The Bane of Names
When we first started playing Canyon did some awesome stuff with describing the monsters in Wolves. They really leaned into the fact that these things are not natural and never gave us names.
A manticore is not a manticore it was "A dog of massive proportions a man's mustached face stretched into a grim mockery of a smile over canine features. A lump of iron like nails hanging from its tail" I never really put 2 and 2 together that this was a manticore from this description until after we had defeated it.
I have played ttrpgs for 20 years and probably killed a dozen manticores in that time. This though didn't feel like facing a manticore the name destroys the magic. Knowing what it is kills it.
I do find myself saddened that many of my current players are Wolves fans even before coming to my table and thus have read stuff like Monsters& already so when I am describing things they are always sitting there going "This must be a kobold or this is a gargoyle" and so on and so forth.
The men squatting by the river caking themselves in mud lose their magic when the players think of attacking them as just attacking gargoyles. Rather then approaching things from in the fiction of the setting.
That manticore we killed? We didn't use swords and axes. We used hooks and ropes and pulled the mans face off of it. It left behind a pathetic beaten house pet that we rapidly put down and returned the face to its rightful (if terrible human being) of an owner.
I never would have thought that plan could work as a player if the word running through my head was "manticore" I would have been like "we need big shields to protect us from thrown iron spikes and need to corner it so it can't run away" etc. You know stereotypical monster hunt stuff. Not the things of Beowulf boasting of great things he will do but rather that of a calculating dungeon crawler looking to get out with the reward.
It is a question of what we want out of the game and honestly I am a little saddened from a bit of what is happening in my current game. Not much to do about it besides just keep not naming things.