Well, actually that's a lie. The next issue I wish to discuss is one of terminology.
The terminology issue is one I've briefly touched on before when discussing the magic user classes, but it applies equally (if not more so) to monsters. Now, D&D has some of the most unashamedly retarded monsters I've ever seen, but so what? That's part of the charm. The problem I have is with the way they're described. Every possible word for a particular thing always has to refer to a particular specific individual creature class. So, for example whilst we could use the terms Ghost, Spirit, Shade, Wraith, Revenant, Lost Soul or Shapeless Incorporeal Haunter From Beyond The Grave fairly interchangeably, in D&D each is a different class of creature. there is no room for ambiguity or mystery. Nothing succeeds in sucking all the magic out of a supposedly magical setting than having everything be DEFINED. Take the word Goblin as another example. In mythology it can mean all manner of creatures.
Some, admittedly, scarier than others.
It is, pretty much, a word to describe creatures that you don't really know how to describe. It has a sense of mystery, magic and danger.
In D&D it means a shortarse Orc wannabe who isn't worth much XP.
The problem as I see it is that rather than doing anything particularly interesting with the monsters it's got, D&Ds answer to the need for variety is to simply throw more and more interchangeable stat blocks at the players. Your monsters don't need to have any sort of rationale or background or culture or individual variety as long as there is an implausible variety of different ones. So rather than getting around the fact that all Goblins are identical by allowing for a variety of culture and power within the existing Goblin genus they just throw in a hundred extra types of short nasty humanoids, each of whom is as sadly undifferentiated as they original Goblin was. This results of course in the traditional baffling dungeon ecology, where every room contains a random and unconnected type of creature simply to keep the flavours of murder on offer from getting stale. But the other problem is that of race war.
To be fair, I'm sure that D&D is not the only game to suffer from this. It has, after all, been hard coded into generic fantasy since The Hobbit.
When you're average party of supposedly good and noble adventurers comes across your average party of hapless Goblins or Kobolds or whatever, chances are they won't think twice about slaughtering the lot of them. Then probably stripping the bodies of anything valuable, and leaving them to rot where they fell. But that's okay somehow, because they're Goblins. Leaving aside the issues of alignment for the moment (which is undoubtedly a post in itself) the fact of the matter is the Goblins never progress past the line in the Monster Manual that says (Small Evil Monstrous Humanoid). Thus all Goblins are fair game.
Now just think for a moment how cool it would be for the party to discover the village is being menaced by Goblins and not know what that actually means. Maybe they need to be fought off like a stereotypical Goblin, but maybe they'll leave voluntarily if you can beat them in a drinking competition? Maybe they can't hurt you if you ignore them, or explode with tremendous force if stuck by iron. Maybe they will serve as allies if presented with a yearly tribute of 13 pumpkins and 3 pigs? Maybe they're actually a group of Halflings in Scooby Doo masks and there's actually no such thing as Goblins?
What if, when informed of the existence of something that roughly translated means Incorporeal Undead you have to reach for something other than a +1 weapon?
Like any culture or species a monster race should contain variety and a degree of unpredictability. They should have different motivations, skills and abilities and goals. Sure there should be average ones, but there should also be exceptional ones, as well as the dregs and the lunatic fringe. The monsters should get to level up with the party, rather than just switching to the next species to genocide in the name of righteousness.
I've previously mooted the idea of a plug and play method of character generation. This could just as easily be applied to monsters. They start with a standard profile, sure. But then you can plug in extra traits and abilities and apply new templates to make them far more (or less) than they were to start with. That way you can remain within a coherent ecology and still provide a wide range of action.
I mean, with the sheer amount of things in the various Monster Manuals, shouldn't the forces of darkness have won already? They only outnumber the rest of the species by about ten thousand to one.
And yes, I include the bacteria in that.
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