HOBGOBLIN BY JOHN COYNE, 1981
HOBGOBLIN BY JOHN COYNE, 1981
"I saw in D&D & the whole idea of such games, a way to move my story telling in a new direction. What if characters in a fantasy game became characters in real life? That idea intrigued me & to understand this whole world, I began to play the game so I could write Hobgoblin." - John Coyne
Part of my research for producing LowLife, a Dungeon Degenerates Roleplaying Game has been to dip back into the early days. Back when the broader public was getting an idea of what these games were & had something to say about it.
John Coyne is an American writer who was most known for horror when he started. Hobgoblin is Coyne’s fourth book. Hobgoblin feels more like a teen drama than a horror novel, it has been retroactively categorized as a “Problem Novel” treating Roleplaying as an indicator of mental problems.
I’m of the school that says that roleplaying does attract people that want to live a life of adventure & agency & are imaginative. Since most of the games are fantasy themed, players are often engaged in some escapism.
My biggest interest in roleplaying intersected with me being 10-15 years old. These same years marked my transition from childhood to being a young adult. Once I was thoroughly invested in Punk, I started to understand that I could choose the life I wanted.
People engage in different things for different reasons. The important thing about parental & societal responsibility is knowing that they don’t know & not basing action on assumptions that are frequently inflamed by media of various kinds.
It is hard for the parents of teenagers to deal with the push/pull of their children trying out emotional & social boundaries as they grow up. The child who used to test boundaries by wandering off in the park or grocery store is trying out other things that fall into the adult world.
In addition, the teen says they just want to be left alone. I’m sympathetic to both parties. I have been parenting teenagers for a while now, however I remember clearly what it was like being a teenager. I pushed as many boundaries as I could at that age.
Back to Hobgoblin. The majority of this novel followed a rich kid with a nice car who was living in a castle. I had no sympathy for him. Football players bullied him at his school, but again I didn’t care & even found myself rooting for the bullies.
This kid plays the game Hobgoblin, which is based on Irish mythology. Reality starts to blur as he takes on the identity of the legendary Irish hero Brian Borù & monsters from the game start to appear in the countryside surrounding the castle.
I already had contempt for this character, he just felt like a loser. I try to have empathy for everyone, but I just couldn’t like this kid. I frequently felt tricked by this book which had a cool cover & name, but read like a soap opera about a totally unsympathetic character who I wanted to read bad things happening to.
I would have liked the book more if it was a constant stream of punishing things happening to the main character. Also, Celtic Mythology reminds me of Wiccans which brings back my intense feelings of alienation as a young diabolist. How I felt ostracized by boring, nerdy & societal people that practice white magic.