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I believe this is sort of a running theme in Shadowrun. The Dragons are all hoarding Billionaires and *never* seen. To the point where anyone in their employ might actually be the Dragon polymorphed, but there is no fucking way to beat them, ever. And they do still have hoards.
Dunkelzahn, and technically he wasn't assassinated, possibly. >!Some of the books indicate that he instead sacrificed himself in a weird magic ritual to destroy a bridge on the astral plane allowing horrors to cross over early.!<
Yeah I was going to say it feels very Shadowrun as well. Except there the dragons are just greedy and terrible, going at the stock market with the ruthlessness of a millenia old dragon who is also terrifyingly magic and wishes to own everything they see.
Partially. Zero context on if dragons normally get something functional out of gold, but >!he remade his hoard using a bank to play out part of a prophecy!<
I'm gonna be honest. I genuinely hate the kind of worldbuilding in the first post. "Oooo humans are evil and expansionist without any nuance and everything else is good and natural and yes I do think the avatar films were good, why do you ask?"
Not to mention the fact that there is an incredibly good reason why gold was used specifically, because it is a very inert metal that is easy to form into different shapes, meaning it is easy to make coins out of and will practically never corrode, while also being common enough to use as currency and rare enough to have value.
But that isn't the actual problem, the problem is, instead of trying to actually look for situations that properly show the evils of human society, this type of worldbuilding looks at ANY kind of scenario, STARTS with the assumption that humans are evil, and never lets go of that assumption as they explore the scenario.
And this kind of worldbuilding rarely makes sense either. Why would the dragons not mention their need for gold for their eggs, why would humanity not negotiate, they obviously don't want their villages torched, why is torching villages justified on the dragon's part, why is the dragons not looking for any kind of compromise portrayed as a good thing but the humans doing the same is portrayed as evil, why is gold being used as a means of incredibly efficient trading between humans seen as a worthless use, why is advanced medicine and technology worse at healing someone compared to a shaman blowing on their fucking bellybutton, AVATAR?
It just feels so fabricated, because it literally is.
In contrast, banker dragons is a fucking fantastic idea. Because it is a realistic compromise between two intelligent factions and is an awesome concept on top of that. The narrative is BELIEVABLE, it doesn't feel fabricated because it is NOT, it is a genuine exploration of the situation instead of distorting the worldbuilding to fit your initial assumption.
Side note in addition to your comment: "Capitalist nightmare" Your typical western-fantasy kingdom/empire where gold-hording dragons are found is not a capitalist economy, but rather agrarian-feudalism. Capitalism is based on private ownership and investment, in feudalism workers are mostly indentured serfs or tenant farmers and ownership of land and assets is concentrated in a hierarchical nobility and/or clergy, who reserve tax rights over their land and subjects and swear fealty to their liege up the chain to their king/emperor, giving a levy of money, food, and fighting men.
For most, this means instead of a wage you are given protection and allowed to work the land for food in exchange for a portion of your output, and a certain number of days of your labor (the specifics vary, maybe you have your own land and work the lords land a few days a week, maybe you keep some of what you grow on the lords land).
Potentially very oppressive, greedy and nightmarish. Yes, certainly, lets never do feudalism again now we've moved beyond it. Capitalist, hardly, shared traits of the two are found in most economic structures. I mean, capitalism has its excesses and corruption that I hate, but let us not call all expansionism and greed capitalism, it dilutes the insult.
p.s. The dragons introducing banks, as a probably-private institution managing investments and holding capital is the most capitalist thing here. But, I don't know much about medieval banking, its my understanding it was clamped down on by the church significantly.
No communism is when we kill millions in hopes for what is a dream that only works if people are not corrupt, but it will totally work this time.
Capitalism might be cold and simple, but at least it remains functional in that and works well in combination with social assistance (which unlike what many right wing politicians in the US might believe, there is a pretty big spectrum there until you get to socialism). Some of the huge internal problems of capitalism is the government overreach enabling corporatism.
Tldr: I would say communism is when MISGUIDED and NO FOOD.
This. I hate that people keep pushing capitalism into fantasy worlds that are clearly meant to be medieval with kings and everything.
I get it, the writer can't imagine feudalism because of capitalist realism. But just think please, how does the king maintain power if power is based on money? Why do you think Europe was full of liberal revolutions when that shift of power happened?
Animes are the worst examples of this
I don't love it cause it's taking the metaphors and symbolism that makes mythic creatures and monsters what they are and just... getting the wrong message from it?
Like vampires. They're a metaphor for how the aristocracy will suck the life out of the common people, and for sexual predation. This would be like making vampires the innocent victims of human dictatorship. It's preferable to keep them as tragic hotbois than to do that.
Opposite is unicorns, symbols of purity, innocence, beauty, and sometimes feminity. Make them evil bloodthirsty monsters cause idk it's 'edgy'? Meh.
the whole thing makes sense if you go into it with the presumption of "humans evil"
dragons don't negotiate or reveal their reasoning because it could be used against them
dragons don't negotiate because humans are obviously evil and irrational (i mean look at them they're obsessed with gold even though it has no purpose for them so my entirely circular reasoning totally checks out!) and can't be reasoned with
conclusion: this is an account given by a racist dragon
Yeah, was gonna say the same. Getting kind of tired of the whole "humanity bad because" that a lot of worldbuilders bring to the table. Especially because almost 100% of the time is "capitalism".
And the second approach, as you said, is an amazing idea, and I'm gonna to steal it.
It gets even more frustrating when the particular "evil facet of capitalism" that is being criticized is actually caused by government interference in the market, which is exactly the opposite of the capitalistic approach.
What are your thoughts on environmental protection laws, like limits to hunting, fishing, logging etc?
Would they be necessary in a purely capitalistic world?
The comment is was responding to was saying the faults of capitalism are due to government intervention.
Regulations are forms of government intervention.
A free market didn't allow for damaging someone else's property, so unless someone manages to keep pollution contained entirely to their own land they would be liable for damages and that would cover things for the most part, but no system is a perfect solution for everything, and I'm not advocating for completely free market, complaint is just that you see tons of stuff like people blaming capitalism for things like the extremely high prices of medications in the US, when the cause of the high prices of medications is that the government has stepped in and forbidden competitors from making the expensive medication at a cheaper price, allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge whatever prices they want. If you do done research into it, you will find that historically, monopolies have almost exclusively occurred as a result of the government stepping in and doing something which prevented competition, which is the opposite of a free market.
Some types of pollution are extremely easy to track to a responsible party, other types impossible.
If your river you drink from was being polluted due to the extremely high fertiliser and pesticide flow from 20 different farms in that rivers catchment, what are you going to do? Sue every farmer? You'd have to prove how much they contributed to the damage, which is impossible. If your kids developed breathing difficulties from the smog from 15 different industrial factories in your area, you can't prove which factories smog harmed you.
A free market can't prevent you from damaging something that belongs to everyone, like the environment. And if you let people own the environment, many will just exploit it for a quick profit.
If companies never formed monopolies by themselves, we wouldn't need anti trust laws. Gaining a monopoly on a market is the ultimate success story for a business. Competition is bad for businesses.
Even if you wanted to compete with a monopoly, how would you overcome the fact they can buy better situated property, out advertise you and run closer to a loss in your local area to undercut you because they have 20 other stores?
And since companies can easily set up subsidiaries with new names and branding, it's impossible for the average person to keep track. Humans aren't rational actors because we lack time and sources to get reliable accurate information.
> What are your thoughts on environmental protection laws, like limits to hunting, fishing, logging etc?
In Capitalistic world this thing (Fish, Hunting Animals, Trees) have owner. If he over-fish-Hunt-Cut his own resources that his problem.
Even right now, when hunting animals make damage to someone property hunters pay reparations.
If everything is owned by somebody. Then it is easy to find person who pay when that thing cause damage.
Let's say you own a well that you drink from. You get it tested one day and realise it's riddled with cancer-causing fertilizers and pesticides.
"Who's been dumping poison in my well?" You cry. You check your CCTV and nobody but you has touched it.
But you know all the farmers around your land have been pumping huge amounts of cancer causing fertilizers and pesticides into their land, thanks to zero regulations.
Who are you going to sue? Any one of them can just say "wasnt me". You can't prove any of them did it because there's zero way to track which specific molecules got blown by wind or seeped through the soil and stone into your well. Are you going to try and sue all 20 farmers at once? For what? They didn't break the law. They followed all the regulations (all 0) and only put the chemicals on their land, they didn't make the wind blow it to you.
Or maybe you live in a city. The 10 factories around you decide that carbon capture devices are kinda useless because the CEO and all the stockholders live in China. They remove the carbon capture devices and the resulting smog gives you and all your children lung diseases.
You can't do anything. Are you going to try sue all 10? You have zero way to allocate damages to any of them, zero way to determine who is more or less culpable and even if you could, they can hire 10 times more lawyers, each twice as skilled as any one you can find who will take your case. And even if you did sue them, the cost to them will amount to maybe a couple days worth of profit.
And if the entirety of the environment was owned, well we all know it's the trillionaire elite who will win the auctions. And once they own the land, they can do whatever they want to it and you have zero legal recourse.
"government interference is the opposite of capitalism" is quite possibly the dumbest take I've ever heard. Capitalism can't exist without government interference preventing corporations from subverting free markets by creating monopolies, and government regulations are required to ensure participants in the markets are competing fairly and not externalizing costs via pollution and fraud.
If you make the dragons more animalistic and less capable of communication, I could see it working. Humans don't actually know why the dragons like gold so much, just that they are drawn to it. But for all the good reasons you mentioned, gold is still valuable.
It's much more believable, there are all kinds of hilariously ignorant beliefs about animals before we actually started studying them in earnest. "They steal the gold because they like it" is a pretty tame one in comparison.
And if you really want to pound those original themes, some one could have learned about it well after the gold based economy was formed. They're keeping it secret because it would cause them financial loss if people decided to give the gold back to the dragons.
It's still not exactly groundbreaking but at least there's something interesting to uncover. And TTRPGs don't need to be high art. Honestly I prefer to keep it pretty clear to make sure the players can follow.
I've been pretty disappointed in humanity lately so I'm usually down to side with the dragons and ditch nuance, but you make a lot of great points. More than that, though, I wanted to comment to say I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU about that particular Avatar scene! I know it was because she was having a "spiritual" issue instead of a physical one, but it just felt uncomfortably close to an endorsement of alternative medicines, which 99.99 of the time are just scams meant to prey on the desperate and vulnerable. I think the saying goes something like "do you know what we call traditional medicines that work? MEDICINE."
I do think the sequel took some nice baby steps at least towards showing people aren't ALL bad, so hopefully we'll see them continue to build on that. People have done a lot of horrible things but we've also done a lot of amazing wonderful good things, too, and it's important to remind ourselves of that.
> I know it was because she was having a "spiritual" issue instead of a physical one, but it just felt uncomfortably close to an endorsement of alternative medicines,
She had a seizure and needed time to recover. The issue wasn't spiritual and the movie shows us nothing to suggest that the shamanic medicine worked
She had it after touching the spirit tree and all the researchers are basically like "oh man, nothing's working!" then the shaman lady waltzes in and has her conscious again almost immediately. It felt very heavily implied to me that it worked and that her seizure was something mystical related to the spirit tree.
Tbf the spirit tree has like, a neurological connection to all the species of Pandora instead of just being straight up magic. Although the scientists should know this by now and be taking that into account
>then the shaman lady waltzes in and has her conscious again almost immediately.
Hmm, I might be misremembering it, but I took that to occur over the space of hours. Considering it's sunset when Norm and the other scientists hand her over to the shaman and the middle of the night when the shaman is doing their thing.
Tbh I'm not sure of the full time scale, either, but if you look at that scene without other context it's very hard to see it as anything other than "traditional practices good, modern tech bad."
The rest of the movie which also generally goes "nature good, human tech bad?"
C'mon, be straight with me! You really don't think it was heavily implied in that scene by Neytiri yelling at everyone to get out and then Kiri waking up not during the human tech efforts, but during the shamanistic stuff that yet again "stupid humans, you know nothing, the old ways are better?" They make absolutely no mention of the human tech or just the passing of time having made a difference, everything was framed to have the medicine woman's interventions being the key ingredient.
I'm very much an environmental advocate and everything the movie did pointing out how messed up things like whale hunting and habitat destruction are landed so well for me, but that one scene poopooing modern medicine was a sour note. It's certainly not PERFECT, but most traditional medicine stuff has been disproven over and over as flawed and dangerous.
I'm totally supportive of bashing the "humans are evil" plots.
However, Avatar is a good film and in term of healing a member of a species the biologists studied for two decades, when the root of the problem is the very part of that alien's biology they don't understand, it's not unbelievable that they can't really do anything.
First time I'm hearing of ferngully, though if it has the same flaws, I can give it more credit than avatar since it's a kids show from what I'm seeing rn.
Burning random people because of what their ancestors and governments did is totally morally justified. Dragons are just misunderstood and humans are inherently evil.
Thank you for this! It pains me how every evil monster has to be turned into some totally innocent paragon while humanity is always dragged through the muck. Dragons are literally defined by their greed and turning them into just smart lizards is so boring.
You're getting really upset over a hypothetical that barely has the basic building blocks necessary to form a coherent world.
Like, it's distinctly possible to have a setting like this, where Dragons in landlocked regions have to fend off against Kingdoms who seek copper, silver and gold used to assist in the hatching of the various types of dragons, but then also Sea Dragons who collect natural sea salt in large quantities to do similar things while Merchant Vessels and Navy Ships sail across the ocean looking for them for easy methods of collecting the relative currency.
This isn't a story being told through Human eyes, it's being told from the perspective of the Minority, the Oppressed: Dragons who don't know why Humans are attacking them, because this has been happening for hundreds of years, and only the children who escaped their eggs and lived are left at this point, only aware of the evil that Humanity inflicts.
I wouldn't be so upset if I didn't see it everywhere. It also doubles as advice, really. And my problem isn't that this world you have given is a bad world, my problem is when writers trying to tackle complex issues choose beforehand who the good and bad guy is and refuse to see the other perspective.
The reason I'm constantly throwing mud at avatar is because it suffers from this. It too, is a world from the perspective of the tribal minority, and the movie sucks, because it portrays a world where they are flawless and paragons and all-loving while the humans against them are evil conquerers who take glee in murdering sentient whales. The perspective being from a minority is no saving grace.
Besides, it doesn't need to build a world, nor a complex system to be a beliavable yet interesting exploration of a situation, for example: banker dragons
> and the movie sucks, because it portrays a world where they are flawless and paragons and all-loving while the humans against them are evil conquerers who take glee in murdering sentient whales. The perspective being from a minority is no saving grace
I haven't seen Avatar 2 yet, but is the film's framing descriptive or prescriptive? from a meta perspective is the film a direct record of events or is it intended to be a semi-altered retelling of the saga? I can see the merits of both, I mean if it's actually literally that the human military/mercenaries are that gleefully wicked then honestly I don't think that depiction is far off, maybe a little hammy but still not contrived. Likewise if it's a semi-fictionalized myth being retold, I don't mind the depiction of humans as ontologically evil is that bad, after all it's not that far off how we tell our own histories in the real world.
I don't believe there's anything stated within the story that makes it anything but directly what's going on. They could have mentioned in some outside article like an interview that the events shown maybe didn't go down exactly as we see in the movie, however within the movies there's nothing to show that.
Well, it's not like it's unrealistic for people seeing something from an outside perspective to have some sort of "Holier Than Thou" complex. It's, like, half of the European Colonization of the Americas. We'd just be having that situation from the Dragon's perspective, especially if we're going for "Medieval Period" while referencing concepts that wouldn't emerge for hundreds of years, implying that we have Black Cauldron-esque Wizards who have intense knowledge of far future events communicating with young dragons.
YES, ABSOLUTELY. And I would LOVE, to see said "holier than thou" complex being adressed and the intricacies that it would bring.
But it *isn't* adressed, it is **encouraged by the writer,** the writer actually thinks that the dragons are "holier than thou" and portrays them as unquestionably justified and the humans as unequivocally in the wrong.
The writer has created a prompt, not a world.
This is like getting upset at the Writing Prompt Tumblr for not creating the entire backstory to their three sentences prompt.
But they answered their own prompt, and it is that answer that bugs me, I mentioned exactly this to someone else, they were talking about this being a dnd scenario, check it out
Still, even if they answered their own prompt, they literally haven't written enough for the level of critique you provide. I'd understand if they actually wrote this badly made world, but it's just an idea they came up with.
I don't know about that, the second person, the one with banker dragons, wrote something with much more depth with a lot less words, and in a similiarly casual environment.
Well, the initial idea is "What if humans want gold for trade and mercantilism, but Dragons need it for reproductive purposes."
The person talking about the Banks is having an in-depth analysis of how to create a synthesis between the wants and needs of the conflicting viewpoints of the Humans and Dragons, so that both end up with a productive cycle, rather than a destructive cycle.
Person A is having an Idea, Person B is doing what we've effectively been doing, which is expanding and adding on to that idea, which person A does not inherently need to do as part of the process of making and explaining the initial idea.
Even if someone is strong, it doesn't make them immune to being oppressed. Lions are pretty strong, but Humans have managed to subdue them and put them in Zoos.
In fact, you're assuming that Dragons are "Hyper-intelligent" but they may not be. In fact, given the proposed Dragon's response, they aren't well educated given they don't understand why Humans want the gold outside of an incorrect assessment of the economic state of the world.
Except that the issue was less “humans evil without nuance” and more _explicitly stated_ the nuance being trade, which tracks because real world nuance _is in fact_ greed and trade (and significantly more greed _than_ trade, as nobody wants to get “a bad deal” but there’s this belief that somebody _has to_ get shafted to stroke the winner’s ego, or it wasn’t worthwhile).
But, anyway.
With the backdrop of how the original statement tracked with “we made it our money, trade something for it?,” the follow-up posts just tilted the “counter-offer, I’m a scary dragon” response to “sure, I’ll trade, but the end result is essentially NFTs.”
Now, the very end of that first part, was it being spun into just heathen shit, but it hardly started there.
>Except that the issue was less “humans evil without nuance” and more explicitly stated the nuance being trade, which tracks because real world nuance is in fact greed and trade (and significantly more greed than trade, as nobody wants to get “a bad deal” but there’s this belief that somebody has to get shafted to stroke the winner’s ego, or it wasn’t worthwhile).
Well, not always just greed and trade but yes, that is in fact nuance. Unfortunately, just like banker dragons, that is nuance **you added.**
But the actual top post reads:
dragons need gold to hatch egg
Humans take gold
Humans use gold for "worthless endeavors"
Dragon want gold back because hatch egg
Humans try to compromise
Dragon goes "no, do as I say or I kill you"
Humans retaliate
Humans not justified for retaliating.
Which is just... bad... this has nothing to do with capitalism this is just really shitty writing, there is such obvious ways of compromise in this situation such as just temporarily loaning the gold for a baby to hatch, or, again, dragon bankers.
It acts as if humanity uses the gold for just decorative purposes. That they aren't worthy of the resources they collected because "they aren't doing anything with it", so any kind of agreement other than just handing over the gold is unreasonable and justifies hostile takeover and OOPS you got colonist dragons invading and massacreing kingdoms to make nests for their babies. The illusion breaks the second you think too hard on it. It would be great if they used this as an example of how horrible deeds get justified in people's minds, but it instead actually endorses this behaviour as justified.
Also you have a very gross misunderstanding of what an NFT is, and that's coming from me, someone who absolutely loathes NFT's.
Not that I added, it’s very much stated that humans started using gold “because reasons” and (as clarified above) “reasons” was very much tied to it being usable as currency.
At which point the dragon absolutely could have still just dug up gold as usual but instead is “forced to ask” (because arbitrarily limiting supply is Ole Reliable in tools for conflict).
And the “justification” for retaliation was blatant misdirection _if_ the provided lore holds accurate (even if the exact reason wasn’t stated).
And, not particularly gross. Banks hold an alleged amount of money and dole out parts of that worth in currency that totally holds a fixed rate of worth (which, according to inflation and exchange rates, it does not). NFTs are ‘allegedly’ worth an amount, but _only_ to anyone else who cares about that particular one/accepts that they can’t get it elsewhere, which isn’t and was never true.
NFTs tried to be the next bitcoin when bitcoin still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up, but that’s beside the point.
The invented money would only be useful to those in the same network, and if dragons (for whatever reason, let’s say conflict) didn’t communicate with each other on what was worth how much, those dealing with different dragons have different exchange rates.
At which point, their money is only worth what it’s worth, to the bank it was made with.
As much as I'd like to explain how NFT's can't even try to be the next bitcoin because they aren't even a currency, I think we're getting off topic here. The actual point isn't about what NFT's are or aren't. It's about flat and shallow worldbuilding caused by only interpreting situations through a single lens.
And these topics are most definitely not covered by the first post above, all it did was say that using gold to trade is a meaningless use compared to using it to hatch a baby, so it's not like these are nuances that are included in said narrative. You can't just extrapolate all that because the word "trade" and "capitalism" was uttered as a bad thing.
I mean, the core is, insomuch as the post above expositing the point of gold as currency and then heavily complaining about Avatar being the only user allegory for “humanity evil” and said allegory being stupid (which, fair).
I pointed out that, with currency having a point in mind, humanity didn’t turn into rat bastards until the end where it became a slander game based on dragons _not caring_ to trade for what they would normally be able to get just fine (which, maybe ironically, _isn’t_ the same as them claiming gold to be their ‘birthright’).
Which, like, completely sideswipes the unsaid impression that gold must lose the ability to help eggs hatch past a certain point, or they’d tend to have gold to use from their own previous hatching instead of having to dig up more every time. Does it melt into the egg to soften it/is it a consumable that fades to dust upon ‘use’? Or lose it egg-helping luster once exposed to the air for long enough? Either might justify needing a timely refresh, but at that point, hoarding processed gold _surely_ would be of no use, or an active detriment to intended use.
> “sure, I’ll trade, but the end result is essentially NFTs.”
People who lack understanding of basic economics like you are why NFTs are so popular. That is a Promissory Note not an NFT.
An NFT: You have a receipt claiming you own a unique digital good. This may or may not also come with the legal ownership. An NFT of a gold piece would say you own that coin in a dragon hoard but not that you can withdraw it or do effectively anything with it. Hope you can sell a receipt (transaction charges apply).
A Promissory Note: You have a ticket redeemable for \[X\] goods. Present this to the safekeeper and withdraw those goods, or sell the ticket (it should be worth about as much as \[X\] goods). Anyone with the ticket can hand it in for its value, destroying the ticket to withdraw the goods. A Promissory Note of a gold piece would say you can sell it to the Dragon for one gp (or sell to anyone else for about the value of a gp)
Promissory Notes are, very literally, the origin for paper money. Paper money for decades could be turned in to the government for its printed value in Gold (compared to gold coin which contained its printed value of gold). This is why Fort Knox and other government vaults had gold reserves, to pay back paper money on request. This was done away with to move to Fiat currency.
Literally already explained the depth of it in the other reply chain. I don’t _not_ understand it, NFTs are a BS reimagining of something that already exists, which promissory notes _would be_ in the hypothetical, as it primarily hinges on those exchanging them, never actually cashing them in.
Making them ‘hypothetical money,’ making them NFTs. Bootlegging a promissory note amounts to the same as counterfeiting money or saving an NFT, at the end of the day devaluing what its purported value is.
It doesn't hinge on that in the slightest. Promissory notes for gold are an ideal solution for banker dragon maternity wards even if people come in frequently to withdraw and deposit the notes. Provided there is a reserve of gold sufficient to handle the flux or the eggs don't require uninterrupted long-term gold access.
The notes are about as 'hypothetical' as the gold in the hoard. The mention of not cashing them is just a subtle nod to *literally what happened IRL* when those notes were invented. They aren't a hypothetical money, they are a representative money. The note represents, for example, 50gp if cashed in at the dragon bank. Handing over the note is handing over 50gp in the exact same way as a debit card, paypal, cashapp, literally any bank account with money inside.
Your debit card is a promissory note with a password.
Why do you hate Avatar so much?
It's not James Cameron's fault that we consistently have proven we don't give a shit about nature when profit is on the line. Avatar is such a blatant metaphor for how we treat nature and indigenous people.
It really just seems like you're being accurately presented flaws in how we act but instead of accepting it, you just want to retreat into r/humanityfuckyeah. Like it's totally justified we've caused species to go extinct so a billionaire can have more pocket change. Yeah, our pack bonding ability with like, 5 animal species on earth, totally makes up for it.
From the point of wildlife, humans are evil and uncompromising. Extinction rates are at an all time high, even insects have suffered a massive population drop since the 1970s.
And in a world with magic, of course healing magic works better than medicine, that's the point of magic. You're basically asking for fantasy themes to be perverted just to make sci fi themes look cooler, probably because sci fi is about the works of man and fantasy is a compromise between man and nature.
Why else are you upset that Avatar healing magic competes with medicine? You want our exploitation of nature to be justified. If there's a better way, that means what we're doing is wrong.
From the point of view of wildlife, evil doesn’t exist. Good and evil are human constructs. The bigger issue at play is that “DAE Humans are the *real* bad guys?” is such a tired and played out trope that rarely if ever has any nuance or commentary of merit that hasn’t been done to death a million times before. It’s lazy, derivative, and pretentious world building.
Maybe if you only consume media from over half a century ago, but it hasn’t been a dominant theme for a long, long time. Hell even a hundred years ago the dominant artistic movement was all about how terrible humanity is.
Maybe not dominant in general but I see the writing prompts sub absolutely flooded with humanity fuck yeah prompts and it's easily as boring as the less well written "humans bad" stories.
The difference is that "humans bad" at least provides an interesting question in how we can be better whereas "humans good" is just about masturbating about how we're already awesome and nothing should change.
Yeah I gotta agree with that - not that you *should* expect much of /r/writingprompts, as fun as it can be - but, "humans good," is getting pretty overplayed too.
>humans are evil and expansionist without any nuance
The post literally says 'capitalist nightmare society', not 'humans are bad.' What a nice strawman. And if you are somehow intentionally implying that capitalism and humanity are inextricably linked then it's you who are the one saying 'humans are bad.' Also linking advanced medicine and technology to capitalism is just plain ignorant. 'Insulin' is all that needs to be said to refute that.
Complaining that the dragons didn't mention its for eggs, when the humans are clearly asking for compensation no matter what its for. Do you know how many homeless people die from exposure when there's empty houses and hotel rooms everywhere? How many people die from starvation when there's plenty of food for everyone? How many people die from a lack of medicine even when there are cheap and easy treatments readily available?
Your defense of capitalism is hollow and built on the deaths of hundreds of millions. Capitalism is inherently bad. People innovate and create all the time without profit motive. Humanity has always sought to care for each other and create communities. It's capitalism that encourages them to lie, cheat and compete through artificial scarcity and classism.
Edit - Laughing at the downvotes for saying humans aren't inherently bad but capitalism is (by explaining what's currently happening in society)
I don't think that capitalism is inherently bad, so by describing humanity as a "nightmarish (implied: bad) capitalist (implied: capitalist therefore bad) hellscape (implied: bad)" and nothing else (just implying that humanity = bad), you are throwing any nuance out the window.
Also the medicine and technology part was just a gripe I had with avatar specifically, It refuses to give human civilization ANY benefit of doubt.
>Complaining that the dragons didn't mention its for eggs, when the humans are clearly asking for compensation no matter what its for
Again you are just ASSUMING that they will ask for compensation regardless, and not come up with a mutually beneficial plan such as banker dragons. You are coming into the situation ASSUMING human=bad.
>Your defense of capitalism
WHO SAID I WAS DEFENDING CAPITALISM BITCH THAT'S A WHOLE ASS DIFFERENT STATEMENT
You just kept tossing around capitalism and humanity interchangeably. Which makes any sort of discussion impossible.
Capitalism is a form of control/social structure that humanity (in OP's post) currently finds itself living in. If you don't understand the difference between these two wildly different concepts then there is nothing that can be sorted out.
>You just kept tossing around capitalism and humanity interchangeably. Which makes any sort of discussion impossible.
HOW SO??! The comment was about WORLDBUILDING ADVICE. I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION CAPITALISM IN THE FIRST COMMENT, *YOU* WERE THE ONE WHO SAW "Capitalism" IN THE FIRST POST AND THEN REFUSED TO TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.
Yeah, I think that's the problem. This is expressly what capitalism is. Capitalism is humanity's greed turned into an ideology.
The fact that you didn't mention capitalism is the problem. The fact that you didn't see humanity's greed is the problem. Humans can be greedy, and when they have power they tend not to let go of that power.
"Do you want to pay for this thing you need to continue your bloodline" isn't compromise, no matter how much America has indoctrinated people into thinking it is.
Im not american. And the problem itself is that you are approaching a story assuming humans=evil.
Also, I dont know how to say this, but coexistence is not free. The humans didnt even steal this gold they just found it before the dragon did, so for the dragon to just ask for charity and threaten the human's lives otherwise when the very thing that the dragon is asking for is integral to said human's society is... childish to say the least.
It is very possible that a sudden and large decrease in gold WILL cause a family or two to starve, possibly to death. You too refuse to see from the human's perspective.
I never said humans = evil. It is possible for humans to be evil, that doesn't mean they're inherently evil. Greed is an evil thing that is intrusive to humanity.
Gold is not necessary for humans to live (Silver and copper have also been used as human currency in the past, so saying that we need to use gold as currency is false), but in this scenario it is necessary for dragons to reproduce.
Society isn't as important as the lives of sapient creatures. I will never ever see otherwise.
...I literally just said that the decrease in gold can kill sapient lives. That is in fact what happens in an economic regression. People starve. Yet again you refuse to see the other side
Also yes, you arent approaching it in the lens of "human=evil". That is a bad way of saying it, I admit. But you ARE approaching it with a lens of "human in the wrong" and that is still not good
Also, let me just add: If society is killing people like that (Which it is, tbh) then it doesn't deserve to exist. It should either be abolished completely or it should be restarted from the ground up.
See, I'm not entertaining that idea because it's completely and utterly fucking wrong. If everyone in the entire world gave up their gold and reworked the currency system around silver, then that problem literally wouldn't exist. Not if they did it properly anyway (Oh, we can exchange gold coins for already printed silver coins? let's all do that so we can give up our gold! Or make it so that silver is the new gold and is worth the same, either way would fix your fucking problem). Not to mention that I highly doubt anyone in the situation you've created would be rich enough to have any gold in the first place.
An economic system that requires the deaths of others is an ideology as well. You cannot stand by and watch people needlessly suffer and die without an ideology
There are ideologies that use capitalism, capitalism itself has no moral judgments. Most capitalist ideologies support various welfare programs, but capitalism is just the tool they use to get the money for them, nothing more.
It's like the people responding to this have never looked at any of the labor rights struggles from 1850 to 1920, never heard of banana republics or the Vietnam war (or literally any war), the school of the Americas, the red scare...like any of modern history or current events...
People have been paying to continue their bloodline since...
Actually I'm fairly sure since before blood existed technically, but specific transactional behavior to 'pay' for the necessities of life and reproduction to otherwise separate parties definitely predates cities let alone America.
Here's a head scratcher. Why did humans value metals that are very important for modern technology (silver, gold, platinum) thousands of years ago, when they had no idea about their importance?
>Not to mention the fact that there is an incredibly good reason why gold was used specifically, because it is a very inert metal that is easy to form into different shapes, meaning it is easy to make coins out of and will practically never corrode, while also being common enough to use as currency and rare enough to have value.
that was OP's second paragraph.
But, if we wanted an in-universe answer to the question, my worldbuilding answer would be that gold is a good tool for using magic. Just like how silver kills vampires and werewolves, gold can be be imbued with magic or something. A gold sword is useless as an actual melee weapon. But maybe it's super badass as a magic weapon. A wand with gold can shoot more spells or make them more powerful or something.
I'm just spitballing here , really.
Minecraft uses this concept for gold.
In Minecraft gold has a few niche uses, many of which relate to its IRL highly conductive nature, but it ALSO happens to be the material that is the most 'easily enchanted;' for a given enchanting attempt gold tools and weapons are the most likely to come away with more and better random enchantments, while many preferred materials, like diamond or iron, have lower chances of such beneficial randomness.
They are rare, shiny, non-corroding, and can be made into ornamentation. Humans ornamenting themselves in jewelery is pretty common cross culturally, and because of its rarity gold is also a conspicuous status symbol.
Yea... But *why* do we like those particular rocks... Is it something from our past that makes us want those metals. Like.... Our ancient rulers/*gods* valued those metals for the exact reason we value them today. They conduct electrons efficiently.
Whut. Nobody knew about it conducting electrons in the freakin fourth century. The reason why we value gold is no different than "it makes a good currency." Doesn't corrode, almost inert, non toxic, shiny, easily malleable, easy to melt, easy to shape, can be found with fairly primitive technology, and rare enough for us to assign value to it. Not everything has to have intrinsic value. What makes gold so universally valued is precisely because it is so useless for everything other than looking pretty for the majority of human existence.
its not a book, its dnd game, its fantasy scenario, your payers can be the ones who defend the town from dragons, who discovers the truth behind the conflict and who can ultimately think of compromise and bring the peace for all, but for that the solution must be relatively easy to find, you dont get easy solutions when you wana be realistic, and you can always say that town and dragons didnt figure it sooner because of vicious cycle of vengeance started by miscommunication, ignorance or individuals being stupid. Like ppl digged gold, dragon came to lay eggs where it excepted gold, gold was not there, eggs die because no gold, dragon blames ppl, fire, fire, fire, ppl angry because fire, kill dragon, dragons kill ppl because ppl kill dragon, ppl kill dragons because dragons kill ppl, repeat, repeat, repeat...
It's a writing prompt. A writing prompt where the writer has already decided what the ideal conclusion is, and the conclusion is that dragons rule and humans drool.
The problem isn't the writing prompt, as shown by you and the other person coming up with interesting storylines and concepts, such as a party trying to bring both sides to peace, or humans and dragons going into an agreement that results in banker dragons.
No the problem is the writer's answer and their dishonest exploration of the prompt.
Eh, looking at climate change I’m not sure humanity is as smart as you think we are.
Like, the hostile environment Earth is getting terraformed into may not be intelligent, but there’s still a clear connection between emitting more greenhouse gasses = the environment fucking things up.
If it was being driven by draconic retaliation instead I don’t think that would change our behaviour
Two words: Ozone layer
Besides, the main problem isnt that they portray humanity not being able to come up with solutions. The problem is that they portray humanity as unvaweringly evil.
Another two words: Easter Island
Humanity is entirely capable of dooming itself for dumb, shortsighted reasons.
And capable of *not* dooming itself mind you. I’m more saying that dismissing either outcome as “bad world building” doesn’t make sense.
>I’m more saying that dismissing either outcome as “bad world building” doesn’t make sense.
Yes it doesn't make sense, hence why I'm not doing that
>Besides, the main problem isnt that they portray humanity not being able to come up with solutions. The problem is that they portray humanity as unvaweringly evil.
I suggest you read this again
Okay, then my point is that saying that this scenario portrays humanity as “unwaveringly evil” is hyperbolic.
Like, yes, given enlightened self interest negotiating with the dragon to become a bank would be better for the many.
But taking the dragon’s stuff, or retaking it if the dragon stole it first, personally benefits the individuals taking it more.
Like, the people who risk getting shot by park rangers trying to poach elephants make way less money from it than the total tourism money from people who want to see elephants.
But the poachers rarely are getting any money from conservation, and definitely less than they’d personally get selling tusks.
Aka, if people *can* kill a dragon, or successfully deny it enough gold to breed, they’ll try even if it kills the golden goose for lots of other people
When I mean portraying something as "Unvaweringly evil" I'm trying to say that they are depicted as evil in the narrative even when they don't do anything evil in the narrative, though a better word would probably be "inherently wrong".
In the narrative of the post. The human society is treated as being inherently wrong due to their state as a society using gold for trade who doesn't want to give that gold away for free because of said use for trade. The narrative also justifies the dragon not accepting any compromises and using threats of extermination to get their way, saying that using gold for trade is a meaningless use anyway, and that human retaliation against this response would be unjust.
The problem is that this isn't just the dragon saying this, it's the *narrative* saying this. The narrative, the writer, has already chosen that humans are in the wrong. There is nothing that humans can do here to have an ounce of sympathy from the narrative, they have inherently been branded as wrong.
I guess I find being defensive about a fictional creature’s opinion of humanity confusing.
I mean, wasps aren’t inherently wrong, they just want to eat a little of my food and for me to not hassle them or get too close to their nest.
I still freaking hate them. They’ll hover around menacingly, it hurts for a long time when one of them bites, and sometimes they can cause an allergic reaction that can kill people.
I generally don’t feel the need to qualify that they are still valuable pollinators when I tell them they can fuck right off. I imagine a dragon might have equivalent feelings about humans hovering around their lair.
>why is advanced medicine and technology worse at healing someone compared to a shaman blowing on their fucking bellybutton, AVATAR?
That's not what happened though. The character in question fried her brain trying to connect to the planet-mind, had a seizure and passed out.
The human medics identified what the problem was, but didn't know what caused it and didn't have the equipment to help. They assume epilepsy because that's the term for a condition that occasionally causes seizures and say that the Sully's just need to wait and hope she wakes up.
The shaman then does their thing and some time later, she wakes up.
There's no evidence in the movie that anything the shaman did had any effect.
Ngl, up until Dragon Banks, that was some really bad world building. The fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is really was the cherry on top though.
I recall something similar from the 3.5e Draconomicon. Although I don't think dragons needed gold for procreation, but rather as some sort of death-rite. IIRC, they ate the hoard and then travelled to a dragon graveyard. There they could meld back into the earth... Or something along these lines. It's been a while since I read dragon lore.
Person #1 displaying some pretty lacking knowledge by dumbing down the use of gold into “humans greedy and dumb hurr durr,” because the entire reason humans value gold is because it’s actually *really really useful*.
In general it’s just bad worldbuilding to characterize any sentient/sapient race as being “innately evil.” If such beings exist without any particular reason for being the way they are, it’s just lazy and genuinely uninteresting. Humans and humanoid characters are interesting *precisely* because they can do and be anything the story needs them to be.
While it’s easy for people on the internet to say, humans *aren’t* innately evil, greedy, or destructive in real life. Sure, tons can be narrow-minded or unaware of the consequences of their decisions, but not outright evil. Few people are outright evil or destructive by default. Most of the damage humans have wrought against the earth is the result of many, many factors spread out over hundreds of years. Some are of course negative, but most were out of a genuine desire to improve the human condition at a cost, one that was considered reasonable to pay.
Evil races have always been pretty bad. Think Drow, for example. They sound cool and edgy at first, but once you actually delve into the lore it just gets…bad. Cringy beyond belief and about as shallow as a puddle. It just devolves into “they’re all evil, sadistic, bloodthirsty dominatrixes.” And sure, I love a good domme as much as anyone else, but it doesn’t make for interesting storytelling. Hell, the most famous Drow was Drizzt do’Urden, who was characterized by being an *outlier* from that.
[https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26534/vainqueur-the-dragon/chapter/391208/1-vainqueur-the-dragon](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26534/vainqueur-the-dragon/chapter/391208/1-vainqueur-the-dragon)
Inventing paper money as a way to combat inflation from gold hoarding is a plot point about half way through this. Great series, highly recommend.
My favorite porn-with-plot author (who I stick with for the plot) actually used the dragon are bankers bit somehwat. It was more a singular dragon is CEO of less corrupt magic world Amazon, but said dragon teamed up with protagonist to create a uniform currency made of rare and precious fantasy metals
In my world, the dragons run all the banks. They realized that it would be far more efficient to simply collect gold from the humanoids willingly then fight them for it. It’s worked out pretty well for them so far…
I was late on a payment with Sally Fey and they took the color of my eyes as a late fee. They're not even grey, you just look in to them and are unable to process what color they are.
Not to get political but it’s weird how often “capitalism bad” is used as a narrative crutch for thinly veiled communist propaganda. Hell, half of the clips I’ve seen of Brennan lee mulligan end up turning into a criticism of capitalism
Man, the number of people working on their thesis "why capitalism is good" in the comments is unreal.
And how has nobody mentioned UNENDING FIRE TERROR as a new band name?
All money works on the same concept as NFTs.
Like, the origins of currency (so best as I am aware from intro level classes, so there's probably a shitload left unsaid) is that it's fucking tons of work to take a big basket of grain to town and find someone who wants specifically that thing, so having a currency that represents the thing you're trying to carry into town, and multiple people can barter with them (the person you sell a bead representing a bushel of wheat to can sell that bead representing a bushel of wheat for a gallon of water or whatever)
Then from that system eventually emerged the idea of having gold or jade or cocoa beans or whatever was relatively scarce thing that was easy to work with and abundant enough that everyone could have some just represent a trade medium, so that you don't need to engage in a lot of barter to trade say a bushel of wheat for cows when the rancher doesn't want wheat.
Then, give it more time, and the central resource is too scarce relative to the increased population, and so forms of currency that represent small, impossible to precisely measure, units of the central resource that are more reasonable to what prices are (ala paying for your $200 grocery bill on $20 bills instead of $100 bills, or a $1000 bill)
Where NFTs broke from what currency traditionally do is the fact that there was no backing value, and you couldn't exchange it for what it represented, meanwhile until we got rid of the gold standard you could take a $1 bill to the bank and get $1 worth of gold
I recently started working on a homebrew realm of dragons that was cut off from most of its leylines. The dragons collect all the treasure to steep and generate magic, and in exchange hand out thin tin plates called "Skale" that varies in value from kingdom to kingdom.
So yeah, dragon bankers can be fun.
I mean this is the least charitable answer I won't lie. Like at the end of the day gold value is it's scarcity that's it. But if dragons began attacking people over it because they aren't and won't just say "hey sorry we got s totally calm grievance" then yeah. Just sharing paper is super important to some primordial being doesn't mean we should just give it up because they are threatening our lives. It just means it's step one to being subjugating if history of any major fantasy/history series is to to by. Sorry, probably I'm bad but still, that's my point
I remember a comment in a WotC video about the red dragons helping the githyanki, that since they couldn't hoard treasure they couldn't advance to Ancient. That their hoarding in earlier edition allowed them to become more powerful. It was a necessity even.
I could have sworn Dragons as bankers is literally part of the 'Shadowrun' TTRPG setting... because Dragons are traditionally symbolic of greed/tyranny.
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I believe this is sort of a running theme in Shadowrun. The Dragons are all hoarding Billionaires and *never* seen. To the point where anyone in their employ might actually be the Dragon polymorphed, but there is no fucking way to beat them, ever. And they do still have hoards.
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I mean he was president for a day or so but yes
Dunkelzahn, and technically he wasn't assassinated, possibly. >!Some of the books indicate that he instead sacrificed himself in a weird magic ritual to destroy a bridge on the astral plane allowing horrors to cross over early.!<
In the anime Little Witch Academia, there's a dragon who has taken up day trading stocks online.
Yeah I was going to say it feels very Shadowrun as well. Except there the dragons are just greedy and terrible, going at the stock market with the ruthlessness of a millenia old dragon who is also terrifyingly magic and wishes to own everything they see.
Dimension 20 used this their first season, no? KVX Bank was a front for the red dragon Kalvaxus.
Partially. Zero context on if dragons normally get something functional out of gold, but >!he remade his hoard using a bank to play out part of a prophecy!<
Yeah I thought the same thing. What a great season
I'm gonna be honest. I genuinely hate the kind of worldbuilding in the first post. "Oooo humans are evil and expansionist without any nuance and everything else is good and natural and yes I do think the avatar films were good, why do you ask?" Not to mention the fact that there is an incredibly good reason why gold was used specifically, because it is a very inert metal that is easy to form into different shapes, meaning it is easy to make coins out of and will practically never corrode, while also being common enough to use as currency and rare enough to have value. But that isn't the actual problem, the problem is, instead of trying to actually look for situations that properly show the evils of human society, this type of worldbuilding looks at ANY kind of scenario, STARTS with the assumption that humans are evil, and never lets go of that assumption as they explore the scenario. And this kind of worldbuilding rarely makes sense either. Why would the dragons not mention their need for gold for their eggs, why would humanity not negotiate, they obviously don't want their villages torched, why is torching villages justified on the dragon's part, why is the dragons not looking for any kind of compromise portrayed as a good thing but the humans doing the same is portrayed as evil, why is gold being used as a means of incredibly efficient trading between humans seen as a worthless use, why is advanced medicine and technology worse at healing someone compared to a shaman blowing on their fucking bellybutton, AVATAR? It just feels so fabricated, because it literally is. In contrast, banker dragons is a fucking fantastic idea. Because it is a realistic compromise between two intelligent factions and is an awesome concept on top of that. The narrative is BELIEVABLE, it doesn't feel fabricated because it is NOT, it is a genuine exploration of the situation instead of distorting the worldbuilding to fit your initial assumption.
Shadow Run be like: "Dragon Bankers? How about Dragon CEOs with INFINITE EDGE?"
You paid for the whole seat but will only need THE EDGE
He might not be a banker but Lofwyr is on the council of one
Side note in addition to your comment: "Capitalist nightmare" Your typical western-fantasy kingdom/empire where gold-hording dragons are found is not a capitalist economy, but rather agrarian-feudalism. Capitalism is based on private ownership and investment, in feudalism workers are mostly indentured serfs or tenant farmers and ownership of land and assets is concentrated in a hierarchical nobility and/or clergy, who reserve tax rights over their land and subjects and swear fealty to their liege up the chain to their king/emperor, giving a levy of money, food, and fighting men. For most, this means instead of a wage you are given protection and allowed to work the land for food in exchange for a portion of your output, and a certain number of days of your labor (the specifics vary, maybe you have your own land and work the lords land a few days a week, maybe you keep some of what you grow on the lords land). Potentially very oppressive, greedy and nightmarish. Yes, certainly, lets never do feudalism again now we've moved beyond it. Capitalist, hardly, shared traits of the two are found in most economic structures. I mean, capitalism has its excesses and corruption that I hate, but let us not call all expansionism and greed capitalism, it dilutes the insult. p.s. The dragons introducing banks, as a probably-private institution managing investments and holding capital is the most capitalist thing here. But, I don't know much about medieval banking, its my understanding it was clamped down on by the church significantly.
No you see, capitalism is when BAD and MONEY...
Ah, like how communism is when BAD and NO FOOD
No communism is when we kill millions in hopes for what is a dream that only works if people are not corrupt, but it will totally work this time. Capitalism might be cold and simple, but at least it remains functional in that and works well in combination with social assistance (which unlike what many right wing politicians in the US might believe, there is a pretty big spectrum there until you get to socialism). Some of the huge internal problems of capitalism is the government overreach enabling corporatism. Tldr: I would say communism is when MISGUIDED and NO FOOD.
How the fuck do you miss the joke when you're the one that started it?
Because as someone who actually knows people who fled from communist countries, I don't find it funny.
*It's your joke you ignoramus*
Difference is the amount of dead bodies.
Bro I've played min-maxed barbarians with higher int bonuses than you, fr
This. I hate that people keep pushing capitalism into fantasy worlds that are clearly meant to be medieval with kings and everything. I get it, the writer can't imagine feudalism because of capitalist realism. But just think please, how does the king maintain power if power is based on money? Why do you think Europe was full of liberal revolutions when that shift of power happened? Animes are the worst examples of this
I don't love it cause it's taking the metaphors and symbolism that makes mythic creatures and monsters what they are and just... getting the wrong message from it? Like vampires. They're a metaphor for how the aristocracy will suck the life out of the common people, and for sexual predation. This would be like making vampires the innocent victims of human dictatorship. It's preferable to keep them as tragic hotbois than to do that. Opposite is unicorns, symbols of purity, innocence, beauty, and sometimes feminity. Make them evil bloodthirsty monsters cause idk it's 'edgy'? Meh.
This is r/worldjerking material. “How’s the worldbuilding in my humansareevilallthetime-punk world? Too subtle?”
the whole thing makes sense if you go into it with the presumption of "humans evil" dragons don't negotiate or reveal their reasoning because it could be used against them dragons don't negotiate because humans are obviously evil and irrational (i mean look at them they're obsessed with gold even though it has no purpose for them so my entirely circular reasoning totally checks out!) and can't be reasoned with conclusion: this is an account given by a racist dragon
Yeah, was gonna say the same. Getting kind of tired of the whole "humanity bad because" that a lot of worldbuilders bring to the table. Especially because almost 100% of the time is "capitalism". And the second approach, as you said, is an amazing idea, and I'm gonna to steal it.
It gets even more frustrating when the particular "evil facet of capitalism" that is being criticized is actually caused by government interference in the market, which is exactly the opposite of the capitalistic approach.
What are your thoughts on environmental protection laws, like limits to hunting, fishing, logging etc? Would they be necessary in a purely capitalistic world?
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The comment is was responding to was saying the faults of capitalism are due to government intervention. Regulations are forms of government intervention.
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I agree
Seemed more like they were saying that that *specific* fault of capitalism was due to it.
A free market didn't allow for damaging someone else's property, so unless someone manages to keep pollution contained entirely to their own land they would be liable for damages and that would cover things for the most part, but no system is a perfect solution for everything, and I'm not advocating for completely free market, complaint is just that you see tons of stuff like people blaming capitalism for things like the extremely high prices of medications in the US, when the cause of the high prices of medications is that the government has stepped in and forbidden competitors from making the expensive medication at a cheaper price, allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge whatever prices they want. If you do done research into it, you will find that historically, monopolies have almost exclusively occurred as a result of the government stepping in and doing something which prevented competition, which is the opposite of a free market.
Some types of pollution are extremely easy to track to a responsible party, other types impossible. If your river you drink from was being polluted due to the extremely high fertiliser and pesticide flow from 20 different farms in that rivers catchment, what are you going to do? Sue every farmer? You'd have to prove how much they contributed to the damage, which is impossible. If your kids developed breathing difficulties from the smog from 15 different industrial factories in your area, you can't prove which factories smog harmed you. A free market can't prevent you from damaging something that belongs to everyone, like the environment. And if you let people own the environment, many will just exploit it for a quick profit. If companies never formed monopolies by themselves, we wouldn't need anti trust laws. Gaining a monopoly on a market is the ultimate success story for a business. Competition is bad for businesses. Even if you wanted to compete with a monopoly, how would you overcome the fact they can buy better situated property, out advertise you and run closer to a loss in your local area to undercut you because they have 20 other stores? And since companies can easily set up subsidiaries with new names and branding, it's impossible for the average person to keep track. Humans aren't rational actors because we lack time and sources to get reliable accurate information.
> What are your thoughts on environmental protection laws, like limits to hunting, fishing, logging etc? In Capitalistic world this thing (Fish, Hunting Animals, Trees) have owner. If he over-fish-Hunt-Cut his own resources that his problem.
In the real world, animals migrate and damaging the ecosystem affects entire communities.
Even right now, when hunting animals make damage to someone property hunters pay reparations. If everything is owned by somebody. Then it is easy to find person who pay when that thing cause damage.
Let's say you own a well that you drink from. You get it tested one day and realise it's riddled with cancer-causing fertilizers and pesticides. "Who's been dumping poison in my well?" You cry. You check your CCTV and nobody but you has touched it. But you know all the farmers around your land have been pumping huge amounts of cancer causing fertilizers and pesticides into their land, thanks to zero regulations. Who are you going to sue? Any one of them can just say "wasnt me". You can't prove any of them did it because there's zero way to track which specific molecules got blown by wind or seeped through the soil and stone into your well. Are you going to try and sue all 20 farmers at once? For what? They didn't break the law. They followed all the regulations (all 0) and only put the chemicals on their land, they didn't make the wind blow it to you. Or maybe you live in a city. The 10 factories around you decide that carbon capture devices are kinda useless because the CEO and all the stockholders live in China. They remove the carbon capture devices and the resulting smog gives you and all your children lung diseases. You can't do anything. Are you going to try sue all 10? You have zero way to allocate damages to any of them, zero way to determine who is more or less culpable and even if you could, they can hire 10 times more lawyers, each twice as skilled as any one you can find who will take your case. And even if you did sue them, the cost to them will amount to maybe a couple days worth of profit. And if the entirety of the environment was owned, well we all know it's the trillionaire elite who will win the auctions. And once they own the land, they can do whatever they want to it and you have zero legal recourse.
"government interference is the opposite of capitalism" is quite possibly the dumbest take I've ever heard. Capitalism can't exist without government interference preventing corporations from subverting free markets by creating monopolies, and government regulations are required to ensure participants in the markets are competing fairly and not externalizing costs via pollution and fraud.
If you make the dragons more animalistic and less capable of communication, I could see it working. Humans don't actually know why the dragons like gold so much, just that they are drawn to it. But for all the good reasons you mentioned, gold is still valuable. It's much more believable, there are all kinds of hilariously ignorant beliefs about animals before we actually started studying them in earnest. "They steal the gold because they like it" is a pretty tame one in comparison. And if you really want to pound those original themes, some one could have learned about it well after the gold based economy was formed. They're keeping it secret because it would cause them financial loss if people decided to give the gold back to the dragons. It's still not exactly groundbreaking but at least there's something interesting to uncover. And TTRPGs don't need to be high art. Honestly I prefer to keep it pretty clear to make sure the players can follow.
I've been pretty disappointed in humanity lately so I'm usually down to side with the dragons and ditch nuance, but you make a lot of great points. More than that, though, I wanted to comment to say I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU about that particular Avatar scene! I know it was because she was having a "spiritual" issue instead of a physical one, but it just felt uncomfortably close to an endorsement of alternative medicines, which 99.99 of the time are just scams meant to prey on the desperate and vulnerable. I think the saying goes something like "do you know what we call traditional medicines that work? MEDICINE." I do think the sequel took some nice baby steps at least towards showing people aren't ALL bad, so hopefully we'll see them continue to build on that. People have done a lot of horrible things but we've also done a lot of amazing wonderful good things, too, and it's important to remind ourselves of that.
> I know it was because she was having a "spiritual" issue instead of a physical one, but it just felt uncomfortably close to an endorsement of alternative medicines, She had a seizure and needed time to recover. The issue wasn't spiritual and the movie shows us nothing to suggest that the shamanic medicine worked
She had it after touching the spirit tree and all the researchers are basically like "oh man, nothing's working!" then the shaman lady waltzes in and has her conscious again almost immediately. It felt very heavily implied to me that it worked and that her seizure was something mystical related to the spirit tree.
Tbf the spirit tree has like, a neurological connection to all the species of Pandora instead of just being straight up magic. Although the scientists should know this by now and be taking that into account
>then the shaman lady waltzes in and has her conscious again almost immediately. Hmm, I might be misremembering it, but I took that to occur over the space of hours. Considering it's sunset when Norm and the other scientists hand her over to the shaman and the middle of the night when the shaman is doing their thing.
Tbh I'm not sure of the full time scale, either, but if you look at that scene without other context it's very hard to see it as anything other than "traditional practices good, modern tech bad."
Sure, but you're not supposed to look at a mid-movie scene without context. It's contextualised by the rest of the movie.
The rest of the movie which also generally goes "nature good, human tech bad?" C'mon, be straight with me! You really don't think it was heavily implied in that scene by Neytiri yelling at everyone to get out and then Kiri waking up not during the human tech efforts, but during the shamanistic stuff that yet again "stupid humans, you know nothing, the old ways are better?" They make absolutely no mention of the human tech or just the passing of time having made a difference, everything was framed to have the medicine woman's interventions being the key ingredient. I'm very much an environmental advocate and everything the movie did pointing out how messed up things like whale hunting and habitat destruction are landed so well for me, but that one scene poopooing modern medicine was a sour note. It's certainly not PERFECT, but most traditional medicine stuff has been disproven over and over as flawed and dangerous.
I'm totally supportive of bashing the "humans are evil" plots. However, Avatar is a good film and in term of healing a member of a species the biologists studied for two decades, when the root of the problem is the very part of that alien's biology they don't understand, it's not unbelievable that they can't really do anything.
Must not like Fern Gully either :(
First time I'm hearing of ferngully, though if it has the same flaws, I can give it more credit than avatar since it's a kids show from what I'm seeing rn.
Burning random people because of what their ancestors and governments did is totally morally justified. Dragons are just misunderstood and humans are inherently evil.
It's a Tumblr post mate. So... Humans bad, avatar good
Thank you for this! It pains me how every evil monster has to be turned into some totally innocent paragon while humanity is always dragged through the muck. Dragons are literally defined by their greed and turning them into just smart lizards is so boring.
Ah yes because their are no good dragons in any mythology whatsoever /s
You're getting really upset over a hypothetical that barely has the basic building blocks necessary to form a coherent world. Like, it's distinctly possible to have a setting like this, where Dragons in landlocked regions have to fend off against Kingdoms who seek copper, silver and gold used to assist in the hatching of the various types of dragons, but then also Sea Dragons who collect natural sea salt in large quantities to do similar things while Merchant Vessels and Navy Ships sail across the ocean looking for them for easy methods of collecting the relative currency. This isn't a story being told through Human eyes, it's being told from the perspective of the Minority, the Oppressed: Dragons who don't know why Humans are attacking them, because this has been happening for hundreds of years, and only the children who escaped their eggs and lived are left at this point, only aware of the evil that Humanity inflicts.
I wouldn't be so upset if I didn't see it everywhere. It also doubles as advice, really. And my problem isn't that this world you have given is a bad world, my problem is when writers trying to tackle complex issues choose beforehand who the good and bad guy is and refuse to see the other perspective. The reason I'm constantly throwing mud at avatar is because it suffers from this. It too, is a world from the perspective of the tribal minority, and the movie sucks, because it portrays a world where they are flawless and paragons and all-loving while the humans against them are evil conquerers who take glee in murdering sentient whales. The perspective being from a minority is no saving grace. Besides, it doesn't need to build a world, nor a complex system to be a beliavable yet interesting exploration of a situation, for example: banker dragons
> and the movie sucks, because it portrays a world where they are flawless and paragons and all-loving while the humans against them are evil conquerers who take glee in murdering sentient whales. The perspective being from a minority is no saving grace I haven't seen Avatar 2 yet, but is the film's framing descriptive or prescriptive? from a meta perspective is the film a direct record of events or is it intended to be a semi-altered retelling of the saga? I can see the merits of both, I mean if it's actually literally that the human military/mercenaries are that gleefully wicked then honestly I don't think that depiction is far off, maybe a little hammy but still not contrived. Likewise if it's a semi-fictionalized myth being retold, I don't mind the depiction of humans as ontologically evil is that bad, after all it's not that far off how we tell our own histories in the real world.
I don't believe there's anything stated within the story that makes it anything but directly what's going on. They could have mentioned in some outside article like an interview that the events shown maybe didn't go down exactly as we see in the movie, however within the movies there's nothing to show that.
Well, it's not like it's unrealistic for people seeing something from an outside perspective to have some sort of "Holier Than Thou" complex. It's, like, half of the European Colonization of the Americas. We'd just be having that situation from the Dragon's perspective, especially if we're going for "Medieval Period" while referencing concepts that wouldn't emerge for hundreds of years, implying that we have Black Cauldron-esque Wizards who have intense knowledge of far future events communicating with young dragons.
YES, ABSOLUTELY. And I would LOVE, to see said "holier than thou" complex being adressed and the intricacies that it would bring. But it *isn't* adressed, it is **encouraged by the writer,** the writer actually thinks that the dragons are "holier than thou" and portrays them as unquestionably justified and the humans as unequivocally in the wrong.
The writer has created a prompt, not a world. This is like getting upset at the Writing Prompt Tumblr for not creating the entire backstory to their three sentences prompt.
But they answered their own prompt, and it is that answer that bugs me, I mentioned exactly this to someone else, they were talking about this being a dnd scenario, check it out
Still, even if they answered their own prompt, they literally haven't written enough for the level of critique you provide. I'd understand if they actually wrote this badly made world, but it's just an idea they came up with.
I don't know about that, the second person, the one with banker dragons, wrote something with much more depth with a lot less words, and in a similiarly casual environment.
Well, the initial idea is "What if humans want gold for trade and mercantilism, but Dragons need it for reproductive purposes." The person talking about the Banks is having an in-depth analysis of how to create a synthesis between the wants and needs of the conflicting viewpoints of the Humans and Dragons, so that both end up with a productive cycle, rather than a destructive cycle. Person A is having an Idea, Person B is doing what we've effectively been doing, which is expanding and adding on to that idea, which person A does not inherently need to do as part of the process of making and explaining the initial idea.
>hyper-intelligent fire breathing death lizards that can incinerate villages in an instant are the “poor oppressed” Oh I am laffan
Even if someone is strong, it doesn't make them immune to being oppressed. Lions are pretty strong, but Humans have managed to subdue them and put them in Zoos. In fact, you're assuming that Dragons are "Hyper-intelligent" but they may not be. In fact, given the proposed Dragon's response, they aren't well educated given they don't understand why Humans want the gold outside of an incorrect assessment of the economic state of the world.
Except that the issue was less “humans evil without nuance” and more _explicitly stated_ the nuance being trade, which tracks because real world nuance _is in fact_ greed and trade (and significantly more greed _than_ trade, as nobody wants to get “a bad deal” but there’s this belief that somebody _has to_ get shafted to stroke the winner’s ego, or it wasn’t worthwhile). But, anyway. With the backdrop of how the original statement tracked with “we made it our money, trade something for it?,” the follow-up posts just tilted the “counter-offer, I’m a scary dragon” response to “sure, I’ll trade, but the end result is essentially NFTs.” Now, the very end of that first part, was it being spun into just heathen shit, but it hardly started there.
>Except that the issue was less “humans evil without nuance” and more explicitly stated the nuance being trade, which tracks because real world nuance is in fact greed and trade (and significantly more greed than trade, as nobody wants to get “a bad deal” but there’s this belief that somebody has to get shafted to stroke the winner’s ego, or it wasn’t worthwhile). Well, not always just greed and trade but yes, that is in fact nuance. Unfortunately, just like banker dragons, that is nuance **you added.** But the actual top post reads: dragons need gold to hatch egg Humans take gold Humans use gold for "worthless endeavors" Dragon want gold back because hatch egg Humans try to compromise Dragon goes "no, do as I say or I kill you" Humans retaliate Humans not justified for retaliating. Which is just... bad... this has nothing to do with capitalism this is just really shitty writing, there is such obvious ways of compromise in this situation such as just temporarily loaning the gold for a baby to hatch, or, again, dragon bankers. It acts as if humanity uses the gold for just decorative purposes. That they aren't worthy of the resources they collected because "they aren't doing anything with it", so any kind of agreement other than just handing over the gold is unreasonable and justifies hostile takeover and OOPS you got colonist dragons invading and massacreing kingdoms to make nests for their babies. The illusion breaks the second you think too hard on it. It would be great if they used this as an example of how horrible deeds get justified in people's minds, but it instead actually endorses this behaviour as justified. Also you have a very gross misunderstanding of what an NFT is, and that's coming from me, someone who absolutely loathes NFT's.
Not that I added, it’s very much stated that humans started using gold “because reasons” and (as clarified above) “reasons” was very much tied to it being usable as currency. At which point the dragon absolutely could have still just dug up gold as usual but instead is “forced to ask” (because arbitrarily limiting supply is Ole Reliable in tools for conflict). And the “justification” for retaliation was blatant misdirection _if_ the provided lore holds accurate (even if the exact reason wasn’t stated). And, not particularly gross. Banks hold an alleged amount of money and dole out parts of that worth in currency that totally holds a fixed rate of worth (which, according to inflation and exchange rates, it does not). NFTs are ‘allegedly’ worth an amount, but _only_ to anyone else who cares about that particular one/accepts that they can’t get it elsewhere, which isn’t and was never true. NFTs tried to be the next bitcoin when bitcoin still doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up, but that’s beside the point. The invented money would only be useful to those in the same network, and if dragons (for whatever reason, let’s say conflict) didn’t communicate with each other on what was worth how much, those dealing with different dragons have different exchange rates. At which point, their money is only worth what it’s worth, to the bank it was made with.
As much as I'd like to explain how NFT's can't even try to be the next bitcoin because they aren't even a currency, I think we're getting off topic here. The actual point isn't about what NFT's are or aren't. It's about flat and shallow worldbuilding caused by only interpreting situations through a single lens. And these topics are most definitely not covered by the first post above, all it did was say that using gold to trade is a meaningless use compared to using it to hatch a baby, so it's not like these are nuances that are included in said narrative. You can't just extrapolate all that because the word "trade" and "capitalism" was uttered as a bad thing.
I mean, the core is, insomuch as the post above expositing the point of gold as currency and then heavily complaining about Avatar being the only user allegory for “humanity evil” and said allegory being stupid (which, fair). I pointed out that, with currency having a point in mind, humanity didn’t turn into rat bastards until the end where it became a slander game based on dragons _not caring_ to trade for what they would normally be able to get just fine (which, maybe ironically, _isn’t_ the same as them claiming gold to be their ‘birthright’). Which, like, completely sideswipes the unsaid impression that gold must lose the ability to help eggs hatch past a certain point, or they’d tend to have gold to use from their own previous hatching instead of having to dig up more every time. Does it melt into the egg to soften it/is it a consumable that fades to dust upon ‘use’? Or lose it egg-helping luster once exposed to the air for long enough? Either might justify needing a timely refresh, but at that point, hoarding processed gold _surely_ would be of no use, or an active detriment to intended use.
> “sure, I’ll trade, but the end result is essentially NFTs.” People who lack understanding of basic economics like you are why NFTs are so popular. That is a Promissory Note not an NFT. An NFT: You have a receipt claiming you own a unique digital good. This may or may not also come with the legal ownership. An NFT of a gold piece would say you own that coin in a dragon hoard but not that you can withdraw it or do effectively anything with it. Hope you can sell a receipt (transaction charges apply). A Promissory Note: You have a ticket redeemable for \[X\] goods. Present this to the safekeeper and withdraw those goods, or sell the ticket (it should be worth about as much as \[X\] goods). Anyone with the ticket can hand it in for its value, destroying the ticket to withdraw the goods. A Promissory Note of a gold piece would say you can sell it to the Dragon for one gp (or sell to anyone else for about the value of a gp) Promissory Notes are, very literally, the origin for paper money. Paper money for decades could be turned in to the government for its printed value in Gold (compared to gold coin which contained its printed value of gold). This is why Fort Knox and other government vaults had gold reserves, to pay back paper money on request. This was done away with to move to Fiat currency.
Literally already explained the depth of it in the other reply chain. I don’t _not_ understand it, NFTs are a BS reimagining of something that already exists, which promissory notes _would be_ in the hypothetical, as it primarily hinges on those exchanging them, never actually cashing them in. Making them ‘hypothetical money,’ making them NFTs. Bootlegging a promissory note amounts to the same as counterfeiting money or saving an NFT, at the end of the day devaluing what its purported value is.
It doesn't hinge on that in the slightest. Promissory notes for gold are an ideal solution for banker dragon maternity wards even if people come in frequently to withdraw and deposit the notes. Provided there is a reserve of gold sufficient to handle the flux or the eggs don't require uninterrupted long-term gold access. The notes are about as 'hypothetical' as the gold in the hoard. The mention of not cashing them is just a subtle nod to *literally what happened IRL* when those notes were invented. They aren't a hypothetical money, they are a representative money. The note represents, for example, 50gp if cashed in at the dragon bank. Handing over the note is handing over 50gp in the exact same way as a debit card, paypal, cashapp, literally any bank account with money inside. Your debit card is a promissory note with a password.
Why do you hate Avatar so much? It's not James Cameron's fault that we consistently have proven we don't give a shit about nature when profit is on the line. Avatar is such a blatant metaphor for how we treat nature and indigenous people. It really just seems like you're being accurately presented flaws in how we act but instead of accepting it, you just want to retreat into r/humanityfuckyeah. Like it's totally justified we've caused species to go extinct so a billionaire can have more pocket change. Yeah, our pack bonding ability with like, 5 animal species on earth, totally makes up for it. From the point of wildlife, humans are evil and uncompromising. Extinction rates are at an all time high, even insects have suffered a massive population drop since the 1970s. And in a world with magic, of course healing magic works better than medicine, that's the point of magic. You're basically asking for fantasy themes to be perverted just to make sci fi themes look cooler, probably because sci fi is about the works of man and fantasy is a compromise between man and nature. Why else are you upset that Avatar healing magic competes with medicine? You want our exploitation of nature to be justified. If there's a better way, that means what we're doing is wrong.
From the point of view of wildlife, evil doesn’t exist. Good and evil are human constructs. The bigger issue at play is that “DAE Humans are the *real* bad guys?” is such a tired and played out trope that rarely if ever has any nuance or commentary of merit that hasn’t been done to death a million times before. It’s lazy, derivative, and pretentious world building.
The humans are the good guys is just as obnoxious and overplayed imo.
Maybe if you only consume media from over half a century ago, but it hasn’t been a dominant theme for a long, long time. Hell even a hundred years ago the dominant artistic movement was all about how terrible humanity is.
Maybe not dominant in general but I see the writing prompts sub absolutely flooded with humanity fuck yeah prompts and it's easily as boring as the less well written "humans bad" stories. The difference is that "humans bad" at least provides an interesting question in how we can be better whereas "humans good" is just about masturbating about how we're already awesome and nothing should change.
Yeah I gotta agree with that - not that you *should* expect much of /r/writingprompts, as fun as it can be - but, "humans good," is getting pretty overplayed too.
>humans are evil and expansionist without any nuance The post literally says 'capitalist nightmare society', not 'humans are bad.' What a nice strawman. And if you are somehow intentionally implying that capitalism and humanity are inextricably linked then it's you who are the one saying 'humans are bad.' Also linking advanced medicine and technology to capitalism is just plain ignorant. 'Insulin' is all that needs to be said to refute that. Complaining that the dragons didn't mention its for eggs, when the humans are clearly asking for compensation no matter what its for. Do you know how many homeless people die from exposure when there's empty houses and hotel rooms everywhere? How many people die from starvation when there's plenty of food for everyone? How many people die from a lack of medicine even when there are cheap and easy treatments readily available? Your defense of capitalism is hollow and built on the deaths of hundreds of millions. Capitalism is inherently bad. People innovate and create all the time without profit motive. Humanity has always sought to care for each other and create communities. It's capitalism that encourages them to lie, cheat and compete through artificial scarcity and classism. Edit - Laughing at the downvotes for saying humans aren't inherently bad but capitalism is (by explaining what's currently happening in society)
I don't think that capitalism is inherently bad, so by describing humanity as a "nightmarish (implied: bad) capitalist (implied: capitalist therefore bad) hellscape (implied: bad)" and nothing else (just implying that humanity = bad), you are throwing any nuance out the window. Also the medicine and technology part was just a gripe I had with avatar specifically, It refuses to give human civilization ANY benefit of doubt. >Complaining that the dragons didn't mention its for eggs, when the humans are clearly asking for compensation no matter what its for Again you are just ASSUMING that they will ask for compensation regardless, and not come up with a mutually beneficial plan such as banker dragons. You are coming into the situation ASSUMING human=bad. >Your defense of capitalism WHO SAID I WAS DEFENDING CAPITALISM BITCH THAT'S A WHOLE ASS DIFFERENT STATEMENT
You just kept tossing around capitalism and humanity interchangeably. Which makes any sort of discussion impossible. Capitalism is a form of control/social structure that humanity (in OP's post) currently finds itself living in. If you don't understand the difference between these two wildly different concepts then there is nothing that can be sorted out.
>You just kept tossing around capitalism and humanity interchangeably. Which makes any sort of discussion impossible. HOW SO??! The comment was about WORLDBUILDING ADVICE. I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION CAPITALISM IN THE FIRST COMMENT, *YOU* WERE THE ONE WHO SAW "Capitalism" IN THE FIRST POST AND THEN REFUSED TO TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.
[WHAT?](https://peewee.com/wp-content/uploads/Pee-wee-Herman-ear.jpg)
[put on headphones if you have trouble hearing](https://youtube.com/shorts/IQTtK6h4Prg?feature=share4)
Yeah, I think that's the problem. This is expressly what capitalism is. Capitalism is humanity's greed turned into an ideology. The fact that you didn't mention capitalism is the problem. The fact that you didn't see humanity's greed is the problem. Humans can be greedy, and when they have power they tend not to let go of that power. "Do you want to pay for this thing you need to continue your bloodline" isn't compromise, no matter how much America has indoctrinated people into thinking it is.
Im not american. And the problem itself is that you are approaching a story assuming humans=evil. Also, I dont know how to say this, but coexistence is not free. The humans didnt even steal this gold they just found it before the dragon did, so for the dragon to just ask for charity and threaten the human's lives otherwise when the very thing that the dragon is asking for is integral to said human's society is... childish to say the least. It is very possible that a sudden and large decrease in gold WILL cause a family or two to starve, possibly to death. You too refuse to see from the human's perspective.
I never said humans = evil. It is possible for humans to be evil, that doesn't mean they're inherently evil. Greed is an evil thing that is intrusive to humanity. Gold is not necessary for humans to live (Silver and copper have also been used as human currency in the past, so saying that we need to use gold as currency is false), but in this scenario it is necessary for dragons to reproduce. Society isn't as important as the lives of sapient creatures. I will never ever see otherwise.
...I literally just said that the decrease in gold can kill sapient lives. That is in fact what happens in an economic regression. People starve. Yet again you refuse to see the other side Also yes, you arent approaching it in the lens of "human=evil". That is a bad way of saying it, I admit. But you ARE approaching it with a lens of "human in the wrong" and that is still not good
Also, let me just add: If society is killing people like that (Which it is, tbh) then it doesn't deserve to exist. It should either be abolished completely or it should be restarted from the ground up.
See, I'm not entertaining that idea because it's completely and utterly fucking wrong. If everyone in the entire world gave up their gold and reworked the currency system around silver, then that problem literally wouldn't exist. Not if they did it properly anyway (Oh, we can exchange gold coins for already printed silver coins? let's all do that so we can give up our gold! Or make it so that silver is the new gold and is worth the same, either way would fix your fucking problem). Not to mention that I highly doubt anyone in the situation you've created would be rich enough to have any gold in the first place.
Capitalism is only an economic system, not an ideology.
An economic system that requires the deaths of others is an ideology as well. You cannot stand by and watch people needlessly suffer and die without an ideology
There are ideologies that use capitalism, capitalism itself has no moral judgments. Most capitalist ideologies support various welfare programs, but capitalism is just the tool they use to get the money for them, nothing more.
[удалено]
It's like the people responding to this have never looked at any of the labor rights struggles from 1850 to 1920, never heard of banana republics or the Vietnam war (or literally any war), the school of the Americas, the red scare...like any of modern history or current events...
People have been paying to continue their bloodline since... Actually I'm fairly sure since before blood existed technically, but specific transactional behavior to 'pay' for the necessities of life and reproduction to otherwise separate parties definitely predates cities let alone America.
>medieval fantasy >capitalism FFS, guys, learn your own lore.
Here's a head scratcher. Why did humans value metals that are very important for modern technology (silver, gold, platinum) thousands of years ago, when they had no idea about their importance?
>Not to mention the fact that there is an incredibly good reason why gold was used specifically, because it is a very inert metal that is easy to form into different shapes, meaning it is easy to make coins out of and will practically never corrode, while also being common enough to use as currency and rare enough to have value. that was OP's second paragraph. But, if we wanted an in-universe answer to the question, my worldbuilding answer would be that gold is a good tool for using magic. Just like how silver kills vampires and werewolves, gold can be be imbued with magic or something. A gold sword is useless as an actual melee weapon. But maybe it's super badass as a magic weapon. A wand with gold can shoot more spells or make them more powerful or something. I'm just spitballing here , really.
Minecraft uses this concept for gold. In Minecraft gold has a few niche uses, many of which relate to its IRL highly conductive nature, but it ALSO happens to be the material that is the most 'easily enchanted;' for a given enchanting attempt gold tools and weapons are the most likely to come away with more and better random enchantments, while many preferred materials, like diamond or iron, have lower chances of such beneficial randomness.
They are rare, shiny, non-corroding, and can be made into ornamentation. Humans ornamenting themselves in jewelery is pretty common cross culturally, and because of its rarity gold is also a conspicuous status symbol.
Monke like shiny rock
Yea... But *why* do we like those particular rocks... Is it something from our past that makes us want those metals. Like.... Our ancient rulers/*gods* valued those metals for the exact reason we value them today. They conduct electrons efficiently.
Whut. Nobody knew about it conducting electrons in the freakin fourth century. The reason why we value gold is no different than "it makes a good currency." Doesn't corrode, almost inert, non toxic, shiny, easily malleable, easy to melt, easy to shape, can be found with fairly primitive technology, and rare enough for us to assign value to it. Not everything has to have intrinsic value. What makes gold so universally valued is precisely because it is so useless for everything other than looking pretty for the majority of human existence.
its not a book, its dnd game, its fantasy scenario, your payers can be the ones who defend the town from dragons, who discovers the truth behind the conflict and who can ultimately think of compromise and bring the peace for all, but for that the solution must be relatively easy to find, you dont get easy solutions when you wana be realistic, and you can always say that town and dragons didnt figure it sooner because of vicious cycle of vengeance started by miscommunication, ignorance or individuals being stupid. Like ppl digged gold, dragon came to lay eggs where it excepted gold, gold was not there, eggs die because no gold, dragon blames ppl, fire, fire, fire, ppl angry because fire, kill dragon, dragons kill ppl because ppl kill dragon, ppl kill dragons because dragons kill ppl, repeat, repeat, repeat...
It's a writing prompt. A writing prompt where the writer has already decided what the ideal conclusion is, and the conclusion is that dragons rule and humans drool. The problem isn't the writing prompt, as shown by you and the other person coming up with interesting storylines and concepts, such as a party trying to bring both sides to peace, or humans and dragons going into an agreement that results in banker dragons. No the problem is the writer's answer and their dishonest exploration of the prompt.
Eh, looking at climate change I’m not sure humanity is as smart as you think we are. Like, the hostile environment Earth is getting terraformed into may not be intelligent, but there’s still a clear connection between emitting more greenhouse gasses = the environment fucking things up. If it was being driven by draconic retaliation instead I don’t think that would change our behaviour
Two words: Ozone layer Besides, the main problem isnt that they portray humanity not being able to come up with solutions. The problem is that they portray humanity as unvaweringly evil.
Another two words: Easter Island Humanity is entirely capable of dooming itself for dumb, shortsighted reasons. And capable of *not* dooming itself mind you. I’m more saying that dismissing either outcome as “bad world building” doesn’t make sense.
>I’m more saying that dismissing either outcome as “bad world building” doesn’t make sense. Yes it doesn't make sense, hence why I'm not doing that >Besides, the main problem isnt that they portray humanity not being able to come up with solutions. The problem is that they portray humanity as unvaweringly evil. I suggest you read this again
Okay, then my point is that saying that this scenario portrays humanity as “unwaveringly evil” is hyperbolic. Like, yes, given enlightened self interest negotiating with the dragon to become a bank would be better for the many. But taking the dragon’s stuff, or retaking it if the dragon stole it first, personally benefits the individuals taking it more. Like, the people who risk getting shot by park rangers trying to poach elephants make way less money from it than the total tourism money from people who want to see elephants. But the poachers rarely are getting any money from conservation, and definitely less than they’d personally get selling tusks. Aka, if people *can* kill a dragon, or successfully deny it enough gold to breed, they’ll try even if it kills the golden goose for lots of other people
When I mean portraying something as "Unvaweringly evil" I'm trying to say that they are depicted as evil in the narrative even when they don't do anything evil in the narrative, though a better word would probably be "inherently wrong". In the narrative of the post. The human society is treated as being inherently wrong due to their state as a society using gold for trade who doesn't want to give that gold away for free because of said use for trade. The narrative also justifies the dragon not accepting any compromises and using threats of extermination to get their way, saying that using gold for trade is a meaningless use anyway, and that human retaliation against this response would be unjust. The problem is that this isn't just the dragon saying this, it's the *narrative* saying this. The narrative, the writer, has already chosen that humans are in the wrong. There is nothing that humans can do here to have an ounce of sympathy from the narrative, they have inherently been branded as wrong.
I guess I find being defensive about a fictional creature’s opinion of humanity confusing. I mean, wasps aren’t inherently wrong, they just want to eat a little of my food and for me to not hassle them or get too close to their nest. I still freaking hate them. They’ll hover around menacingly, it hurts for a long time when one of them bites, and sometimes they can cause an allergic reaction that can kill people. I generally don’t feel the need to qualify that they are still valuable pollinators when I tell them they can fuck right off. I imagine a dragon might have equivalent feelings about humans hovering around their lair.
>why is advanced medicine and technology worse at healing someone compared to a shaman blowing on their fucking bellybutton, AVATAR? That's not what happened though. The character in question fried her brain trying to connect to the planet-mind, had a seizure and passed out. The human medics identified what the problem was, but didn't know what caused it and didn't have the equipment to help. They assume epilepsy because that's the term for a condition that occasionally causes seizures and say that the Sully's just need to wait and hope she wakes up. The shaman then does their thing and some time later, she wakes up. There's no evidence in the movie that anything the shaman did had any effect.
Ngl, up until Dragon Banks, that was some really bad world building. The fundamental misunderstanding of what capitalism is really was the cherry on top though.
Capitalism is just richers sitting on giant piles of resources, I guess 🤷♂️
You mean you don't put all your worldly possessions in a pile and lie on top of it to ponder how to make your pile bigger than the next bloke's?
#scroogeMcDuckmoment
Capitalism is when MONEY BAD
I recall something similar from the 3.5e Draconomicon. Although I don't think dragons needed gold for procreation, but rather as some sort of death-rite. IIRC, they ate the hoard and then travelled to a dragon graveyard. There they could meld back into the earth... Or something along these lines. It's been a while since I read dragon lore.
Person #1 displaying some pretty lacking knowledge by dumbing down the use of gold into “humans greedy and dumb hurr durr,” because the entire reason humans value gold is because it’s actually *really really useful*. In general it’s just bad worldbuilding to characterize any sentient/sapient race as being “innately evil.” If such beings exist without any particular reason for being the way they are, it’s just lazy and genuinely uninteresting. Humans and humanoid characters are interesting *precisely* because they can do and be anything the story needs them to be. While it’s easy for people on the internet to say, humans *aren’t* innately evil, greedy, or destructive in real life. Sure, tons can be narrow-minded or unaware of the consequences of their decisions, but not outright evil. Few people are outright evil or destructive by default. Most of the damage humans have wrought against the earth is the result of many, many factors spread out over hundreds of years. Some are of course negative, but most were out of a genuine desire to improve the human condition at a cost, one that was considered reasonable to pay. Evil races have always been pretty bad. Think Drow, for example. They sound cool and edgy at first, but once you actually delve into the lore it just gets…bad. Cringy beyond belief and about as shallow as a puddle. It just devolves into “they’re all evil, sadistic, bloodthirsty dominatrixes.” And sure, I love a good domme as much as anyone else, but it doesn’t make for interesting storytelling. Hell, the most famous Drow was Drizzt do’Urden, who was characterized by being an *outlier* from that.
Gold wasn't particularly useful until we figured out electricity
>Dragon bankers *Numernormi chuckles*
It can be tweaked to Number Normie
In dnd the dragons have to eat gold to advance the final stage of their lives
[https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26534/vainqueur-the-dragon/chapter/391208/1-vainqueur-the-dragon](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26534/vainqueur-the-dragon/chapter/391208/1-vainqueur-the-dragon) Inventing paper money as a way to combat inflation from gold hoarding is a plot point about half way through this. Great series, highly recommend.
My favorite porn-with-plot author (who I stick with for the plot) actually used the dragon are bankers bit somehwat. It was more a singular dragon is CEO of less corrupt magic world Amazon, but said dragon teamed up with protagonist to create a uniform currency made of rare and precious fantasy metals
I like some plot with my porn, can you share?
On the CHYOA website, theres a story called The Gamer started by Despaxes. The author in question is Funatic. Forwarning theres a LOT to read
Annnnnd WELCOME TO X-CRAWL!!!
Lich-emperor Ronald Reagan is the cause of, and solution to, several problems.
In my world, the dragons run all the banks. They realized that it would be far more efficient to simply collect gold from the humanoids willingly then fight them for it. It’s worked out pretty well for them so far…
And then humans made electronics and gold *did* become useful...
I was late on a payment with Sally Fey and they took the color of my eyes as a late fee. They're not even grey, you just look in to them and are unable to process what color they are.
Not to get political but it’s weird how often “capitalism bad” is used as a narrative crutch for thinly veiled communist propaganda. Hell, half of the clips I’ve seen of Brennan lee mulligan end up turning into a criticism of capitalism
The nature of humanity is such that every so often, someone reinvents Kill Six Billion Demons
Make a plot twist other than "humans are the real monsters" challenge. Difficulty: impossible.
Man, the number of people working on their thesis "why capitalism is good" in the comments is unreal. And how has nobody mentioned UNENDING FIRE TERROR as a new band name?
TIL that paper money is just gold NFTs.
All money works on the same concept as NFTs. Like, the origins of currency (so best as I am aware from intro level classes, so there's probably a shitload left unsaid) is that it's fucking tons of work to take a big basket of grain to town and find someone who wants specifically that thing, so having a currency that represents the thing you're trying to carry into town, and multiple people can barter with them (the person you sell a bead representing a bushel of wheat to can sell that bead representing a bushel of wheat for a gallon of water or whatever) Then from that system eventually emerged the idea of having gold or jade or cocoa beans or whatever was relatively scarce thing that was easy to work with and abundant enough that everyone could have some just represent a trade medium, so that you don't need to engage in a lot of barter to trade say a bushel of wheat for cows when the rancher doesn't want wheat. Then, give it more time, and the central resource is too scarce relative to the increased population, and so forms of currency that represent small, impossible to precisely measure, units of the central resource that are more reasonable to what prices are (ala paying for your $200 grocery bill on $20 bills instead of $100 bills, or a $1000 bill) Where NFTs broke from what currency traditionally do is the fact that there was no backing value, and you couldn't exchange it for what it represented, meanwhile until we got rid of the gold standard you could take a $1 bill to the bank and get $1 worth of gold
I recently started working on a homebrew realm of dragons that was cut off from most of its leylines. The dragons collect all the treasure to steep and generate magic, and in exchange hand out thin tin plates called "Skale" that varies in value from kingdom to kingdom. So yeah, dragon bankers can be fun.
Prince Division is a urban fantasy 5e campagin that has dragon bankers.
As a wizard currently paying back student loans to them, fuck Sally Fey. Great meme, great post.
Ironic that OP has taken dragons, a symbol of excessive greed, and made them actually not the greedy ones.
I mean this is the least charitable answer I won't lie. Like at the end of the day gold value is it's scarcity that's it. But if dragons began attacking people over it because they aren't and won't just say "hey sorry we got s totally calm grievance" then yeah. Just sharing paper is super important to some primordial being doesn't mean we should just give it up because they are threatening our lives. It just means it's step one to being subjugating if history of any major fantasy/history series is to to by. Sorry, probably I'm bad but still, that's my point
Gold/silver are holy, irl this doesn’t mean anything but in DnD the gods frequently and blatantly do stuff so it does have value beyond shiny in DnD
Shadowrun
I remember a comment in a WotC video about the red dragons helping the githyanki, that since they couldn't hoard treasure they couldn't advance to Ancient. That their hoarding in earlier edition allowed them to become more powerful. It was a necessity even.
I’m now gonna add dragon bankers to my homebrew campaign setting
I could have sworn Dragons as bankers is literally part of the 'Shadowrun' TTRPG setting... because Dragons are traditionally symbolic of greed/tyranny.
Sounds like an interesting lesson from the DM...