Valid post, and given the scale of DnD dragons I’d say that an adventurer is about the size of a cat relative to an adult dragon. IRL, a cat being able to attack you and successfully kill you would be pretty fucked up even if it’s theoretically possible.

Incidentally however…

A cat in DnD does have the ability to reliably fight and kill a Commoner.

So what I’m saying is that it should actually be a valid plot to put humans in the position of some shitty media’s dragons- once dominant, but through the power of one especially heroic housecat who has exceptionally strong plot armour, we are reduced to a dying race, ancient and forgotten by the new era.

Even as a dedicated pokemon fan that hasn’t played Palworld (the butchering mechanics don’t really appeal to me)…

I really hope Nintendo loses this, and loses it HARD. I think that some actual competition would be really healthy for the pokemon franchise, giving them an actual impetus to make sure their games are high-quality and well-supported and don’t pursue serious anti-consumer practices.

Godspeed, Palworld. Counting on you.

Peak Konsi content, this might not normally be my style of character but I LOVE it when she gets to nonchalantly and completely accidentally upend people’s understanding of reality

WotC and failing to understand their own game, name a more iconic duo

Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I’m honest

Insanely true, I didn’t give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.

Also: ew, Apple.

Edit: Really annoyed it doesn’t have a headphone jack though

“Roll a death save.”

“No.”

“…No? You can’t just not do that?”

“I don’t care.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Too bad.” Gets back up with 50% HP

Oh yeah, I wouldn’t say that Nintendo are paragons of virtue or anything. But they are far, FAR better at making games that offer a wide variety of experiences (edit: when compared to Sony/MS. Indies are king). Similarly, sure the Switch control scheme isn’t something nobody had ever conceived of before, but it’s very distinctly different from the Xbox/Playstation controllers.

They’ve got like… what, 7 or 8 IPs that they actively maintain, right? And about 10 more derelict but still iconic IPs. Plus some stuff made by other companies that’s exclusive to their hardware.

-Mario -Zelda -Pikmin -Splatoon (Hey look a gun game) -Fire Emblem -Donkey Kong Country -Super Smash Bros

Dedicated 3rd party: -Xenoblade -Pokemon

All these games have really different themes and gameplay styles and aesthetics, and that is the reason why I’m convinced that the Switch 2 is perfectly positioned to just completely take over the market the way the Wii did- Nintendo is large and competent enough to avoid the issues that plagued the PS5 launch and later life, and fresh enough to get people interested, unlike the Xbox.

Where Sony/MS have uhhh… Looks at the PS5 exclusive games… Looks at Halo/Call of Duty/Fortnite…

Pffff. The AAA industry is notorious for being about as stale as a three week old french baguette. If it isn’t a Gun Game made for chasing the most recent trends, then chances are they don’t even want to sniff at it. To say nothing of the absolutely egregious thirst for Profit that plagues a lot of titles. It’s one thing to be a $70 game, and another thing entirely to be a $70 game with a subscription, ingame puchases, and day 1 DLC.

Sony and Microsoft can have their pathetic little ‘arms race’ about processing power and framerates and 150GB+ games.

In the meantime, Nintendo is likely going to step right up with something that has a nice fresh, intuitive control scheme like the Wii or the Switch, with a solid release library that covers a variety of styles and appeals, and promptly curbstomp the living shit out of the competitors. The market is absolutely wide open for a smash hit console in the near future, coming off the backs of the PS5’s no-games failure and the fact I haven’t even heard about the Xbox in about 3 years.

Now that’s really interesting! I wonder where I can go to see this stuff…

This may sound strange, but honestly once you understand the game it’s really the other way around!

The official 5e devs do NOT have any clue what they’re doing in terms of encounter balance and design; almost everything gets crapped on by a good spellcaster or Ranger, and they play it pretty safe and corporate with stories too. Half of 5e adventures are copies of old adventures and it really shows because all the copies of old classics are actually way more respected and generally liked (Curse of Strahd, Sunless Citadel, White Plume Mountain) than 5e originals (Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen). Notable exception being Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Despite being the smallest original adventure in 5e it’s honestly good.

Still, I really appreciate the meme for our community! You’re the backbone of lemmy with all your posts my guy

It’s pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.

Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I’d like to say my piece on cliches.

Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.

“The Butler did it” as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.

Similarly, “Hell good, Heaven bad” is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn’t fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that’s also a very good idea, but doesn’t understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that’s already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.

(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it’s perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they’re suitable for it)

Anyways, cliches aren’t bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you’ve mentioned above is no exception.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK BOYS

Isn’t this the plot of Fire Emblem Three Houses

I’ll be completely honest with you sir:

It’s just that none of the other popular TTRPGs (as in, ones I can find a group for) have much content on dragons.

On one hand: I know damn well that formatting is a huge bitch, because I’ve made my own huge homebrew for the game.

On the other hand: This is a multi-million dollar company that’s been around for bloody ages. Hiring a professional formatter shouldn’t even be a blip in the budget.

Young Black Dragon called Gendridd, wasn’t meant to be a major obstacle, his personally is that he’s evil mostly just because he’s having a fantastic time being an asshole and constantly taunting people (to the extent that the first and so far only lair effect he’s got is the ability to heckle people at any location in the lair). Anyways he was fully aware that he’d get one-rounded trying to fight a party of four level 7 PCs, so instead of fighting them stole the party’s unattended bags and sat in a tree to taunt them about it before flying off (he did not consider this might lead to fighting them anyway).

The party’s plan was to ambush him in his own territory, so their plan was to cut through some of the most overgrown parts of the swamp to get behind his lair and set up an ambush, instead of confronting any of his minions. However, between several spellcaster party members who had both completely dumped their strength/dexterity and couldn’t cast spells while drowning, party members wearing full heavy armour that weighed them down significantly, and bad rolls, then two of them fell into a bog, and in trying to rescue them the others also fell in and they all drowned, resulting in the first TPK.

Obviously that wasn’t a super satisfying ending, so for closure I offered to run a oneshot with a level 5 party in Gendridd’s lair, sent to avenge the original party, on condition that I wouldn’t hold back with enemy strategy and tactics (no bullshit with magic, just good enemy postioning, balanced teams that had lots of options in fights, and had actual battle plans). They made it through most of the dungeon pretty well, while constantly trading off verbal barbs with Gendridd who basically ran a snarky sports commentary the entire way through, letting them know how eager he was to crush them when they made it to HIS big boss chamber. Anyways they reached the outside of the chamber and they were just preparing to fight the skeletons who were guarding his door when he jumped out of an acid river behind them and got a Surprise Round, hitting two of them with a breath weapon and then rolling good enough initiative to knock out their fragile backline casters.

After that then he’s become popular/respected enough to get Promoted To NPC.

TLDR: First wipe due to RNGiamat cursing the d20 and a party badly suited to dealing with falling in a bog. Second wipe because Gendridd employed the secret chromatic dragon art of ‘lying to people’.

Can confirm, I run a LOT of dragons and the interesting dragon villains are generally about finding unique takes on their common traits or villains because of their response to their circumstances rather than pure random villainy. We’ve got the red dragon who self-perpetuates her own cycle of violence, we’ve got the black dragon who’s mentally broken because their worldview of being entitled to everything due to their strength collapsed after they lost a territorial struggle, we’ve got the emerald dragon who’s desire not to be bothered by their humanoid allies led them to neglect their promises, we’ve got the silver dragon who loved her friends so much she was willing to fall into necromancy to try and undo their deaths.

Also we have That Bastard With Eight Player Kills.

That said, always remember: To become cliche, something needs to work super well first- so well that everyone does it. It only crosses from great into cliche if everyone does it and forgets why and how it worked in the first place.

Fully intended! Vex helping both explain stuff for new players and make funny jokes about content is straight up aspirational

Thank you <3

She’s a character with the Unholy Ravager class, I use her to spice up my Forgotten Realms games (White Dragoness in a non-snowy area jumpscare)