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Why Monsters, and Why So Many? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I think the simple answer is that DnD is a game focused on combat, so it'll have a lot of cool hostile creatures, while Lord of the Rings is focused on exploration and drama, so it'll have a lot of cool places and friendly creatures.

But when I compile a mental list of all the fights in LotR + The Hobbit, they do feature quite a varied assortment of monsters. Trolls, orcs, spiders, a dragon, a balrog, wargs, nazghuls, ringwraits, wights, the watcher, olifants. Then there are the non-hostile monsters like ents, eagles, ghosts, and shape-shifters.

So I'm not sure the enemy variety in DnD is that much greater in relation to the amount of time spent fighting.