I was watching some RPG YouTube, and of course there was talk about Monsters. And with the recent OMG CONTROVERSY with the newest Monster Manual, I got to thinking about something that is more inherent in D&D and in fantasy games in general, why so many monsters? I’ve played various other games, and read many books, watched many movies, but it seems that fantasy games, with D&D leading the charge, seem to have more monsters than any other medium in the genre, or other genre’s in particular. So yeah, why are there so many monsters?
Yes, however, to appease the pedants out there, saying Gygax and Arneson and the rest of the Geneva Lake crew “grew up on” DnD is a bit of a misnomer. They didn’t grow up on it, they invented it, and they were well into adulthood at the time.