Goblins in modern fiction

Look what I've found over at the Game Producer Blog:

Imagine there’s bunch of goblins guarding a treasure cave. Each goblin would have motivations, such as these:

• Need for food (avoiding hunger)
• Shelter (avoid rain for example)
• Being safe (for example, sticking with a bigger group or perhaps running away)
• And so on…

Now, our hero arrives near the treasure cave and thinks for a moment about the situation. In our typical RPG, you’d usually draw your sword and hack’n’slash em.

But what if we could instead have AI that reacts to different stuff. For example, hero could leave food near and make noises that attract goblins to check out the noises. When goblins go check noises (that would be programmed in a common “guarding behavior” AI), they would see food… and hungry goblins would remain there to eat the food. Others might instead return. If there wasn’t any food, all goblins would return back.

Or what if hero uses a rain spell: it starts rain and it causes goblins to scatter: some go find shelter at nearby trees… some perhaps would go back to cave.

Really, there is not much I can add to this post, other than the fact that I really love the idea and would be interested in implementing the idea in some game. As a matter of fact, Dwarf Fortress, does something similar (though not in a RPG setting).

Edit: And now even with the proper link.