<quotes clipped and moved around to touch on individual themes>
Maybe it's because they sucked so much in the first edition of AD&D? I don't remember them at all from 2nd edition, though it's possible they were introduced in a supplement I didn't own, but I do remember being blissfully Monk-free until 2000 and the Monk reared it's ugly, quivering palm in 3rd edition.
They were in oD&D, AD&D, and BECMI (there called 'mystic') in roughly the same form. 2e made monk 'kits' for most classes and introduced martial arts concurrently but tied to expending weapon proficiency slots instead of a discrete class.
* I see the Monk was inspired by a series of books called The Destroyers, one of which was adapted into the classic movie Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins in 1985 and Captain Janeway costars.
While the Monk class can encompass a wide swath of non-Asian warriors, the fact is, the class has always been very heavily coded and marketed as "Kung Fu Guys", I mean, look at most of the Monk art that's been produced over the years. Or the need for some older editions to add every wacky martial arts "weapon" (sometimes using the term very loosely) to the game!
it is not designed to mimic east Asian martial arts very well and certainly not the story versions from legends, books and visual media.
The quiet parts out loud is that the Monk class was based on a 1970s Western pop culture pastiche of wuxia media and (Eastern) martial arts tropes and legend, as seen through the lens of a 25 year old fanboy (Brian Blume). Yes,
The Destroyer series is the referenced direct inspiration, but everything from
Kung Fu to old samurai movies* are in the mix. It is a grab bag of tropes that seemed iconic at the time that got written down and ossified into the game.
*seen in B&W on Saturday afternoons on some old UHF station.
People correctly point out that A) you can re-flavor to fit your own needs, and B) the most recent ruleset has tried to strip out the explicit quasi-Asian framing. The won't change that no small part of your players who want to play a monk probably
want to be playing some level of the above concept.
I'm with you on not liking monks in the pseudo-medieval fantasy that is D&D. They just don't fit the vibe.
I don't understand why monks are problematic when most D&D settings are effectively global, if not interplanetary or interdimensional.
Here's the other quiet part out loud: -- Some people like playing quasi-medieval Europe* if magic and mythical creatures were real (plus exceptions A, B, and C); and some people like playing globetrotting (if not planehopping) adventures. Early D&D certainly did conform a lot more to the former than modern versions -- except for all the exceptions. The monster manual certainly never shied away from including whatever Japanese or Native American critter Gygax thought interesting. However, character creation did lean heavily on knights in shining armor and pointy hat wizards... but then monks and psionics.
*with some renaissance equipment somehow coinciding with classical/iron/bronze-age stuff, but not firearms
**or a spell-point magic system at least, in psionics' case.
And those did stand out -- not least of which because Gygax wasn't 100% thrilled with their inclusion, but did so because others wanted them. So plenty of people spent many years gaming with them seeming like outliers (because they were). More to the point, the game itself never really got around to integrating them cohesively into the game world and system the way other things Gary wasn't fond of (PC demihumans, for instance) were.
So I vaguely get why someone would not wanting monks in their game because of their vibe -- particularly when D&D monks
aren't a great representation of IRL Asian culture (again, Western 1970s pop culture pastiche). If someone said they didn't want non-pseudo-Europeans in their game, that would be different -- and people have rightly brought up how much world travel did happen bitd.
That said, if you are one of those people, but have successfully integrated psionics, or artificers, or swashbucklers (also something early D&D didn't support, and breaks the knights-in-shining-armor vibe), or interplanar nexus cities and dragonborn/tiefling/warlocks/whatever else has been introduced in the past 30 years -- at least contemplate your reasoning as to why this lift is the one that is too hard.
After more than thirty years of playing D&D off an on, it's time I just accept that Monks are here to stay.
In the game? In the game at all, yes, monks are here to stay. Do you need to have them in your game/utilize them heavily? No. Plenty of people don't use psionics or artificers (or only have them around when someone wants to play one, etc.).
the problem is more that no one seems to be willing to do the leg work of explain the basic metaphysics the makes these things tick and then just work outwards.
If 3E 3PP are any indication, plenty of people have been willing to do the legwork. None of them have gained universal traction. I think that's the underlying problem with 'fixing' the monk -- much like psionics, no two gamers agree on what they want out of them. So even though the current product is unsatisfactory, there isn't a strong incentive to greatly reexamine it.
And before anyone says "it's not that hard/just do X,Y,Z", just keep in mind that few other classes ask you to go out of your way to make room for them.
All you need for Clerics is Gods willing to reward faith. All you need for Barbarians are tough people who live in harsh environments. All you need for Wizards is people who can learn magic from books.
I would argue that clerics are at least as much a lift, at least the ones we landed on with late 1E-modern D&D. Clerics from oD&D, early AD&D, and the B-BECM lines were pretty generic -- they tended to worship 'gawds*.' However, once settings like the Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms boxed sets came out, you got whole pantheons and clerics started choosing gods and then eventually other PCs were encouraged to choose their own specific god within the pantheon**. To my mind, that's more worldbuilding requirement for a given class than monks, druids, or paladins have. We're just really really used to it.
*Mornard's recollection of 'Church of Crom, Scientist' coming up when someone finally asked who the clerics worshipped is pretty hilarious
**despite that not being really how polytheistic religions work.