I was thanking a seller on Ebay for the last goblin figures my basic army needed and explained how my fantasy mass battle games are intended to go:
"Yeah in my world the Goblins are the Revolutionary French/American Republic forces and the (less than unified) Dwarves are the royalty ruled Austrians, British, and Russians. Gnomes, Hobbits, and Elves are the "lower classes/peasants/serfs" under the rule of the Dwarf nobility. That way no one group has a claim to being totally the Good Guys or the Bad Guys. The Dwarves represent stability and the Goblins represent the potential (realized better in America than France in the 1780's though 1815 era) of representative government."
Just thought I would throw that out because it was the first time my vaguely defined roles for (essentially) human-less fantasy actually jelled in a way I immediately knew expressed how I wanted my world to work and I just needed to tell someone.
Thanks for the space to blab.
Gracias,
Glenn