Do Orcs herd green sheep?

Or: How do humanoids fit into the lifeweb of your setting?

Do they displace human or demi-human settlement? Or do they only live in the borderlands or deep wilderness? Do they compete for land with other races?

Do they live in multiracial communities or do they live only with their own kind? Are they xenophobes? Who are they willing to tolerate? How far does this tolerance extend?

Do they trade? Who do they trade with, other humanoids, demi-humans, or demons? What do they have that others want? What do they need that they can only get from their trading partners? Why haven't they just tried to take it? Or have they tried and failed and now have to trade for it?

Do they farm? Or have herds? Do they live off the bounty of a wilderness carefully tended? Do they only live from the spoils of war and raiding? How do these subsistence patterns effect the rest of their culture?

                                                                                                                                                          

 Its all well and good to say that Orcs 'live only for war' or that Hobgoblin culture is militaristic, but it doesn't fill out a campaign world very well. Not only is it reductionist, removing any individuality from creatures who should be as complex as any person you've met, but it also denies you the opportunity to make your world more three dimensional.

In my setting 'The Gem Cities' the Goblinoid culture controls an area of rolling highlands to the south east of the Gem Cities. Generally Goblins are held as chattel by Hobgoblins and Bugbears serving as agricultural labor and cannon fodder. They war with the Dwarves who inhabit the mountains to the north and east of their lands as well as the Elves to the west. They trade with the Orcs who spread across the northern taiga beyond the mountain holds of the Dwarves.

The Orcs are semi-nomadic herders who travel between summer camps in the high north and winter camps close to the dwarven homelands. They trade their shaggy horses to the Hobgoblins for manufactured goods and the produce of agriculture. Between the temperate lands of the Gem Cities and the frigid lands of the Orcs lies an area of rough hills and narrow brooding valleys that is home to both Men and Orcs as well as a mixing of the two short lived races. Humans came seeking open land and self determination. Orcs came fleeing calamity and warfare in their northern lands. In this borderland can be found Humans living under the brutal yoke of orcish masters, Orcs chained to their labor under the cold eyes of a Human overseer, and Half-Orcs both wretched and exalted. Orcs war with the Dwarves in protection of their trade with the Hobgoblins as much as for any ancient grudge. Orcs willing serve as mercenaries for any who would pay them; and they particularly prize the luxuries of more settled cultures as rewards. Young Orcs often seek service with the Hobgoblins when they war with the elves to the south as a necklace of pointy ears and a pack horse laden with elvish treasure greatly improves an owner's status in the frozen north.

Thought and time spent towards developing the interrelations of your setting is a reward unto itself but also gives your world a depth beyond a bunch of ugly green people waiting in the wood s to be slain by passing adventurers.