Goolock is a portmanteau of the acronym G.O.O. for Great Old One and the contraction of Warlock to lock.
Page 109 of the Player’s Handbook introduces The Great Old One as an otherworldly patron for Warlocks. Cthulhu is mentioned along with beings like That Which Lurks, Dendar the Night Serpent and Zargon.
Great Old Ones are not mentioned again in the core Dungeons & Dragon rules and don’t seem to fit with the cosmology of the Planes used by settings like The Forgotten Realms. However, third parties like Petersen Games have built up extensive libraries of sourcebooks that merge H.P. Lovecraft, the creator of the Old Ones, into D&D.
The first level spells a Warlock with The Great Old One pack has access to are Dissonant Whispers and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter.
Dissonant Whispers can cause target creatures to take psychic damage and flee from you if they fail a Will save. Tasha’s Hideous Laughter is a spell which makes everything hilariously funny for the target creature that fails a Wisdom save so much so that they become prone.
Wizards of the Coast’s most recently announced D&D book is Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, named after the Tasha of the spell, and it is expected to have additional rules for psychics/psionics in D&D and group Patrons.
A Goolock differs from a Coffeelock in fan naming conventions simply because Goolock is a contraction while Coffeelock is an amalgamation.
Creative Commons credit; Masked Warlock by Ramirez de Souza.
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