D&D General Why do good monsters exist, from a game design standpoint?

[Desdichado]

You can summon them, you can ally with them, you can pit them against bad guys. But mostly, it's because Gygax was at heart a simulationist, and his "Gygaxian naturalism" as it's been called, meant that he had to have the rest of the world statted out, or at least an idea on how he would do it, so that the whole world operated under the same mechanical framework, because that's just how he rolled.

 

[nevin]

Okay, you asked about from game design, and then nothing you had to say had to do with game design (mechanics and rules) and everything about what purpose they have in-world for adventure and/or setting design. So I'm going to handle that.

You've mentioned allies, there's the flip side of patrons. They could be there to rescue or save. They could be not aligned with the characters but someone they could potentially convince or convert. They can simply be NPCs, there's little difference between a high level fighter and a storm giant, a king and a dragon.

Basically, we know that good-aigned NPCs are used for. I don't get a feel that you're saying that good aligned "monsters" are unfit for all purposes a good-aligned NPC is, so that exhaustive list should answer this question completely.

I'm a bit confused by the original question. Monsters and NPC's are there to be used to help drive the story. Good ones for good threads in the story,evil ones for evil threads in the story. Sometimes either for neutral or simply non important ones in the story. Why do we need lists of what they are for?

 

[Blue]

I'm a bit confused by the original question. Monsters and NPC's are there to be used to help drive the story. Good ones for good threads in the story,evil ones for evil threads in the story. Sometimes either for neutral or simply non important ones in the story. Why do we need lists of what they are for?

"List" was used in the exact way you just did: listing out ways they are used. You listed good threads in the story, etc. It wasn't referring to any formalized list.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm a bit confused by the original question. Monsters and NPC's are there to be used to help drive the story. Good ones for good threads in the story,evil ones for evil threads in the story. Sometimes either for neutral or simply non important ones in the story. Why do we need lists of what they are for?

Well, when I think of their mechanics, the question becomes why publish the mechanics of good aligned monsters if they're primarily for story reasons and not fight?