Ten Leagues Beneath the Earth

I make full apologies for my ongoing Life is Strange phase (I love it so much would not recommend) and none for my Mass Effect phase.

"What you see is what you play!" -- Around this time some games had beautiful box art by talented painters that often made the actual game graphics seem disappointing in comparison

I'm surprised by the inclusion of 'Government type' and 'Law level'. Does the output assume that every planet necessarily has one world government? 'Tech Level' makes more sense to include, as even on planets with high disparity between societies, if at least one of them is spacefaring then that makes the tech level noteworthy to other spacefaring societies, but the assumption that a planet's entire governance system can be encapsulated by one category is much shakier.

Well, it was originally written by a Trekkie in answer to a complaint that Star Wars planet generation is annoying, and partly based on Traveler, so yeah it has some of the conventions from those baked in.

i do not “delete sentences” when they start “hindering the plot” i COPY PASTE THEM into a SEPARATE DOC made just for keeping all my USELESS LINES that i will also NEVER USE so therefore i should JUST DELETE THEM but i DONT because id FEEL BAD if i did

You don't actually have to kill your darlings. You can just put them in the oubliette #myoubliette

Anyway while I don't think Dungeon Meshi is by any means perfect (it is very extremely good, it just has a few things which don't quite stick the landing for me personally) I think it is one of the best examples of media in the broad genre of "dungeon fantasy" that engages with many of the conventions and tropes of the genre critically while at the same time being very reverent of the genre itself. It is both a good example of the genre it's a part of while also examining some of the ideas of said genre and I think that's a lot better than a lot of "irreverent take on D&D" media. The motivations of the main cast are quite mercenary and the story very much doesn't start out as a quest to save the world but a quest to save someone who got in trouble during a get-rich-quick scheme, but the characters are still fun and sympathetic.

And like one of the tropes of the genre it engages with critically is central to its story, which is the whole idea of food as more than just fuel for dungeon crawling but as a make-or-break thing where the ingredients used and actual nutrition matters. Most dungeon-crawling fantasy just ignores this, at most giving a contrast between food that's just boring fuel/stale rations and food that's actually sold at da store back in town, but the difference doesn't actually have teeth in the narrative. It doesn't matter whether Goblin Steve ate icky stale rations that day or had a delicious feast at the banquet, they both just count as the thing stops the hunger mechanic kicking in. Anyway yeah so Dungeon Meshi is like "there actually is a difference."

also don't eat goblin steve

Also don't eat goblin steve

"The word pandemonium was coined by John Milton as the name for the Parliament of Hell" is an all-timer etymology. Oh yeah did you hear that Mrs Higgins's dogs got loose at the village fête? It was like a vast golden edifice in which fallen angels debate their strategies for vengeance against god, yeah.