Here’s a fantasy scenario:  You and your adventuring friends come to a bridge where a group of goblins are crossing.  They have heavy packs and haven’t noticed you.  Do you:

A.  Attack immediately.

B.  Yell to them to see if they’re dangerous.

C.  Wave hello and let them cross before going on your way.

This scenario happened in a D&D game that I ran using Windemere as the world.  The group picked ‘A’ and got angry when I pointed out that the goblins were delivering a gem shipment to the city they just left.  Oops.  Still, this touches on a point that I’m going to use my goblins to make.  If you write fantasy, DO NOT think that you have to keep the standard creatures the way they were before you entered the genre.

My goblins started as your basic pack creatures that were easy to kill.  In fact, many of the other races consider them to be primitive savages that are free to kill if you can make up a decent reason.  Yet, behind the scenes, I was wondering where I wanted to go with the goblins.  They never get a decent part to play in fantasy.  They’re evil henchman, rabid beasts, enslaved servants that are going to go traitor, etc.

So, during that game session, I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like to have the goblins be a race with trade agreements.  Like the dwarves, they were miners and I thought of making them trade in furs and roots too.  They’re still not the prettiest things in the world, but they gained an odd cuteness to their species once I focused on them.  In the most recent book I’m writing, the heroes get to interact with the goblins and learn more about their culture.  They have villages, families, morals, wisdom, and a sense of fairness that you don’t typically see in them.

So, to all fiction authors who plan on using the time-tested races of the genre, I suggest seeing what else you can do with them.  Maybe you can figure out a way to make goblins the elegant nobles and the vampires can be the wild, easily killed beasts of the wild.  The sky isn’t even the limit on what a fiction writer can do.  Though, I do think all dwarves need booze and beards.  There are just some things that you don’t mess with.