I love goblins and lizardmen. Goblins because deranged little dudes running around is always a blast. Lizardmen because alligator people with melee weapons are the way I wish dinosaurs evolved instead of being birds.
Dragons, dragonborns (though half-dragons are original and better than dragonborn but more poweful so they wasn’t balanced as player race) and kobolds.
Khajiit and all other cat-people and cat-monsters everywhere (maybe except Kzinti)
Owlbears are great too.
Trolls come in dizzying array of variants (my favourite are the troll gods from Edding’s books).
Tengu, especially the crow-tenguDo biblically accurate angels count?
Sure.
I love Goblins as well so I always make mine Pathfinder inspired so they will be green with a big head who love fire and general chaos instead of orange like dnd goblins. They are always fun since they like to straddle the lines between disgusting, cute, destructive and helpless. I know my players always will befriend them so I like to put a lot of them in there.
I also like to treat them like cockroaches or fruit flies who breed very fast and can adopt to any conditions. So there will be strange variations based on where they live. Mud goblins, fire goblins, moss goblins who just have small physical adaptations to better fit their habitat.
To play as in RPGs, I like big stuff and little stuff. Like orcs and goblins. Or very non humanoid stuff like slimes.
In general, idk, I used to really love gnomes (warcraft/d&d style).
Edit: I totally missed the word monster in the title. I like shapeshifters, oozes, any sort of undead besides the typical zombie and ghost, and probably most of all are demons.
Sphinxes or lamia. The cruel intelligence of man with the refined predatory abilities of felids/snakes. What a match!
I don’t know if you would call
HobbitsHalflings monster races but they are my favorite. I love the way Eberron did them with their mark of hospitability so they have special magic to make everywhere more comfortable and good things just happen to them. I love how they just took the fearlessness and everything good from Kinder and just wrapped it into regularhobbitshalfings.I feel like Beholders are the product of some nightmare fueled fever dream. They fascinate me endlessly.
Fun fact, fever dreams are how beholders reproduce
Weeping Angels
i love lizardmen. mainly because i am a scalie.
Probably dwarves - they’re not that exotic but I really vibe with them… for something more out there I’m a big fan of Yuan-Ti, they have spectacular lore and it’s always tickled me that their most human-like form is basically considered low-born while the pure bloods are full on snakes.
Dwarves definitely take the cake for me though, big beards, stout, egalitarian, sometimes greedy - but always devout craftsfolk. As a big gender non-conforming man with a bigger beard and an intense love of my craftwork, I really vibe with them.
… I am a dwarf, and I’m digging a hole Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole
I love the classic elves and dwarves as fantasy races. They don’t give a shit about our human centric concepts of gender roles. Dwarf women have large beautiful beards and elf men wear long flowy clothing with their long scented hair.
their most human-like form is basically considered low-born while the pure bloods are full on snakes
Wait, what ?
Snake people is a decent answer, but dwarves are not typically considered monstrous.
I love dwarves too. If I had to pick another race it would be the Nac Mac Feegle from Discworld.
I couldn’t even understand the text I was reading at first when they talked, but once I figured out the accent I loved reading them. Plus the only thing they’re afraid of is lawyers.
Kobolds deserved the place in the player’s handbook that dragonborn got. Those little scrappy fuckers maybe being the actual scions of dragons appeals to me in a way that dragonborn just do not.
First gen Pokemon? Or is that cheating?
Not really a race or a fantasy setting. Think more in lines of trope that could be applied across multiple settings (kobolds, orcs, tengu, etc).
Okay, you consider it a cheat answer, that’s fair. But, just for the record, pokemon is a fantasy series. And the pokemon are a race of monsters.
But for a more typical answer, I’d go with either dragons cause they’re usually powerful and intelligent and can fly or warcraft’s taurens cause they’re like a hippie version of a minotaur. Strong and intelligent but with an affinity for nature. A tauren druid being a very fun combo with tons of versatility.
I know it makes me super basic but… dragons. I know, it’s not inspiring. But I must add a caveat. I prefer that they are intelligent, on par with or surpassing humans in intelligence and willing (if reluctantly) to interact with them. Game of Thrones dragons are cool and all but they don’t really do it for me in the same way as, say, the dragon from Dragonheart.
If a dragon is looking down on us magic less short lived specifies as trash what is the point? I want my dragons innately magical in strange ways, clever and older. I enjoy a rampaging dragon but even better if they are doing it on purpose
Basic is good. In fact I asked this question because I wanted to get a “vibe check” on what people thought was iconic.
Pushing the boundaries of the question, but 40k orks! How can you not love the big green lugs?
40K orks doesn’t really fit, but orcs in general do. 40K just happen to be the best version of orcs. I’m a Badmoons painter myself.
The 40k orks do have a couple of Warhammar fantasy counterparts, at least. I’m not sure how similar in personality they are (a brief search suggests the Old World ones were more like 40k’s orks than Age of Sigmar’s orruks are) but they at least look similar on a surface level
Original warhammer fantasy orcs were more like Middle-Earth Uruk-hai, they even had women, and hobgoblins being steppe nomads analogues were doing normal nomad things, just with big wolves instead of small horses. 40k orks were kinda separate as they started as satire on british football hooligans. But as mext editions came they were defined as the current fungal sexless species and fantasy orcs followed suit (probably to take away the troubling concepts like “misogyny”, “sexual assault” or “logistics”).
Orruks seems to me exactly like last iteration of Old World orcs, both differing from 40k orks in development level and lesser population increase ratio.
They look so similar in fact that I kitbashed a box of Ironjaws Orruk Ardboys with some 40K Nob bitz to create Eavy Metal Nobz. The fantasy legs are shorter so I have some cut up sproose to act as bricks for them to stand on.
I think it’d be fair to consider them a sub race of orks, not much goofy lovability about Tolkien orks but you can’t help but smile listening to Ork hijinks
The orcs from orcs must die probably fit in a similar sub race
And intensely stylish squigs to wear on your head so you can swap out your “hairstyle” at will!
I’ll go with the Alzabo from Gene Wolf’s worlds. Mimics the intelligence of anything it eats and begs its prey to be eaten in the voice of (already eaten) loved ones.
The people who submit, don’t do so out of momentary stupidity, but because the Alzebo/Loved Ones make such a compelling case that the only way to be reunited again is to join the beast.
