The idea has been bouncing around in my head for years now, I can remember talkin’ to my Friend as we’d walk home from high school, discussing the development of my idea, planning for him to proof-read some stuff.   How the whole idea actually came to be conceived is a pretty daft, simple thing, but surprising how much it just developed in my head over time.  I wrote down notes and notes about various details and sections of the game, including a small bestiary of different types of Goblins (The typical Greenskins, the badass Grayskins, the monstrous Whiteskins, the ninja-like Smallskins etc) and even notes about their culture, their language, how they survive living on the Mor (an enormous, treacherous mountain range devoid of life).
I’d grown weary of the typical portrayal of Goblins in games and stories as some weak, pathetic, useless creature that you see at level1 and never hear from again.  I liked the concept of them being somewhat clumsy and prone to in-fighting and barbaric, yet devious and clever (in a kind of ingenious combat mechanism sorta way) but I wanted to bring them to a bit of a darker side of that, take away the connotation of them being weak.  Make them the prime enemy, to really explore the history that could be achieved with a larger scope to focus on them with.  They’re still clumsy and prone to in-fighting and die as fast as they appear, but they’re also a lot stronger, scarier and more devious than ever, sticking with their notorious contraptions (including getting the massive Mammoth-esque creatures and layering them with armour and sheets of metal, riding them along as war machines) but with a hierarchy.
Orcs, ogres and trolls are still in it to a degree, but are viewed as cousins of the Goblin race; the other “skins”.  This way I could put a lot of focus on their species and really delve into what makes them tick, what makes them so interesting to me, without having to squeeze all that within level 1, then ditch it forever.  Warhammer had a big hand in this ideaology for me, teaching me that Goblins can be around forever, and be as equally scary as anyone else; there’s no need to shove them off to the side when it’s time to introduce the cooler enemies.  The Goblins can be the cooler enemies!

There were a few other concepts I wanted to bring into this too, context affecting our preconceptions being a big one, another one being an off-handed attack at human culture as we know it.  I wanted to bring in as many different Goblin species and races as I possibly could, and show them all working together, as one huge unit, making the most of each others’ advantages and due to this one attitude, becoming an unstoppable war machine.  They’re happy to have their intellectuals as leaders as much as their combatant pioneers, and use giant fighting monsters as secret weapons, to send in slinky ninja types to sabotage and even have different coloured skins work alongside like there’s no difference between them.
Next, I’d contrast this with showing the Humans as they are; prone to government affairs and political bullshit, paranoia and segregation, separate from each other and lacking common goals.  This would be the primary failing of the Humans on Averell, and the primary reason they can never get one over on the Goblins; because they can’t work together, whereas the Goblins don’t see prejudice as we do.  The Goblins see weak as weak, and strong as strong, it’s simple for them.  Humans associate races and genders arbitrarily as weak and strong and allow irrelevant political matters to interfere with importance.  Due to this, even with vastly superior numbers and technology, they keep allowing themselves to be outfoxed and defeated by the Goblins, time after time.
The Goblins are fictional, but the problems allowing these metaphorical monsters to victor over the Humans are quite real.  I’m never going to change such things, but I am well aware of how stupid Humans can be in this day and age, and I’m all one for the metaphors.

But I could never really get it right.  Something always felt wrong, always put me off, and I could just never advance much.  I’d go back at it year after year, editing the notes, restarting fresh, changing small details here and there trying to get it right and never quite could…”feel” it.  This year, however, I finally got the idea to throw it together in RPGM, to take a different approach of bringing it to life and the inspiration tap turned on again, all those ideas that had faded over time suddenly blow up with colour, I knew what I was doing again, and when I went to write down my notes I could hardly stop myself, going page after page and not even writing down more than a sentence for each major event; it was uncanny.
Here I am now, finally workin’ it the way I’d wanted, and with the concept brought into a game it’s given me the ability to add artistic license and change things up, add different sections, it’s allowing me to bring sides of the story and sub-plots into vision that would have been awkward to portray in a novel, at least not without doing what Tolkien did and go on massive tangents every few pages, which I’d have rathered avoid.  Within a game world, however, you have the option of pursuing the main story or stopping and going after some of that sub-plot, finding out about something small and unimprtant, just because the rest of the game can be put on pause; it’s more interactive and freeing than a novel would be.  I think that’s what finally gave me back the inspiration to finally get back on the idea after so long of letting it sit as an untouched folder of files on my computer.  But here I am, ready to get at it again!  Bring on the Goblins!