Setting Pet-Peeves

I think it's a pretty damn good setting, but it suffers because its bad, very bad rip-offs made people tired of its aesthetics.

>the bullshit of a generic guy being trapped in a fantasy world
This genre always bugged me. A lot of them just straight up suck, but I feel like you could really do something interesting with this if whichever author doing it just had the balls to make the MC something other than Everyman McBeige.

Like, imagine an idyllic high fantasy setting a la Magic Horse Pals or some shit and you stick a guy in it who's had to survive an apocalypse by being the bigger, badder sociopath. There's going to be some at least mildly interesting interplay there as long as the guy isn't just a murder machine.

Instead we get 'generic teen #115' and some waifus. It's a damn shame.

So... in the interest of going off on a tangent, Op' s pic and Alice in wonderland reminded me of a certain hentai series.

What do you guys think of Alice in Sexland?

>So, the opposite of Dark Souls, the quintessential JRPG?
>Dark Souls
>quintessential JRPG

The quintessential JRPG is Final Fantasy.

Those are designed to be wish fullfilment so it's hardly surprising

I did say Dark Souls gets a pass since it does not have any of those.

That's only one reason I really wouldn't call it the quintessential JRPG, and your claim that it is anywhere approaching such sounds very strange to me.

A time traveller from the 90's?

Settings where everything is the opposite or different for no reason, but also with no consistency.

I'm fine if somebody wants to make a few sweeping changes from the expected to help define and differentiate their setting, but it gets annoying

>All dragons are the size of houses ads and are also angels
>All housecats are the size of dragons and are named after Norse gods
>Also goblins have a WW2 era level of technology, despite everyone else being in the stone age
>Also dinosaurs that breathe fire XD

I've always strongly disliked "trapped in another dimension" fiction as well, even in the West. There are some rather notable exceptions - Digimon, natch - but for the most part, I prefer self-contained universes. Thus why I mourn the fact that my favorite Narnia book, A Horse And His Boy, will never be made into a movie, because it's entirely in-universe and those stupid kids are barely in it, and when they are in it it's entirely in their roles as Narnian royalty, not travelers from Earth.

I don't mind elf ears on actual elves or other fey creatures.

>the generic cliches of heroes and dark lords that the west has almost entirely dealt away with

It's not been done away with, it's just been buried under miles and miles of pathos, angst, and backstory to try and justify things (I don't care the Lord Whatever was raped as a young boy and so that's why he's killing all the elves. He's still killing all the elves. That makes him a bad guy. Explaining his motivation doesn't change his narrative purpose). I don't mind it as long as it's done well.

>Also dinosaurs that breathe fire XD

Isn't that just dragons though?

>Horse and His Boy

my dark skinned comrade!

I think it would be cool to see what happens when you swap the hero born and raised in one setting with the hero from the other.
>One is a gritty, PTSD-stricken merc with a mouth who's shunted into a noblebright kingdom where everyone except for the bad guys is nice and he finally gets a break from the pain- secretly, he considers it a dream come true and doesn't want to go back.
>The other is a noble knight in shining armor who has to learn to live with the fact that everyone else in the grimdark land doesn't hold his high sense of morality and fair play. Luckily, he's a total badass with a strong conscience, so he holds his head high even when everything seems stacked against him.

Oh, hey, that reminds me.

I fucking hate how we can't just have straight-up villains anymore. Everything's got to have miles and miles of pathos, angst, backstory, justification, "Gul Dukat did nothing wrong", "being and adult means realizing the Joker makes more sense" bullshit by the authors trying to convince me that a Bad Guy is only a Bad Guy because of SOCIETY and INJUSTICE and we should blame that and feel sorry for the bad guy.

I WANT VILLAINS AGAIN, GOD DAMNIT.

Exactly

>It's a 'the darkness breaks good the hero episo-'
>wait, no it's not

Color me interested user. That sounds like it might be a fun story.

Gul Dukat did do nothing wrong though.

>"being and adult means realizing the Joker makes more sense"
Who the fuck has ever said this besides angsty 15 year olds? The Joker is completely self-destructive.

My parents were Irish (as in, born and raised there), but when I was a kid instead of buying me a story-book about Irish folktales or Grimm's fairy-tales or Mother Goose or whatnot, they bought me the Arabian Nights.

Also I was 5 when Aladdin was released, exactly the right point in my formative years to leave an impression. Throw in Tattooine from Star Wars, and you've got the right recipe for a lifelong love of deserts, genies, and trickster heroes.

>consistency
If I see this buzzword again I'm gonna fly way off the handle

>humans are the most flawed borderline evil race

Yes that's why I love he-man and samurai jack
The bad guys may be silly but at least they aren't conflicted
And I have a love for overblown bad guys

You have good taste user.

>Who the fuck has ever said this besides angsty 15 year olds?

Way more people than I'm entirely pleased to know exist.

This. I'm fucking tired of every bad guy I come across having some sob story. You can make a villain interesting while still making them irredeemable, Dio and Kars from JoJoBA prove this more than anything.

I don't want villains that never existed outside of childrens cartoons and pulp literature for manchildren. Try growing up.

user, some people are just born shitty. Its not always society's fault they're fucked up.

Yes my brother of African decent

As far as I know, it comes from a meme a while back that got circulated heavily on Facebook. The full thing is more or less, "childhood is idolizing Batman. Adulthood is realizing the Joker makes more sense."

I know a person or two that shared it unironically. I don't talk to those people anymore.

Give examples.

>heh, these kids aren't mature like me
>I better tell them about my superior taste on an anonymous Malaysian picture plank

Butch Cassidy.

how about a recent one? The guy who streamed a killing on facebook because he got into a fight with his girlfriend.
Was that society's fault? was he just a good boy who didn't do nothin?

I'm gonna say I have never seen anyone doing adventurers guild in tabletop RPGs. Honestly sounds like a fun concept.
Since I don't read isekai light novels or play mmos, the concept isn't overdone for me.

Also lol at "japan's take on rpgs". You mean garbage light novels take on rpgs right? It's not like japan has a particularly big presence on tabletop rpgs, and in terms of video games, the big names like final fantasy, persona, and dragon quest don't really do "adventurer guilds"

I hesitate to agree. I think it more so depends on the portrayal of the villain. You can provide backstory and motivations that make a villain understandable, as long as they're still treated as a villain. I think the problem is when villains are made to be sympathetic, as if they aren't responsible for the horrible things they do.

>Summons the darkness within the knight's heart with magic, turning it into a ghoulish, skeletal figure
>It lasts about five seconds as the knight assesses it, parries its attack, and then decapitates it

Emperor Nero
Henry VIII

Consistency

>the GOOD rebellion
>the EVUL empire

Can't we have some rebels that want to overthrow a decent ruling system and replace it some jihadi bullshit? Just for once?

youtube.com/watch?v=Ok85BmPyl_I

>The quintessential JRPG is Final Fantasy.
Nah, I'd say that's Dragon Quest.
The newer Final Fantasy games are somewhat different from the typical JRPG formula, just look at the newest one.

Do you know why I hate that excuse? Because blaming SOCIETY doesn't hold up to scrutiny when you realize that the hero of the story has likely grown up in the same society and yet somehow has managed to NOT managed to become a giant asshole.

It means that there was just a certain fundamental moral weakness in the villain from the start. But fedora-tippers don't like to think about that and instead just paint SOCIETY as being the ones ultimately at fault.

Henry VIII wasn't that bad.

Trust me, I watched The Tudor's I'm an expert.

I ran a Star Wars one-shot like this
My more liberal friends were not happy about it.

I kinda liked this part of FTL, you're part of the Confederation. The antagonist are racist rebels trying to create a humans only empire.

Kinda wanna play some more ftl now.

That was the Prequel Trilogy, user.

Also Air Force One when you think about it.

You guys remember that one time when he was beat by the French poet king/prince
That was pretty hilarious.
Because Henry VIII was an uberchad on 6 beers a meal in a lead-lined cup

Freespace II, AKA "The starfighter simulator that was so good it killed the entire genre for years afterwards".

Well did you make the Empire good? Cause I'd side with your players, if that was the case.

>Orcs are just misunderstood noble savages
I used to play with a group that loved WoW and seeing any kind of evil orc made them pissy.

Not exactly. They were just playing Stormtroopers raiding a rebel facility where the rebels were planning on using Xenomorphs as a bioweapon.
It was a one-off to test out the system and see if it would be something we'd like to run.

>seeing any kind of evil orc made them pissy.
I got in an RP-PvP guild that played up the war bit really hard. There were several characters in the guild who would eat recruits or use them for live practice dummies.

Fun group. I got ejected from the clan (read: my sub ran out) for assaulting a superior officer and ruining their plan to convert one of the shaman to a warlock (I still don't know why I was invited to that ceremony. My character very publicly hated anything and everything fel)

You'd all probably like my campaign setting then.

>Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, and orcs live together and are FAR more influenced by their home nation's culture and way of life than their racial culture. It's Empire vs. Republic not Elves vs. Dwarves.

>Adventurer's Guild got its shit kicked in, is filled with losers and wannabes, and nobody takes its seriously.

>Every religion is well-meaning but has its share of extremists and fundamentalists who take things too far or twist the meaning of their scriptures. All of them are well-meaning but align themselves with cosmic forces that are naturally at odds with one another. Non-religious people are equally likely to be good or evil folks as well.

>Rural folk are pretty similar to city dwellers, just with slightly different sensibilities based on region.
>Casters are required to act with great responsibility due to their abilities but are pretty well balanced against non-casters mechanically.
>The Gods don't directly intervene in the world and can't be killed without unwinding reality itself.
>Monstrous races literally cannot control their savage ways and do not have true free will, they were MADE to be like that.
>The PCs are never secretly working for the villains, nor are the villains secretly the good guys all along

>Monstrous villains like Demons, Dragons, Beholders etc. are always evil because it's their nature. Humanoid villains are evil because they're either selfish and cruel or they're misguided and probably WAY too obsessed to ever listen to reason.

>The 'evil' Empire was just an isolationist kingdom built far away by folks who were religiously persecuted for worshipping different gods. The 'rebels' were soldiers and refugees from a kingdom that got magic nuked but the Empire didn't have the resources to feed and house them all. In response the rebels started a 'religious' war because 'muh gods' and stole over half their kingdom.

>
>I'm gonna say I have never seen anyone doing adventurers guild in tabletop RPGs.

It's possible, so long as it's justified well.

The Night Wolf Inn does it fine, for instance, because it's essentially run by an epic level wizard and its entire purpose is highly specific.

He had a great body, I would let him behead me anytime as long as I got to service those abs.

Wasn't he like morbidly obese or something?

>faux-gritty fantasy setting goes out of its way to make every race have gender-equality and acceptance of gays
>looking at you Dragon Age
I don't even mean something like "lel women can't fight XD" I mean every race has an equal 50/50 split of male and female and there is no dimorphism. I've never seen something where a brutish warrior-race is born 70/30 with males in the majority. I think it could add some interesting dynamics.

No, he was mentally insane.

Sanity is relative my friend

I'm with this one.

I mean, I'm all for gender equality, but you'd think there would be more ways to make women more proactive and interesting than just stick them into armor and throw them into the fight along with the men.

He was after an accident(during a hunt I think?). Before that he was handsome, sporty, a litteral Chad
Then he got fat and behaded a wife or two

Not in my historically accurate american network animes.

>I want catholics to die
I fixed it.

That's because such a race would have incredible problems procreating unless you had modern medicine to keep the women from dying in childbirth.

They could reproduce using rape.

It's made by the Burgerstani for the Burgerstani to appeal to their sensibilities. If you're from the rest of the world, you'll have to deal with it.

Didn't he take a blow to the head too?
I mean, honestly, a good shot to the noggin can make people pretty irrational. Your decision making can get pretty skewed if you're not treated, and the depression that can come with a concussion doesn't help.

user modern medicine is pretty darn new, natural childbirth worked (and still works) for a looooong time.
Also it probably wouldn't be much of a problem if they gave birth to multiple children.

Need it.

>No, he was mentally insane
Oh so he was born fucked up then?

Again, the Prequel Trilogy literally flips this on its head by having the Seperatists be evil and the Republic be basically good.

This is leaving aside any stories about the American Civil War, where the Rebs are inevitably shown to be in the wrong (provided the movie was made after the 1930s or so anyway).

>The setting is an obvious soapbox for the GM to espouse his philosophies
More of a meta example but I think it applies.

The South were traitors, the deserved to die. Anyone who says otherwise is an ignorant inbred faggot.

>t. historical revisionist yank

Really common trope actually. See every fucking time an evil cult, thief's guild, or mage's guild is an antagonist.

>Guy gets a following because he's the only guy who's NOT a total dick

I mean, I don't think they deserved to *die*, but they were traitors and deserved to lose the war.

And also stupid and deserved to lose the war. Seriously, had none of them looked at the differences in industry and manpower between the North and South? Their loss was inevitable.

I doubt they would have trouble reproducing. What you would see is instead of a one-to-one pairing like what we have is a one-to-many pairing being the acceptable social norm.

Insects have an extreme version of this where the Queen has many partners and jealously guards any new queens that are born until the hive is ready to split.

I was thinking more of a "only the strongest get to mate" kind of thing. But maybe that'd require a majority of females.

One of the worst DMs I played with was aggressively atheist and would do this shit all the time. I think basically every campaign, the setting's church were just basically cultists of the worst sort. You know, the human sacrifices, blood everywhere, and on one occasion literal baby-eating(which he dropped very quickly at the group's "request").

It got to the point where we ignored the churches because no matter what, they were always 100% irredeemably pure evil for one reason or another, though he did his best to railroad us back into dealing with them.

Last time I saw him, he wanted to run a real world historical campaign, and someone asked him to drop the pure evil church shit this time since it's real world stuff, to which he agreed.

2 days later, we get an e-mail basically saying "Well since player x is being a stuck-up bitch about his sky fairies, I'm not DMing for you guys anymore." From what I can gather, the premise of the campaign was supposed to basically be "Jesus Christ was actually a demon tricking people, you need to go murder the Pope because he's Satan in disguise" or something. We basically dropped contact with him and haven't had any regrets since.

>exercises constitutional right to secede
>this makes them traitors

>be south
>throw hissy fit because you lost control of the federal government for the first time
>refuse to see how the world economy is changing and adapt your own economy accordingly
>instead take up arms and start a war with your northern brothers
>get ass raped because southern leaders have no idea how to modern warfare
>muh northern aggression
>muh weak south will rise again

>Last time I saw him, he wanted to run a real world historical campaign, and someone asked him to drop the pure evil church shit this time since it's real world stuff, to which he agreed.
>2 days later, we get an e-mail basically saying "Well since player x is being a stuck-up bitch about his sky fairies, I'm not DMing for you guys anymore." From what I can gather, the premise of the campaign was supposed to basically be "Jesus Christ was actually a demon tricking people, you need to go murder the Pope because he's Satan in disguise" or something. We basically dropped contact with him and haven't had any regrets since.

>you ask him not to do thing
>says he's not going to do thing
>he does thing anyways

I really don't want to believe you. Why didn't he just have the setting give another, non-religious explanation for Jesus's existence, like, 'he was a local philosopher who got blown out of proportion'?

Atheists like that give atheists like me a bad name.

Don't get me wrong, I had a "rah rah religion bad" period when I was 15 as well. Then I grew up, looked at the world, and came to the conclusion that people don't need religion to kill each other; that if there was no Christianity or Islam, they'd just find some other reason, like land or resources or iPods or something.

Most religions at least on paper try to put a stop to that by outlining when it is and isn't okay to kill other people, which frequently isn't when it's being done in their name. It's not the fault of the religion if people ignore it or use other vague passages in its holy book to justify the crusade that they were going to go on anyway.

These days I just try and live by the credo, "I'm an atheist, not an asshole".

Also I come from a family of stone masons and so can't help but admire the stonework that goes into old Catholic churches

Sounds like you're a stuck-up bitch about his sky fairies

The only reason to be upset about church being evil is if you're an easily triggered dicksucker.
"The Church is evil" is only really common outside of mainstream media anyways. You wouldn't be able to sell a "church is evil" to average americans and make any significant money. And even that's not good enough for you. This is why Atheists look down on you.

>constitutional right to secede

>instead take up arms and start a war with your northern brothers
That actually is historical revisionism.

>Currently creating a setting for D&D
>Furiously writing down all of these, even the contradicting ones

Welp, I need to rethink fucking everything.

>Federal government oversteps its boundaries and threatens half the country's economy
>le stupid south

Tell me more.
I love a train wreck

Didn't the South fire first at Fort Sumter?