Looking through the Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons monster manual has reminded me that seeing some weird and utterly nonsensical monster is great. I just look at the feyr or the deep spawn or the thought eater and am filled with so much inspiration that I don't get when I look at goblins or orcs.
There is a certain magic to the classics, don't get me wrong. I like my goblins and orcs as much as the next gal, but I feel that with the classics you run into a problem. Say you encounter a troll. You know how to deal with a troll: with fire. The act of using fire on a troll is less good thinking and more a test of "do you know your dungeoneering basics?" A fine question, and one that should be asked at times.
But we can do better. What if you didn't immediately recognize what you were fighting. Instead of a troll being tall with green mottled skin, a troll is instead a giant insect with fast regrowing chitin. The answer is still the same, but then the question has changed, and thus discovering that fire works is new and exciting! The issue that there is only so many times you can reskin a troll before players begin to suspect that every new monster is troll in sheep's clothing.
What happens when you come across a feyr though? It's weird and different, and obeys its own rules. Figuring out how to deal with it comes with the same magic they must have had back in the day when they realized how to beat trolls. The classics are the classics because they're easily recognized, a shorthand form of symbolism. New monsters, weird monsters, ignore this symbolism. That makes them interesting.
As a GM, using cool monsters is a large part of my enjoyment. Putting a cool challenge in front of the players and seeing how they deal with it is my fun, and weird monsters are the perfect cool challenge, fresh and new and exciting. This is why bestiaries are my favorite kind of TTRPG product. A monster can be an entire adventure, a whole and complete session bundled in a few dozen sentences of description. It's also why I've added different types of monsters into my setting Neurim, and changed up the ones that are more classic while removing some of the usual suspects. You've seen a goblin, but you likely haven't seen my goblins, and you assuredly haven't seen my husks.
Long story short, I think we should stray from the classics every now and then and use something a bit more exciting. Not always, weird monsters are like candy, too much and you'll rot your teeth but perfectly fine as an occasional treat.
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