If we can make the assumption for a moment, and call Evangelion a deconstruction of the Mecha genre

>angels
They are ayylmaos.

Two things.

First, I'm presuming you mean the setting, rather than the game itself. Because I don't think that a deconstruction of a game system really works. Like, at a conceptual level.

Second, and I really am getting tired of saying this, deconstruction is a literary criticism technique. No work of fictions can be, itself, a deconstruction in the same way that a physical, living cat cannot itself be a reaction image.

I'm not sure that's so much a fan theory so much as a complaint that goblin slayer's setting doesn't make any sense. It punishes characters for acting like JRPG tropes are a thing, but it doesn't give any excuse for why so many people in-setting would be following JRPG tropes in the first place if doing so was so reliably suicidal.

Its like the mimic question write large across the whole setting.

"Mimics are ambush predators who have evolved to look like treasure chests in order to trick greedy people into coming close enough to attack."
"So... why do we still make treasure chests that look exactly like mimics?"

Deconstruction of fantasy looks like this.

Basically that the party are a bunch of assholes that don't respect other species they deem less worthy who have just as much sentience as they do. Oh and take out the edgelord gnoles.

youtube.com/watch?v=QsO2cOM5TeY

It's called Darkest Dungeon.

Personally I've always thought of it like this:

- Bad Endings like for the opening chapter's party aren't representative of the usual adventurer experience

- most experienced adventurers quickly move on from grimy goblin hunting to more heroic and noble epic level content. Goblin Slayer keeps hanging around grimy relatively low fantasy goblins, so his adventures are not gonna be representative of the overall hero experience.

Basically we may simply not have gotten enough insight into the lives of people outside of Goblin Slayer to determine how representative his experiences are of the usual adventurer's life. But it seems to me like everything so far has built him up to be an exception that's completely molded itself around the very niche type of experience it has dedicated itself to.

That has to be the most incompetent party I've ever seen in my life.

Assuming its a deconstruction of pathfinders setting and tropes, I thing the route to go is:

1: Magic is real, but ultimately very weak. However, the only people who really know the full power of magic are the wizards that study it, so its not uncommon for wizards to use magic + trickery to frighten whole cities into submission 'for fear of their wrath'. A skilled magician can kill a man dead, but put him against four men and he probably doesn't have enough magic for all of them.

2: Everyone talks about gods and other worlds and all of the big high fantasy stuff, but none of that is real. Clerics are masters of public speaking and using religion to move the masses, and what makes them useful in a party is their connection. Their church is like a big religious themed guild, with all of the money and resources that implies. Having a cleric on your team means having a place to sleep and get healed by skilled doctors and getting jobs from the church, and the church pays well.

3: Monsters are real, but are often beyond the ability of adventurers to deal with. Some can be killed by a small team of skilled warriors, like a single werewolf or ogre. But most monsters worth worrying about you need a larger and more heavily armed force to deal with. You don't send 5 guys to kill a vampire, you send 200 guys. You'll probably lose 30 of them, but the rest will stab that fucker to death and burn down everything until there is nothing left.
In these cases, the role of adventurers is not execution, but recon. Finding the monsters lair. Mapping it out. Taking note of any traps or minions or other hazards that might turn the tide of battle should the army run into them unawares. Basically give the army all of the info and warning they can so that they are better suited to kill the monster with the least loss of life. Obviously, doing all of this without alerting the monster to the fact that its lair has been discovered is best.

Genre Deconstruction occurs when the author of a work performs deconstruction on a specific genre. The genre is basically boiled down to a set of tropes, conventions and a typical premise. ... Basically, the heart of the genre is laid bare, warts and all.

Pathfinder is pretty basic and bare already. It would probably come off as comical if it could be done at all.

That's the point, yes.

Groups of people from the real world are regularly dumped into this fantasy land by unknown forces, and int he process their memory is wiped. They don't know where they come from or how they got here or anything, but actually they will do stuff like make reference to airplanes and then someone will ask them what an airplane is, and they don't know why they said that word.

In this particular batch of arrivals, an alpha dude established himself as leader and took all of the actually competent people to go and form and adventuring group. They are doing pretty well.

The group you see here is everyone who was considered too weak to be useful and was left behind. They get drafted into being monster hunters because they have literally no skills to make a living off of, and monster hunting will pay anyone who brings back some monster ears regardless of who you are. And if they do it enough, they get free room and board at the guild hall.

That's not deconstruction that's just reversing whats already

Almost no one uses term deconstruction right. But in its commonplace usage, its synonymous with 'subversion' these days.

Derrida didn't believe that words have meanings on their own anyway, so its kind of fitting that the term he coined isn't used in anything like how it was intended.

I enjoy pathfinder, but SKR really makes me want to put the books down for good sometimes

Pathhider

Fuck off back to TV Tropes

OP here. Yeah, I meant the setting for the most part.

However, if there were some way to structure the game itself using Pathfinder's mechanics in a way that would make your players reflect on the absurdity of PFs ruleset, I think that could be interesting.

It would also be absolutely miserable to play, but that kind of goes without saying.

Lastly I agree, the works of fiction often referred to "deconstruct" certain aspects of a genre loosely, rather than existing as a "deconstruction" altogether. A work of fiction by its nature can't only be a dismembering of X or Y genre by itself.

>"So... why do we still make treasure chests that look exactly like mimics?"
We don't, which is why you only see them in the million or so ancient, unexplored dungeons from before everyone got the memo.

How so many dungeons are still there to be pillaged is a better question.

I never will guess why they make the kind of undead that has the easiest time spreading and feeding to be also one of the most stupidly fuckin powerful.

I cannot fucking understand what a "Deconstruction" is or rather how Evangelion and Madoka are deconstructions of mecha and magical girl.

It seems to be something about applying real life logic to xyz. Turning robots into meaty aliens and magical girls into liches isn't anything close to any definition of a deconstruction I can think of. Or is it?

Closer to humans than anything, actually.

Basically, the problem at its core is that no one on the internet uses the word Deconstruction correctly. Like 'literally', how it gets used has only tangential overlap with what it is supposed to mean.

Most people who use Deconstruction in online discussions really mean 'subversion'. Aka, setting up a plot with a premise that at first glance appears to fulfill traditional tropes before inverting them instead.

While this doesn't preclude a twist, a subversion is not by default a twist because a twist by its nature has to come later into the story and requires actual setup and payoff structure. If it happens in the first episode, it cant really be a twist because you are still establishing shit.

Evangelion was a mecha subversion because piloting the Eva sucks and Shinji wants nothing to do with it, the organization dedicated to saving the world are ultimately working for the bad guys, and in the end Shinji ultimately fails his Heroes Journey and the whole planet pays the price.

Madoka is likewise a subversion of magical girl tropes, in that the contract is actually a deal with the devil and pretty much everyone dies at least once instead of what is normally a kid friendly show for a kid friendly genre. Its well done for what it is, but by the time Madoka came around darker takes on anime genres were more of a thing so its uniqueness has more to do with its stylistic choices and specific implementation rather than the the overall idea of the show, whereas Evangelion (simply by right of having come out more than a decade earlier) was on the front end of that wave so it was more of a surprise.

>Monsters are real, but are often beyond the ability of adventurers to deal with. Some can be killed by a small team of skilled warriors, like a single werewolf or ogre. But most monsters worth worrying about you need a larger and more heavily armed force to deal with. You don't send 5 guys to kill a vampire, you send 200 guys. You'll probably lose 30 of them, but the rest will stab that fucker to death and burn down everything until there is nothing left.
>In these cases, the role of adventurers is not execution, but recon. Finding the monsters lair. Mapping it out. Taking note of any traps or minions or other hazards that might turn the tide of battle should the army run into them unawares. Basically give the army all of the info and warning they can so that they are better suited to kill the monster with the least loss of life. Obviously, doing all of this without alerting the monster to the fact that its lair has been discovered is best.

Okay. Am I the only one who thinks this actually sounds super fucking cool?

It basically turns dungeon delving into a survival horror game instead of a power fantasy murder spree, because the goal of each mission is to go through the entire dungeon while triggering as few combats as possible. In a system actually designed for it, this sounds cool and tense as fuck.

A deconstruction usually involves taking genre conventions and examining why they wouldn't really work with realism (for a given value thereof).

NGE mostly focuses on how the backstories and plot of most mecha shows would result in a bunch of broken, emotional wrecks. I can't speak for PMMM, as I have not seen it.

The argument can be made that they aren't "Deconstructions", but they do function to point out why child soldiers with a mountain of trauma aren't very good at building healthy relationships.

Im glad you posted this. I wad going to if you didn't. I posted this

words have meaning under Derrida, admittedly only through relations to other words, but they still have them. Also why would you bring him up?

To be fair, they were all kind of gonna be emotional wrecks with or without piloting, but yeah.

TVtropes is a site full of autists obsessed who can only look at fiction as a series of component pieces and have an obsession with cataloging pointless information. The term 'deconstruction' banks on the assumption that most creators are as obsessive as them and construct their works in the same mechanical way - they don't.

You can tell it's stupid because Eva is a tribute show by a mecha nerd anyway.

...

Oh yeah, but the added physical and emotional trauma combined with the severe personality flaws making everything even harder?

The number of named characters in that show who don't need therapy could be counted on one hand.

Too be fair, anyone over the age of 14 lived through the end of the world and anyone younger than that was raised by people who lived through the end of the world.

Its kind of amazing everyone is as normal as they are, all things considered.

>Eva is a tribute show by a mecha nerd anyway.
Who has gone on record saying he hates everything the mecha genre has become and made the show to make those flaws (namely in personalities and the impact on people war has) so incredibly obvious people couldn't possibly miss it.

And them they did.

And that's why I like it as a character study. And as a way to highlight how shit the Japanese are at mental healthcare as a society.

And yet he personally stepped in to get his series into Super Robot Wars.

I only looked up TVtropes to try to find out a working definition of deconstruction would be, I first heard people refer to Evangelion and Madoka as "deconstructions" here on teej.

I wouldnt call it a subversion, its more a that they changed the context of things and made it darker. Like the child soldier thing, instead of explaining it like in gundam by saying the MC is a newtype they explain it as him being linked with his mothers soul in the EVA

>NGE mostly focuses on how the backstories and plot of most mecha shows would result in a bunch of broken, emotional wrecks.
To be fair, one of Anno's main inspirations for Eva, the Gundam series, isn't bad at turning its characters into emotional wrecks. Amuro was pretty fucked up during 0079 and had some damn heavy PTSD in Zeta. And Kamille got battered so hard he turned autistic.

Sounds like a cool setting to me.

I always like the settings that had a high "cost" associated with siring another vampire.

Or something like the original mythos, where the Dracula is dangerous not just because he's undead but because he's got a thousand years to tricks and magic up his sleeve. Ie, if he spawned some more they're "low level" threats for a century or more.

Ptolus us kind of close. It's openly based on taking 3.PF to its logical conclusion

>Who has gone on record saying he hates everything the mecha genre has become and made the show to make those flaws (namely in personalities and the impact on people war has) so incredibly obvious people couldn't possibly miss it.
None of this is true though.

I don't really like using the word deconstruction anymore because I spent a full year discussing Madoka on the internet and at the end of it I still felt like I didn't really understand what the word meant. I think the closest explanation to how people intend to use the word is >usually involves taking genre conventions and examining why they wouldn't really work with realism (for a given value thereof)

The problem is where the line is drawn with regards to the "realism", since clearly Eva is still a show about mecha. I'd say that from what I can tell, a deconstruction keeps the core premise and setup (giant mecha pilots and sci-fi setting for Eva, little talking animal that gives girls magical powers to fight evil for Madoka), and then removes all of the following genre conventions that have been built up around that over time that allows the story to work the way it does. A lot of times this involves creating more human and flawed characters. Shinji is scared of dying. Mami feels isolated and alone being the town's secret magical girl protector. Sayaka gets some firsthand experience in the flaws of a power source that works based on hope and positive emotions. There is a more self serving reason now for why the talking animal conveniently shows up to give away "free power". And some of the genre conventions are not character based but more the removal of convenient outcomes, namely reducing plot armor.

That was basically what old D&D was, except with treasure instead of a boss monster.

But a deconstruction is usually purposefully using a "trope" or situation to its fullest, but completely straight in order to show the trope itself as poorly thought out.

Kids piloting robots to save the world is a terrible idea, but it's constantly used in the media it was reacting to, so let's use it, play it completely straight, and show people how fucked up the premise is while still telling a decent story (usually).

Subversion would be setting up the world, and leading you to believe it's going to be another teenaged hot-blooded robot pilot, but instead having the show be about a grizzled no-nonsense war veteran.

At least, that's how I understand it.

Same goes for Madoka.

The idea of magical creatures coming to earth and bestowing upon little girls the ability to fight "evil" is, in its essence, kinda fucked up. Therefore, you follow that trope to it's most logical conclusion.

A subversion would be the expectation of a magical girl story suddenly being replaced by a young boy, or a grown mother. Subverting your expectations of the TROPE rather than subverting your expectations of where you expect that trope to go.

Do I have that right? I don't even fucking know. It's all muddy water in these discussions.

Brilliant.

not really though for one darkest dungeon isnt a tabletop game. secondly darkest dungeon's classes are fairly balanced so not really a deconstruction of pathfinders "balance" and thirdly Darkest dungeon is devolves into cosmic horror drivel by the end and while there are some splat books with Cthulhu in it, its not really the focus of most pathfinder games

Let's actually look at what you're asking for, OP.

Deconstruction is a name commonly associated with philosopher Jacques Derrida's critical outlook over the relationship between text and meaning. Derrida's approach consists in conducting readings of texts with an ear to what runs counter to the structural unity or intended sense of a particular text.

In EVA, the writing and direction was designed to point out the most negative points of modern Japanese culture. Your heroes are bad, unlikable, self centered people. Your love interests are results of what the culture around them turned them into, and you should actively feel bad for lusting after them. Most importantly, the world of EVA is a place where nobody is happy. Everybody suffers from crippling depression that makes it hard to live with others, and the end CONGRATULATIONS is Shinji's acceptance of this aspect of himself. Unlike the perfect hero of other Mecha shows where anything is possible, the only victory to be had here is to come to terms with the fact that broken is the normal state of a person.

So, Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a power fantasy about gaining strength and tools through one's best qualities to overcome great obstacles. A warrior hones their skills in physical prowess to be able to stand against armies with nothing but their two hands. Clerics and Paladins become embodiments of the ideals they support, changing the world to a version closer to that which their gods desire. Wizards and Sorcerers come to understand the nature of reality itself and learn to manipulate it to their will, becoming forces of nature unto themselves through study and understanding. Rogues steal from kings, Bards cause stone hearts to weep, it goes on and on.

I would propose that Konosuba is the best deconstruction of pathfinder out there. The characters are capable of similar feats, but their nature is so different that they instead struggle with mundane tasks.

(2/2)

Konosuba's best supporting bit for this is when the cast comes into conflict with a badguy, and their tank is cursed with a spell that would eventually kill them. Instead of going on an adventure to raid the baddie's base and slay them to break the curse, they have their cleric "purify" it away and totally try to just forget about the evil person out there.

The answer lies within the original DnD and the Fallout games.

The original DnD had magic be more common. For example, you go to some fort to rest, but the Lord there challenges the party Fighter to a Pegasus race, and this would surprise no one.

Now, I used the Fallout comparison just to get people into the proper mindset. You know how in the game, nukes fell, almost everyone went underground? Replace nukes with Wizards with access to High Level spells and you can basically go 1 for 1.

> Do I have that right? I don't even fucking know. It's all muddy water in these discussions.

Congratulations! Now you are a real literary critic!

One of the biggest fucking problems with Post Modernism is is that every7 years or some some new asshole comes along and says "All these definitions are flawed. Seriously, there are like 10 different ways that people have claimed to be post modern. I know! Ill come up with a new definition that perfectly replaces them all!"

And that just means that we have 11 different definitions of postmodernism. So no one really knows the the fuck anyone else is talking about anymore, unless they start their manifesto with a list of exactly what interpretations of the common vocab you are using this time.

The big secret to post modernism is that any value it might have had has been buried under generations of literary critiques crawling up their own ass and dying, and while some of their techniques can have interesting results its better to pay as little lip service to the movement as possible.

Relativism is a nightmare in practice, honestly.

From what I can glean from the setting.
Goblins are a horrible problem for small villages.
Small villages are poor, so they don't have much money to pay to clear out goblins.
Fancy pants adventurers pass on chumpchange.
Meaning low tier adventurers think "Oh because its chump change it should be easy.
But its not.

Its like a fantasy dirty job, everyone thinks any idiot can be a plumber, but its messy and unpleasant so they get someone else to do it.

Though maybe I'm mixing metaphors.

One of the biggest fucking problems with Modernism is is that every7 years or some some new asshole comes along and says "All these definitions are flawed. Seriously, there are like 10 different ways that people have claimed to be modern. I know! Ill come up with a new definition that perfectly replaces them all!"

And that just means that we have 11 different definitions of modernism. So no one really knows the the fuck anyone else is talking about anymore, unless they start their manifesto with a list of exactly what interpretations of the common vocab you are using this time.

The big secret to modernism is that any value it might have had has been buried under generations of literary critiques crawling up their own ass and dying, and while some of their techniques can have interesting results its better to pay as little lip service to the movement as possible.

But that's not ow it works. Plumbers make fucking DOSH because so few people want to be plumbers. I know two plumbers, and they both made so much money from plumbing that they own and rent real estate on the side now.

One of the biggest fucking problems with Classicism is is that every7 years or some some new asshole comes along and says "All these definitions are flawed. Seriously, there are like 10 different ways that people have claimed to be classical. I know! Ill come up with a new definition that perfectly replaces them all!"

And that just means that we have 11 different definitions of classicism. So no one really knows the the fuck anyone else is talking about anymore, unless they start their manifesto with a list of exactly what interpretations of the common vocab you are using this time.

The big secret to classicism is that any value it might have had has been buried under generations of literary critiques crawling up their own ass and dying, and while some of their techniques can have interesting results its better to pay as little lip service to the movement as possible.

One of the biggest fucking problems with Primitivism is is that every7 years or some some new asshole comes along and says "All these definitions are flawed. Seriously, there are like 10 different ways that people have claimed to be primitive. I know! Ill come up with a new definition that perfectly replaces them all!"

And that just means that we have 11 different definitions of primitivism. So no one really knows the the fuck anyone else is talking about anymore, unless they start their manifesto with a list of exactly what interpretations of the common vocab you are using this time.

The big secret to primitivism is that any value it might have had has been buried under generations of literary critiques crawling up their own ass and dying, and while some of their techniques can have interesting results its better to pay as little lip service to the movement as possible.

You're a Literary Critic, Harry!

I'm a what?

I didn't know toddlers knew how to ctrl-paste. Still more likely than imagining an adult so entertained with mindlessly repeating stuff.

>Who has gone on record saying he hates everything the mecha genre has become and made the show to make those flaws (namely in personalities and the impact on people war has) so incredibly obvious people couldn't possibly miss it.

I doubt Anno, a big mech fan, would be that retarded considering that "Kill em all" Tomino had been doing that shit for years.

>The idea of magical creatures coming to earth and bestowing upon little girls the ability to fight "evil" is, in its essence, kinda fucked up. Therefore, you follow that trope to it's most logical conclusion.

Madoka and NGE work because of their characters, not because it meaningfully critiques their respective genres.

I could not give two shits about all the callbacks to previous mecha shows and playing with genre conventions if I didn't care about Shinji Ikari, Asuka, Gendo, and the rest of a very iconic cast. Nobody would care about Madoka if the plight of Homura and Madoka didn't strike a chord.

Deconstruction in the TV Tropes sense is retarded because it acts as though these things are inherently interesting when they aren't. Which is why it isn't a terribly useful idea for writers.

>What would a a deconstruction of Pathfinder look like?

That's GURPS, user.

Pathfinder would more likely be a crooked loan title.

This. Old school D&D was far more about "sneak into the evil guys lair and get out with as much as you can carry before he notices you" it's why you got xp for treasure

Strike!

So what does that make Konosuba? Is there a term for "Using the audience knowledge of the genre to fuck with expectations for comedy?

Subversion? it undermines your original expectations

Right, as a writing tool it's functionally useless unless you have a good foundation.

It's still an aspect I think is interesting to explore, but doing it for the sake of "deconstruction" is a terrible and misled idea.

> Is there a term for "Using the audience knowledge of the genre to fuck with expectations for comedy?

Yeah. Parody.

Like, duh.

Arnt Min maxed characters already kind of a deconstruction of pathfinder. they highlight the absurdity of the system

Darkest Dungeon is a bit like that

Goblin Slayer isn't.
At first it looks like that
But then you skimp over the most important detail: Why is there no conscripts, nobility defending their fiefs, or 20 man hunting bands clearing the countryside?
Well, its because the of a gigantic demon war is happening, so its more a Chinese case of "guard patrols are now in the war, so nobody is doing their job, so there is now bandits"

Goblin Slayer isn't as much of a deconstruction as a war time famine in disguise.

The first bullet point reads more like.... 19th century modernism that a deconstruction.

The second one is more like a commentary on how DND churches is non entities in a setting where Demigods and Blessed Souls runs around burning and smithing the Gods enemies in all forms.

The third bulletpoint is just a understanding that kingdoms without high level NPC's need a way to clear out some of the more mortal dangers.
That by itself can be a deconstruction, but it needs to be supported by understanding things like Demographies and Birth/Survival rates, because thats is what War Meat Grinder is made out of.

Evangelion is a deconstruciton of the Mecha genre, but not the Mechs themselves.

Mecha is often about SUPER POWERED ROBOT being used TO FIGHT FANTASTIC INVADERS, with a FANTASTIC SUPPORT CREW!
The only "Applied Real Life Logic" is that you get Faction Politics in there, alongside a work/job structure on the characters.
The rest of EVA is just thing you get a additional adjective as a caveat on the mecha checklist.
I.E Mech's are angels
Invaders are also Angels, and are invading because Mech's exist
The support crew is just one gigantic mesh of insane religious conspiracy and scared survivors.

>lets make an assumption
It's not an assumption. Eva is deconstruction. That being said, what is "deconstruction"? To put it simply, "deconstruction" is basically analyzing something in such a way as to view the information that exists behind the implication. If I say, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", a deconstruction of that is realizing that phrase is associated with Second Amendment advocates, and that I might advocate for the Second Amendment myself.

A deconstruction, for all intents and purposes, is a refusal to take something at face value and to search for and analyze the intrinsic contradictions of that thing. HOWEVER, that analysis relies fundamentally on observing that meaning does not exist without comparison to something else, and that an assertion has to be made first before it can be compared to anything else.

That being said, Eva taken as it's own story cannot be a deconstruction. Only when comparing the tropes of mecha anime to the real world, and then comparing the final product of Evangelion to those observations can a deconstruction be produced.

So, you can't really deconstruct Pathfinder the game, You can deconstruct the Pathfinder setting, and the stories that take place in it, but you're going to have to necessarily compare it to the real world.

So basically, a Pathfinder deconstruction is, "Village nerd who accidentally discovered magic still can't hack it as an adventurer because of years of self-imposed social isolation, poor health, inadequate resources, and constant danger. He lives an otherwise mundane life made slightly easier by his magical abilities, the ramifications of which never extend beyond his home town."

Which is incredibly fucking boring. Deconstruction is meant criticize something or to analyze texts and thoughts. It is not a genre unto itself.

That's the point. They enter the world. Get given ultra basic training so they can 'fulfill' their class and get told fuck off and do shit.

No conditioning. No explanation how the world works. Nothing.

Turns out that the world is pretty much a real life scenario and the shit like goblins and kobolds are actively fighting back as if they were players themselves.

That first fight is the very first thing they attack and the goblin goes full loco trying to survive.

It was alright till the MC got a stringsoffate ability that let him one shot boss mobs that would otherwise run roughshot all over the group.

The other thing I missed, that everyone fucks up on, is that Eva is not a deconstruction because of how it flips mecha genre tropes on their heads.

Eva is a deconstruction because of how it criticizes the creators and consumers of mecha anime when it was produced. It was a visual demonstration of how sick their power fantasies actually were, and how childish they were being for glorifying such content.

So that Pathfinder deconstruction would almost necessarily have to focus on how table-top role-players are, almost as a rule, some sort of social outsider seeking to escape reality by living in a power fantasy where they are the authority that they reject in their real lives.

how was Darkest Dungeon a deconstruction? It was literally the Ancestor being an evil cunt who got coopted by a elder being.

Wasn't like it did anything new. Just did it well.

>tfw you can never find anyone to play AdEva with

>you'll never watch EVA for the first time again

This.
The fact most pathfinder players can't differentiate between a video game and tabletop game should be a point in the deconstruction.

>The fact most pathfinder players can't differentiate between a video game and tabletop game should be a point in the deconstruction.
How does two people on Veeky Forums translate to "most pathfinder players".

Especially when nothing in either post indicates they play Pathfinder?

Slayers.

Because I'm not just going off of the two presumable pathfinder players in this thread?

So you're just talking out of your ass?

I'm just talking about you apparently, why else would you be so butthurt if I what I said didn't somehow in someway mention you and your inability to distinguish Pathfinder from a video game like Darkest Dungeon?

Also, for Pathfinder/D&D in particular (as distinct from most other RPGs), looking at how in the game mental power is more rewarding in the long run than physical power.

That sounds about right to me.

Why would it have to focus on the tabletop roleplayers? It should focus, again, on the creators and the tropes that they employ.

If you try to just pick on the players, then you've got a world full of murderhobos and thieves trying to talk about how 'real' adventurers would act in those situations and how terrifying and horrifying most player-characters are. So, you're just watching Berserk play out. Again.

Instead, why not bother the creators? Talking about how their personal politics in the setting makes for insane deities that don't make sense. About how trying to be inclusive they wind up adding the ability for a lot of very violent and terrible things to happen to women and children. About how every module has a 'waifu' and they usually have incredibly fucked up pasts.

It deconstructs heroic fantasy by making people come to town all gung-ho and ready for ADVENTUUUUUURE and winding up with a drinking problem and post-traumatic stress disorder within a fortnight.

The story is your standard dark fantasy flair.

Right from the outset it establishes itself as dark right down to the title, it doesn't present itself as heroic fantasy. I perhaps deconstructs paladins slightly with the zealous trait and how that can be limiting but thats about it

OP again, I agree that Eva is a deconstruction. I only called it an assumption because people love to screech autistically at each other once you use that word at all.

Therefore, "let's just assume" is meant for the people who would rather have a discussion about the premise, rather than the secondary question I asked.

But I'm still dubious about being unable to deconstruct Pathfinder "the game". If deconstructing something is primarily a criticism of the usually trope-based formulas, then couldn't you, as a game designer, run a game meant to highlight the absurdity of some of Pathfinder's rules? Taking the arbitrary limits of human ability that Paizo says is balanced, and applying that in such a strict way as to appear absurd within your game world.

I think it would be a miserable player experience, and no one should have that inflicted upon them, but it was still just a thought I had.

Dark Sun.