Look. Let's put it this way. It is fantasy. It isn't reality. In D&D, usually goblins are vicious, malicious, terrible monsters. However, if in your D&D play sessions you make goblins just another race that aren't this way, that's fine. You see them as another race. However, this is not the goblin tribe that Larian is presenting to us. The goblins and their children are vicious, malicious, terrible monsters. Larian, being the DM, has the right to present them as such.
That - right there - lies close to the heart of the matter: what WOTC/modern D&D establishes and what the DM/players decide. Goblins are monsters; Goblins are not vertically-challenged humans that got smacked by the ugly stick a thousand or so times yet are otherwise "decent people". Succubi aren't edgy nymphomaniacs; Succubi are capricious and malevolent manifestations of the lower planes who use sex as a weapon. Mind Flayers aren't yet another sentient/sapient being with a specific dietary quirk; Mind Flayers establish societies that revolve around the utter domination of "lower beings" for the express purpose of satisfying their hunger/curiosity.
A simple tautology is the most efficient way of lubricating the machinery of escapism: "They're monsters because they're monsters." If one wishes to avoid getting lost in the forest, then one should avoid stepping into the forest.
Overly-conscientious players: "Can we reform them?"
DM: "No."
Overly-conscientious players: "Are there any exceptions to the rule?"
DM: "No."
DM: "Do you want to spend your sessions of
Dungeons & Dragons making painstaking efforts to ensure that each and every humanoid monster isn't deep-down a genuinely caring individual? Do you want to escort groups of quite literally monstrous POWs - who may not be innocent and may in fact attempt to murder you along the way - to medieval court systems in villages/towns/cities that are all-too-accustomed to attacks by these monsters?'
Overly-conscientious players: "..."
