>>95966284
Small things are weak. Weak things are easier to beat but still not helpless. Things that are people sized, same as the PCs, intuitively are as threatening and thus make for coinflip encounters or encounters that feel wrong/fake. Systems like D&D and PF which want heroic fantasy but want man sized enemies to pose man sized threats thus use goblins, gronkbolds, etc. as fodder for newfags.

Contrast WFRP, which leans into encounters being a deadly coinflip. You're much more likely to encounter man sized or bigger enemies as first foes there - bandits, chaos faggots, orcs, beastmen. It still has vermin races like goblins and skaven, but these are recontextualized as a sincere threat by nature of them relying on large numbers and that being an actual threat in system math (you're just A Guy, not Conan).

Then you have systems that aren't just heroic fantasy, but hew more closely to the pulp origins of this whole hobby. You tend not to see vermin folk in these as frequently because the system assumes that PCs are a cut above. They're Conan, the Shadow, Indiana Jones. See systems like Savage Worlds, Barbarians of Lemuria, or Honor+Intrigue.

It's not a moral judgment on being small, it's an outgrowth of how the given world is "supposed" to work.