It goes back to what I was saying before when the last hubbub about WotC fucking around with alignment and playing moral relativist. They think they're being cute and subversive by trying to shrug and say 'who knows?' when it comes to demons and devils and orcs etc. but at the end of the day it makes creating engaging stories involving these creatures less interesting if you try and keep up with the progressive treadmill because we end up with everything grey, neutral, and boring.
When you've got races and creatures that you know most of the time are evil motherfuckers and come across one that instead maybe isn't that's when it's intriguing and you've actually got something that player's will pick up on. Case in point, in Curse of Strahd there's a friendly Lich in the Amber Temple that should have PCs shitting themselves until they realise he's A-OK actually and wants to help them (assuming they don't act like assholes and pick a pointless fight that can TPK them easily). You've also got the opposite situation with the fallen angel Abbot to a lesser extent.
That is the greatest sin in this whole "oooh, we cannot stereotype anything" push they're making. First, we don't get to say memorable lines like "only
Stormtroopers Razorleaf Elves are so accurate" or "the orcs are nearby, I can still feel their stench burning my nostrils". If no one has any sharply defining characteristics, it becomes impossible to be memorable. Second, if every goblin has the same potential to become a paladin as a dwarf, a human, or even a goddamn
demon, meeting a goblin paladin stops being special. This should be obvious. But these idiots keep pushing out "unique" characters that just...
aren't unique by their own rules.
Drizzt Do'Urden only became the template for a billion cheap knockoffs
because he was unique. And he was
only unique because he was different from the rest of his species. Fuck, even Legolas, as basic bitch elf as he was stated to be, was
different because he was young and willing to give a dwarf the time of day. Expectations were rightly subverted. But when every elf gets along with dwarves just fine
because they're clearly not bigots, and when every drow is a tolerant member of a democratic community where nobody ever does anything wrong, there are no expectations to subvert. Oh, this drow is walking in daylight and fighting for good? Well, good on him. This goblin is the fair and popular mayor of a human town? Neat, I hope he gets re-elected.
For all their posturing about wanting their fictional worlds to "wow!" their players, all they do is make everything boring and predictable.
