Conroy

Jesus, no it doesn’t. These media outlets want nothing more than to put the word “Pokémon” in their headlines to drive clicks. It’s as little like Pokémon as the game has always been

I would honestly recommend sports anime like Haikyuu or Prince of Tennis for this kind of thing. Sports anime always lean really hard into the mental game and you’ll have whole scenes playing out in freeze frame or slow-mo while characters painstakingly walk through their plans. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing

Removed by mod

“Be real” how? I’m legit confused what point you are making. “Using someone’s work for free” doesn’t mean the same as “taking someone’s work and selling it as your own.” When you buy a shirt, you can put your own art on it, but if the shirt company uses your design without credit or consent to sell more shirts, that’s a bit sketchy, no?

I’m gonna “be real” with you, it doesn’t sound like you support modding at all

I’ve got to recommend Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. One of the most legendary games in the series for its sheer amount of content. It might feel a bit dated if you’ve played World or Rise, but still good

This is a PC port of the first MH Stories which was originally released on the 3DS

“Hymn”

You basically lose just guessing the 5 vowels

Remind them every, single, turn.

“Really? Your dagger? Not your cantrip?”

“Oh yeah, I always forget about those”

If they prefer to use it for thematic or aesthetic reasons, they’ll tell you and the mystery will be solved. Maybe there’s a class that does what they want and you can push them towards it. Or maybe they really are just that forgetful and they just need to be reminded every turn. Consider giving them a character sheet that more obviously shows what they can do. Action cards, spell cards, stuff like that might help too. But ultimately, just don’t let them make a dagger attack. Just stop them and present the better option EVERY TIME. You’ll learn one way or another what they want because they’ll go with it or resist it

And I’m not necessarily saying to find a new group (although it seems like you’ll have no choice since you’re moving). I’m just saying, I cant imagine how you could keep playing with this person and no one at the table is making suggestions on how to play their turns. My players strategize about each others’ turns constantly. It’s a bit meta-gamey, but they’re newer and don’t know all the mechanics well so I never stop them. In fact, I try to help them find the course of action that will make them feel the coolest or the most useful without outright telling them what to do

I can see where you are coming from but OP assures us that this player knows about games and specifically makes caster characters. This isn’t one sorcerer with a quirk in their backstory about never using their magic, this is multiple characters in a row. I play with new players all the time. Maybe an occasional person will take others’ suggestions as law, but if they do the same thing too many times in a row or force themselves to use the move you recommended when it still doesn’t make sense, you just keep guiding them.

“Don’t forget you have other cantrips too. Using fire bolt was a suggestion. In this fight, you could try using your shocking grasp to get away. Or you could use your magic missile for some guaranteed damage on that heavily-armored hobgoblin. It uses one of your slots, but now seems as good a time as any. They’re no good to you when you’re dead.”

The DM and even the other players should be chiming in with suggestions on other players’ turns. It can get annoying when you know how to play and others are telling you what to do, but if you had a fighter player who just stood in combat and took a disengage action every turn, wouldn’t you eventually speak up and suggest they try a dodge or an attack instead?

There’s really no right answer here and I don’t think it’s something that we can work through without that player involved in the conversation. It’s not that they don’t know better, it’s not that you haven’t helped them, it’s not that you haven’t made suggestions, and they’ve been doing this for 3 YEARS??? I’m sorry, but this is above my pay grade. I am almost certain there is some detail that I’m missing because this makes zero sense. I have played with veterans of all walks and ages, new players who are 8 years old, new players that are 60 years old, and everywhere in between. It just doesn’t make sense unless there’s more to it.

Sit down with the player again. Ask why they don’t use cantrips. Leave the leveled spells aside for now (saving them forever is a problem, but an understandable one). Continue to remind them every combat, every turn, every time they take out their dagger. I know you said your group doesn’t know the rules well, so maybe it’s time to learn (3 YEARS???). Cantrips and weapons work exactly the same, so I don’t know how “not wanting to engage with the mechanics” has anything to with it. There’s something going on and I can’t be sure what it is without talking to this player themselves

“I run up and stab it with my dagger!”

“Are you sure? As a wizard, your dagger is very ineffective and puts you in harm’s way. You could cast fire bolt from where you are standing. You’d have a better chance to hit, do more damage, remain safe, and play to your character’s strengths more. Do you want to do that instead?”

“I’m trying to save my spells for an emergency”

“Well fire bolt is a cantrip, so it never runs out and you can use it every turn like a fighter would use their weapon. Cantrips are the ‘auto-attacks’ for spell casters”

I can’t understand your situation OP if the exchange I described above isn’t the solution. I play with newbies and first timers all the time and we constantly strategize in combat so they can learn how to play as we go. Would your player really say “no, I don’t care, I stab them” after being presented with that option? If so, I think they are doing this intentionally because they think it’s funny or interesting, not because they don’t know better

Single player is fun if you like to play survival crafting games alone. “Pokémon with guns” is not actually a very good description. It’s a monster capturing game, and the creatures are cartoony like Pokémon, but it’s a third person survival crafting game. No turn based elements or choosing monster move sets or anything like that.

It’s more like Ark with Pokémon instead of dinosaurs

I think I know what you mean, OP, but it seems like most of the comments think you are just complaining about people saying “thanks” at the end of an email, or in general.

So forget email for now. This is an in person thing or instant message. Ending an email, even a short one, with “thanks” is fine and normal. But if you message me “please update that ticket. Thanks.” It has a more aggressive tone than you might have meant. It feels like you aren’t asking and so the “thanks” comes off as fake or even sarcastic. Maybe also a bit dismissive or distracted. Like this isn’t a conversation or even a request. I’m telling you what to do and walking away. It’s a bit terse. You’re not even giving me a chance to reply. If you say “please update that ticket” and I say “sure thing” and then you say “thanks”, the tone is much different. That doesn’t sound bad at all.

Again, email is different. Emails are meant to be send and forget. The thanks at the end can even be read as a “thanks for reading”. I think OP is talking about something different, and I agree it feels bad when someone talks to me that way.

As for your actual question, OP, I can’t say I know why they said it that way, but I’d guess they mean no offense, like most people are saying. It could be a second language thing or they really are too distracted or busy to wait for your reply. They don’t want to get into it, they just want to check off that someone is taking care of that one thing

I actually kinda love WYSIWYG because it’s pronounced “wizzy-wig” in some circles and that always makes me chuckle

Just to be “that guy” I wanted to say that an acronym is technically an initialism that you pronounce as a word, like SCUBA, LASER, or NASA. If it’s just letters that stand for something, it’s called an initialism. No one cares (not even me), but I had to say it :P

Most acronyms that have a W in them are pointless to say aloud in English. It’s almost always shorter to just say the words. Like WTF, for example. Those are my least favorite

Oh and YMMV. I used to work with car data and we would use YMMB to mean “year/make/model/body” and so I always start reading YMMV wrong and that bugs me

Monster Hunter is a great example of a series with quality sequels. They always add some new, interesting mechanics, trim the fat from the previous iteration, and add new content while still keeping the core gameplay exactly the same. There have been some exceptions, but generally every MH game before they split the dev teams had been an improvement on the last. Even when they cut the swimming from 3U to 4. It was a system that most players didn’t enjoy, and 4 had so many great new additions like mounting that it hardly felt like anything was missing.

That said, one of the main criticisms you’ll hear from players is the “ultimate” edition being the same game with just some new hunts tacked on. Or even that the base version isn’t worth it and the ultimate version is the “real” game. Nowadays they do expansions instead, which I think players generally find more palatable

Granted, I haven’t played the original Dragon’s Dogma in like 10 years and I’m watching this on a small phone screen, but if you told me this was DD1 footage, I would believe you. I really don’t see the difference. That said, DD1 also looked awesome and I did enjoy it for the most part… I think it was just missing something to be truly great. I’m just not sure what that is. Back then, I thought it was multiplayer. As a huge Monster Hunter fan, DD felt like a great competitor or rival (despite both being from Capcom) and so I just thought multiplayer was a no-brainer. Now, though, I really appreciate single player experiences more and more, so I’m not sure that was really it. Maybe it was the Pawn system just didn’t do it for me or maybe it was that the quests didn’t flow.

Either way, I think I’m excited to give DD2 a try. The classes in DD1 were very cool, especially the advanced classes. Looking forward to see what this game has to offer

It’s easy to get hung up on this stuff. I’m guilty of spending way too much time thinking about this kind of thing. There are so many potential nameless towns and villages that you can just make up your own without worrying too much. You can always make up your own kingdom or region without ever specifying or even mentioning what sphere, planet, plane, continent, or whatever you are on. With deities, they almost never matter unless a player is planning to lean heavily into it, and even then, you usually can skim some basic details about one or two gods and make stuff up from there.

If you read deeply into the history of the realms and their lore you will learn that it’s mostly independent nonsense. The pantheons and cosmology that the official setting uses has changed so many times that you can really just do whatever you want. There are literally worlds that are identical in every way except for a few things. They exist in the same place and time but are invisible to each other and just served as an excuse for the writers to say “it’s just like this other setting… but different.” The world your campaign takes place in can just be another one of those. A world based on the official Forgotten Realms, only in this world, the king is dead of the magic is delicious, or there’s no such thing as dragons, or gods don’t exist, or whatever.

Don’t let the existing lore stop you from telling the story you want to tell, because it never stopped any licensed content creator from doing whatever the fuck they wanted

Not sure what you mean, but it sounds like you just don’t care because it doesn’t affect your choice. I wonder how you will feel if one day your party’s candidate finally crosses your line