| theraphos |
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The typical goblin must be considered insane and/or evil by human standards, but they presuambly have no genetic imperitive to burn, kill, steal, eat sentients and their babies, torture small animals as part of games, etc.
I would think it would be less genetic imperative and more...well, one thing that struck me while reading Goblins of Golarion is that they're a lot like children. Cruel, terrifying children. And a child's brain has literally not finished developing, compared to a human adult's, so some predisposition to distraction, foolishness, thoughtless destruction, inability to really think long-term and amoral "innocence" (the scary kind) might actually BE genetic, along with similar traits they display - I don't have time to go through the whole book again and do a really involved essay, although it could be interesting.
A goblin raised by good-aligned humans might still get caught giggling while pulling the wings off flies or setting things on fire (heck, that happens with human children) and will probably never grow up to be quite right or think/act like a little human in a goblin costume. But as with most children, goblins *are* still people and most could probably be raised to be better than what the goblin gods want them to be. If the adoptive parents had the patience of saints.
The goblin would just never really grow up/mature in the same way a human would, because that's not what a goblin brain *does*. Just like a Golarion orc is probably still going to have anger management problems no matter their upbringing. You run into this sort of stuff when you start talking about literally alien brains.
Now I've gotten myself really, really interested in what a non-evil goblin might be like, while still being a goblin.
EDIT: Oops, typo.
