D&D 5E Is he evil?

[Maxperson]

The problem becomes that the subverted trope ends up becoming more prevalent than the trope, on the grounds that people always think they are being edgy and creative in subverting the trope.

So for example, coming at this from the opposite direction, 99% of all Paladins in D&D related literature are jerks that end up as fallen Paladins, death knights, blackguards or whatever. So for example, as soon as the Paladin was introduced in 'Neverwinter Nights', I knew that she was going to fall. Maybe perhaps if there really had been 1,000,000 Paladin protagonists portrayed in a noble manner, it might be interesting to have a story with that one paladin that falls. But in fact, what you see presented is nothing like that.

After you kick the trope over enough times in order to subvert it, you destroy the trope and the very thing that makes kicking it over interesting. Besides which, it is so obvious, and such a stock character, that it ceases to actually be creative.

I agree that the "edgy" thing gets overdone a lot. Drow are cool. Drizz't was very cool. After I saw my 10th player making a Drizz't clone(before than really), it was stale. I was actually guilty of making one of those 10 myself, but I quickly retired that PC as I like to do my own characters and not copy others. My next drow was a CE Assassin/Shadowdancer. An assassin with hide in plain sight. Yikes! Good times.

That said, when not overdone, those edgy PCs are awesome. The atheist in Dragonlance(prior to the return) for instance. I definitely would not want a game where you couldn't be unique edgy. The thing with video games and the usual trope like the fallen paladin, is that they make those games for the masses. Many of which haven't seen them as much as you or I, so what's predictable to us may not be so predictable and cliche to others.

For me, if you want to have a character that plays against the type, make it a character where the thing itself is not defined by the type. For example, I have a troll bard/sage that plays the violin. That plays against type without destroying what the thing itself is, because troll is a fairly broad somewhat vague term open to interpretation, and a troll artist and intellectual is still a troll. We have all these other things - ogres, trolls, hill giants, whatever - where you can play with the idea of an unexpectedly noble character. But, after that, we still need to preserve something to represent the idea of a being that can't play against type.

That's really good, too. I do all of it. I play the normal trope, the edgy counter-trope, and the normal trope with a quirk. I see a place for all of it.

No, no, it's not you. It's me.

Did we just break up?

It's a personal peeve, and I shouldn't let it irritate me.

Whether or not it's you, I'm okay with using other terms that won't irritate you. It's no skin off my back which we use. Besides, it's not like "people" is now canon for this discussion or anything

I have a professional interest in AI, and some small knowledge on the subject. And invariably, whenever you start talking about AI with laymen, invariably they start going off one robot rights and how having AI's as property is slavery and all sorts of similar frankly deranged nonsense that they think is being moral and righteous because clearly a robot is a direct parallel to a member of the human race. Sometimes they get so angry about it that you are afraid they are going to punch you in the face. And the truth is, if you want to act immorally, and you want to create monsters, then by all means act like AI's are inherently people and demand they be treated with such. I can think of no surer way to end up with a Butlerian Jihad or Skynet or some other dystopian crap. So I'm trying to force people to think seriously about what things like 'intelligence' and 'human' and 'person' really mean.

Yeah, I'm not like that. We can keep this confined to D&D creatures, though.