How RPGs turned goblins into people - TTRPG culture and design

[dreadlordmrson]

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This is an absolutely fascinating video.
Most times when people talk about the humanity of fantasy creatures in TTRPGs it's a discussion of prejudice. Or our real world morals. Of racism.
But this video is approaching the topic with the framing of game design and psychology, and it has a lot of fresh angles to consider.

Highlighting this comment from Bluecho4:
On another note, a species being "people" does not negate their ability to be antagonists, even on a large scale. It just requires recontextualizing their antagonism. Give them "people-reasons" for opposing the protagonists. Whether that is diagetic, like Drow living in deeply unjust hierarchies that profit from internal division, to a dragon's greed being a mirror of our own.

Person-enemies, by their nature, demand complexity. Individual monsters or monstrous societies granted personhood don't need to be rational or sympathetic, as such. If they're going to be granted "human-ness", they must simply have human qualities we recognize. Anger, desire, love, desperation, pride, spite. A PC should look at, say, Drow or Goblins menacing them, and say "but for the grace of the Gods, that would be me". Much as how a Drow or Goblin PC stands with the rest of the party because of very "person-y" reasons.

You can have traditional "antagonist species" in your D&D campaign, and also have them be entirely person-able in a party. It just demands a bit more effort in the world-building. (And it makes the truly inhuman adversaries seem all the more inhuman, because they diverge even farther from what we consider "human".)

And the reply by henry6715:
Yes, exactly! I don't think "antagonist species" are so hard to build. There have been "antagonist ethnicities" historically - non-agrarian peoples who live on the fringes of agrarian civilizations who raid for vast swaths of wealth: vikings, steppe nomads, etc.. Goblins can both be authentically vicious raiders who burn and plunder settlements regularly and be people.

This also opens up a lot of historically inspired narrative possibilities: A great hobgoblin conqueror has taken vast swaths of land, now divided amongst their descendants; which lands will stay under the control of the invading "monsters" and eventually integrate cultures? Which lands will rebel against their ruling caste?