Anyone mind giving me some advice? I'm trying to be creative instead of derivative...

Anyone mind giving me some advice? I'm trying to be creative instead of derivative, but I'm having trouble making my own goblins that aren't just not!Warcraft ones.

I'm trying to make a goblin/dwarf centric campaign, and the gobs are sort of a counterpart to dwarves. They dwell in mountains, are craftsmen/miners as well (specializing more in steampunk/industrial stuff than the dwarves - dwarves are mostly enchanters, blacksmiths and armorers; gobs make bombs, firearms, and automatons, among other things), and have developed a culture revolving around selfishness and greed (unlike the dwarves, which tend to believe in sharing and advancing their strength as a united race).

The problem is, I'm having trouble finding ways to make the gobs unique, and not just generic tinker/trade gobs like the WoW ones, while still keeping them distinctly goblins. I've done an ok job of making the dwarves my own thing - they don't heavily drink, have a shamanistic culture, focus on martial and magical strength equally, and have xenophobic tendencies (a little like Drow lite, but some dwarf factions are willing to cooperate with other races). But at the moment... the gobs are pretty much Warcraft ones, and I'm having trouble making them their own separate thing.

So basically, I want some ideas about how I could make them their own thing, be that through culture, behavior, or racial history. I don't want anyone to write for me or anything - I just want advice and ideas - so while you can be specific if you want, I'd prefer vague-ish or broad ideas that I can interpret my own way and then run with.

Sorry if I seem stupid or anything because of this - I'm new to Veeky Forums, and tabletop gaming in general, although I've been making my own stories since I was a kid.

> I'm having trouble finding ways to make the gobs unique, and not just generic tinker/trade gobs like the WoW ones,

If this is how bad you are, I'm sorry, but you may very well be beyond help.

If your go-to is the worst possible iteration, and you can't shake that iteration by any effort on your own part, you may very well be doomed to shit taste.

Make them hyper capitalist libertarians to rub contrary to the monarchist socialism of the dwarves. The free market is the ultimate arbitrator of everything. Non goblins are not people and therefore not covered under the NAP.

Shoddy/faulty goods? Buyer beware, the market will push out people who sell things that aren't quality. Eventually. Probably.

Slavery? Only non goblins. Or goblins who have lost their citizenship by entering negative market value. Or have sold their liberty to another goblin for a period of indenture.

Everything is run by guilds. Guilds collect dues to enforce laws. Laws can vary wildly. Disputes between guilds go to council meetings. Votes are bought and sold regularly.

So, make them Ferengi, basically.

>gobs make bombs, firearms, and automatons, among other things), and have developed a culture revolving around selfishness and greed.

You're kind of going about it the wrong way around. You're starting out with an already fairly specific picture of where you want to end up, and then try to sort of make everything else fit around it.

Instead, start with the basics. The gobbos live underground in mountains. Why do they do that? You can't farm for shit there and everything's dark, so they must have a reason for being there. Perhaps it's a physiological reason (e.g. aversion to light), or a geographical feature (e.g. they're stuck in an extremely cold environment and underground is the only place with non-freezing temperatures), or there's something on the outside keeping them in (e.g. very common predators with a penchant for green meat).

You want them to develop a rather selfish culture. How did that come about? Groups under severe outside threat usually have to cooperate or perish, so chances are that's not it. So they're probably reasonably secure where they are. Perhaps there's an outside factor that puts a hard limit on their available resources or maximum population size. Maybe the geometry of their underground living space doesn't lend itself to large population centres, so they're living in insular little enclaves, or are even semi-nomadic.

You want them to be a fairly high-tech counterpart to the dwarves. This might just pose the biggest conflict. Explosives aren't difficult, just plop down a big old supply of sulphur and salpeter (or a fantasy analogue) right where they live. Higher tech, however, is difficult. That kind of thing relies upon communications and exchange, not to mention that it requires a solid industrial base and at least reasonable security. That's rather contradictory to their supposed selfishnes, so there must be a factor that forces them to cooperate at least in the mid-term. Perhaps a war, or an internal revolution.

>worst possible iteration

All of my kekels. There are FAR worse out there, even if Blizzard is usually shit.

They weren't actually my go-to. I thought I was combining usual smart, tinker race tropes with usual goblin features, but upon reviewing it, I realized that they were far more similar to Warcraft ones than I intended. I wanted them to be a counter to my dwarves, which I made first. I didn't really want Blizzard gobs - that's the whole reason I'm trying to change them.

>I want steampunk, tinker goblins
>lol y I no escape warcraft?
Because your premise is stupid.

Want goblins that are fun and interesting, again? Try using D&D goblins. Savage, ferocious cannibals that live to kill and eat everything, including each other. They swarm in hordes and own only what they have plundered. They are a mindless mass of hungry teeth and sharp knives. They live in caves because they eat, sleep and hide, and killing so many dwarves has given them some nice dwarf-caves to live in. They are evil, wretched things that may be genocided with a clear conscience.

>Want goblins that are fun and interesting, again? Try using D&D goblins. Savage, ferocious cannibals that live to kill and eat everything

That's approximately the opposite of interesting. Not necessarily bad, depending on the genre, but extremely not interesting.

It's derivative to use pre-existing fantasy races in the first place.

>A writhing horde you must explore caverns and root out. Living in ruins they litter with traps, treasure strewn about the dark corners. Larder-slaves penned up to be freed and interacted with. Relics of the civilization that came before still tucked away in the deepest reaches.

You want a dwarf-centric campaign and think "the main enemy fits perfectly in a massive dungeon-crawl" is dull?

We obviously have different interpretations of "fun." Mine is better than yours.

I'm not the OP. Yes, a faceless enemy race like that can well be a tool for good gameplay. But the race taken in and of itself is rather uninteresting. You know, in the same way that a simple rock can make a pretty good weapon in the right situation, but at the end of the day it's still a dull uninteresting object that you never have a reason to give a second thought about.

So, make them Jews, basically.

>We obviously have different interpretations of "fun." Mine is better than yours.
At this point anyone who would keep arguing with you has the IQ of a ladybug.

It's also important to mention that a society that runs entirely based around self interest is a bit self destructive.

You own the rights to some land, and know there are diamonds there. Mining it would poison the water supply for everyone down stream, and is likely to cause a cave-in somewhere else. But that's not your problem. Your problem is that there are currently diamonds sitting in the rocks that aren't making you money. So buy some slaves from a debt collector, and some mining equipment. You're going to be fucking rich and everyone else can go fuck themselves.

>interesting
Sure: if you want to define "interesting" as "fanfic wanking to your own design" then I guess that's dull.

But if you're talking about designing a game and that is your criteria for what makes the game interesting then guess what? Your game sucks ass.

Because what makes games interesting and fun is that people find playing them to be interesting and fun. And a game about rocks is interesting and fun based on the rules and scenarios for the game--not on whether or not there's a lot of cheesecake art drawn for rocks.

Fuck you, Warcraft goblins are the best goblins have ever been. One of the genuinely great things about Azeroth. They managed to make Goblins greedy and backstabbing without resorting to the tired Jewish stereotypes.

We get it, you won't help OP, you just want replies. Get out.

If that's your view, let's just agree to disagree, because you don't seem like the kind of person who has any opinions I'd care to listen to.

Or, you know, perhaps people just like races that can be interacted with in ways other than
a) murder them
b) get murdered by them

Particularly since nothing in the OP really suggested that the gobbos' role would be purely antagonist cannon fodder.

Helping OP understand the error in what he is doing is helping OP.

He has already let us know he is new to TTRPGs, and is making the same mistake of most new DMs: thinking lore-wank is the key to a good campaign.

When, in reality, it's the exact opposite of how a good campaign is designed. You start with how you want the game to play, then you fill in the details to make it play that way.

You don't start with "how I want my super-special, ultra-unique, fantasy world to be" then try to figure out what the players can do in it.

That's how you make a very shitty game.

>I don't agree with you
>you're a shitty person
You don't seem like a person who should be allowed to have opinions

I don't see any errors in his premise. He's still in the conceptual stage and literally anything he makes from this point on can come out well or terrible. DMing is no science, no matter how this makes some DM's feel, everyone goes about it their own way.

In this case, you're clogging the thread by replying to a question nobody asked and nobody has need answering. You seem to be the only one interested in this discussion because it gives you attention. If you don't like the premise of the question, just don't bother answering the question! Is that so hard? There are dozens of threads here you can reply to.

OP here again
This definitely would work. It'd put more emphasis on the greed and scummy aspects of them, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I actually already had a reason why both races prefer subterranean environments. The dwarves are there for religious purposes - the main deity in their pantheon is a powerful god of earth/rocks/mountains, so they're there for a mix of what they think is being closer to their gods and simply getting resources for their crafts. The mountains also just provide cover from outsiders, which dwarves don't like.

The goblins, on the other hand, are the final remnants of an ancient forest-dwelling race, which were wiped out millennia ago during wars with humans. They fled to the cover of caves and mountains after their woods were destroyed, and slowly evolved to adapt to them - they shrunk and grew rougher skin to make moving around in clefts and mountains easier, and they (as you thought of yourself) adapted to dark conditions, to the point where they can't see well in naturally bright areas, and instinctively just don't like them much. The selfish culture rose out of necessity - to survive in the harsh environments, the once-naive race had to emphasize their own well being above others, and even after they learned to survive, their pragmatism remained, leading to a culture that glorifies personal achievements and success above all else.

The high tech part is, like you said, the most difficult bit. The best idea I can think of right now is that their sharp wits evolved with their other goblinoid traits, and the other and now-evolved goblins forgot their former animosity enough to trade.

Those ARE boring, imo, and very much so. And I already have something like them in the setting (they're just called Savages, and are former humans that have degenerated to the point where they behave like orcs or cavemen).

Then do Tolkien and make them servants of an evil guy or orcs. There is no point or necessity in "making goblins unique." Goblins are goblins. Paizo tried to make "unique" goblins and not only did everyone hate them but they ended up just being regular goblins anyway. Goblins are evil, twisted, crooked, often made by a dark lord or evil power, and they cowardly serve others or viciously go out on their own. That is how goblins always were, always will be.

Oh fuck off! You can't make a greedy fantasy race these days without somebody crying "but muh jews"

>DMing is no science, no matter how this makes some DM's feel, everyone goes about it their own way.
Cooking isn't a science, either. But you'll still just get a mushy pot of shit if you leave everything in a pot on boil for four weeks.

There are straightforward standards and methods to game design. "Build all my lore-wank first" is a straight-up violation of all of them.

>In this case, you're clogging the thread by replying to a question nobody asked and nobody has need answering.
Don't be a little bitch, user. Stop crying that someone has an opinion on a thread that doesn't coincide with your own.

Mate, he was talking about the Ferengi. The Ferengi are, very transparently, Space Jews.

I wish Tolkien could hear that his brand of worldbuilding is, apparently, shit.

>worldbuilding
See the fact that you can't tell the difference between writing a novel and writing an RPG adventure is one of the reasons that your opinions are so shit.

>what is the silmarillion
>what is unfinished/lost tales
>what is children of hurin
>what is 40% of his lord of the rings trilogy

The novels mixed worldbuilding AND storytelling. That's just how good Tolkien was.

Just stop replying to him. He's derailing a perfectly good thread.

No, they didn't. He figured out the story he wanted to write then built a world around it.

Consider the following: make your Goblins Swiss. Make them worship wealth. All money is sacred, the ability to earn it is a direct sign of favour from the god. Every coin and banknote contains a share of the god's essence, the more of it you have, the more likely you are to go to heaven. In contrast, spending it is giving the holy ghost away, and wasting it is a direct sacrilege. Heathens don't deserve to have money, so any methods of ripping them off are considered pious, even those that would at first seem morally questionable. There are no separate banks and temples, they are one and the same.

So countless games of all possible varieties based on Tolkien's lore don't exist? Lol.

Will do.

The problem with all of this is that making your goblins not-goblins basically means they aren't goblins.

>make them swiss and worship money
>make them be revolutionaries
>make them be more civilized than nobles

Then why make them goblins in the first place? Why not use something else instead of the evil, ugly race bent on destroying everything?

Tinker elements were never good for goblins. Or any race really. It should be a personality, not a cultural standard

>So countless games of all possible varieties based on Tolkien's lore don't exist? Lol.
See this is you not understanding the basics of design, again.

Why were dwarves, orcs and elves included in D&D worlds? As a marketing strategy because they were popular monsters and the game called for popular monsters to be included. Their inclusion had absolutely nothing to do with worldbuilding.

Why are there tinker-goblins in warcraft? Because the designers of Warcraft RTS games needed air units for the evil army.

In neither case was it world-building for the sake of worldbuilding. Because that is not how you build a successful world or game.

OP says his starting point are Warcraft goblins. They aren't evil and are sure as hell not bent on destroying everything.

And yet it has a real life precedent in England, which was for a time far ahead of any other country technologically.

What Tolkien did was invent a bunch of languages because he was a huge etymology nerd and then create peoples and history to explain their relations and evolution. The man was most certainly more worldbuilder than storyteller, he just knew how to present it without taking huge loredumps on the reader

You are flatly incorrect. He worldbuilt around his stories. Countless notes and details have been released that make it incredibly clear that his worldbuilding was done around his stories. Not the other way around. Because no one writes like that except people who write very poorly.

Hm...

What if it was less of a cultural thing, and more that since the culture glorifies success and ingenuity, it happens to be a fairly common career choice?

They were also ruthless and greedy. Hmm... Redcoat goblins? I can dig this!

>He worldbuilt around his stories.
He's been worldbuilding since he was a kid.

No, he had been writing stories since he was a kid. Tom Bombadil was included why? Because it made sense in the world?

Nope. That was a character he liked from another story and randomly tossed into LotR.

You don't world-build for the sake of world-building unless your goal is to create garbage. You create stories, or games, or adventures. Then you world build around what those call for.

His notes contain tons of worldbuilding that never actually got told. The entire reason for the sillmarillion existing is to finally get all that together in one place. In his letters he declares how carried away he gets with his languages, and how much of the world has been stewing in his head for decades.

Pirate goblins from Confrontations? They're hi-tech, they're greedy and selfish, they're fairly unique... too bad they don't live in the mountains. Maybe your goblins can be airship pirates.

>how I could make them their own thing, be that through culture, behavior, or racial history
You can take the obnoxious cultureless American stereotype, I feel that it's underused in fantasy and yet fits the image you're going for perfectly.

>You don't world-build for the sake of world-building unless your goal is to create garbage. You create stories, or games, or adventures. Then you world build around what those call for.
He worldbuilt because he liked languages. That's seriously the core of it. He built languages with his friends, his wife, just in his free time; the man was infatuated with it. At some point he realized languages don't mean shit if there is no mythology behind them, probably due to myth being his specialization. He even expresses this opinion in his letters; he claims in one as a reason esperanto failed to catch on. So he got to work creating stories for all his imaginings, and because he wasn't an utterly shit writer he was capable of creating stories not utterly enslaved to detailing his every little autistic obsession and instead made them things of merit that could stand on their own. He wanted to make a definitive, pre-christian "english mythology". Not sure how well he achieved that what with all the norse mythology influence, but hey that's what the man wrote.

I'm more like Tolkien than I thought. Feels good man!

> You own the rights to some land, and know there are diamonds there. Mining it would poison the water supply for everyone down stream, and is likely to cause a cave-in somewhere else. But that's not your problem. Your problem is that there are currently diamonds sitting in the rocks that aren't making you money. So buy some slaves from a debt collector, and some mining equipment. You're going to be fucking rich and everyone else can go fuck themselves.

*sigh*

If everyone is a whore, and you don't mind / can't be sued to oblivion, it might work. Otherwise, you'll just run out of trading partners and die of starvation.

So don't forget to make everyone so greedy, and diamonds so valuable, that everyone else is ready to stomp on their ethics just to get the scrapes from that goblin's table.

>Tribal
>Militaristic
>Great minds for technology
>Inter-tribe conflict is constant
>MATCHLOCK GUNS

I like the greedy/mercantile angle but rather than the whole steampunk shit I suggest you look towards mythology; goblin fairs with goblin magic and goblin tricks.
Making mysterious and magical but often cursed or troublesome items and trading them for strange favours and goods.

I like the Warcraft goblins, personally. Twenty years after the original Warcraft game, they're getting to be cliched and boring, but they're IMO unarguably a big departure from the previous cliches from D&D and Tolkien.

Have you read GURPS Banestorm? There's a PDF linked from the OP of GURPS general, so take a look. The setting in a nutshell:

1) On a world with elves, dwarves, and orcs, a conspiracy of desperate/ruthless elves tried to craft a mass high magic spell to eradicate the rampaging orcs by summoning their bane. The spell backlashed and the elven empire never really recovered. It's not clear whether the spell worked or not.

2) A series of transdimensional storms started summoning individuals and small communities-- mostly of humans, mostly from a medieval europe in an alternate timeline. Eventually the storms mostly subsided but never went away. Other creatures were summoned from other worldlines as well, including goblins.

3) Humans quickly organized and within a few centuries, with their ruthlessness, aggressiveness, intelligence, and rapid breeding rates, they've been slowly displacing and wiping out the orcs. Along with the Elves and Dwarves, too, of course.

4) Most of the biggest continent is now controlled by an evil catholic re-creation of ancient Rome. It's huge, corrupt, authoritarian, and strictly anti-technology (they know from the occasional banestorm immigrant about firearms and the social changes they triggered and so strictly patrol to stop gunpowder from being invented). But they do accept other races if they convert to catholicism.

5) Most goblins are part of one human empire or another, and adopt the local religion/customs. Therefore, most are catholic. They are bright, clever, eager to try new things for their own sake, and not to squeamish about taking big risks. Most who have the Gift learn magic. The rest get into business and trade, or join the priesthood. They're wild and FUN, rather than greedy.

And have the players meet at a bar named Quarks.

>race of snake oil salesmen
Sounds cool

>They're wild and FUN, rather than greedy.
Is it still a goblin if it's not greedy?

Cave Viet Nam. Some tribes of Goblins are nuetral, some are aligned with the dwarves, most are baddies... but even the good tribes are full of spies and assassins.
They mostly use their craftiness to set traps and ambushes. They use also use their industry to mass produce shoddy weaponry and armor at unprecedanted rates

But mate, the Vietnamese were the good guys.

Warcraft gobbos are just borderline ancap American stereotypes.

Make the brutally collectivist Russians.

In other words, dwarves?

>the Vietnamese were the good guys
>in a war between multiple Vietnamese factions
>that all commited atrocities left and right

Hard to give any concrete advice without just telling you to immitate something else, but give a look at some Chaos Dwarf WH Fantasy background if you have time - they did a pretty neat job of making Chaos Dwarves not polar opposites of their dwarfs, but took traits and twisted them.

Most of the traits are shared, bar CDorfs being cruel and twisted, but the skew on everything is more interesting than one race getting a load of good and the other polar opposite bad traits.
It's nice to show both races as being greedy, industrious master craftsmen, but the slight twist on one turning them into barbarous, amoral slavers vs the upright principals of the others.

The only good vietcong is a dead vietcong

Except dwarves are often depicted as valuing quality over quantity and giving fuck about the lives of their fellows.

You know very well I mean the communists.

>collectivist
>not giving fuck about the lives of their fellows
Tried using your brain?

Their choice was between adopting slavery and going extinct.

Chaos Dwarfs did nothing wrong.

You'd think that, user. You'd think that.

But it never turns out that way in practice.

How many of the Red Army's casualties at Stalingrad were retreating soldiers executed on the battlefield for "cowardice?" Estimates have gone between "less than most people think but still a lot" to "more than the Germans killed," depending on who you ask and how good their research is.

>ivan get in death trap of tank and worry not about life, is but sacrifice for mother russia
>also don't worry about damaging tank, is not made to last longer than six months for strategic reasons

Right, because the USSR only existed during WWII... But even assuming that it was always that bad (it wasn't), that's no excuse for such a fucked up understanding of collectivism. Collectivism is when you sacrifice your own ambitions and opinions for the sake of social equality and harmony.

>Warcraft gobbos are just borderline ancap American stereotypes.
Come again? Azeroth goblins are, very explicitly, Jews. Down to the accents. There's nothing American about them unless New York is the whole America to you.

The dwarves in my setting are already collectivist. Not quite to USSR levels, but still, they're monarchist collectivists. The gobs are gonna be greedy capitalists who do business with everyone, to counter the xenophobic dwarven commies.

Other than that... I do like the idea someone gave of trying to make them more like twisted versions of dwarves than polar opposites, like the Chaos Dwarves. That could work pretty well.

Make them have a long history of cooking.

>monarchist collectivists
So, Norway?

>"I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas!"
Use D&D goblins
Use MTG goblins
Use Beyond The Wall goblins
Use Pathfinder goblins
Use Goblins goblins

On the second thoughts, please don't use Pathfinder goblins.

This doesn't sound too bad at all. It wouldn't have too much of an effect gameplay wise unless I flanderized it to the point where goblins mention cooking every sentence - but just as an additional aspect thrown in for flavour, it'd be pretty nice. And plus, you got trips.

Imma work this into the campaign, I think. It won't play a major role, but flavour text can be good. And I can make it kinda like how the cuisines of France/England are widely seen in the US - gobbo cooking is good, but overrated, and dorf cooking is bland and nasty.

I don't know much about Norway, but they'd be REALLY xenophobic - up to Drow levels, in the case of some dwarf clans - so somewhat, but not quite, I think.

They'd also be more hardcore collectivist than Norway. Dwarves with the ability to work must be productive in some way to their stronghold, according to ancient dorf tradition that has made its way into law.

Gee, it's like I was only listing a single example of how that only works on paper.

Then again, individualism doesn't work either, and looking at dolphins and such the other animals have no idea what works. We just can't win.

I did consider all of those. Either they didn't fit the campaign, I took a few of their features that did fit and mixed them with my campaign's goblins, or (in the case of PF gobs) I just don't really like them much.

It works perfectly fine in Asia. And in Northern Europe to a lesser extent.

Perhaps find a different social and tech structure for goblins if you want them to not be too warcrafty. For instance, bat goblins with sonic tech using the caves to carry messages and magical effects for miles on end, echoing spells that repeat or get stuck in your head, aware of everything around even in total darkness. Everything is for the flock, but every goblin is also more than willing to sacrifice other nearby individuals. Their entire language is a single word with different inflections... squee.

>doesn't actually know his trek lore
They're based on 1980's American businessman
Bajorans are the space jews and the space palestinians

In this case? Clearly yes. That's the thing. They're still very distinctly goblin, but also their own thing.

Not him, but you don't ACTUALLY believe war has 'good guys' and 'bad guys', Right? War has winners and losers. MAYBE aggressors and defenders if you want to get all moralfag about it, but certainly not good and bad. No one would fight for a side that was 'bad'.

>inb4 nazi's
They weren't EVIL, they were WRONG. And while those two things occasionally get very close to one another, they are different things.

Warcraft goblins are great.

>ywn have a vulgar dickgirl goblin with huge gold rings on her fingers blow cigar smoke in your face

You're asking us to judge your ideology based on its professed ideals, while you judge our ideologies based on your exaggerated assessment of what might hypothetically happen someday... IF we assume your ideology is correct.

Whereas the USSR alone has a body count of 20+ million of its own civilians. China under Map was at least 2 million, possibly more. Cambodia 2 million. Vietnam after the US left: about 200,000.

Fascism was a collectivist ideology, too. Obviously Germany and Japan racked up a long list of dead innocents. Then there's Spain and Italy, plus the USSR since they were allies with Germany for much of the war. If you include the wars, we get well into nine figures.

The free market democracies have their own body counts, but they were much lower and eventually stopped on their own. Under Lenin or Brezhnev, body counts were on the order of an Amritsar massacre every few hours.

Agreed tbqh (except the dickgirl, I don't like futa)

>ww1 pre USSR Russia
>lol just give them a bunch of knives and whip them towards the Germans

Collectivism can be a lot of things. Collectivism can easily mean that the individual can be expected to be sacrificed for the good of the collective, or that the collective gets to make those decisions for the individual.

>goblin shamans are LARPers that completely miss the point and creates industrialized McShamanism
>goblin priests are televangelists preaching atop piles of money
>goblins are the number one proliferators of sunglasses, pool parties and cutting edge weapons technology

Even when you mention that they're Jewish stereotypes, they're American Jewish stereotypes, that have more in common with other Americans than so many Jews around the world.

5/5 brety gud

To those that don't get it:
If you want your game to take place in a world of your own, you have to start with what you want and build up to that.
Even if it's just "elves wear masks".

>The high tech part is, like you said, the most difficult bit.
Okay, let's focus on that then.

>make them servants of an evil guy. Goblins are evil, twisted, crooked, often made by a dark lord or evil power, and they cowardly serve others or viciously go out on their own.
Right idea, wrong execution.
Nobody thinks of themselves as evil.
They're the last remnants of an ancient forest-dwelling race, which were wiped out millennia ago.
Humans wrote that story.
Let's write the goblins' story.
Sure, they went underground, but not alone.
They had an ally. Not likely human, maybe goblin, maybe some other, more appropriate race.
Who is this ally?

OP? Imagine your favorite fictional, insanely brilliant scientist.
Doc Brown, Rick Sanchez, Hubert Farnsworth, Dr. Light, it doesn't matter.
They saved your goblins.
They taught them how to survive and even thrive in caves.
They taught them science, pragmatism, and triumphing over adversity.
They were pinnacles of what good can come from tragedy.
They left a legacy of enlightened, adaptive goblins.
Left them to flourish and overpopulate until they needed to expand, tighten resources, and adapt to harsher and harsher conditions.
Pragmatism and survival became cruel, cold, and calculated ruthlessness.
Their savior became regarded as a warrior of science, his name chanted as blood was spilled for the benefit of the swarming mass of goblins, breeding beneath the stone surface of the world.
One day, the goblins will retake the surface and burn the ancient forests they no longer need.
They will slaughter the arrogant humans that once dared to think they were better.
They will show the world the might that their Powersmith Sire has forged within them.

And wherever he is, he will weep.

Or, you know, whatever you like is good too.

Your problem is you made them 95% like wow goblins and you want the last 5% to make them super unique. It's just not gonna happen.

>he will weep
Unless it was Rick Sanchez like you said. He'd laugh, maybe try to fuck a goblin girl if they're cute, and exterminate them all the moment their existence became inconvenient. Really, he's pretty fitting as a goblin god.

You are not wrong.

Yeah, I'm starting to see that.

On the bright side, due to a mix of tips from you guys and just changing them some on my own to suit the campaign's story better, they're moving away from it. They're still greedy, incentive fuckers, but are no longer WoW expies, thankfully.

That's a very narrow view to think no one in war was ever a bad guy.

I mean, I'm pretty sure those old European trade fleets that took over islanders and killed them if they resisted were bad guys.

Not that user, but the idea that one side being totally good and the other side is totally evil is effectively always gonna be wrong.
But war is full of evil guys doing evil things.
It's war.

I don't know about any side being Good but those Europeans were totally Evil by any description you could possibly give me, likely Lawful Evil. Unless, y'know, you actually have a legit description of evil that wouldn't encompass them.

They acted in self interest, for money, taking other's freedom, resources and land by law and by force.