Lot of this comes from my own experience, and I really wanted the player to be immersed, so I based a lot of things in reality but gave them a fantasy twist. Enough familiar to be comfortable, enough different to feel that joy of discovery.
As for the goblins, they're probably my crowning achievement. I'm a very Against Type writer, so I like to take common tropes and expectations and turn them on their heads. I wanted to take a characteristically "ugly" race and see if I could make them cute without losing what made them goblins. I was tired of the short fugly ones and I was tired of just "green humans" being called goblins, so I wanted to redefine what a goblin love interest could look like. Quite proud of them... so I had to make more lol