What are some tropes/ conventions that you dislike, not for being necessarily bad by itself...

What are some tropes/ conventions that you dislike, not for being necessarily bad by itself, but for appearing so often that you had enough of it?

>place and people names with more than 3-4 syllables

>Page 10
This thread might be amusing, so I'll give you a bump.
No need to thank me.

That dress has some QUALITY animation.

Are they that hard for your brain to remember?

>Sci-fi setting has magic
>Refuses to call it magic

I'll give you too

>The people think the ancient mega empire was peaceful and idyllic, but it turns out they were actually enslaving dicks who were total meanies to everyone's primitive versions

and badly ported Lovecraftian ideas that don't fit the setting but serve as a side-note with spooooooky implications.

In every single sci fi or fantasy setting ever, The Ancient Lost Civilization always had technology far more arvanced than anything made thousands or even millions of years after them. Always. Which is convenient, because then you can always say "the ancients made it" whenever you want to throw in some place, mcguffin or object that doesn't really fit the rest of the setting.

Just once, I'd like to see a setting where technology doesn't move backwards.

The obligatory Catholic Church Stand In is always cartoonishly evil, with no redeeming qualities.

A good spin on this in warframe is that while ancient tech is superior, it is fucking unreliable because they designed it with two things in mind:
to look cool and to look cool, which somehow made the energy consumption for their weapons or simply for starting a generator so high that people still have trouble balancing them out hundreds of years into the future

>Cthulhu
Everybody's favorite crossover material. People treat it like an instant nobrain cool button.
>Elementals
They are goddamn everywhere and any excitement the concept of a mostly uniform blob of sentient material might once have had is long gone.

>Well there's magic
>And then there's PSIONICS
>It's like magic but psychic instead
>Is mind reading Psionic?
>No that's magic

>scifi setting
>blatant explainable magic
>naw, its just science, guys

>duel wielding being fairly normal
Was it done? Sure, you'd find it rarely, ussually with a short sword, or more often a dagger in the off-hand, but with 2 fucking longswords? I'm sure it happened at some point out of desperation, but having it be fairly common is just ridiculous.

>It's X but in space!
>rebels are never evil, always good
>all rich people are assholes
>all poor people are assholes

I never thought I'd be bored of Cthulhu. Then on a V:tM game the ST closed the campaign with him rising from the sea and killed everyone's enthusiasm dead on its tracks.

>rebels are never evil, always good

Holy shit this. Every story, every game. It was only when the rebels were bad in FTL that I noticed how prevalent this is.

>Western media
>Media that comes from a culture where not one, but two major nations arose out of rebellions
>Rebellions perceived as righteous struggles against oppression
>Still being surprised rebels are usually good in this culture's fiction

I'm not surprised, that's the problem. It's so predictable, that it's boring. Throw at me a rebellion with Pol Pot at the helm, that might be actually fun.

this is idiotic and contrived as shit.

psionics in D&D is even more ham-fisted than the asian monk stereotype.

>the BBEG is a manipulative genius who no matter what you do never slows down their plans even a little bit
>their second in command is a slimy piece of shit worse than the BBEG
>their second in command is secretly the BBEG all along
>no win scenario in cosmic horror ever besides "kill yourself"
>the PCs are unimportant slobs and nothing they do ever effects anything slightly

Like give me some fucking motivation and stop throwing all these invincible villains at me. Have competency, have them be a threat, but don't make them full on unstoppable, because if they were unstoppable, they'd have won already.

Hell, have the BBEG just SAY that everything they do plays into his plans while in reality things are going to shit, he's just trying to demoralize the party and make everything seem worthless, and have someone make a check to see if he's bluffing.

It's become pretty ironic after the last few decades of rebels in the Middle-East.

Elves. Dwarves. Orcs. Halflings.

Tidily delineated pantheons of deities.

Demons who's names have a ton of multiple consonants in a row, seperated by apostraphes.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water as elements. Worse if Light and Dark are also elements.

Aztec themed shit, especially the theme park attraction kind that takes all the most boring elements of their culture and ignores all the cool stuff.

Really? Halflings? You'll be hard-pressed to find a fantasy world without elves and dwarves, and the are often orcs, but halflings?

>Aztec themed shit, especially the theme park attraction kind that takes all the most boring elements of their culture and ignores all the cool stuff.
I mean really, you can say that about any historical culture aped by bad writers. People butcher the Norse on a near daily basis.

I have it so that the PCs are a serious wrench in the villainous plans that they're having trouble dealing with.
At first, they were just stooges for the bad guy and got duped into completing part of his plan for him, but now the villains are starting to realize that that may not have been a good idea, because they're now pissed, too strong to kill easily and have recently blown up one of the resource channels for the villains. Bringing out the big guns would get the PCs to do the same and provoke a fight with some of the people the heroes have helped, wasting a bunch of resources, so they're trying to quietly squash the heroes before things get out of hand.

what's "boring" about feathered serpents, step pyramids, doomsday predictions, god-kings, jaguar skins, human sacrifice, and ritualized warfare?

If you wanna call it over-played, then yes I fucking agree. But what secret hipster aspect of Aztec/Mayan culture are you wishing got more representation, their fascinating taxation system? the way they ate corn all the time?

>>the PCs are unimportant slobs and nothing they do ever effects anything slightly

just got out of a game like this. thankful i died and was able to leave gracefully. we basically just wandered around and watched events happen and every now and then a set piece scene would happen where unstoppable NPC's would heard us on to the next location where we'd inevitably do more nothing.

no quest breadcrumbs, no nothing. seemingly sandbox open world with nothing to actually do but watch events unfold that we had absolutely no effect on.

>the way they ate corn all the time?

gotta love that maiz, dude

I have a real hate on for to many spikes, chains, and augments. I think that if someone cant climb into be at night and sleep, they have an issue. So all these motherfuckers wired in to there armor? all the sharp pointy bits and weird exposed augments? It bothers me.

>the BBEG's plan is to open a portal to the demon plane

Magic
How many years need to pass for people to understand that it's a trope not a mandatory element

Don't forget their public school system!

Potatoes.

Potatoes were also cultivated by the Aztecs.

Eurofags don't even know how good maiz is.

>BBEG has literally no real motivations or justifications for why they're evil, they just are
>literally anything steampunk

>more than 3-4 syllables

Guess you hate people named Alexander, Julius, and Octavian.

euroslimes will never know about authentic delcious street vendor lengua taco served in an arepa

neither will shit-ass amerifats who eat nothing but burgers and hotdogs

>Magic is real and observable
>Still calls it magic

>Setting is the future
>White people still around

>spelling maize without an e

>Earth, Air, Fire and Water as elements
>Water

I fucking wish water got its due. Goddamn wizards only give a Fuck about fireballs and lightning bolts.

>setting is the future
>humans still around

...

>Scene in an auction house where people bid reasonably for a minute then some voice from the back of the room says some very large number and everyone turns around and gasps.

The God's rules of genetic prevent you to have overly mixed skin m8, with dominant and rececive genes and all. So you'll still see a white, black and yellow skinned normies in the future.

Sorry atheist

>I'm going to make a fantasy setting that Breaks The Mold (tm) and avoids all those boring old Tolkien Tropes
>In order to show off how subversive I am MY elves live on the moon and turn into crystals at night and hate the forest and MY dwarves come from the sea and have no beards and are the BEST at magic!

If you don't want a game with elves, don't put fucking elves in your game.

If you want a game with elves, just fucking put elves in your game.

If you can't commit to one of those two decisions, you just look like an asshole. The PHB gives the barest fucking framework of the races for you to work within, but if you don't like what D&D says an elf is just make up your own race to replace them, because only ponces intentionally rewrite everything about a fantasy race to show off how "subversive" they can be.

>one language per species except for humans
>one country per species except for humans
>one race per species except for humans
>one religion per species except for humans
>any of the above but also including humans
>one biome per country
>one sect per religion
>[real life culture] but [quirk] cultures
>[real life culture from time period A] but [quirk] cultures next to [real life culture from time period B] but [quirk] cultures where A != B
>humans but [quirk] species
>[animal] but humanoid species
>half-[species]
>"higher"/"lower" "dimensions"

Pointing them out as if to show "hey guyz i read tv tropes i get how stories work"

Protip: Reading TV Tropes probably hurts your creative process

What the fuck do you like then?

If I had to guess, human only settings probably

Ah yes, the Cynical Guy Who Points Out TvTropes Hurts Your Creative Process trope. I'll be sure to add that one to the Veeky Forums article!

>>The people think the ancient mega empire was peaceful and idyllic, but it turns out they were actually enslaving dicks who were total meanies to everyone's primitive versions
age general/

To be quite honest, it's become so pervasive I think it needs its own TV Tropes page. One where the majority of examples come from anime, or western kids cartoons.

Human-only low fantasy

How about fanfiction examples also?

Settings that don't use "human" as both a species and a template to stick shit onto. Settings that don't have language, race, culture, religion, government, and geography slot neatly together. Settings with cultures that can't be adequately summed up as "not-[culture]". Settings with species that aren't just races.

(You)

So, nothing, then?

How could we forget! And we need some Harry Potter and Joss Whedon examples to really round this article out.

Drives me crazy too. Looking at you, Menoth

This reminds me of my personal bugbear.
>it's a fantasy setting
>but it's really post-apocalyptic scifi
>look at all this cool advanced tech that all the primitives call magic
>aren't they so backwards?
It's not even that common, but when it pops up it annoys the hell out of me.

I'm not autistic. A work can be good despite any hang-ups I have. It just means that the setting is like background noise to me.

Thoughts on Elder Scrolls?

If I'm there, it's for the lore; the cosmology; the metaphysics. Certainly not anything mundane.

Except the Dunmer. The Dunmer are well-done.

>>"higher"/"lower" "dimensions"
Most of those I agree with. I might have disagreements about beastmen, but that's me being a mythology-loving fruitcake and I agree that "they're people but with stereotypical (animal) personality" is trash.

But really, no underworld that can't be reached just by digging, no heavens that can't be reached just by flying up, no arcadia that isn't just some city in the woods, no places you can't put on a map? Alternatively, am I a retard who can't into proper terminology?

>Setting is the future
>Aliens rule a massive empire across the galaxy ala space ottomans
>Humans are space Circassians
>Ayy lmaos enslave humans as concubines, slave soldiers, and eunuchs

Really? Why? Examples?

I don't mean planes; I mean using the word "dimension" when you mean "plane". It's more of a complaint toward sci-fi.

>Tidily delineated pantheons of deities.

I almost fell into this trap myself. I was trying to make two pantheons, one good and one evil, and I made a list of all the aspects I could and grouped them into 15 for each. Then under those 15 gods and 15 devils, there were 3 captains per deity that had a sub-aspect of their master's power. So a deity of pestilence had servants of plagues, rot, and vermin. But there was so much overlap with the sub-aspects that it was really triggering my autism that a deity of monsters might have a captain of vampire-kind, but the deity of pain had the captain of bloodletting, as an example.

In the end, I realized what I needed to do was make this tidy shit the mortal attempt at defining the pantheons, when the actuality of it was that the deities, both good and bad, were all part of a single clan and what seems like animosity to mortals is just family drama to them.

The big one is Numenera, with its 8 gorillion years in the future fantasy setting, but it seems like it's everyone's first idea for a "subversive" homebrew. I was also lumping in
>fantasy setting
>all medieval-renaissance technology supplemented with magic
>except for one faction with modern or higher tech level

Things to not be monolithic I assume.
>Elves follow a polytheistic religion
>Some follow slightly different forms of the religion or focus on specific gods
>One group of elves follow a monotheistic religion based on a singular creator god
>Elves have tons of different countries
>Countries vary in topography and climate
>Elves have a lot of different languages

None of these are insurmountable barriers, especially in settings where magic exists so that you could just cast a comprehend language spell but adding these different features makes the world seem bigger and more interesting.

That's a lot more reasonable. All these wonderful terms for "place" and people fall back on dimension.

I hear you on falling into the trap. My general rule is: if it makes more sense than the Greek pantheon, it's probably too clean. It helps keep things from getting boring or samey.

>"If the rebels succeed then they'll establish a republic that stands for liberty!"
>Religious dictatorship or quasi-secular dictatorship happens

I guess I was looking for ones beside Numenera, since I love that setting. I would be surprised to hear about many more that did the same thing.

Name one instance in history in which this did not occur.

On that issue the well is kind of poisoned.
>Write up original race.
Half of people says, oh but that is just an elf/dwarf/orc.
>Call same thing elf/dwarf/orc.
Other half says it's not an elf, dwarf or orc.

Or maybe even more than half of people, because people love to be contrarian an bitch.

The problem is more GMs bait and switching by withholding information while using the standard labels. Then they triumphantly say gotcha, what a twist.

>talislanta.post

>names are trying too hard to be edgy and full of K, X, Z, etc.
>names sound like barbarian grunts full of G, K, R, etc.
>names have punctuation
>names are unpronounceable

That's one of the things about trying to make a pantheon that feels similar to the Greek one that makes it so difficult. The Greek pantheon is so convoluted and inconsistent that it's hard to get a real grasp on it. Even experts on the subject note how complicated it all is, but that's only because it's the result of millions of people and thousands of years of stories springing up about them. You end up with deities who may or may not also be another deity, or who have a dozen names for a couple of separate deities, or a hundred deities who all supposedly look after farming or shit.

We can introduce some aspects of complexity, but we can never match natural progression of a mythology, and if we could it would be too complex to be accessible for outsiders.

>names sound like barbarian grunts full of G, K, R, etc.
>thinking the Kurgan isn't a brilliant name

...

>Thinking the Kurgan is a brilliant name

Damn straight. 'The Kurgan' was such a good name I forgot the entire group of protagonists for a few months.

America.

Turkey

>One biome per country

This gets me too. Seriously, biodiversity exists almost everywhere. I think people jst do it to simplify things

>Elves on the moon
I did this once

[Unrelated]

I ran a game where the moon was actually forested and had life on it. When humans began spreading and destroying the environment they warned that there would be disastrous consequences. After a few centuries, the elves built a portal to the moon and all moved their, letting the mortal races have their soon to be dead ball of rock.

The moon was completely forested with 20 hour days, and the elves magicked up massive treants and built wandering cities in their branches. The portal still exists (it's like a stargate), but the key uses druidic runes and there are very few druids left around. Most of them consider it their duty to hold out and try and reverse the damage being done.

[/unrelated]