Quote Originally Posted by B. Dandelion View Post
Would I say they are evil? ...not in the same sense I would call a human murderer-rapist evil. It's like trying to slot a third-dimensional point on a two-dimensional line. Or maybe the reverse -- if you are dealing with a creature that is as far above you as you yourself are to an insect, has reason to, is definitionally impossible to understand, and kills you without thought, do you actually need to phrase a conflict in terms of good and evil and not survival?
Ah, thank you, now we're getting somewhere. Maybe the Lovecraftian analogy is unhelpful, so let's stick with the canonical D&D example of mindflayers. If I'm dealing with a creature that (I think) regards me in much the same terms I regard an insect, then - yes, killing is a matter of survival, not morality. I agree. And if I'm a D&D adventurer, I'll kill mindflayers on sight without stopping to ask them where they stand on the rights-for-humans controversy that, I'm sure, exists among the top illithid philosophers.

(Same applies to black dragons, by the way. Some creatures have such enormous natural advantages over humans that if we don't take the opportunity to kill them when we can, we pretty much deserve to be eaten.)

But the same logic can also be applied to any creature whose interests are antithetical to yours. If you're governing a country, and another group of humans sets up camp next to you, defines themselves as "not like you", and denies citizenship and basic rights to "your kind of people" - then it really doesn't matter what "alignment" the other side's rulers think they are. You've got to do something about them, either by negotiation or force, as a matter of survival.

And that's the state of human/goblin relations. Until one side is willing for their country to be fully multi-ethnic, so goblins can live on equal terms alongside humans, elves, dwarfs, bugbears, nagas, ogres, halflings, nymphs, gnomes, centaurs, hobgoblins, drow, trolls, giants, sphinxes, ettins, gnolls, lizardfolk, will-o'-wisps, kobolds, troglodytes, wererats, rakshasas, sylphs, harpies, dopplegangers, minotaurs, gargoyles, medusas, dryads, werewolves ... their interests will remain inimical to each other. As long as you define any of these creatures as "different", you're discriminating against intelligent beings, and you should reasonably expect them to be hostile.

It doesn't have to be that way. There's no reason, within D&D rules, why you can't have countries that embrace all the above ethnicities and more, and then the problem goes away. But we haven't seen any such in OOTS. (Unless it's the Empire of Blood, but even there we've only seen a handful of races).