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[Rex_Nex]

So, I have been wondering - how do you all think the 3 (Or 5 if you want to include Kobolds and Goblins) major races think of each other? Right now, the only thing clear to me is a Dwarf's thought on Elves, and that's about it. Still brings some questions to my mind - How do dwarves think of humans? Brethren? Filth? I have no idea. What about Elves and Humans? Gnomes and Dwarves? Goblins and Kobolds? Give me your thoughts.

[cameron]

well goblins export terror or something and are the main enemy so they probably hate/fear them.

[KillerClowns]

From watching worlds gen, I can tell you this much:
Nobody likes the goblins or the kobolds; treaties with the former tend not to last beyond the first abduction, and nobody can even communicate with the latter.
Humans and elves actually hate each other more than elves and dwarves do, because humans actively encroach on elven territory during worldgen.
Dwarves and humans rarely go to war, and it's usually player-caused or demon-caused when they do.  So its safe to assume their relations are cordial.

[NW_Kohaku]

Dwarves and humans have fairly similar ethical viewpoints, and don't compete for land or resources most of the time.  They also have things to trade with one another - humans often have food and such from aboveground farming, while dwarves have steel.  Humans are fairly dwarf-like (to the point where drunks think themselves basically the same as dwarves), but generally just lacking in the sophistication of their technology and culture, so I think dwarves may have some sense of superiority, but it would be something like the arrogance of America compared to... pretty much any of America's allies - it's something both sides may jeer at the other about, but nothing that would really cause violence or hostility, especially when money is to be made off trade.

[monk12]

Kobolds are about a step above gorillas on the evolutionary ladder in the eyes of the other civs, IMO. And given they live in a world where a bunch of other random creatures can speak without [UTTERANCES], can you blame them?

Goblins suffer from Always Chaotic Evil, Elves are pricks who protest the expansion of the Humans and Dwarves, which causes some woes there.

I'd like to add that sharing mortality is another plus to the Human/Dwarf Bromance. They are the only two civs whose members face old age, a fundamental shared experience that neither goblins nor elves can empathize with.

[Satarus]

Kobolds are viewed as thieving monkeys.  Not worth the effort to exterminate, but worth killing on sight.

Human/Dwarf relations are one of trade.  They don't compete for land since dwarves build in the mountains and humans in the hills and forests.  Both sides make trade goods the other values.  Humans make above ground foods and booze plus odds and ends.  Dwarves make all kinds of metal and gem crafts for the humans.  Plus underground goods. War is generally caused by normal game-play (diplomat killed in fortress mode) or demonic influence.

Elves see humans as interlopers who cut down their sacred forests.  Humans probably see elves as we dwarves do.

Goblins are universally viewed as a blight upon the lands.

[Mel_Vixen]

Actually its 13 races. 5 Mayor ones and iirc 8 tribals. I still miss the rat-man btw.

[Toast024]

The underground tribal civs - Nobody knows about them except your fort, and maybe the Kolbolds.

[Derekristow]

Speaking of the underground tribes, how do they feel towards dwarves?  The only one I've encountered was hostile, is there a way to improve relations?

[KillerClowns]

An occsaional eccentric will sometimes decide it likes the dwarves.  But otherwise, they're about a step above kobolds, but below goblins, and mostly just think of dwarves as something that needs stabbing with a bit of sharpened wood.

[Ieb]

I would think the fact that kobolds know how to bend copper to their will would put them above cave-dwelling tribes. They just have the problem that they're really small and really easily frightened. Still doesn't stop the occasional thief from showing up and slicing off a hand or leg from an unfortunate dorf.

Also, related to the dwarf/human bromance due to old age being their issue, kobolds age too. Then again they are hard to bromance because they probably  hardly grasp the concept of regular romance.

I would guess elves are, evolutionary speaking, on their way out. While they can populate a lot of areas easily because they like forests, they're also really badly outgeared when compared to other civilizations. Hell, I think with the current way damage works even an average armed kobold is better than an elf soldier with his/her wooden gear. Dwarves and humans, while friendly, also use the power of SCIENCE to kick themselves out from wooden tools and creating stuff out of iron and so on, goblins use the same things for their twisted ends, kobolds are... Somewhat a mystery. I mean, they still live in caves, have no form of communication(except themselves) yet they still somehow manage to use metal to make themselves stuff.

So the elves try to "educate" the other races along the lines of "if you keep cuttng those trees at the rate you do, horrible things will happen".

It's just like Tolkien, except in Toady's version, elves usually end up dead horribly. Which is good! Even when there comes an elf along the lines of Cacame at times.

[NW_Kohaku]

"Elves" (and I say that to distinguish the Tolkienian our-pastoral-life-is-perfect elves we all know and love to hate from the "pointy-eared-humans" version, below) are almost always on their way out.  In fact, it's a major question how they even survived that long in most cases.  Elves always represent the forces of nature who get trampled underfoot from relentless human progress, and represent some lost innocence of nature or some such. Although sometimes there's the added twist like in D&D, where dragons once ruled the world, but Elves represented a faster-breeding, technology-using changing world before humans existed.  (And the successful elves were the ones who just started living with the humans rather than trying to stop them.)

It's the fact that they're such an anvilicious "technology is bad" strawman that tends to make them wind up some dying race.  It's fairly rare you get an "Avatar" storyline where the Ewoks actually manage to make Rock Beat Laser, and overthrow technology.

Cacame, on the other hand, represents more of the Dragon Age "City Elf" line of elves - the ones who stop being ecoterrorist-strawmen, and just sort of become pointy-eared humans, with some fantastic racism thrown in so they can become the (actually somewhat compelling and fun to play) fantasy Jews.  (And if you haven't played the female city elf origin story in Dragon Age Origins, you really should.  The part where the king asks why you joined the fight, and you can respond something along the lines of, "Well, you and your repressive elf-hating regime let a noble of yours (legally) try to rape me and my friends, so I butchered him and about two dozen guards, and enlisted to evade the law... Nice to meet you!" Ahh... HILARIOUS.)

[cameron]

i should like to point out there is a difference from elves based on Tolkien and Tolkien's elves, who weren't really what you make them out to be

[NW_Kohaku]

Not particularly; The elves of Tolkien weren't exactly Ewoks, but they were created as a direct representation of a "perfect culture" of a pastoral, pre-industrial world, where everyone was happy to serve their monarchy.  Then those damn humans went and screwed everything up with their progress and ambition and desire not to be stuck in Medieval Stasis, and all the other evils of the world. 

The elves weren't of particular focus in the main story of LoTR, but whenever you adapt Tolkien's works into other fantasy, all the problems become blatantly obvious if you don't delicately paper over all of them, and repeatedly insist that everything technological is evil, and everything pastoral is good.  Whenever you want to make humans (or dwarves, for that matter) the good guys, elves just immediately start looking stupid and contrarian.  (And the same can be said of the Ewoks and Pandorans, which are cut from the exact same cloth.  They only look heroic so long as you repeatedly insist that all technological progress or understanding of the world or anything but a pastoral life is evil.)

While this isn't really about elves, per se, the last couple paragraphs really touch on it - http://plover.net/~bonds/tolkien1.html

[cameron]

Im not sure how much that link pertains to the elves more then to the rest of the book as the humans were just as "Pastoral" and free of sex. Saruman was in fact one of the maia and not human and the elves are mostly (of the 3 races) to blame for the war of the ring as they forged all but the one ring and allowed sauron to trick them. The elves of  Lothlórien were in fact the exception in living in trees and it is explicitly stated that the reason for this is lack of stone(in the book of lost tales). The elves taught the dwarves a large fraction of their craft (though they[the dwarves] picked it up extremely quickly) and were rather skilled metal workers the main point of their(the elves) wish to preserve middle earth is because the whole of it had been "fading" apparently meaning growing weaker and smaller and less fantastic and this meant their time in it had begun to end. the elves also had rebellions and betrayals just earlier in their history.

if anything most of the book is not so much opposed to progress as it takes the more classical view, that all knowledge was given out by the gods originally and can be relearned with out the need for new discovery(though this is probably truer then most cases as Tolkien seemed to be going with that). I think you got a rather different impression of the elves from the books then i did.

also in the OP don't the gnomes just steal your beer or something?