Fantasy Tropes

What are your favourite and most hated fantasy tropes, and if you can explain it, why? Also, feel free to argue about which fantasy tropes are objectively the best.

Personally, I'm a fan of enormous architecture - as in the Dark Souls games, with hideously huge buildings.

Something I absolutely hate is how everything bad is always "darkness". Mainstream fantasy media really can't get enough of its "light vs dark" imagery, but it's not just that I'm a hipster who's tired of it - even in settings that are supposed to be morally ambiguous, motherfuckers just can't stop themselves from muh light vs dark.

>all dwarfs are scotsmen
>all elves are faggots
>all centaurs are insufferable assholes
>all dragons are greedy jews
>all humans are religious nuts

>seemingly evil monster race actually has a complex culture or civilization
>hostility has real, somewhat justified, reasons behind it rather than just evil for the sake of evil
>actually try to be reasonable about things rather than going overboard with pointless cruelty

Just plain evil races are fine too, but they'll never be as interesting.

I despise the medievel stasis where a thousand years roll by and nothing's changed, that and the aversion to things like guns.

Dark Souls is guilty of this but then having the setting reset to zero is literally a function of it's setting

I both love and hate fantasy cultures that are basically just Vikings on steroids.

I absolutely hate it because it's incredibly overused and I know far too many people obsessed with Vikings. That said, a winter barbarian is still cool.

I don't know about favourite, but one I really don't get tired of (and maybe should) is the "ancient, magical, fallen society whose artifact-laden and maybe-haunted ruined cities are hidden, buried all around us" stuff.

I think well detailed magic weapons are fucking rad.
Where its basically a character on its own even without intelligence.

What I hate is specific to RPG's. I hate it when the DM railroads the party into inadvertently helping the BBEG.
It's fucking bull shit.
>DM: you were really helping the bad guy all along! what a twist!
>Eveyone else: wooooow...

I could get the same bullshit by loading up one of my 20 year old jrpg's.

favorite:
>bone armor and chitin items
>huge underground cave realms
>elaborately ritualized decadent imperial court
>huge burrowing worm monster
>necromancers raising huge undead armies

worst:
>instant insanity cthuloids
>cthulhu mythos tacked onto other cosmology
>elves have godmode cheat when fighting in the forest
>most things described as fey
>elementals

>elves have god mode cheats

Im rereading the Eragon books and this is the most cringy part. Theyre, not good, but great at every fucking thing. Spells? Get fucked. Sword play? Centuries of practice since we werent fighting against the guy trying to kill us. Seige warfare? WE ARE THE FUCKING BEST YOU SCRUBS. GIT GUD. Knowledge? Good thing everyone of the elves knows everything. Ever.

I also love huge churches, palaces, and temples. The more broken and in disrepair the better. PCs cleared a tunnel I had blocked off by rubble one time. They went back to town and bought new items and more rations to do it. They loved discovering it. Only downside was I could never recreate that magical feeling again. It was lost. Was told it felt like he first played Ocarina of Time again.

Same. It's a kickass novelty but uninspired.

Objective morality.

>I'm rereading the Eragon books
Why?

I thought I should finish them from start to finish.
It was a bad choice. Im back to Ernest Hemmingway's short stories.

My favorite is definitely classical elements. I prefer the Greek ones, but Chinese are good too. Only if they're actually handled as *elements*, though -- ie, building blocks of existence, not just flavors of magical blasty stuff. I like there to be a whole philosophy and worldview built around them, stuff like humorism and shit, not just color-coded attacks.

Some of my most hated:
>Magic is something anyone could learn and master

>There exists only one pantheon of gods, although they may have subgroups and internal rivalries, and their presence in the world is proved and tangible

>You know exactly how the afterlife works

>Dungeons have 'puzzle' traps or 'riddles' and lack any logic from the maker's perspective
Fuck this one in particular. If I put traps all around my treasure or my lair it's not to let 'just the wise ones' in, it's to kill anyone trying to enter but me, period.
It also applies to traps/puzzles/riddles that are meant as a way to test an adventurer and see if they're 'worthy' of the Holy Sword of BBEG Undoing. Fuck that, how does one's ability to figure out puzzles determine their worthiness?

Not him but they're so hilariously bad I reread them every few years for a chuckle.

remember his edgefag stuff on religion and the dwarves?

>be King Orrin
>commit a sizable chunk of the Vardens army and most of the supplies
>try not to become a barbarian and retain some form of manners and customs
>everyone shoots me down at every occasion
>keep secrets from me that could negatively influence my country
>the one that is single handedly funding this war
>never tell me about meetings or when/why/what/where big players are going or doing
>everyone disrespects me and steals my ideas
>use my men and horses like fodder
>blame me for lack of supplies while I bankrupt my country
>blame me for drinking and call me a bad leader

Fucking pissed me off like no other

>it's all powered by crystals

>most things described as fey
witcher
>cthulhu mythos tacked onto other cosmology
warcraft
>elementals
everything except lotr lmao
>elves have godmode cheat when fighting in the forest
everything

You can enjoy a fantasy IP even if you hate a part of it.

Funny, because Dark Souls also somewhat subverts the thing you listed as hated.

Enjoy
>species with really non-human mindsets (Lizardfolk in DnD or Hanar in mass effect)
>more grounded armor designs (souls franchise does this well)
>Monsters are threatening, but adventurers are also perceived as very dangerous by enemies when appropriate

Don't enjoy
>Humans as mary sues (versatility taken to mean the best at everything)
>Really abrupt transitions in terrain (blocked out desert/forest/arctic/etc.) with no believable intermediates
>Dwarves having Scottish accents

Two kingly tropes that I love equally:

>The Warrior King (King Arthur, King Henry V, Aragorn)

The king who, when shit goes down, grabs his sword and fights along the PCs and is *really fucking good at it*. Extra points if he's been in the campaign before this as a plot dispenser/mentor figure. This can be just as fun if he's an antagonist who the PCs have previously only dealt with politically or through hench-men or minions.

I should note that this kind of king is distinct in my head from the Barbarian King, where everyone expects him to be a brute and a battler. It's less impactful when that guy smashes somebody's skull.

>The King By Committee (Robert Baratheon, Glipkerio Kistomerces)

Another king that absolutely shines in a tabletop game, and who is often opposite the Warrior King in many ways. He's the kind of guy who is so careless, uninformed, or paralyzed by indecision that the majority of the actual ruling is done by his army of petty lords, court wizards, and councilors. This guy is an excellent patron for PCs who want all the fun of siccing the Imperial Army on their rival's estate (our sources indicate it's actually a hideout for rebels against the crown!) with none of the associated responsibility, and he makes for an infuriating bad guy. Maybe even a sympathetic one, if he's the in-over-his-head type.

Not specific to fantasy, but I cannot stand it: Female characters who exist solely as STRONK SMART POWAHFUL BADASS ROLE MODELS 4 TEH YUNG GRILS. (See: Hermione, Rey, the Powerpuff Girls etc.) Worst form of Mary Sue ever.

guilty for crystals

>TFW delving into dwemer ruins in Skyrim
HNNNNNNG

That shit gets annoying, too. I like female characters that are characters, not this shit. I agree with you about Hermione, but I like Rey and the original PPG (not the nuPPG, that show is fucking trash)

>liking Rey
Please seriously consider suicide via IcyHot-coated chainsaw to the anus.

>Hermione, Rey, the Powerpuff Girls
Are you deliberately picking characters that *don't* conform to the stereotype you're hating on? Because I hate that stereotype too, and it's fucking everywhere, but come on.

She's no more of a mary sue than fucking Anakin was.

That's... really not saying much.

I will always love the barely dressed / fully nude female Barbarian/warrior trope. Great fun, pointless cheesecake.

One I hate? 'Guy who sent you to defeat the bad guy, WAS the bad guy all along!' Always disappointing.

Jade empire too?

Okay fair enough. I just think we don't know enough about Rey to judge her yet, and I don't recall people throwing nearly as much of a fit over how bullshit Anakin was back during episodes 1-3. Just seems unfair to me.

Actually never played it.

Anakin had the "he's Darth Vader" bit backing him up. Not sure how I feel about Rey yet, think I'll wait until VIII to call it on if she's a terrible Mary Sue or an interesting one.

I'm with you there. I didn't mean to start a "Rey is/isn't a mary sue" argument since I know those have derailed threads for the past year or so. They never go anywhere good.

Dude two of the three are right there in Google's suggestions of Mary Sues.
Also Rowling flat-out admitted Hermione was her self-insert.

>Sasuke is in there
Oh, the memories.

>Not being evil for the sake of evil.
Dogar and Kazon aren't happy.

Yes:
>MAGIC CRYSTALS
>Pretty much any kind of outsider or demon or whatever being 'BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION MORTAL' and having a conversation with them is pretty similar to sticking your head into a coal furnace because they have no metaphysical inside-voice
>Wizards all live in tall, thin towers for no fucking reason at all

No:
>Haha magic turns you into a chicken hahaha lol
>Cheerful people who live in a cottage in the woods are magical (FFFFFUCK TOM BOMBADIL)
>There's a midget race (Gnomes, Halflings, fuck all yall)

CRYSTALS are pretty much the only caveat I am okay with to magic always being a dark element of the setting. Even if the setting as a whole is cheerful, magic should be an awful thing that anyone with any sense has good reason to be terrified of.

>Rowling flat-out admitted Hermione was her self-insert

then why did she make her black all of a sudden

>>There's a midget race (Gnomes, Halflings, fuck all yall)
I've never understood the appeal of short races. The only one that makes sense to me is dwarves, since they've got that rugged manly appeal.

I thought all the ladies wanted to get blacked?

In particular, the fact that Dwarves are miners (IE justifying their height), and near humourless, tough as nails types (contrasting them away from the annoying traits of the other shitty midget races or indeed real midgets), makes them more redeemable in my eyes.

That said, I am still lukewarm on Dwarves despite this.

I'm sick of the four basic elements, and I'm sick of the stale way they always relate to each other

I'm sick of light vs dark
I'm sick of light and dark only interacting with each other as opposites, and being totally separate from every other cosmic force

>Slenderman
>Mary Sue
What did they mean by this?

it's fun to be the guy who breaks free of his chains and stabs the bad guy in the face when he doesn't notice you escaping.

I recognise that image.

Thanks, this will make it easier to search for a source.

It's funny, I never used to see the appeal of halflings myself, but halflings have really grown on me over the years. Mostly for their typical culture/mindset, more than anything. I've come to rather like the idea of chill, simple, but big-hearted folk who just like to enjoy the little things in life. Granted, there's no particular reason why that couldn't be applied to a certain cultural group within another race, but it's sort of iconic to halflings, so I figure if you're doing elves and dwarves already why not throw in some hobbits as well.

Mostly I got turned on to the idea when I was working out races for my main pet project setting. It's heavily themed around the classical elements, and so I wanted to have a "civilized" humanoid race for each of the four elements. As I thought it over, I realized halflings were a great fit for the "air" race, since they're basically the sanguine humour personified, plus they have a racial bonus to Dex (fitting for the air element) and there's precedent for a more nomadic/vagabond spin thanks to D&D's interpretation, as opposed to the settled homebody types originally envisioned by Tolkien. (Not that I have anything at all against homebody hobbits -- quite the contrary -- but a nomadic lifestyle certainly fits the air element better.)

Fuck gnomes, though. For one thing, pretty much every system with gnomes has them as fairly basic humanoids with little to no inherently magical nature (and what little they have is generally not earth magic), whereas the other Paracelsan elementals are all portrayed as significantly magical beings closely associated with their traditional element. I really like the whole paradigm of the classical elements, so breaking the symmetry like that really rustles my jimmies. Plus for all intents and purposes they're really more a halfling culture/splinter race, even by fantasy gaming standards of base race differentiation (which is not a very high bar to meet).

I love this one, such a great way to mess with people because it almost always works

>x isn't evil, just completely indifferent.
>Proceeds to only do evil things.

Not him, but my memories are telling me Jade Empire was fantastic. Sequel when.

>Fave:
BBEG is realisticly motivated, and not just greed/revenge/losorandumb-alignment reasons
BBEG's forces are legit behind him/her/it for personal reasons, not just paid or enslaved to do it
"Good guys" have a second or third angle, and are very zealous to keep it secret.
Elves aren't prissy shits that are only good innawoods
No alignment-specifics par understandable reasoning
No attempts to waifu or railroad
DM/GM pulls multiple sources to level out he plot and uses anime plots that are intensely mellowed out. Actually happened, and he used Spirited Away and Berserk as source material.

Hate:
Dumb Diggy Dwarves
Erotic Elf Escort
Humans R Nutcases!
Dragons are pure evil!
Necromancers are pure evil!
RL politics influencing plot.

I love Hyborian/Barbarian/Bronze Age aesthetics. Stylistic nudity is awesome and so is impractical armor.

I also love straight up Evil things. Not every world needs everything in shades of gray. I do want demon-born Gnolls that ravage corpses and cackle madly as they inflict terror and confusion. I don't want Hyena-folk who have demonic origins but have developed beyond it.
I want Evil. Hell I prefer my world being more Evil than Good. Far more interesting then, plenty of opportunity for conflict and story.

I hate the "default" depictions of Dwarves and Elves, I hate the majority of the elf memes of the Veeky Forums community. I hate what Tolkien did to elves.

Ori and the blind forest had a refreshing take on this.

The bbeg of the game, a giant owl, was generally allergic to light, as were her three kids.

When the main character, a seed of the giant world-life giving tree, fell off and became sentient, the tree went into mega light emitting mode as it lit the whole place up so it's followers could find the main character better. (The MC fell off to early and was still a weak babby in a pretty merciless woodland).

This light ended up burning all the owl's babies to death, hence owl got angry at big tree and destroyed it, then started hunting down its followers.

Won't spoil the ending of the game though.