Mr. Son vs Youtube

Sent to my friends on Discord:
Listening to a DnD video about improving dragons where the guy is talking about green dragons
He's talking about why the various chromatic dragons have the personalities they do, why it makes sense for their environments
And how the green dragons -- living in the forest -- would face the most encroachment from humans and other humanoids into their territories, so they have less focus on holding territory and accruing vast hoards that they can't move if they need to

And like.
Wouldn't that make a neat actual "villain with a point" dragon for a game or story?
The dragon who's lived here for centuries but recent settlements have been agitating to chase him away, and he's decided to lash out brutally againsnt them.
Maybe a little too topical given the real world right now :p
But in a fantasy setting it would be a case where it might even make sense to stop the dragon not by killing it or finally driving it off, but by working on his side to get the settlers to let him live in land that he's been in longer than they have, just maybe with some sort of treaty so they can handle each other :p
...so frustrating to go "oh that's a neat idea!" and as I'm writing it up go "oh no, it's accidental political allegory for current events."
I don't want to write political allegory I just want to write cool fantasy

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?