The theme is message boards. The players can take roles like veterans, spambots, newbies, ****, or nazi mods. Each of them has a different objective. Veterans and newbies try to build their reputations, spambots and **** try to saturate the board with their content, and mods try to keep the boards clean. Each player starts with a random enemy player chosen as their enemy, and they get bonus points when they're eliminated from the game.

I propose that we don't care about the theme for now and establish the mechanics instead.

pure abstract gameplay

I relegate two alpha variable tokens to the resource bin to draw a card. I play that card to reduce your beta variable by two and win the game.

I'm torn between school and game store themes. School could have alt win conditions like popularity, academics and sports which could make things wonderfully asymmetric. Game store/forum would be full of in jokes.
If we do literal goblin-keep-outing though, we get to move lots of tokens around the board and that always appeals to me.

Space psychological horror. Goblins are a nickname for a nanobot plague that's sweeping the galaxy for all human life and you have to escape it.

The Greater Organized BioLife NanoSwarm must be stopped at all costs!

Genius.

I voted for four of the options. Reverse World Domination (obviously because I was the one who suggested it), No Goblins Allowed (game mechanics could be put in place that make it close to a Reverse World Domination type of game), Space Psych Horror (the premise given is kind of similar to RWD, except the idea appears to be escaping the overwhelming force rather than fighting it), and Bottom Up (cause it doesn't hurt to settle on mechanics first).

Edit: I just realized that I gave a genre instead of a theme. Oops.

Is this poll really new, or are people just not voting for their own suggestions?

I voted for the first (since I suggested it) and one other.

there's a poll?
When was I supposed to notice this?

What is "Bottom Up"?

Okay. I'll vote for that one two.

Although I feel like that will make it 2 or 3 out of 4 steps that we decided to do something else and come back to it later.

Suggestion for next step:
Adventures/scenarios (ie. Castle ravenloft, tragedy looped, betrayal, etc)
VS
Standard objective (ie. Monopoly, clue, Catan, etc)

OR
Legacy game (evolving game, ie. Risk legacy, pandemic legacy)
VS
Non legacy game (everything else)

OR
Dice vs cards vs both vs neither

Just a few ideas.

Well when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much...

All the option descriptions are in the OP. I forgot to make a new post to go with it.

Having recently watched Home Alone (Well, HA2, but still) I've come round to thinking that building a board out of map tiles and defending it with traps could be a neat game. Sort of like Betrayal At House On The Hill. Just with more pitfalls and heavy objects rolling down the stairs.

That game was called Mousetrap

Lovecraft - Always a favorite and I like it.
NGA - Interesting idea, but doesnt tug at me.
Website Start-Up - Sounds tedious but could probably be made fun. Not for me.
School - Too vague, although fun stuff could probably be done.
Reverse World Domination - I would like this more if you controlled the world and were trying to get rid of the control for some reason rather than the old fashioned do-it-yourself insurgency.
Message Boards - This sounds oddly cool. I like it.
Bottoms Up - Cop out. I'd rather start designing Top Down and change the focus than go Bottoms Up.
Space Horror - Kinda like Lovecraft. Anything Horror I like.

Looks like we're making the multiplayer strategy version of Dead Space, then.