalent of the Orkin Man to come take care of it. With a smaller subset of those being "come save the girl" or "avenge my destroyed village" types.

Transcript of dialogue taken from here: Goblin Slayer: Season 1, Episode 2 script | Subs like Script

The Bandit Problem

Of course Goblins are just one threat, possibly even a minor one, compared to the cutthroats, trolls, Ogres, Dragons and slimes which we know inhabit the Goblin Slayer universe. So even if Goblins aren't marauding and destroying villages left and right, why hasn't everything else stomped the poor farmers flat?

To answer this does force us to move more firmly into straight up speculation since anime especially focuses almost exclusively on the menace of Goblins with references to almost everything else far from the focus.

We do know that unlike Goblins there are no shortage of volunteers for taking on the likes of Dragons and other fierce foes either for the monetary gain they promise or the experience and prestige which will allow Adventurer rank up in the Guild. With most quests seemingly being completed within a 24-hour cycle based on how the rush to find new quests seems a daily ritual. So a Dragon that has taken roost within the area watched over by the Guild Hall will likely be dead within the week limiting how much trouble it can cause.

I would submit that quite unintentional and almost accidental the King, Lords or Merchants who are offering the large rewards to protect their own interests from the bigger, more threatening monsters are inadvertently shielding the lesser folk. Both in the sense that the 20 bandits Spearman defeats to protect a merchant can no longer go on to terrorize villagers but also creates an unfavorable risk versus reward. That attacking a small, poor village gives you little for your time and trouble while ensuring every Adventurer who needs a paycheck that week will come gunning for you.

Which isn't to say villages aren't ever razed, they almost certainly are. Your are going to have that Ogre that is hungry and isn't thinking of anything past eating your cows or the bandit troop who think your daughters would make fine play toys for the company and damn the consequences. It is just these happen irregularly enough and are spread out wide enough its a more ignorable problem.

Farm Organization

Farms in Goblin Slayer, whether singular homesteads like Cowgirl's farm or villages like GS's home, seem oddly dispersed and decentralized with much of the country side they occupy being lightly cultivated in terms of civilization and are seemingly surrounded in all directions by verdant, almost untouched wilderness and old, long abandon forts. This I speculate isn't accidental but a deliberate choice on the part of the ruling class to spread the risk relatively wide and far.

The power scale of the Demon Lord's army means that it would be impracticable to try and fortify a farm against them. Not only is a Ogre-Mage tall enough that the windows on a Bastle Houses are about eye-level he's likely strong enough to smash through the wall. Short of turning each farm into its own fortress-city any defenses would likely be a waste of time and trouble. Something the human realm, showing signs of being resource strained, can ill-afford. It also has the problem that while it likely won't stop a dedicated attack from the forces of Chaos such defenses would be very effective against the Crown requiring heavy resources to overcome. So there are certainly incentives not to encourage the peasants to fortify.

The Guild of Adventurers provide some protection of course but it isn't absolute and is firmly outside of any single authority's control. Due to its nature you could have the Guild fixating on the Dragon that week hoping to "level up" and ignoring the bandits setting farms ablaze. So instead the human realm spreads its farms out making each one less individually valuable and making each one less critical should it be attack reducing how tempting a target they are.

A deliberately part of this is the lack of any central authority, Regent or noble to these farms but rather their just vassals working their little plot of land out in the woodlands. There's simply no one there important enough to attack, no wealth to attract thieves or bandits ect.

Broadly speaking I'm imagining a spokewheel design with a town at its center as a hub of trade and a widening spiral of dotted farms expanding out from it in ever greater lengths. For more perishable products, like Cowgirl's cheese, are situated within a day's travel to the town while others, like GS village, are spaced much further out where travel to the town is infrequent. After all Cowgirl was excited to visit her Uncle's farm as a child partly because she was going to get to visit the town.

We know both the human realm and the Elves make use of animal drawn wagons, Cowgirl's uncle even uses one in the flashback, so its likely not every farm relies on busty anime girl power to move their goods. With the idea being each farm will independently send its wares to town to be sold which in turn will be centralized and transported from there to where its needed. The towns would also be the ideal place for the textile mills and other process-involved industry for turning raw material into sellable product.

The end result of all this is that while the overall system is inefficient requiring much more effort to move and ship goods its more resilient to attack, which being a kingdom at war likely is the primary factor, while the farm less appealing targets for all parties involved except Goblins who require human females to breed.