So, going along with my 'request' for the 8 core ancestries to be 'full' races, and using the removal of defined 'half-races' to add in some other 'monster' ancestries to balance out the oddity of goblin inclusion, I'd like to propose a bit of reasoning for this, using individual racial societies' alignment tendencies to show the balance this could produce in the game worlds.
Now, obviously no individual is required to be these alignment, but these do sort of make sense as the various races have been described previously.
Elf (CG) | Gnome (NG) | Dwarf (LG)
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Human (CN) | - - - - - - | Halfling (LN)
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Goblin (CE) | Orc (NE) | Kobold (LE)
See - now I got to make a thread focusing on races AND alignment - so I'm sure this discussion will be completely civil - Prove me right.
EDIT1: swapped halfing and gnome...
The only one that doesn't make sense to me is gnomes as LN.
The only one that doesn't make sense to me is gnomes as LN.
This was really sort of a 'drunken first draft'. I agree that it doesn't necessarily bode exactly true across the board, and it was not really intended as a published mechanic, but more as a design tool to show how the gods might have ended up creating the various races long ago as a sort of self-balancing nature. Also to show the weird imbalance the Goblin inclusion (but Orc and Kobold, omission) brings to world design.
regarding your specific mention - i do realize that I ended up switching where I had originally wanted gnome (NG). Guess it's time for drunken second draft post editing....
I'd see gnomes as CN and humans as unaligned (literally anything).
Well, as I recall, the way that the various racial descriptions describe them in PF1e, is as follows:
Most Elves are CG.
Most Dwarves are LG.
Most Gnomes are NG.
Most Humans are N. (I went with CN)
Most Halflings are N. (I went with LN)
Most Goblins are CE.
Most Orcs are CE. (I went with NE)
Most Kobolds are LE.
Nudging the Humans toward chaotic, and the halflings towards lawful spreads them out to the ring, and nudging orcs to NE (The hold of Belkzen sort of indicated that they are not truly chaotic, at least not as much so as goblins).