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?
What?! D&D isn’t thát old. It’s from 1974. So people who grew up on it are in their 50’s and 60’s.
Gygax died in 2008, Arneson died in 2009, I don’t know how many of their cohort have gotten cancer or heart attacks or other stuff that generally get listed as “natural causes” on a coroner’s report. We are slowly losing that first generation of gamers who had to argue at length whether players should be allowed to read the rules, whether players should choose their character’s race and class, and whether they should roll their own dice.