Unpopular opinions go here

[Lanefan]

Well, I did say I it would be unpopular

Mostly, I am coming at this from the perspective that people don't know for sure, do not have concrete, empirical evidence, of the overarching spiritual, moral, ethical, and metaphysical underpinnings of the universe are like. I like that degree of ambiguity (and yet I am a man of faith, so please understand that I am not, by any means, denigrating faith).

If you're a player, sure; that lack of concrete evidence very likely reflects the knowledge of your character.

But if you're the DM I hold that you have to get this cosmology stuff nailed down hard during the design process, before starting play.

I also don't like when the precious cosmology has to be hammered into every setting, regardless if it fits the rest of the setting, or if it removes elements that make said setting unique.

I'm of two minds here.

Each setting, and arguably each culture/species within each setting, should have its own (view of) cosmology, its own pantheon of deities, and so forth. This is a large part of what makes each of those cultures what they are. Players would learn of some of these through their characters, in play.

Buuuu-ut, underneath it all I also think there needs to be a universal underlying framework that all these things rest on, a framework that's portable from setting to setting and campaign to campaign such that it only ever needs to be designed once. This framework could be DM-side only, and while players may or may not learn about it in-character during a particular campaign*, they still won't know it applies everywhere.

* - my current campaign is crawling with Corellon Clerics for some reason; imagine their shock when a few high-level PC ones found out that Corellon in in fact just an aspect of another (framework-level) deity!

For me, in D&D setting terms, Spelljammer is far more interesting and fantastical than Planescape (except for the art, because DiTerlizzi is amazing).

 

[Parmandur]

The cost-per-hour thing is pretty interesting.

The best value in my Steam library by far is Stardew Valley. I bought it for $12 a few years ago, and I've played it for 2,210 hours (and counting), so it breaks down to about half a penny per hour.

The second-best value is Subnautica. I bought it while it was still in Early Access for $20, and I've played it 1103 hours...almost two cents per hour.

And it looks like the third-best value is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I bought this one twice (the regular version and the 64-bit version), and both times I paid the release price. (I was young and foolish.) I also bought the DLCs for their release price. In all, it looks like I spent $113.97 on a game that I've played for 1332 hours, about 9 cents per hour.

The worst value for a game that I bought was Red Dead Redemption 2, which I paid full price ($60) for because my buddies wanted to meet up online and play together during the pandemic lockdowns. The online gaming never happened, but I still ended up playing it for 82 hours by myself before I put it down. That's $0.73 per hour--less than the "dollar per hour" cutoff, but almost a hundred times more expensive than other games on my list.

(I just checked, and RDR2 is still full price on Steam, four years later. Yeah, good luck with that.)

So, even Red Dead Redemption 2 cost peanuts by that measure.

More than cents per hour, how I view it is "work hours to play hours" conversion ratio, which can be adjusted in the event of changing life circumstances. My work hours have a certain value, so I can assign. A product a number of work hours in terms of cost (currently ~2 hours for a video game or RPG book). So, if I procure a game with 2 hours of work...and then get only 82 hours of play for thst work...that's a value. If I get thousands, that's an insane value.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, even Red Dead Redemption 2 cost peanuts by that measure.

More than cents per hour, how I view it is "work hours to play hours" conversion ratio, which can be adjusted in the event of changing life circumstances. My work hours have a certain value, so I can assign. A product a number of work hours in terms of cost (currently ~2 hours for a video game or RPG book). So, if I procure a game with 2 hours of work...and then get only 82 hours of play for thst work...that's a value. If I get thousands, that's an insane value.

If I charged by hourly rate for all of the time I have spent playing various iterations of Civilization ...

Well, y'all would be complaining about me, instead of Elon Musk.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I don’t think I have a single game in my admittedly smallish collection that I have less the 2,000 hours in. I tend to do multiple playthroughs of games I like when I first buy them, and will also get the urge to replay a game of series of game once every year or so.

I’ve also played Skyrim so many times I can probably quote every major quest line’s dialogue by heart. Especially the opening scene.

 

[FrogReaver]

If internet posters were paid by the post then AI would have already been outlawed.

 

[Scribe]

I just checked my time /played in World of Warcraft and took 5d20 psychic damage.

I wonder what the highest is. A hardcore day 1 type.

 

[overgeeked]

I just checked my time /played in World of Warcraft and took 5d20 psychic damage.

I made that mistake a few years ago. I stopped playing shortly after that.

 

[Velderan]

I just checked my time /played in World of Warcraft and took 5d20 psychic damage.

Does it show all characters or just the one you're currently on?

I realize I may have just made you feel worse asking that question. lol

 

[Gradine]

D&D doesn't need a Warlord class.

 

[Reynard]

It's so weird. Looking at my Steam history, except for a few outliers (Bethesda RPGs and similar mostly) I play most ga.es for about 30 or so hours. I don't even finish that many. But I'm okay with that.

I am looking forward to pouring a whole lot more than that into BG3 and Starfield and eventually going back to Diablo 4.