For the exact same reasons.
I seem to recall two fellows who spent a lot of time not just playing a game in a fantasy setting - but writing stories with these same sorts of creatures. Imagining them out of whole cloth.
Fellows by the names of John Ronald Roul Tolkein, and Clive Staples Lewis.
Fairly conservative and Christian fellows, though not evidently up to the moral, ethical, and religious standards of posters on this thread.
I know you like to think Tolkein & Lewis would be playing RPG if they were alive today, but I very much doubt it. Neither would have had the time or the inclination.