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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2118680" data-attributes="member: 27012">Again, those societies are as functional as any goblin society needs to be, as far as I'm concerned.  I'm not expecting them to build a pyramid, fill the Library of Alexandria, or put a goblin on the moon.  I'm expecting them to raid, torture, and kill human farmers for their stuff and to be forced mercenary soldiers for evil overlords.Just how functional do you expect goblins to be?  At what point are they simply humans with different attribute modifiers and funny looks?  And if they are just humans with different attribute modifiers and funny looks, what purpose do they serve?I disagree.  There is a scene in Goldeneye where James Bond escapes from a Russian police station.  In the process, it kills quite a few Russian police officers who were simply doing their job trying to stop him.  Because I did have my empathy turned on, the scene bothered me quite a bit and it pretty much spoils the movie for me.  How many people die in The Matrix during those oh-so-cool combat scenes?  Or how about Pulp Fiction, where they play someone getting shot in the head by accident up for laughs?Even a little bit of empathy for those who are dying and those scenes are not cool.  They are troubling at best, if not sick.  And notice that to really get the audiences sympathy in a movie, they have to kill an animal -- a dog, cat, or horse.  That's when the audience really starts to cry.  Kill a few dozen faceless Nazis?  No problem.  Shoot their dog, though, and there will be Hell to pay.I have a half-dozen cats and have seen the behavior you talk about.  The dead mouse, bird, etc. is a maternal instinct.  It's how big cats teach little cats how to catch prey.  It's not a present in the same sense that humans give presents.  As for the grooming behavior, I've seen cats groom furry rugs and cat fur covered cloth.  I've also heard of cats grooming the fur of dead cats.  Read some web pages on training cats.  I've had to do it.  They can't be trained like dogs or humans because they don't think the same way.Even when it exists, it doesn't need to be used for positive purposes.  A torturer can understand that they are causing their victim pain by their body language and vocalizations.  That they understand they are causing pain is a very different kind of empathy than the sort of empathy that would cause them to identify with their victims.  Sure, goblins could understand the emotional state of others but that doesn't mean that they identify or sympathize with the pain or misfortune of others.  In fact, they may use it more the way a torturer would -- to more effectively torment their victims and underlings.Well, that's exactly what I'm talking about.  Why stay away from social instincts?  Basically, there are three choices.  Either your goblins are simply different people and are Evil because they are raised that way, goblins have a strong tendency to be Evil but you might be able to teach some to overcome it, or goblins are Evil by nature and any social behavior they exhibit is instinctual.  Each one of those choices has a different moral implication.In the first case, goblins are simply tragic and should be treated like humans who have experienced an unfortunate upbringing.  Goblin children should be sent off to good schools to grow up and become good productive members of society if their parents are killed.  In the last case, goblins are simply intelligent vermin that can be slain with impunity.  The middle case creates a difficult moral problem for the player characters.  Yeah, you can help some goblins but it will take a lot of effort.  That raises the question of playing games about being foster parents to orphaned goblin kids, trying to keep them from a life of crime. In my case, I wanted to have things both ways so I decided that the goblinoids were Evil by nature and the Orcs, who can mate with humans, simply had an inclination toward Evil.  That way, I have killable bad guys when I need them and don't want the game to get bogged down with, "What do we do with the prisoners?" and I have a deep moral problem if I want to explore that in the Orcs.  As for goblins just being little people who were just brought up wrong, I'm not sure I need a whole race of creatures to fill that niche and can use bad humans if I want to explore that dimension.Oh, I think it could work pretty well.  It wouldn't be pleasant.  It may not put a man on the moon.  But it could serve the purpose that goblins are intended to serve.  They don't need to build cities and write novels.  They simply need to eat, reproduce, and menace others.  They don't need a complex society for that any more than those child soldiers do in Africa.   They can be but they don't have to be.First, goblin babies don't need to be as helpless as human babies.  Think about the little sea turtles that swim their way into the ocean to survive on their own or even baby herd animals that can walk minutes after birth.  They don't have to be helpless and perhaps they aren't.  But even if they are for some short period of time, goblin mothers can have a use for them, which I already suggested.  Or like cats, they could simply be overcome by maternal instincts that they can't control.  As for being a recognizable society, what exactly are you looking for?  Burrows?  Villages?  Cities?  High technology?  I don't see them making a lot of tools.  I see them either stealing tools or enslaving someone else and forcing them to make tools.  I also don't see them building little thatched roof cottages with curtains in the window and a flower garden.  There are plenty of reasons to cooperate on things that have no immediate reward which are neither altruistic nor empathetic, in the compassion sense.  Why do kids join street gangs?  Why do child soldiers pick up an AK-47 and join a band of thugs?  Do goblins really need more motivation than that?</blockquote>

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