The Founders Trilogy (book 1: Foundryside) by Robert Jackson Bennett uses a system of magic called Scriving wherein objects have written upon them instructions that sort of convince the objects that the laws of physics work in different ways. Over long ages engineers found ways to build engines for scriving that had commonly used instructions and essentially allowed more advanced technologies by creating “programming languages” of a sort, if you will, that work in proximity to the engines. So you get this very advanced society with technology built over this magic system, and a main character whose MacGuffin allows for messing with others’ scriving as your setting.
I quite enjoyed the trilogy, and they seem to fit the kind of vibe you’re looking for. Over the course of the books they dive a lot into both the way the magic functions and the history behind how it came to be as it is.
Palworld has brought back a Pandora’s Box that Pokemon let open in Black/White: Does Team Plasma have a point? Is the player in Pokemon/Palworld an evil entity just for playing?...
Interestingly I can think of a couple games that get around the mon-game issue you mentioned, and in pretty different ways.
Ooblets (which I haven’t played, but appears to be popular with 91% positive on Steam) has you grow your mons in a garden, and rather than pitting them in fights with other critters, you do dance battles. It appears to be a bit more slice-of-life vibes but with the monster-collecting element.
And Cassette Beasts (which I have played, would recommend to anyone who likes monster collectors easily, and is 96% positive on Steam) dodges the issue in a different way. You don’t actually capture and train monsters… you record them, and that recording lets you transform into that kind of critter. Successfully record a Traffikrab in a fight, and you can then transform into one later. You are still fighting the wild ones, but you aren’t enslaving any or having them fight for or serve you in any way. The equivalent of trainer battles is fighting other people who also do this.
I don’t know exactly how it works in the US (probably it varies by state), but to give an idea, in Canada employment can end typically in one of three ways: quitting, being fired, or being laid off. (Some other less common cases exist of course like long term injuries or medical issues etc.)
Generally being fired means it was somehow the employee’s fault (anything from not being good enough at the job to being caught doing something actively wrong), while being laid off is due to lack of available work (when a business has to scale down, or dies completely). Laid-off workers can start collecting employment insurance almost immediately, and have certain rights to getting their job back if the company suddenly has work available again, among other things (i.e. it’s not meant to be possible for employers to use layoffs as a way of getting rid of employees they can’t or don’t want to fire).
A fired employee can’t get employment insurance as immediately since they’re seen as at fault for their own job loss from a legal perspective, but if the firing was wrongful, then they might have legal recourse against their employer.
The US is again probably very different in details but the basic difference of employee-at-fault job loss vs the work no longer existing is essentially the same, I think.
Tyrian 2000 is an easy choice given it’s permanently free on GOG. It’s a really fun old shmup with story and arcade modes, lots of difficulty settings (look up cheat codes if you need to make it harder) and a pretty solid amount of weapon customization. Still very much holds up today.
In A Realm Reborn, flying for all zones unlocks immediately after the end of the 2.0 quests, so you’ll have flight during all the patch quests.
In the expansions, flight is unlocked by a combination of doing certain side quests and finding a certain number of aether currents in the zone. Once you’ve done all of them, you get flight in that zone. Typically, the last quest you need to get flight is locked behind completing most of the story in that area.
rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
The problem with liberation groups in monster-taming games (Pokemon, Palworld)
Palworld has brought back a Pandora’s Box that Pokemon let open in Black/White: Does Team Plasma have a point? Is the player in Pokemon/Palworld an evil entity just for playing?...
Xbox Is Not Your Friend (www.kotaku.com.au)
After laying off almost 2,000 people, Xbox finds itself in a position at odds with the community-first image it has cultivated for itself.
GOG 15th anniversary sale (www.gog.com)
Should I Be Leveling Multiple Classes?
Playing through the game for the first time as an arcanist and I’ve reached level 28, though I’ve only hit level 21 on the MSQ....