#im the absolute worst at turn based games man. im bad at games in general tbh but turn based is like. i dont know what is going on at all

[coridallasmultipass]

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[utilitycaster]

Well now im curious, what are your top 10 etiquette violations

I'm not actually sure there are 10 tbh in that these are relatively broad - you could split them up more finely if you wanted but they cover a wide range of behavior. Also this is...a bit stream of consciousness. I do stand by 1 as the absolute Golden Rule of D&D in that it's really just so Me Me Me (more so than main character syndrome) that it's inexcusable, but like...rules 2- 6 are kind of all in the same nebulous position in my mind as are rules 7-10. 2-6 are "really bad, have a talk and be prepared to kick this person out if they don't shape up and honestly I would probably not want to hang out with them irl much if they don't shape up" and 7-10 are "maybe don't invite them to game nights but they could be okay otherwise."

Deliberately going against the general vibe of the table. This is the broadest but also obviously worst trait. If everyone else is here to play a serious playthrough of Curse of Strahd and they're all vampire hunters and whatnot and you're playing a clown in a hawaiian shirt named Jeff you are not funny; you are an asshole. I think that person who made the post of like "I'm playing D&D with my dad's friends and they're all fighters with tragic backstory and I'm a neon firbolg who resurrects our enemies and runs therapy sessions" should be beaten with hammers. Like, be unique, but if everyone else is going for a lighthearted vibe it's not time to bust out your darkest PC and vice versa. (This also goes deeper, like, if your table has decided PC death in-game is okay, you can request a change, but if you've never spoken up about this and then your character dies and you pitch a fit, that's on you.)

"Um actually my rich family solves this" and similar circumventing of obstacles in a way that cuts off all story avenues. It's fine to offer your services to help - sometimes the party will want it! But the worst player I've played with (who still did not violate Item 1) did this and short-circuited like 75% of the plot by being like "well my wealthy merchant family can probably smooth this over" and I wanted to, well, beat them with hammers. Brian Murphy of Naddpod calls this "showing up and trying not to play D&D" and he's right.

Closely related to/overlapping with item 2 but Main Character Syndrome. If you're a wizard and there's a nonurgent trial of strength? that is for the barbarian. If they ask for help, go for it, but don't just do everything. Share the table. Self-explanatory but man do some people not get it. I'm also grouping this with "my character wouldn't help" behaviors. Like to be clear, forgoing your turn as a roleplay thing is fine, but another Naddpod D&D Court regular topic is like "the player for whatever reason would not join combat bc their character wouldn't, and we nearly had a tpk because the encounter assumed our fucking cleric would be there".

Actually violating player agency. Closely relating to 2-3. Conflict is great and good. I think it's fine to lie, cheat, and steal from your party members if your table agrees on that. There are spells or abilities that lead to possession which is also valid if your table has talked through that. But you do not get to otherwise like, force another player character to do your bidding (unless your table has, again, decided this is okay). You cannot persuasion check other PCs into going against their desires unless that's a very specific conversation you've had out of character as a table. Even in game, like, the DC on persuasion checks can be arbitrarily high - even impossible - if someone would simply never do it.

Noncombat/non-violent D&D. There are other TTRPGs that are not heavily based on war games with character classes that aren't like 90% battle abilities and you should check those out. Anyone who plays noncombat/nonviolent D&D and is proud of it is dumb as the bag of hammers I'm beating the people of items 1 and 2 for and I don't respect them. I guess this isn't so much an etiquette violation in that if your entire table wants this you can all be terrible together, but it is kind of a dick move, especially since I both love D&D and find the anti-D&D crowd to largely be the most sour grapes-ass losers of all time, but also believe passionately that there are many things D&D does not achieve well because it is in fact a specific game with specific objectives. You should, if you want to play a game that is all social encounters and skill checks and no fighting, play the many indie games that would love your patronage and suit you admirably, not the most neutered, milquetoast, unsalted margarine version of D&D. I genuinely believe that people playing murderhobos or hardcore metagamers are VASTLY preferable.

Not making a good faith effort to know the rules. You do not have to be good at D&D. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting for not knowing every rule of D&D. You only have to let the soft animal of your body have at least read the rules of your character's class, subclass, and race, and show up prepared, instead of being like "tee hee I listened to 5 episodes of TAZ Balance and am going to twirl my hair at the DM and hope they help little old me." The DM is BUSY and has SHIT TO DO. Read the fucking manual. It's okay to be wrong! It's not okay to be clueless on purpose.

Rules for Thee and Not For Me. Mostly a DM thing, and to be clear, the DM does have special rules bc they are the special one and this is obviously not about that. There are also rules that apply to NPCs/stat blocks and not PCs, and those are inherent to the balance of the game and are fine because NPCs have different abilities. But if, for example, you are requiring an athletics check of PCs to climb up on a ledge and don't permit acrobatics, your rogue NPC villain can't do acrobatics either unless they have some specific pre-written ability.

Metagaming pt 1: excessive metagaming: Part 2 will reveal the "excessive" but like. If you know trolls regenerate because you've been playing D&D for years but you are a level 4 INT 8 sorcerer in-game? you do not know trolls regenerate.

Metagaming pt 2: refusal to engage with the fact that this is a game: Sometimes you get the reverse, when people are like "well my character wouldn't realize that this magic item was important to your character" despite the other person RP-ing everything or "would I notice you were knocked out directly in front of me? It's a pitched battle!" Like. don't cheat but come on bro. This is, ultimately, a game. I will once again bring up Naddpod both because D&D Court exists AND they will do rule of funny shit (as Murph once pointed out, if you want to say you go to Ruby Tuesday's as a joke, great, if you try to use it mechanically, no, which is a healthy attitude towards immersion) AND Murph understands the concept of kayfabe.

Really extensive indecision that doesn't involve the whole party. This is mostly me but like. it's not fun, and I am impatient. If you're not an actual play livestream, you should take a break and in fact talk out of game and resume because god this drags. If everyone's on board obviously go for it but if it's one person's choice...babe the spotlight is on you, sing your solo or leave.

Basically: remember you are at a table with other people and you are telling a collaborative story in a system that is combat-heavy. I'm not bothered by (for example) someone stealing another character's item so long as they understand that this may lead to consequences for them! If you can dish it out but you're prepared to take it and your table trusts each other? Great! The problem is when people try to win against the other players, ask for special treatment they do not grant others, waste everyone's time unnecessarily, or skip to the end of the story; that's against the fundamental nature of the game. It's inconsiderate AND it misses the point.

[shihalyfie]

How would you describe the relationship between each respective goggleboy and 'rival'? Ive seen different interpretations but im curious what you think! Not to mention that the fans are sometimes arguing over who the 'rival' actually is, like with Daisuke where some people say its Ken and others say its Takeru. (I dont think there are actual rivals in the show, except for maybe Manga!Kiriha who outright says he will be just that with Taiki.)

One thing to keep in mind is that the word "rival" has kind of integrated itself into anime lingo as a full-on English loanword, so it comes from expectations of anime tropes more than anything. While even official staff has used that word in talking about Digimon, as you say, it never really fit to begin with, because not only has Digimon TV anime never been a particularly conventional shounen series in many ways, that term was also mostly coined in light of series where that term made a lot more sense. As in, they were more likely to be actually competing over something (in sports, or something tournament-based like card games); in that sense, a "rival" would be someone who might be antagonistic by being on the other side of the field, but would have a mutually positive relationship with the other person overall because the competitiveness would keep both of them on their toes and allow both of them to improve together. Digimon is not the first time this term has started getting overapplied to contexts where it doesn't really fit at all (it's been going on in Super Sentai for years), so people generally have a greater perception of it broadly meaning "two characters who have differing opinions on how something should be done due to their differing personalities, and sometimes fight over it", but in Digimon especially, it really does seem like trying to smash a square peg into a round hole.

The short answer: Xros Wars is probably the only one you can make a real argument for.

The long answer, in detail:

Adventure: I cannot emphasize enough that Adventure, being a series that was really big on that whole trope subversion thing, is a series that casts the trope of "rivalry" as "getting in a lot of fights" as a bad thing -- it's actually pretty unsubtle about it, because the word "rival" itself is explicitly used in Adventure episode 44, by Jureimon trying to manipulate Yamato. Or, in other words, "hey, if you saw someone who's supposed to be your supportive friend as someone you had to constantly compete against for no good reason, wouldn't that be really messed up?" Adventure does not even bother with or remotely believe in the idea that fighting somehow is a sign of how good friends you are, at least, not as long as that fighting is a sign of genuine hostility and refusal to communicate (which is why Yamato punching Taichi in 02 doesn't count). Every time Taichi and Yamato got in a fight back in Adventure, it was heated and ugly, and everyone in their presence was horrified, and once they sorted out their issues in Adventure, their appearances in 02 and Kizuna involved properly talking things out and making an active attempt to understand each other's feelings. There's a bit of bickering between them due to said opposing personalities, but it's never over anything serious (see the contrast in Kizuna between them having a bit of a minor row at the beginning, but high-fiving right after and spending the rest of the movie practically counseling each other).

02: Straight-up does not exist. Daisuke may have seen Takeru in that way due to the Hikari issue at first, but he was really running in circles getting absolutely nowhere about it, Takeru was mostly like "okay, you have fun with that," their only major argument about anything was the very serious issue in 02 episode 11, and it still resulted in Daisuke trying to understand Takeru's feelings. I think all of it boils down to Daisuke himself just not having that kind of personality to begin with, because he's friendly and supportive before anything else, and the whole thing with Takeru became a non-issue after a fashion (way before we even get into Kizuna, at that). Ken has the word "rival" sometimes applied to him in official franchise media, but nobody ever believes it. Sure, Daisuke and Ken have fairly complementary personalities, but they seem to both be aware of this fact and actively using it to help each other. It's very, very, very hard to imagine them ever getting into any kind of fight the way Taichi and Yamato used to in Adventure. It's just not happening! They're "best friends" who enjoy each other's company and actively hang out, and...yeah, that's it.

Tamers: Also does not exist! I know a lot of people really try to say it's Ruki because she's the one with the lone-wolf attitude and aggravated Takato at first, but my impression of Takato's attitude with her wasn't out of any competition but more that he'd like it if she didn't try to pick fights with him. Which she does actually stop after a while, mind you, and you could even make an argument that she's more of a foil to Jian than Takato, because Jian's the one who was completely pacifist at first, with Takato caught in the middle. In the end, Ruki never actually attains a particularly close relationship with Takato compared to Jian, nor does she really keep up a particular competitive streak with Takato; she kind of pops in and out at her leisure because of her more independent streak, and Jian ends up more of Takato's right-hand man (which is why the franchise presumably picks him as the secondary character to feature whenever they do "secondary characters"), but neither Takato nor Jian are prone to conflict and the entire trope is just fundamentally absent. The Tamers trio, is, ultimately, a trio.

Frontier: Takuya and Kouji are probably the first pair to really look like a proper execution of the trope, and at the very least they align pretty perfectly to how it's known in Sentai: a more hot-headed, aggressive lead with a more cool-headed and cynical right-hand man, where they end up often prone to conflict over dispute on how to best lead the team. However, while it's much more of a conventional execution than Adventure (since Adventure had Yamato actually be more prone to being an emotional fuse bomb whereas Taichi was often too chill more than anything), there being any conflict isn’t gone into that deeply beyond just "their personalities are complementary", and in that sense it's not far off from Adventure itself.

Savers: The series kind of baits you into thinking it might go this way when Nanami taunts Tohma about how he had to resort to a Masaru-esque tactic to beat her (it's one of its early red herrings about Tohma supposedly betraying the group), and it does have traces at the start because of how blatant of a foil Tohma is to Masaru, but one thing important to consider is that while the "rivalry" of what's being competed over is barely even relevant in most Digimon series to begin with, Masaru and Tohma don't even have a "group" to lead -- they're the employees under DATS who are being given orders from above, and are dealing with situations as they come. Masaru ends up leading the charge a bit, but he's not actually a leader in any shape or form, and Savers is more of a story of Masaru's coming-of-age than anything else, so while the series mostly has to do with his personal philosophy more than Tohma's, it ultimately lets the two of them pursue their lives their own ways. Masaru's worst bout of infamous anger is at being hurt over Tohma's apparent betrayal, not against him personally.

Xros Wars: I would say this is the only series to date where the term "rivals" properly applies, and it's because they're fighting over something concrete: the Code Crowns, and eventually Digital World territory. So in this case, for the first two parts, the answer is obviously Kiriha; Nene was a rival at first, but after various events happened she allied with Xros Heart early into Death Generals, and while Taiki and Kiriha had a relationship of mutual respect, Kiriha still considered him an opponent over what they were competing for until eventually the Xros Heart United Army fully came into formation. In the manga version, Kiriha does invoke the word "rival" in the above sense of competing to polish one's skills, but ironically, its version of the Death Generals arc involves them being much more in-tune with the same goals, so it might actually apply less because Taiki kind of responds with "uh, sure...?" since he's not nearly as interested in self-improvement. In Hunters, while it initially seems like it might be Yuu, the answer is really Ryouma, and note that Ryouma never really forms a particularly close relationship with Tagiru; it's just that he's the person most at the forefront for competing with Tagiru in the Hunt, to the point he's the first person chosen to wield the Brave Snatcher and turns out to be a bit of a foil for Tagiru in terms of actually having admired Taiki this whole time.

Appmon: Also does not exist. Rei tried to do the whole schtick in terms of competing for the Seven Code Appmon at first, but Haru was having none of that and immediately reached out to him emotionally, worrying about his welfare, and although Rei had a bit of a detached relationship with the other Appli Drivers thereafter, it really was friendly more than anything, just a bit awkward. Haru and Yuujin aren't even on the table, since their relationship is "best friends" akin to Daisuke and Ken.

Adventure: reboot: Also does not exist, considering that Taichi and Yamato bickering over the best way to approach things is limited to the very beginning of the series (and one of those times was with Yamato and Sora, not Yamato and Taichi, at that). In fact, I think most of these kids have been acting separately for most of the series anyway...?

[tumblunni]

...i have never been less hype and i hate it

i feel really guilty for not being happy when i mean these games are very pretty and all but all of it just seems to not be grabbing my happy when i got myself SO HYPED for the unlikelihood of something better

like man COME ON

come on man

TWELVE YEARS

almost 13!

sinnoh was fuckin due for a remake back when sun and moon got announced

ive been getting hype and dissappointed at every single goddamn announcement nintendo’s ever made for the last 4 years or so and it never happens and yet they keep teasing it why are there so many official tweets teasing sinnoh if its not fuckin happening im starting to lose hope that it will happen EVER

twelve. fucking. years.

like man we’re almost due for a goddamn unova remake by now!

like man fucking kanto got TWO REMAKES already

like man SINNOH IS THE REGION THAT MOST ACTUALLY NEEDS A REMAKE

its not just im nostalgic its that i want desperately for the generation i love to get any goddamn recognition at all. fuckin gold and silver were already beloved as the best generation even before their remake. ruby and sapphire got some unfair hate for the no transfer between games thing but that died immediately after the first remake happened. neither of them were in this unique situation where they were fuckin DEAD ON ARRIVAL and waiting TWELVE YEARS for resuscitation!

sinnoh failed ENTIRELY not on its lack of appeal as a generation but because of goddamn CONSOLE LIMITATIONS

it was slow, it was buggy, it had buddy green brown palettes, the wifi didnt work. all problems with it being an experimental first ds game by the company. it was fuckin HATED as the WORST GENERATION for so many years and it wasnt its goddamn fault and like seriously its only even become TOLERATED again because of this ‘sinnoh confirmed’ meme that NINTENDO FUCKIN REFERENCES AS IF THEYRE GONNA ACTUALLY DO IT ANY TIME IN THE NEXT DAMN DECADE

fuck i was more hyped for lets go than i am for this. like a second kanto remake was the thing i hated the most but at least it seemed original enough with the goofy new minigame for catching and loads of nice reveals like the return of following pokemon and stuff. this trailer didnt really say anything except hey its a new region hey the starters look generic as fuck. nothing to mitigate the dissappointment

and i feel AWFUL cos i know rationally that this is a great pretty game and nothing about it is actually bad yet and my only complaint is that i only like one out of three starters when i felt the same way about sinnoh itself. its just that feeling ‘meh its probably okay’ isnt what i hoped for. i hoped even if it wasnt what i wanted itd be something else equally as hype? just ‘meh’ has turned into ‘oh god no’ cos man ive been up for 48 hours getting hype for this shit why the fuck am i unable to not get hype even though i KNOW every goddamn time its a dissappointment and it has been for years and it will continue to be every goddamn time

like the highlight of the video was ‘oh an underground area maybe at least theyll bring back the sinnoh underground minigame in another country’

also.. uhh.. bags? i like the protagonist designs a lot and im happy to have the hiker bags cos srsly if i was in pokemon world i would absolutely want to go 100% ham in all ways possible AS YOU CAN SEE BY HOW I CONSTANTLY GET MYSELF TOO HYPED AND ALWAYS DISSAPPOINT MYSELF

and GOD i know im being predictable and i know that probably when i let the grumpiness wear off and get a few hours of sleep i’ll rewatch this and actually be able to notice all the lil details and get properly hype about things and probably by then we’ll know what country its meant to be based on and more info and stuff. like LOL i almost had a heart attack when there was some generally industrial looking stuff and a big ben esque clock tower like im sorry no i REALLY dont want poke-britain even though im british. its like the most cliche generic idea for a region and following on from a great region that gave representation to a nation historically mistreated by britain and america im kinda like hey can we not. like britain region was everyone’s immediate idea for the next ‘white region’ after unova happened and i was still dissappointed that we got france after that and pleasantly surprised that theyd even THINK of doing a non-white western country like hawaii! and it was really great and had loads of stuff based on hawaiian culture and even taught you some hawaiian words and local foods and stuff!! i dont wanna learn about my own country through the sanitized false ‘child friendly’ idea of us being all knights and stuff AS IF IT WAS A GOOD THING. So yeah im not sure what other european country this might be, the outfits make me say possibly holland? but im just real glad that someone other than britain gets to be ‘sword and shield’ and the only british representation we get is thematic elements being used for the design of team plasma’s uniforms. yes thank you we were fuckin colonialist pigs please never glorify our military ever again in any fiction. please never put a sword anywhere near fiction britain unless youre ready to talk about how many indigenous cultures we slaughtered. SORRY IM KINDA GOING OFF ON ONE!! im not like ‘never put my country in pokemon ever’ but if theres any form of specifically HISTORICAL CONTENT in the pokemon version then HOO BOY it would need to be handled carefully and the name sword and shield does not bode well for that so FUCK YES please be holland, please be the other place that has a lot of picturesque farm scenery and also better hiking and also literally everything. it cant be britain cos if it was britain we’d definately have a fuckin sheep or somethin for a starter. srsly tho i am very confused by the big ben looking place, am i just bad at geography and dont know about a similar clock tower in holland that is also associated with red brick industrial buildings and mines? i hope so! either that or maybe its like a combination region of multiple european countries? but thatd be weird since france got to be its own thing. tho honestly i would like it if britain got COMPLETELY ignored except to be one single town that contains the underground minigame, lol

please be holland i love you holland please save me from my rambling awful post WHY THE FUCK am i getting so bad at recognising geography oh yeh cos i havent slept in ages

i love the big bags and the rabbit starter is something ive wanted since i was a lil kid. those are two positives. holland is a third. and its super pretty. okay. i can see all the positive things individually but still somehow my net reaction is a meh because i got too hyped for the wrong thing and also kinda got jumpscared by almost maybe britain I AM SO GLAD IT IS NOT

theory: pokemon world is so idealized and wonderful and beyond us in technology and equality and etc because britain never existed in this universe.

holland stabbed it with a sword

the end

[twow]

okay no one asked but here's my engage thoughts and musings:

i'm split so far. while i'm certainly glad they're bringing back a level of campiness that i thought 3h lacked, i worry that it'll lean too much into the campiness and silliness and we won't get many emotional or serious moments from the supporting cast. so far none of the characters seem to have any depth, altho it's absolutely possible that they're just hiding that in the clips and trailers and it'll be present in the actual game

alear will almost certainly be the 13th ring. when they're good they'll have blue hair and when they're evil they'll have red hair. see the newest serenes forest analysis as to why there's probably a 13th ring + we see all-red hair alear at the end of the last main english trailer. plus marth's hair turns red when he's in the hands of the evil group. it all adds up and makes sense

i worry about the story. i think fire emblem's stories are the best when they involve the politics of the nations and have complex stories. mindlessly evil shadow organization + evil dragon has no appeal to me and it worries me that that's all we've seen of the story so far. since this is (allegedly) an anniversary game they may have relied mostly on fanservice and written a lackluster story. ofc, like i said above, they could just be hiding it

i'm not 100% sold on the art style, but the animation itself looks great. the models are far more expressive than the 3h characters. but yeah i don't love the baby-face anime models in general. overall a huge visual upgrade tho i think it looks great

the character designs are really fun! i'm not a fan of all of them (skunk girl and the xenoblade twins are especially egregious imo) but in general i enjoy them

our first male dancer! yay!!

i hope there's s supports for everyone or no one. i REALLY hated that byleth was the only one who could s support, it felt way too self-inserty. if alear can s support, everyone should be able to

re: s supports, if they are in the game i want explicitly gay s supports for non-alear characters. none of the player-sexual BS. if two characters can s support the same gender version of alear, they should also be able to s support with each other. i think everyone should be able to romance everyone regardless of gender but i know it's not realistic. also ofc this is all contingent on s supports happening at all but man. i just want good lgbt rep in fire emblem

the voice acting is sooo bad so far im sorry. framme, veyre, and hortensia are the worst offenders, like im serious go back and watch the english trailers. all three sound like 6-year-olds which is incredibly creepy (im sure it's loli bait) and it's incredibly grating

the throwbacks are super fun and it'll be really cool to see some old maps, music, and characters brought back. i just hope they don't have a recency bias and give the old games enough love too

i REALLY hope that chrom, robin, seliph, alm, hector, and eliwood make it into the game as DLC bracelets. even if some of them have to share it, they need to be in a game where all the fe lords are present and it would be wrong if they weren't. shez would be cool too but def not necessary considering he'd be the FIFTH 3h rep when all the others have 1-2. i also wouldn't be shocked if you could switch to the other gender of avatar characters so maybe even sixth if you include f!byleth as a separate character. anyway please add the other lords :) i also hope they don't go the fanservice route with the DLC. no camilla ring please

on the subject of DLC i hope that important story content isn't locked behind a paywall. i thought it was terrible when fates did it and i'll hate it if engage does it

also in general i HATE day 1 DLC. imo if you have finished DLC ready day 1 it should be in the base game. that being said i have pre-ordered it 🤡

SUPPORTS FOR THE EMBLEMS PLEASE. idc if it's just with the engage characters or with each other they need SOME support content.

also i hope the emblems get costume changes like the 3h characters can change to their war phase outfits or ike can change between his por and rd outfits. or even just let them have the customizable options that regular units do.

soren reference please

also just references to the emblems' games in general i think they should act like a real person would and TALK about their original worlds and their friends and family and stuff. even giving them unique dialogue with certain bond rings would be soooo epic please fe please do this one thing for me

idc about the gacha system as long as it uses in-game currency that you can't buy with real money

fe4 remake tease. please please please i need that game remade or ported i need to play it on a modern console

i am excited :) new fe games are almost always fun and i'm looking forward to it. i'm cautiously optimistic even tho this post is pretty negative. i'd rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. unless some earth-shattering news about it comes out it's a day one purchase