Tropes You've Had Enough Of

Was that really worth a post? Fine, have another. This one really is a dragon... maybe... I don;t actually know much about Fire Emblem lore.

I thought it was GMs taking inspiration from Game of Thrones.

ELVES ARE TREEHUGGERS AND HATE HUMANS AND TECHNOLOGY FOR NO REASON AT ALL

AND THERE'S ELVES WITH SLIGHTLY DARKER SKIN AND ARE MORE ACTIVE AT NIGHT THAT EVERYONE HATES, SPECIALLY "LIGHT" ELVES FOR NO REASON AT ALL

HURR WHY DOES YOUR ARMOR HAS BOOBS DO YOU KNOW THAT'S IMPRACTICAL AND UNREALISTIC SAYS THE MAGICAL MEDIEVAL 59999 YEARS OLD WARLOCK

Yeah, I'm the GM for my group, so I haven't had to deal with it personally, but having other GMs talk about it, hearing from other players, and seeing discussion on /tg

>George RR Martin "grim'n'gritty" worlds

Thank christ I'm DMing for kids in an Astral Sea campaign and I'm getting paid for it

Eh... boobplate is one of those things I'm actually OK with, even in settings that tend more towards the realism side of things. As long as it's not a chainmail bikini, I'm willing to meet halfway on something as far as practicality and personality go.

>Anyone who seeks to make a profit is evil (except the party), all corporations are corrupt and covering up for human rights abuses for no reason
Seriously, when is the last time a company in any modern- or future-set work was just selling a product or service in exchange for money, without somehow managing to either stand in for slavery or secretly be trying to conquer the world or something?

Eh, I've seen it often enough in "noblebright" settings... but they also tended to be anime-inspired.

I play a variant of ShadowRun where this trope is surprisingly dominant. Except for the Slurpee Man.

Access to arcane forces governing very structure of reality needing merely memorization of gibberish and some special McGuffin.

Some McGuffin is more powerful than other McGuffins, needs to be retrieved/destroyed/claimed to save the world - but before the upcoming cataclysm absolutely no one gave a shit about it and let it rot in some cave.

Good guys are good and are the main characters of the story. Plot armor/arbitrary punishment for their attitude (or to railroad some drama) commences.

Brooding, yet pure of heart, "badass" (pretentious) dark magical assassins of power.

Gods are people with very humane attitudes and thinking, just more knowledgeable and superpowered.

Technology and magic hate each other.

I'd imagine those neutral profit companies just aren't worth mentioning. It's not like TV or Video Games where a billboard, company logo or product label just appears in the background, the GM needs to mention them specifically.

I've had enough of TVTropes and think you should go back

This topic isn't "tropes that are shit", it's tropes that are (or can be) good but you're just tired of them.

knight in shining armor being lawful stupid or in anyway naive.

>The guy you got the quest from has an ulterior motive, and has set you up to take the fall for him!

It can be done well. It's an ancient twist. But fucking everyone does it, to the point where a party would have to be retarded not to thoroughly investigate any untrusted or new quest giver no matter how mundane or straightforward the quest is.

The only times I've enjoyed this are when it's comically obvious, or when it's well set up in advance and not really intended to be a surprise third-act twist.

Fuck off. "Trope" is the correct word for it. TVtropes didn't invent the term and not everyone who uses it is from that site. Your readiness to jump about it at the mere utterance of a common word that site happens to use is telling.

t. asspained Troper

In general, the idea that tropes should be subverted.

I'm tired of launching into a rescue mission that turns out to be a misunderstanding or ordered under false pretenses.

I'm tired of the evil tyrannical warlord actually having a noble goal.

I'm tired of the BBEG actually being the good guy all along, aiming to stop some conspiracy the GM asspulled out of nowhere.

Not all art needs to be subversive to be interesting or creative. I'd rather a classic tale told in a thoughtful and skilled manner than one that turns everything on its head for no reason other than to say LOL WHAT A TWEEST.

Do you have a better word for it, something that triggers your autism less? It's Veeky Forums - traditional games - storytelling is a major part of most of these games - and it's natural we're going to discuss the common elements of storytelling in some threads. And every single one of those threads inevitably has some autistic fuck whining about that site. What exactly do you want?

>What exactly do you want?
Attention.

I had a lot of fun doing that in Shadowrun. Well, as non-supervilian as a department can be.

A woman hired them to sabotage the local NORCO processing plant as it was making in-roads in the city and selling under cost to drive out competition. They were effective and professional so she hired them again a few times for similar sorts of job.

She was the local Aztechnology rep. No, she wasn't taking part in any big secret evil plan. She hired them for the NORCO job because Aztechnology makes 80% of it's dosh from Food and she hired them later to sneak into a crime scene and look for evidence because there had been an Aztechology citizen killed and she didn't trust the local rent-a-cops to actually do the job properly.

From Start to End, she played her cards as openly and professionally as a Johnson can. She didn't lie to them and gave them a reasonable bonus if they went above and beyond. Didn't stop them constantly expecting backstabbing/blood magic to be involved.

Actually, I prefer cliches and conventions

>Didn't stop them constantly expecting backstabbing/blood magic to be involved.
That just means it's so prevalent, its lack is an exception that proves the rule.

And why should we care about which synonym you prefer?

The whole "noble savage" bit where everyone who lives in a mudhut is actually more cultured than everyone else in the setting. Just fucking tired of seeing it. Let savages be savage, goddammit.

This, along with the earlier user that mentioned the "original race" shit. Changing things and adding some originality is all well and good, but not simply for the sake of it.

I agree with this user. Honestly I don't mind the classic races and stories and such, so long as they're done in a tasteful manner.

People often confuse savages and civilized people with lower local tech levels.

Well, the guy he replied to did ask in his first sentence.

A better word, not just a synonym.

A cliché is an overused trope. Whether that's better or not depends on what one is trying to say.

...are you okay mate?

They are just being realistic, user. Even our world has evil cooperations.

Aren't you familiar with EA?

There is nothing realistic about "literally every profit-seeking entity is evil".

westaboos talking about MUH SUPERIOR LONGSWORD FORGED IN DAMASCUS OVER 10000 TIMES AND CAN CUT THROUGH SOLID STEEL or I LE SMITE THE EVIL XD faggotry
we get it, you got tired of weeaboos but this shit has been going on for YEARS and i can't handle it anymore

see

i didn't say the trope was shit now did i
i appreciate cool western knights just as much as anyone else i just hate how they've become a fucking meme for so long

Grimdark.
In general people trying to make a setting as shit as possible 'cause "m-muh realism"

Space opera doesn't mind "Here's some big strong race, here's some warrior race, here's the elegant space diplomat race."

But if you have a race of short guys, they're going to be called Dwarves or Halflings unless you go out of your way to make them completely contrary to those stereotypes, which is a shame because they have a lot of interesting potential in them.

fuck the guy who goes to a group world-building session and, when asked about things he doesn't want to see, says 'conventional fantasy.' Nigger I'm the one who has to put all your crazy shit together afterwards into a worthwhile setting, don't handicap me.

The "Every Trope Needs to be Subverted" Trope.
I just want to rescue a princess kidnapped by a dragon because the kingdom didn't pay it's last tribute and the dragon is an evil, gluttonous bastard.
No the dragon isn't misunderstood.
No the princess isn't evil and the dragon is saving the kingdom by taking her.
No they aren't secret lovers.
No the princess is actually a prince.
No the dragon isn't actually a wyvern trying to frame the real dragon.
No the dragon didn't have an affair with the king, birthed a daughter and this is just her month of shared custody.

All of them

I've had enough of the trope trope

I don't mind OC DONUT STEEL races as long as it's clearly based on something. It's when it's truly from left field that I stop giving a shit.

> The Xghc'bshs are a race of short people who walk backwards and only exhale. Their culture is a mix of Venice and Feudal Japan and their complex mythology involves seven gods and is seventeen pages long!
This is terrible, but
> The Xghc'bshs are basically jewish space samurai. got it?
I don't mind

Aw man, do you remember that wierd lego mech wargame? That game's rulebook was something like 120 pages of fluff, a lot of it reeking of totally unnecessary SJW nonsense (mostly revolving around how gender neutral everything is, except there's three genders, for two sexes). It was ridiculous

>Technology and magic hate each other.
I kinda liked how it was a rule in the Dresden RPG that if your character had an intimate understanding of some type of technology or another, being magic actually made it work more smoothly instead of making it freak out as it tries to reconcile actual physics with your latent wizard-ing.

Me, I'm sick of vampires and vampire business. It's all dumb and makes no sense. Why do vampires exist in the setting? Why do they conspire together instead of going to a hospital or something to cure their vampirism? Why not be public about their vampirism instead of acting like secretive junkies? What's special about blood that sustains them, and why haven't they turned towards animal blood? I can buy a little 1l tub of pig's blood with bones floating in it at my local chinese grocer.

And why does becoming a vampire immediately make you into a debaucherous degenerate? Are there no vampire nerds? vampire trainspotters? vampire salarymen? Where is the vampire that goes home at the end of the day, kisses his wife (or non-flamboyant same-sex lover), and then proceeds to not bite them?

>Why not be public about their vampirism instead of acting like secretive junkies?

Because people generally try to kill things that suck their blood. ie mosquitos, leeches, ticks etc

Right now I'm actually tired of sci-fi in its entirety. I haven't gotten to play a regular fantasy game in years.

I'm getting kinda tired of 'Organized religion that even vaguely resembles Catholicism is evil'.

Yes, we get it writers. You didn't like going to church when you were 13. It gets kinda boring though when your Big Dramatic Twist about the Organized Religion being evil has been done so damn much that it's become more predictable than just having them be good or even a bit grey.

I would like to see someone with balls subvert that trope using not-Islam. Like if turns out the god of eastern desert religion is actually a blood thirsty moon demon that grows more powerful as his followers slaughter infidels

That's funny, I'm the opposite

This 'GM says he'll be on hiatus for a few weeks to prep for the next arc then drops off the face of the earth' trope.

You mean Narnia with Tash?

You mean real life?

I think there was a Kafka short story that's the opposite of this. Some guy encounteres a group of hyenas that just cannot stop talking shit about muslims, then a muslim guy comes along, throws the hyenas a camel carcass, and the hyenas make an utter barbaric mess of it, getting blood and bone splinters everywhere, while continuing to talk shit about how filthy and barbaric muslims are all the while

and the muslim guy is like "let them say whatever they want, at least I'm not eating some diseased camel and getting blood all over me right now, lmbo"

I think it's supposed to be an allegory for westerners who see the middle east as a barbaric wasteland even though they're the ones that keep coming by and starting shit every decade or so ever since world war 1

2true

*fedora remains static*

Yeah, I get you on that one. I think Shadowrun is the only game I've been in a fairly normal game of.

No, wait, Star Wars as well, even if I only joined during the second half of that campaign,

In my most recent DMd game, the clearly evil court wizard vizier was totally evil and the BBEG.

The players viscerally *hated* him, it was great.

If only Kafka could have seen what they're like himself. Would have given him some interesting ideas. Imagine instead of turning into a bug, the mc spontaneously explodes.

>confusing The Metamorphasis for one of his random 2 page short stories about hyenas talking mad shit

I never thought that I'd run into typical american uncultured boorishness on Veeky Forums

I'm just going to assume English isn't your first language. If it is, then you're autistic.

Did you ever read that short story? It wasn't The Metamorphasis. Why would Gregor just explode? Do you think Gregor was a muslim?

> not being up to date on Kafka
Jeeze, what a faggot. Amirite?

Also on a relevant note:
Origin stories
Why does every campaign need a long, complex mythology. I have to memorize a new one every time even if it means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

literally this, especially the last one

>Undead and necromancy is always evil
This one kinda pisses me off, because I like both good alignments and undead.

Hey. I'll make a reason to hate tech.
Say... Elves were the first race, they made great magitek devices, factories, had tremendous progress, even made proto-other races... and then their carelessness caused a big natural disaster that killed off majority of them (not!Fall of Eldar). And wood elves who survived blame technology for that disaster ("spoons made me fat", huehue).
Iz dat ok?

>boobplate
I just want consistent design, or some goddamn groundwork. Boobplate/pseudogreek muscleplate or 'everyone is wearing magitek circuitry shit' or 'gender-neutral historically appropriate full plate' is fine, it just rustles my jimmies when the same level of armor for the same rank of people from the same culture with the same approximate level of care of craftsmanship and enchantment is 98 pounds of armor for dudes and two cups and underwear for chicks.

Blame JRPGs, and blame weird christianity shit in japan before that.

And to be fair, an organised, effective, and genuinely helpful organisation with a connection to nearly every citizen really cuts down on situations that need four murderous fucktards with bizarre skillsets thrown at it.

I usually go for "Generally a force for good, some bad apples, some bros, some guys just there to punch in and out".
But then, I'm generally more interested than the people than the religion, and the religion over the actual deity.

>I usually go for "Generally a force for good, some bad apples, some bros, some guys just there to punch in and out".
>But then, I'm generally more interested than the people than the religion, and the religion over the actual deity.

DM for me sempai

Already not playing because too busy, senpai.
I advise making a cleric by looking up christian heresies until you find one that's interesting, then make a character based on a fantasy version of that. Monopolize the game by getting into theological arguments with NPCs until your DM sends inquisitors after you.