Different lifespan as a source of interspecies tension

[King of Nowhere]

I was looking to add more tension to my campaign world, which would otherwise be pretty peaceful, and I looked into how long-lived races would feel threatened by short-lived ones. It was like opening the pandora's box, as it has plenty of interesting implications.

The first issue is that demihumans and halflings, breeding much faster than elves and dwarves, would threaten to take over. Especially in a period of expansion like that my campaign world is undergoing, the capacity of short-lived races to field many more children to fill the world makes long-lived races worry that they may be excluded. There is also the worry that, once there is no more wilderness to expand, the humans would turn their numbers against the other races, and win by sheer capacity of replacing losses.
I produced an in-world document that I'm going to let the players find.

Spoiler: Excerpt from "et educ tecum sicut lepores" (they breed like rabbits), a clandestine treaty inciting long-lived races to unite and wage war to others

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"in ancient times, war and famine kept a demographical balance, with longer-lived races enjoying a lower mortality because of their greater skill. Modern progress, by reducing mortality, altered this equilibrium.
In an elven generation there are five human ones. If each couple only has two children that survive to make their own offspring, then there is no problem. But if every couple has three reproducing offsprings, then starting from a human and an elven couple, in one century there will be three young elves, thirteen young humans. In three centuries, the elven youth population will only have grown to six, while humans will have skyrocketed to 750.
What will humans do when they'll run out of space to store their countless children? Would they let them starve? Or maybe they will look greedily to other races' lands, to swarm them with their numbers and keep growing like an ecosystem's methastasys?
That's why it's imperatice to act today. We're already in numerical inferiority, but our greater skill borne of experience will give us a chance, if we band together with our long-lived brothers. The more we wait, the more unfavorable the numbers for us.
There is no time to lose. Elves, dwarves and gnomes must unite now to face this threat."

Here I took a perfectly genuine concern, that of being marginalized by a competitor's growing numbers, and laced it with some not-so-subtle specism. It makes perfect sense: when one guy lives 70 years and another lives 700, you'll have a hard time arguing that they are equal, that living ten times longer is compensated by one skill point per level. If we met an alien race of similar intelligence who grow old by age 20, we'd be hard-pressed to not see them all as kids. And it's true (not by RAW, but in my campaign world, because it makes sense) that most elves are higher level than most humans. Few humans reach level 5 before they die, but with all those centuries to accumulate experience, elder elves reaching as high as level 10 are not too uncommon. Most of them are experts, of course.
Which carried me to the second issue: mixed marriages. An elf makes children with a human, and those children are going to die of old age before the elf advances one age category. I assumed for my world that, through millennia of mixed breedings, most elves have at least a bit of human blood. I had already established that there were a few fanatics of blood purity, and I showcased them negatively - they were actually spearheaded by a main villain. This time I thought, hey, given the relative life spans, maybe those guys actually have a point in wanting to preserve their bloodlines.
So I wrote this other piece of documentation

Spoiler: Excerpt from "aihut'amol acas'halor" (let's help them in their own places), manifesto of the sequoia movement, a group dedicated to the spread of pure elven blood.

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"Cursed is their blood, that a woman must see her children grow old and die before her! Hapless are they, who tread fast upon this world, they wilt from one day to the other. THis curse they bring, it infects those who take compassion of them. Already young elves are doomed to grow old prematurely, because of the sillyness of some of their ancestors who bound themselves to those short-lived creatures.
All responsible elves are advised to stop spreading the infected blood. If pure-blooded, try to marry other pure-blooded, and to have as many children as possible. If, by ill luck, your blood is impure, be merciful, don't pass it to your descendants! Rather, adopt a child from a pureblooded couple. Call a pure-blooded brother to impregnate your wife, knowing that you'l be gifting your children decades of life.
[...]
Humans, we are not your enemies. We want for you the same gifts we have ourselves. You can also contact an elven breeder. Your progeny will enjoy longer lifespan through many generations from mixing elven blood in it"

I like the kind of culture I created with this document. On one hand, they mean well. They are actually trying to help, but at the same time they show their prejudices and can't help being jerkasses. They have several good points - I empahsized that elves already have a shorter lifespan that they used to because of mixed breeding - and they are trying to offer a solution, but a very extreme one. Their long-term plan is to turn all humans into elves by injecting elven blood over several generations.
I developed the figure of the "elven breeded" basically as a joke (as in, showcasing their extremism to the point that it becomes a caricature of itself), but it actually makes plenty of sense: would people do something like this? Well, some actually would. There is already some real-world parallel in that people with a genetic disease sometimes choose to generate their children through sperm donation. And those elves basically see the whole humankind as suffering from progeria. In fact, how many humans would actually take the deal and get some elven blood in the family? Not enough to appease the demographic problem, that's for sure, but I'd expect them to be a significant minority.

I would like to explore this general concept in my worldbuilding, so I'm looking for comments, observations and ideas.

[awa]

another aspect is that generally in many professions you basically need to wait for someones else to die or retire before you can get a promotion, and when it comes time for that promotion seniority is a major advantage. If some races live hundreds of years longer than others you might find in mixed communities they will often rise to the top and fill all the leadership positions, leaving shorter lived races little room for advancement.

Social change is another aspect, its often generational people dont change their minds so much as die off taking out dated ideas with them. Additional the old tend to become more set in their ways clinging to the past rather than looking towards the future.

For long lived races these traits could mean they are extraordinarily conservative and reactionary unable to keep up with the rapidly changing views and opinions of shorter lived races. Just look at the opinions of people 500 years ago and compare that to all the social movements that have occurred over that time frame

Old man Elrond siting there screaming at everyone to get off his lawn and whining about countries that have been gone for centuries unable or unwilling to understand that things change. Yeah maybe those guy were vicious barbarian raiders a few centuries back but now their really into opera and the stuff they stole are in museums (their still not giving it back though).

[King of Nowhere]

another aspect is that generally in many professions you basically need to wait for someones else to die or retire before you can get a promotion, and when it comes time for that promotion seniority is a major advantage. If some races live hundreds of years longer than others you might find in mixed communities they will often rise to the top and fill all the leadership positions, leaving shorter lived races little room for advancement.

Social change is another aspect, its often generational people dont change their minds so much as die off taking out dated ideas with them. Additional the old tend to become more set in their ways clinging to the past rather than looking towards the future.

For long lived races these traits could mean they are extraordinarily conservative and reactionary unable to keep up with the rapidly changing views and opinions of shorter lived races. Just look at the opinions of people 500 years ago and compare that to all the social movements that have occurred over that time frame

Old man Elrond siting there screaming at everyone to get off his lawn and whining about countries that have been gone for centuries unable or unwilling to understand that things change. Yeah maybe those guy were vicious barbarian raiders a few centuries back but now their really into opera and the stuff they stole are in museums (their still not giving it back though).

Yeah, good points: the shorter lived races will have their share of grievances.
I've also connected that, while elves may consider humans as inexperienced kids because they are younger than any adult elf, humans themselves may consider elves as some brand of retarded that will take 20 years to get out of diapers and 40 to learn to read.

[JeenLeen]

Your first post assumes that elves produce offspring at a delayed rate. Which may well be true, but isn't necessarily true. I could see an elven couple having a kid about every 20 years. That's about 1 per generation. If humans average 2-3 per generation, that's... well, still has the issues noted in your spoiler, but not as extreme.

I've also connected that, while elves may consider humans as inexperienced kids because they are younger than any adult elf, humans themselves may consider elves as some brand of retarded that will take 20 years to get out of diapers and 40 to learn to read.

Is that hyperbole or does growth actually take that long for elves in your campaign/setting?

In standard D&D, I think it's taken that elves reach something like early childhood about at the same rate humans do. Maybe a couple years delay. But that'd still be out of diapers by about age 5 and learning to read and write decent by age 10. A lot of the 'you are still a kid' is perspective and maturity, so an elf might be physically adult in his 30s or 40s but considered the equivalent of a teenager until he's about 100.

Though I think that doesn't quite make sense, unless elves do have puberty (or some magical equivalent, if they have any innate spellcasting ability) delayed. So maybe they are almost adult size in their 30s or 40s, but aren't sexually mature until around 100.

On the other hand, if elves indeed are like babies and toddlers until about age 20, I could see (after a couple centuries of interaction with humans) some shame about that. It's mostly cloaked in keeping children safe from disease carried by humans and/or bad ideas humans talk about, but the end result is trying not to let humans be aware of those who are like babies but the age of a grown man. That keeps the humans from looking down on elves.

[MoiMagnus]

If you want to have lifespan have a realistic effect on politics here are some related subject. For simplicity, I will just consider elves vs human.

1) Quick learning. Appart from cultural aspect, are humans quicker to learn than elves (making them even more dangerous), or are elves able to reach level of mastery that no human ever reached just because human die too young (making the elves feel superiors to those ephemereic humans).

2) Are elves really living all that long? or are some elves living very long and most elves just dying like most humans of war/disease/...

3) Are elves really have (significantly) lower reproduction rate than humans? If mortality from war/disease is as high as human, they don't have that much reasons to have (significantly) less childrens than humans.
=> Maybe elves have passed the "demographic transition" while human don't, giving a relationship similar to Occidental world vs Affrica.

4) What about elves that leave in the human society? I don't see a lot of reasons why the aristocrats would not be exclusively elves and half-elves. Just look at how in our world, nobles were almost considering themselves as a race superior to the remaining of the population (with purity of blood, ...)
=> If I were to make a realistic world, chances are that it would be "High elves governing a society of humans are in tension with Wood elves, because High elves have a lot of human workforce and need more and more place for their cities, and wood for their ships"
=> Even without that. Unless humans are stupid barbarian with no real sense of strategy, chances are that skilled elves would be welcome as strategist in their army, and that some elves would gladly betray their people for a lot of money (except if your elves are perfect and pure, of course). Symmetrically, I fail to see why elves would not hire human mercenaries to fight for them (and a lot of humans would gladly accept).

[Kaptin Keen]

From the viewpoint of long lived elves, humans are a plague - we're comparable to climate change, happening at fast forward. Within the lifespan of a single elf, humans populations would multiply by ... how much, a factor of ten? From 1800 to 2000 (the blink of an eye to an elf), real world population has exploded from around 1 billion to more than 7. In such perspective, we're running rampant, breeding out of control, destroying everything we touch, everwhere we go.

Any form of direct or indirect population control would seem not only reasonable, but necessary, to an elf. We're the Krogan, and they're the Salarians.

[awa]

but earth has effectively no natural predators for humans and ever increasing agricultural capabilities I'm not certain fantasy land humans would be able to breed that fast with all the monsters it has. (not to mention gender equality and literacy tend to reduce birth rates, both being things that d&d settings tend to be better about then the real world.

[MoiMagnus]

but earth has effectively no natural predators for humans and ever increasing agricultural capabilities I'm not certain fantasy land humans would be able to breed that fast with all the monsters it has. (not to mention gender equality and literacy tend to reduce birth rates, both being things that d&d settings tend to be better about then the real world.

But magic (i.e the priest of each little village) also help a lot against diseases, and probably also against all the infantile mortality. Which mean they are in constant demographic transition.
(low mortality rate from diseases, but no decrease of birth rate since the society is still very poor with a lot of farmers)

[awa]

education and gender equality tend to reduce birth rates, in d&d commoners (depending on edition) are assumed to be literate and woman have decent if not perfect equality. So I dont think population growth would be so explosive, likewise if the children are surviving the need for so many would be reduced.

The other aspect is in the real world their are very few things that regularly hunt humans, but in fantasy land their are vast numbers of creatures that exclusively eat sapient humanoids. Thats a kind of population pressure the real world simply does not have.

[Max_Killjoy]

But magic (i.e the priest of each little village) also help a lot against diseases, and probably also against all the infantile mortality. Which mean they are in constant demographic transition.

(low mortality rate from diseases, but no decrease of birth rate since the society is still very poor with a lot of farmers)

education and gender equality tend to reduce birth rates, in d&d commoners (depending on edition) are assumed to be literate and woman have decent if not perfect equality. So I dont think population growth would be so explosive, likewise if the children are surviving the need for so many would be reduced.

If a setting has readily available magic and herbalism and alchemy lowering the death rate... and a more equal and literate society than historically (or at least the way history has been presented, there's a lot of dispute over just how "illiterate" and "misogynistic" things were in post-Roman pre-Modern Europe overall)... I'd expect that methods for lowering the pregnancy rate are also more common, safe, and effective.

[King of Nowhere]

If you want to have lifespan have a realistic effect on politics here are some related subject. For simplicity, I will just consider elves vs human.

Well, I wanted to look at the topic from a general point of view, to fish for potential ideas, but I did consider the answers to those questions you raise, because they are key in shaping the conflict

1) Quick learning. Appart from cultural aspect, are humans quicker to learn than elves (making them even more dangerous), or are elves able to reach level of mastery that no human ever reached just because human die too young (making the elves feel superiors to those ephemereic humans).

Both. Humans really do learn more quickly, but elves eventually catch up with their longer llives. Most of the world population is human, most people above level 15 are elves. Humans still have their fair share of 20^th level people, though.

2) Are elves really living all that long? or are some elves living very long and most elves just dying like most humans of war/disease/...

Yes, they are. Until about a couple centuries before present, the world was much of a classical D&D world, and all races had a constant population (elves still lived longer, died later and were less fertile, but everything compensated to get a stable population). but then a period of peace and prosperity settled in, meaning that most people do actually get to die of old age, at least in the rich countries. In those couple centuries, human population skyrocketed, while elven population grew more slowly. And that's why the conflict is starting to exacerbate now.

3) Are elves really have (significantly) lower reproduction rate than humans? If mortality from war/disease is as high as human, they don't have that much reasons to have (significantly) less childrens than humans.
=> Maybe elves have passed the "demographic transition" while human don't, giving a relationship similar to Occidental world vs Affrica.

I established that elves grow slower than humans, which means more childcare needed, and longer pregnancies (an elven pregnancy should last about 5 years, limiting how many children they can make). That said, elves could still make a lot of children in not too long a time if they wanted, simply because an elven woman is fertile for over 200 years. So demographic transition is also an issue; this is one of the points raised by the sequoia movements: elves could near keep up the demographic war with humans, if they really applied to it.
From the human side, some nations are very rich and are transitioning to fewer children (so it's actually possible that the problem fixes by itself in a century or two), other nations are very poor and still with traditional economy and demographics.

4) What about elves that leave in the human society? I don't see a lot of reasons why the aristocrats would not be exclusively elves and half-elves. Just look at how in our world, nobles were almost considering themselves as a race superior to the remaining of the population (with purity of blood, ...)

Right now, elves are in good relationship with most humans (period of peace and prosperity). Different species are not discriminated. Elves have a tendency to rise to the top of human social structure because, when they reach a position of power, they keep it for longer. Still, elves living among humans are few and far between (because humans outbreed them), so that has not been an issue so far.
Now, give it a few more centuries, humans may start to wonder why most of their nobles are actually elves, but that's for later. Humans would worry more about it if they were more inclined to think in the long term. Also, the advanced nations already have parlamentary monarchy, give it a couple of centuries and nobody will care about nobility anymore.
The opposite is also relevant, as humans living among elves are becoming a significant part of the population. I was planning to write another in-world document about dwarves complaiining that humans already make up half of their capitol's population, and asking that they are denied the right of vote, least they take power.

=> If I were to make a realistic world, chances are that it would be "High elves governing a society of humans are in tension with Wood elves, because High elves have a lot of human workforce and need more and more place for their cities, and wood for their ships"
=> Even without that. Unless humans are stupid barbarian with no real sense of strategy, chances are that skilled elves would be welcome as strategist in their army, and that some elves would gladly betray their people for a lot of money (except if your elves are perfect and pure, of course). Symmetrically, I fail to see why elves would not hire human mercenaries to fight for them (and a lot of humans would gladly accept).

So far, most of the conflict is along the good-evil axes, especially worshippers of opposite deities. Elves aren't particularly good, but they are more prone to thinking in the long term, and since good tend to be better than evil in the long term, they do have a propensity towards good behavior, for simple utilitaristic reasons.
So far the players have managed to tip the scales by bringing more and more people in the good axis (most botably the orcs and goblins, who are not good but are seeing political advantages in it).
Making the demographic question explode is an intentional move on my part to put cracks in the good axis, to restore a balance of power that is the main source of the plot.

[King of Nowhere]

Spoiler: excerpt from "parun akaz-nostrak" (masters in our own homes), speech to the dwarven parliament

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By now, 31% of the population of Kal Sharok is non-dwarven, and with the high birth rate of those, this figure is bound to increase. Even in Tal Calel, non-elves are over 20% of the population. By comparison, both Avandaren and Kopplig host less than 5% of non-demihumans [intending humans, hal-elves, half-orcs. Not sure if the term is exact]. In just 20 years, most of those non.dwarves will have kids. In another 20 years, those kids will have voting rights.
What then? A dwarf king having to deal with a human parliament? An halfling on the low throne?
We must revoke citizenship to all non-dwarves, or we'll soon be guests in our own country. We must do so now, soon we won't have the numbers anymore to passs this law

No, really, those guys reach age 20 before they can put off diapers, and they even think they are better than us?
Typical human retort to long-lived races propaganda

Incidentally, both "let's help them in their own places" and "masters in our own homes" are catchphrases of the italian nationalistic party. I want this to resonate with real life issues, as it both helps the players enter into it, and it gives it a bit of comedy twist.
i want the first reaction to be like "lol, those old bigots are here too"
and then, after thinking for a bit "but hey, in this case the races really are different, so if this already creates a lot of tension in our own world, it would be much worse in this fantasy world

[Drynwyn]

Assuming that this is a heroic fantasy, D&D-style world, there's something important that hasn't been mentioned yet- heroes and magic.

In a lot of heroic fantasy there are elf archmages and the like running around. This makes sense for the academic wizard-type professions- humans spend 60 years getting really good at magic, then they only have twenty to thirty to make use of it- what good is that? Meanwhile, some elven archmage has been doing this for two hundred years and just keeps getting better. It's also surprisingly logical for the non-magic professions- if you're in your physical prime for 200 years, your heroic warriors can get a lot more done than the humans (at least, in theory).

This could make for some interesting dynamics- the ruling class, especially if you have some kind of magocracy- is disproportionately of the long-lived races, because, well, if you're trying to endlessly accumulate personal power, living several centuries really helps with that.

[awa]

though one thing that's different between the real world and rpgs is that in games continuous training makes you endlessly better but the real world has very strong diminishing returns. Well its possible that a thousand year lifespan allows you to reach incredible heights no human could match, but its just as likely they reach their peak in 20-30 years and then all their traning just keeps them from forgetting or growing rusty.

[DuctTapeKatar]

I think that another issue that could crop up is the issue of monster races and their long-lives.

Some monster races, even the long-lived ones, might see issue with the elvish side. Elves might have long lives, but they are far from the oldest creature, and some races (particularly the drow) might even want to support the short-lived side just to spite the elvish empire. Dragons might see elves as foolish and selfish creatures (And I just realized how hypocritical that would be as I was typing that out). Additionally, there might be some races that want in on this mess because they want to be part of a civilization as well.

Kobolds or goblins might join elves and dwarves just so that they can get a shot at having their progeny become servants to the people that they are kissing up to.

Harpies might want to join humans and halflings so that they don't have to live in squalor or hunt for mates.

Treants and giants might want in on the action just so that they can reclaim their lands from the humans or elves that happen to be living there at the time.

My point is that the moment that a medusa hears that she might be able to walk into town without being impaled on a spear, she is going to slither up to the nearest person willing to give that to her and ask to join them, whether she lives to be 100 years old or 2000. This isn't a "human VS elf" issue, but rather a battle to see who gets to be in the next codex as a core race.

[King of Nowhere]

though one thing that's different between the real world and rpgs is that in games continuous training makes you endlessly better but the real world has very strong diminishing returns. Well its possible that a thousand year lifespan allows you to reach incredible heights no human could match, but its just as likely they reach their peak in 20-30 years and then all their traning just keeps them from forgetting or growing rusty.

yes, and that's the reason while most elves manage to get more skilled than their human counterparts, the difference is not huge.

I think that another issue that could crop up is the issue of monster races and their long-lives.

Some monster races, even the long-lived ones, might see issue with the elvish side. Elves might have long lives, but they are far from the oldest creature, and some races (particularly the drow) might even want to support the short-lived side just to spite the elvish empire. Dragons might see elves as foolish and selfish creatures (And I just realized how hypocritical that would be as I was typing that out). Additionally, there might be some races that want in on this mess because they want to be part of a civilization as well.

Kobolds or goblins might join elves and dwarves just so that they can get a shot at having their progeny become servants to the people that they are kissing up to.

Harpies might want to join humans and halflings so that they don't have to live in squalor or hunt for mates.

Treants and giants might want in on the action just so that they can reclaim their lands from the humans or elves that happen to be living there at the time.

My point is that the moment that a medusa hears that she might be able to walk into town without being impaled on a spear, she is going to slither up to the nearest person willing to give that to her and ask to join them, whether she lives to be 100 years old or 2000. This isn't a "human VS elf" issue, but rather a battle to see who gets to be in the next codex as a core race.

Good points.
I already covered the dragon part. half of them like humanoids because they make all the shinies that dragons hoard, and elder dragons need their hoards to survive, giving them a symbiotic relationship with humanoids. the other half would like the humanoids gone, because they breed fast and they keep encroaching in draconic lands. but they fear a direct confrontation, as humanoids have a relatively high number off high level adventurers, plus cannons that would be a serious danger. So they are looking forward to interspecies tensions exploding to a devastating war, where the dragons would be able to mop up the survivors.

I covered a bit the other monstruous humanoid races, though they are not so powerful as to be all that relevant.
Other sources of tension are the druids, some of whom would also like a war to reduce the population and let wilderness recover some of the civilized land.

All in all, I have prepared quite the mess to unleash for the pcs to fix.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

What if, long ago, humans and halflings were once the pets of elves?

Elf dad: "Pethwathuin! Did you leave the pen open? There are humans all over the forest."
Elf kid: "Sorry Father, I'll clear them up."
Elf dad: "Make sure you get every last one of them! Remember what happened to Nargothrond?"

[Lapak]

[RE: Do the elves actually live that long]

Yes, they are. Until about a couple centuries before present, the world was much of a classical D&D world, and all races had a constant population (elves still lived longer, died later and were less fertile, but everything compensated to get a stable population). but then a period of peace and prosperity settled in, meaning that most people do actually get to die of old age, at least in the rich countries. In those couple centuries, human population skyrocketed, while elven population grew more slowly. And that's why the conflict is starting to exacerbate now.

That's interesting in part because I'd expect the impact of this to be the reverse! Someone with a theoretically unlimited life span would see much less of an advantage in an age with a lot of conflict, because elves aren't much more resistant to violent death than humans are. I'd have expected the elves to be awfully excited as some of them got a shot at actually enjoying their lifespan / seeing their race survive despite a slower reproduction rate.

(Fun thing I read a few years ago, not strictly relevant to your scenario: some actuaries did analysis to determine what the average human lifespan would be if we eliminated death by age and disease - that is, your typical elvish immortality where you're not going to die unless someone kills you. Apparently it's not as much of a shift as you'd hope; the average human would get a little over 200 years before violence or misadventure of some kind did them in. Car crashes, home accidents, struck by lightning, etc. Some immortality!)

[Son of A Lich!]

I would actually compare Elves (Long life spans compared to humans) to Goblins (Short life spans compared to humans).

The political tension between the two races on basis of life span gaps is Huge and a very interesting perspective to look at, but trying to understand the "Elven Condition" by looking at humans from their vantage point has a bit of a skew to it.

I think the way we see goblins and the way Elves see Goblins is closer to the way Elves see Humans, they just think that humans are 'Slightly' better.

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Goblins gather in squabbles of clusters and seemingly spread like mold. They separate out into splinters and their numbers always remain stagnant in the colonies they form, but their culture is so barbaric and crude it's amazing they can produce anything for themselves. So, they dig themselves into little nooks and pits and eventually you have to find some group that will take coin to flush them out and hope that you can kill all of them, because they will be back otherwise and in full force again by the end of the century.

They have plans that are so obscenely short lived, you could hardly count it as 'planning' at all. Sometimes, they get adventurous and get into some genuine Animal Husbandry, though why they pick weasels of all things to ride is so abstract that you are better off just not bothering to try to ask. Goblin, as a language, is always rapidly changing and evolving and skewing itself over and over again, that what you learn today is likely going to be completely different tomorrow. What culture they have is stolen, bastardized and vandalized. Their entertainment is crude, and they are slaves to a gaunt set of vices that act more as a natural means of skimming their population down rather then providing genuine enjoyment. They make hovels that are poor renditions of real architecture and smear paint on walls that is an almost adorable attempt in literacy.

Of course, as much as we would love to just completely ignore goblins... They are unnervingly willing to throw themselves into danger for even just a sliver of personal gain. I suppose if I had the life span of a hearty Mayfly, I would want to get something done to, no matter the meager benefit. But with worthy leadership, say a dragon or a lich (You know, something that can actually live longer then a century), they can trial and error their way into a devastating pock mark of our progress as a culture. A Goblin Swordsmen (If such a thing exists, even!) will never rival an Elven swordsmen, but a hundred common goblins can threaten the crops, the common folk, steal artifacts that they don't understand the value and purpose of, and drive a frustrating thorn into the sides of those that never bothered to get a handle on them in the first place. They could mimic our spell casters, and through a practice more inline with a parrot reciting poetry it could never fathom, unleash magic that threatens the natural boundaries of the planescape.

All because one goblin put a fancy ring on his head and decided he liked gold more then iron, and an Elder race told him he could have more of it in a convoluted plan that no sane advisor would ever approve of.

Too numerous, petty, and lazy to be taken a serious threat... but to dangerous to let live for too long.

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That is why Elves think they are better then everyone else.