I've done a couple of interviews - one recently with Iain of Roll to Save (highly recommend this show!) - in which I confess my regret over having dunked on characters named 'Grog' back in episode 0. At the time, I didn't know there was a character on Critical Role named 'Grog' and so I wasn't trying to insult that player personally, so much as just crap on the worst fantasy name I could think of. I might have said 'Ugg' (probably find out about some other beloved character named Ugg now... FML...). Maybe it all amounts to the same thing.
Anyway, it got me thinking about my own lack of originality and my own hypocrisy. To explain: I'm against boring prefab character archetypes like the 'stupid barbarian' or the 'bard who seduces everything that moves' but at the same time I am completely in love with the tropes of basic fantasy, like green slime, sadistic goblins, magic fountains, mystical elves, stoic dwarves ... you get the idea. So where does my 'classic' and and someone else's 'cliché' begin? There's no clear boundary, right?
Not really sure I am going to come to any meaningful conclusion here, I just thought it was interesting to discover how specific my tastes run. To me, all things Tolkien and B/X DnD are wonderful, and intrusions into those (very similar) worlds are to be repelled with force. Oddly, even recognizing my biases, I have no intention of changing anything (well, every now and then I think about editing episode 0...). I actually treasure my biases. How strange...
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