The Monsters Are Meant To Be There

[GMMichael]

-Natural disasters: plagues, hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes, wildfires. We still don't control these things and they come out of literally nowhere to threatened us. So you can create dragons, not as sentient and calculating critters that can have debate with adventurers, but creatures with goals and morality that are completely alien. Maybe their very existence bring about catastrophe and they exist as opposition to civilization, like a dragon who's wingbeat spreads illness, or one where their step cause sparks to fly and set fire to everything completely out of their control.

-Criminal organisations, terrorist groups : On the other end of the spectrum you have groups with clear goals and easily knowable motives. Greed or the desire to control. All things considered they're actually a 'rare encounter' in real life, but they are sensationalized. You don't need a whole race of them, but rather organization. People perverted by their own selfish desire that ignore the suffering of others. Rather than 'monster' being a race, it is a creed... something even more dramatic.

-Despot and cultists: Another type of more human enemies are the good people warped by loyalty to dangerous figurehead and endoctrinated with ideology that place them in opposition to others. Again, monsters as a result of corruption rather than a race.

Erm, you left out governments. Unless those were included in criminal organizations?

At the same time, there's been a really big rethink of monsters in fantasy series, including in Tolkien's own work as well as in Beowulf. Wizards, of course, just announced the end of evil races. I think there's a lot of merit to that, and a lot to learn about how we ostracize people by painting them as "monstrous," or use racialized features (as Tolkien as been accused of doing) to indicate evil in the monster. And you can tell great stories about people who have been cast out as monsters - the rethinking of Sycorax and Caliban in last year's run of the Lucifer comic was absolutely brilliant.
. . .Is the idea of a monster as death personified still worth including in our stories, even if just to role play out how we can face down our own mortality? Can it be separated from its racist past? If so, how do you tell that story?

For myself, I've been trying to find the balance of these evolving views as I'm designing my own monsters. Making death clearly inhuman is one way I try to avoid the problems of the story. And facing down a ravenous dragon creature is still a pretty cool gaming experience. But, should we still have monsters that can't be reasoned with or befriended? Or is that inherently problematic, and promoting violence and hierarchy?

Death isn't going away, and I doubt that metaphor is, either. The question is: does the average reader have any appreciation for symbolism? That's something that might be going away: appreciation for art.

If you want to include monsters as enemies in your game that aren't racist, I recommend eschewing racial stereotypes. Don't eschew the monsters though: those are fun to fight.

 

[Undrave]

Erm, you left out governments. Unless those were included in criminal organizations?

they fall under 'despot and cultists' .