I quite like your first version of goblins. When designing a fantasy world I found I was very quickly putting dwarves in the mountains, elves in a remote forest and have humans inherit the Earth. this’ll help counteract that.

[…] lot of people liked the ideas I had in my Goblin post, especially including the “social network” concept. For Ravenflight I decided to […]

@ Mitlik:

Yes! I absolutely love the hibernation idea. Let’s say that once their food supply dwindles down to zero, they start burrowing in the ground and go into dead-like torpor state. The wake up mechanism is related to biological activity in the soil – as Goblins will usually leave an area a desolate wasteland given enough time. Once plant life starts to re-grow and there are nutrients in the soil, the Goblins get activated again.

Mitlik wrote:

Just one question. If they only care about eating how does a Flood Goblin obtain weapons or armor?

Oh, they are pretty intelligent tool users – they were engineered to be very adaptable. They don’t build tools, but they can learn to use the ones they find. Remember that when they “split” both resulting goblins retain the same memories. So each new outbreak is actually more experienced and more efficient than the last one, because the goblin which survived, and triggered the relapse “remembers” what went down last time.

So it is not unthinkable that when faced with organized and armed resistance, The Goblin Flood would over decades learn to scavenge and use weapons and armors from fallen foes.

I love the Flood Goblin version. The only thing I think I would add is a kind of torpor or hibernation period as a part of their physiology, much like insects that run in cycles. It would allow for a natural rhythm to form even in the extended absence of other races, and allow settling parties enough time to establish themselves and perhaps be reluctant to leave the area.

Just one question. If they only care about eating how does a Flood Goblin obtain weapons or armor?

@ Matt`:

Well, I sort of envisioned the “flood” version as a magical bio-weapon designed by some evil wizard. So the fast gestation is aided by some magic processes that are not readily understood because no one has really observed Goblin reproduction in controlled conditions. It’s not like you can just go and nab some Goblins to experiment with, and the outbreaks are more or less natural disasters.

Which could actually be an adventure hook. A wizard hires the party to capture some live goblins in an “infested area” to bring them back to his lab to be studied. Tons of things can go hilariously wrong along the way.

I liked the first one – the adaptable niche-fillers, stumbling along with a grab-bag of skills and a group mentality. That seems like something that could be used to flesh them out into more than a kind of vermin. Lets you imagine docile goblins, grown fat on successful trade, rather than an endless horde of barbarians.

That said, maybe goblins are better as barbarians, eating and pillaging and never really stopping. In which case your exponentially growing Flood would fit right in, although the non-existent gestation time and massive traumatic injury involved in birthing a new goblin stretched credulity for me.