Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
Noble/dirt farmer injustice can also happen. They're not mutually exclusive. But if, as Redcloak says, goblins can't walk into a human/elf/dwarf settlement without getting slaughtered on the spot, that prevents them from joining any alliances or cooperating to become stronger and more resilient. The fact that they are in a weaker positioning has the potential to keep them in a weaker positioning, effectively.

As for the "diverse communities" thing, I probably misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that the communities were created with a mixture of completely diverse humanoid races, with goblins and elves and humans and dwarves and orcs all living alongside each other. My mistake.
Ahh, I understand. No, I was shifting the focus entirely to within-community situations there. It does seem that starting populations were "this group of elves starts here, this group of dwarves starts here," etc, and that intermingled communities are a result of the descendants of those starter groups choosing to become intermingled.

My point was that if the starting group of humans chooses, say, the physically strongest member to be their chieftain, then that chieftain's descendants are potentially advantaged by a genetic predisposition to strength, which was given to them by the gods (and can also be seen as everybody else being hampered as weaker by the gods).

It's also possible that your stats are rolled at random at birth and you cannot genetically inherit anything in ootsworld. However, the chieftain's descendants are now also advantaged by being the children of the chief. The beginning of inherited wealth. Maybe their line is more likely to have the opportunity to produce a hero who has a very high quality weapon which becomes an ancestral blade.

In addition, the people in power are able to make choices in disadvantaging other people in order to keep themselves in power within their own community (as the Azure City aristocracy does), just as the humans/elves/etc have the ability to collectively keep the goblins out of the circle if they choose to.