Yes, I'm aware you're changing your original opinion. Now it's simply less of a cliche.
That's not really a change of opinion, more like an elaboration of one. That'll happen in conversation sometimes. I said originally that it was a cliche "in general," then when prompted by your phrasing of a question, said it was "less of a cliche" in the RPG world. I understand you're trying to discredit me (I've come to expect it), but that's not a change of opinion.
Here is (I hope) a clearer statement. An overused motif (cliche) in general or in one genre can be relatively original content when used in a different medium or genre. Happens all the time. Star Wars is filled with the themes and structure of myths told repeatedly throughout the millenia — certainly "cliche" in that sense (at least to anyone familiar with myth). Yet when it came out, all you heard was how original and groundbreaking it was. When TV programs first got created, most of the stories were the same as told on radio, in dime novels, or in books for many years prior —nothing original about them, very cliche — and yet people ate it up because the new medium/presentation made it novel.
The same is true of themes and character types that jump genres, though of course to a lesser degree than jumping media. Mario and Luigi are overused (cliche) characters in Nintendo platformers, but they would strike us as unusual if they were featured in an FPS.
Nope, you simply missed the point. It wasn't about one example being more or less cliche than the other, I was just giving a demonstration of the logic you're trying to use.
A poor illustration, if that was your intent. Try listening to the logic first, rather than coming up with counterexamples in order to try to win an argument. You just end up looking like you don't get it.
You even managed to help prove my point by mentioning how often the general concept has been used recently.
Yeah, you like to argue, don't you? I've never disagreed with you that the concept has been overused. In fact I started our interchange by agreeing with you that the character was cliche "in general" (to elaborate that a bit — I mean in film and on TV, not everywhere necessarily). I guess that's the point (or just before that) at which you stopped really listening to anything I was saying.
As I said, it's cliche "in general", but you can use all the semantics you want in pretending otherwise.
Thank you very much.
A down & out alcoholic will be a nice change of pace for the RPG genre. It hasn't been done to death like the Tolkein fantasy tropes and a bunch of other stuff. The fact that it's been overdone in some films and TV doesn't matter much to me, since I haven't seen many of those movies or shows. I can understand why, though, if you've seen a lot of them, you'd be sick of it.