ITT Tropes you hate

He went down the deep end, and built a wicker man, to burn his followers?
Sorry, I don't watch the show.

So.. He had a burning man hippie jam festival? Laame.

Still better than dual-wielding fuckboys.

Show Bran sucks. Books are another deal.

>Wolf, he knew at once. Summer stalked toward the sound, wary now. Soon enough the scent of blood was back, but now there were other smells: piss and dead skins, bird shit, feathers, and wolf, wolf, wolf. A pack. He would need to fight for his meat.

>They smelled him too. As he moved out from amongst the darkness of the trees into the bloody glade, they were watching him. The female was chewing on a leather boot that still had half a leg in it, but she let it fall at his approach. The leader of the pack, an old male with a grizzled white muzzle and a blind eye, moved out to meet him, snarling, his teeth bared. Behind him, a younger male showed his fangs as well.

>The direwolf's pale yellow eyes drank in the sights around them. A nest of entrails coiled through a bush, entangled with the branches. Steam rising from an open belly, rich with the smells of blood and meat. A head staring sightlessly up at a horned moon, cheeks ripped and torn down to bloody bone, pits for eyes, neck ending in a ragged stump. A pool of frozen blood, glistening red and black.

>Men. The stink of them filled the world. Alive, they had been as many as the fingers on a man's paw, but now they were none. Dead. Done. Meat. Cloaked and hooded, once, but the wolves had torn their clothing into pieces in their frenzy to get at the flesh. Those who still had faces wore thick beards crusted with ice and frozen snot. The falling snow had begun to bury what remained of them, so pale against the black of ragged cloaks and breeches. Black.

>Long leagues away, the boy stirred uneasily.

>Black. Night's Watch. They were Night's Watch. The direwolf did not care. They were meat. He was hungry.

>The eyes of the three wolves glowed yellow. The direwolf swung his head from side to side, nostrils flaring, then bared his fangs in a snarl. The younger male backed away. The direwolf could smell the fear in him. Tail, he knew. But the one-eyed wolf answered with a growl and moved to block his advance. Head. And he does not fear me though I am twice his size. Their eyes met.

>Warg!

>Then the two rushed together, wolf and direwolf, and there was no more time for thought. The world shrank down to tooth and claw, snow flying as they rolled and spun and tore at one another, the other wolves snarling and snapping around them. His jaws closed on matted fur slick with hoarfrost, on a limb thin as a dry stick, but the one-eyed wolf clawed at his belly and tore himself free, rolled, lunged for him. Yellow fangs snapped closed on his throat, but he shook off his old grey cousin as he would a rat, then charged after him, knocked him down. Rolling, ripping, kicking, they fought until the both of them were ragged and fresh blood dappled the snows around them. But finally the old one-eyed wolf lay down and showed his belly. The direwolf snapped at him twice more, sniffed at his butt, then lifted a leg over him.

>A few snaps and a warning growl, and the female and the tail submitted too. The pack was his.

Still not seeing any signs of large-scale human sacrifice on his part...

>The prey as well. He went from man to man, sniffing, before settling on the biggest, a faceless thing who clutched black iron in one hand. His other hand was missing, severed at the wrist, the stump bound up in leather. Blood flowed thick and sluggish from the slash across his throat. The wolf lapped at it with his tongue, licked the ragged eyeless ruin of his nose and cheeks, then buried his muzzle in his neck and tore it open, gulping down a gobbet of sweet meat. No flesh had ever tasted half as good. When he was done with that one, he moved to the next, and devoured the choicest bits of that man too. Ravens watched him from the trees, squatting dark-eyed and silent on the branches as snow drifted down around them. The other wolves made do with his leavings; the old male fed first, then the female, then the tail. They were his now. They were pack. No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady' s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there' s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?

>Falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat against his face, comforting as a mother's kisses. Fire, he thought, smoke. His nose twitched to the smell of roasting meat. And then the forest fell away, and he was back in the longhall again, back in his broken body, staring at a fire. Meera Reed was turning a chunk of raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit. "Just in time," she said. Bran rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and wriggled backwards against the wall to sit. "You almost slept through supper. The ranger found a sow."

>taking Roman propaganda seriously

Fuck you, Rangers deserve to be archers. Eat my whole ass for fucking dinner and choke while your opinion slithers down your throat.

vegan bait

Are you saying that turning into animals is much closer to what they really were? Obviously neither of them is true, but at least one of them I haven't seen a million times.

>make a druid character
>want to play up some more sinister aspects
>animal (and in extreme cases, human) sacrifices, secret rituals, relishing the hunt, as immovable and uncaring as nature itself unless appropriate compensation and concessions are offered, embody life and growth but also death and decay
>DM basically blocks all of that when it comes up or I ask about it
>Druids don't do that in my setting."
>being forced to play the world's only grumbling tree hippie

>Druids don't do that in my setting.
Sounds like a shitty setting, to be honest.

Nope.

Bards are better skill specialists. Rogues have been about trap-finding and Thieves' Tools for a long time.

Not really. I got this from Dwarf Fortress, the elves there don't like when you put down trees but they don't have anything against eating meat from intelligent beings let alone animals. Also Starbound, the floran are a race of plant ayys know for eating other intelligent creatures
I just think those guys make way more sense than the average Hippie Nature Race

Lel why r u so salty user?

given that hippies, the guys who usually have the "trees are people too" mentality, are vegeterians
i dont see the problem

I'm not talking about an urban subculture. I'm talking about a entire culture with the "let's not hunt animals and let's not cut down trees so we can cultivate crops, we're just going to eat berries now okay?" actually being successful in this fantasy world. Read. The typical tree hugging race wouldn't be so stupid If they were men eating savages

>reflexive need to have Cthulhu in the setting, despite already having an array of evil gods
>hypocrite nature types sending every animal into a meatgrinder without second thought.
>elementals
They proliferate in every damn fantasy setting, but I think they are so tired.
Homogeneous mass of one material, magic blob with the extensive characterization on liking it's material. They read like someone placed a template on top of an empty placeholder.
>"Adventurers" as a recognized in setting concept. Especially when it is like some sort of implied caste of people that matter. You don't secure the aid of a wizard and hire some mercenaries to solve a problem, you get a prepacked sentai team of "Adventurers" because dozens of these roam any given region.

(fantasy art specific)
>archer can't shoot unless doing the jumping backwards pose

I much prefer when elves (And other such races) are actually smart about it. It's not about not chopping down trees, it's about not cutting down more than you replace.

For elves, it makes a lot of sense. They need to personally live with the consequences of those actions 100 or 200 years down the line, rather than saying 'It's someone else's problem' so they take the long view on environmental stuff.

One fascinating take I saw on it was in a supplement for the old Stargate SG1 game. Like, you'd expect, lost Nazi space colony. But it actually acknowledged that it's been seventy years. People kinda know that they lost the war. There's actual moderates involved and the players have a chance to catalyze reform and peace with a hostile native population that's perpetuated its share of brutality on the German settlers. Way more complex than I would have expected.

>le chosen one
>"Adventurer" is treated as a legitimate profession. Roving packs of (probably unwashed) glorified mercenaries, armed to the teeth and with no no allegiance to any ruler or nation, are just happily accepted -- and even respected and revered -- by everyone from peasants to kings, rather than ever being treated like the obvious threat they are.
>Humans (in a setting where non-humans exist) are the most bestest race ever for no readily apparent reason.
>"Comic Relief" race.
>Race that clearly exists as fap material for the author.
>Perfect mary sue race that exists to be mouthpieces for the author's retarded political opinions.
>Horrible conniving obnoxious literal thieves who you're expected to find cute/charming/endearing and whose actions are never punished or even apparently disliked by any non-evil character.
>All non-human races are one-note monoliths whose members are all basically the exact same and just some generic archetype or caricature.
This one specifically can be fine, however, if there's a good reason and it's done intentionally and acknowledged. A race of literal clones or a hivemind are fine, but all elves/dwarves/whatever being basically interchangeable one-note stereotypes for no particular reason isn't.

>Adventurers" as a recognized in setting concept. Especially when it is like some sort of implied caste of people that matter. You don't secure the aid of a wizard and hire some mercenaries to solve a problem, you get a prepacked sentai team of "Adventurers" because dozens of these roam any given region.
I dont make them a caste, just a job

and I really like wandering super adventurers looking for a job, I think it's cool

Scream /v/ all you want but I like to think of adventures as something similar to vault hunters. Money-crazed wandering wierdos a step above bandits and less trustworthy then mercenaries. Something the ruthless and greedy will immediately take advantage of by churning out readily available supplies and playing up their actions into propaganda heroics that serve only to inspire the young to take up the cause and continue feeding the adventure industry

I like to play my adventurers straight
with the evil ones being the exception

I dislike it when all of the evil races are made entirely neutral or are otherwise pitched as innocents who would be wrong to kill in large numbers.

I'm fine if someone wants to shify things around for their world so they have goblins in place of Halflings as a civilized race or whatever, but when every single monster is secretly a good guy and the GM guilt trips you after every fight ypu start wishing heavily for some objectively evil cannon fodder so you don't have to listen to his grey morality tripe.

I guess I figure if I want to do em like that I'll just play Shadowrun. I'm usually playing some D&D type game because I'm looking for a more heroic break from the usual.

>Money-crazed wandering wierdos a step above bandits and less trustworthy then mercenaries.
With enough firepower to flatten your town in a couple of days. Yeah, the authority will probably send in enough firepower to flatten them soon after, but is it really worth risking over a few coins?

I'd say that can definitely work. But they should still definitely be viewed and treated as threats. They would be likely held in disrepute by most people. Peasants would fear and very likely hate them (especially since they'd probably have a major reputation for fucking over peasants and villages), kings would see them as useful but extremely dangerous (they could easily be turned against the king and his armies), they'd probably smell like shit due to spending most of their time in the wilderness/sewers/tombs and never bathing so the people they deal with when they come to town probably wouldn't view them too well, and they'd probably be extremely popular scapegoats and the first ones to take the blame when shit goes wrong in the kingdom (especially since they'd probably already have a well-earned reputation as dangerous criminals and wierdos).

In that case, "adventurer" has pretty similar connotations to what it did in the middle ages (a mix of thief, mercenary, bandit, and wierd creepy drifter) and it's perfectly fine and realistic.

You know what, I'm not TOTALLY against hippie elves.

But do them really hippie-ish. For reals. Stoned, bullshit magic, the whole fucking deal.

Or make them actual vegan do-not-kill-a-fly pacifists, why the fuck not. But jainas aren't exactly similar to Legolas or Elrond, and for good reasons.

>worst example in recent memory is the elf chick in Isekai Shoukodou
> muh elven superiority
>friend to animals
>"I wonder if these humans can even cook something vegan"
>she's a fucking ranger complete with bow and arrows

Oh everyone was "good" more or less at the beginning. Bright-eyed and pure in the wake of one renowned band or another accomplishing world-saving feats. So like you thousands of young boys and girls take up adventuring. Everything's great at first- there's no shortage of low-level threats and folk are still inclined to think fondly of well-armed bands of freebooters looking for bloody work. It takes a few years before your immediate area is more or less pacified, so now you have to look further afield.

Except you, your village and the dozen between you and a major city weren't the only ones to decide this course. Heroic deeds are becoming harder to find and even the more dangerous evils and perils of the world are coming under attack. 20 years later you're on the verge of 40 and you can't remember the first time you and your friends murdered another band in their sleep. Gold is your world, murder your passion and like every other "adventurer" you've become so starved for quests that any opportunity is something to kill or be killed for

>intelligent (and usually humanoid) race lives far longer than humans and is always apparently baffled by the fleeting nature of human life

Oh yeah. You don't hire adventurers unless you can't afford good mercenaries or what you want done falls outside what a reasonable man would

What if they eat sunlight, dirt, and water?

>muh realism
>realism meams that everyone is a fucking asshole
I hate DMs like you. What happened to heroes being heroes? Too old fashioned?

I like grizzled old adventurers who can retire proud they made the world a better place

the gold was only half the payment, knowing that someone got a rare medicinal herb eveb though normal mercs thought the danger to payment ratio wasn't favorable enough is the other

Sorry, I guess I just like settings that are well thought-out and make sense. I guess for me that includes humans (if they exist in the setting) acting like humans.

I mean IMO I guess it just seems unlikely that unwashed packs of heavily-armed roving vagabonds would be viewed particularly favorably, though I guess it's certainly fine if there's a good reason for it and YMMV obviously.

That's because you don't live in a world with dragons and owlbears.

I personally like PCs being heroes, which is why I also dislike fully organizes adventurers guilds or the like. Mercenaries should still be a thing, but often I prefer it when PCs are adventuring for their own reasons and just happen to be very, very good at it. Not chosen ones, as that gets tricky with a game where people can die easily, but having more of a motive to brave ancient ruins and save people over just money.

Because some of us fantasy. Others like you want fairy tales

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with a group of people going out to do something, or save someone, or accomplish some quest, without being part of an army or mercenary company and being sent by a ruling lord. I'm perfectly fine with that -- in fact, I love that. Ordinary people driven to go on some journey far from home on some desperate, dangerous, extraordinary quest. What I'm talking about is "wandering adventurer" as a recognized accepted profession that people are just okey-dokey with.

Yeah, i probably wouldn't have people classify them as that either, but probably go the more unrealistic route and have people just be generally more accepting of heavily armed wanderers. Probably helps if the people look at them more as individuals rather than as a group, as a wandering hedge knight, nomadic mage, and priest on a pilgrimage wouldn't draw any eyes on their own. I think it also helps if you make them get more famous more quickly so that people trust and hail them as heroes rather than adventurers.

>It takes decades of study and practical experience to master a field IRL, but a single wizard can do everything from cast fireballs to stop time to turn people into frogs

Just specialize, ffs.

Yeah, I'm pretty fine with that. I actually like that. Though I'd still tend to think that they should be viewed with serious suspicion at the very least. At the very least until or unless they build a reputation for themselves.

>archer can't shoot unless doing the jumping backwards pose
Oh, why, why did you have to say this. I was blissfuly ignorant of how many people draw this. Can't anyone just draw archers firing from a solid stationary position or from horseback?

Wizards have studied and practised for decades, that's why at chargen they roll a addition 2d6 for starting age.

It could function if there was specifically some higher magical power that kept the system fuctioning, say ancient tree spirits would reward them for their diligance with super berries.

But the fact you need to go 'wizard did it' to excuse it becomes an issue in an of itself.

>"But user, aren't they called rangers because they use ranged weapons?"
No, it's because they range, in that they are wanderers.

>reflexive need to have Cthulhu in the setting

Hate this and it plagues many a young wanna-be writer as well. I'm a huge Lovecraft fan but the sort of re-popularization of him has become a plague, everyone's shoving eldritch w/e into their world w/o any regard to w/e themes they're going for (if any), just bc it's grimdark.

Right, but I don't expect a theoretical physicist to scratch-build an internal combustion engine and I don't expect a neurosurgeon to hack into the Pentagon. Specialization and limitations make things more fun, not to mention balanceable.

>archer can't shoot
It's because your standard 'drawn bow' archer pose is really static which isn't really good when you wish to portray energy or motion in a picture whilst still showing them as an archer.
Jumping is an active pose, but the body isn't actively moving much by itself for a beat or so, giving a realistic time frame to draw and loose even though it's unrealistic.
Further, the backwards shoot pose opens the body up and can be used to demonstrate how limber and flexible a character is.
This combines well with the standard 'female archer' trope, and becomes a prefect excuse to draw more curves.

>Plant people that are super carnivores
You mean the Florans from Starbound

I think your problem stems from
>A)You trying to deconstruct/apply realism to "Adventurers" as a concept
and
>B) Trying to use "Adventurers" in a
world/setting that doesn't support them.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein

>archer can't shoot unless doing the jumping backwards pose
It's a pose that easily conveys a sense of dynamism.

Most humans lack the skill to do all of those things period, let alone actually be skilled at all of them.

I know why it is done, I don't dislike it purely because muh realism. It has become automated and unreflected in it's use and prevents other interesting fresh things from being done.

The frustrating thing is when everyone else has to specialize heavily if they don't want to be shit at all the things they want to do, but magicians get a free pass to do everything for no reason.

I could see that, but at the same time low level characters would look pretty weaksauce at a glance. I could see it coming up with the typical town guard, though in most cases I'd rather yse it as an excuse for them to be inspected by someone high ranking, like if the guards aren't sure what to do with the party mage so they call in the local priest or wizard for advice, who would be more adept at telling that the PC is a novice and could possibly have some work for them and the rest of the group.

Agreed. This is why personally the only Lovecraftian piece of media in recent times I enjoy is Bloodborne, since they were able to actually understand and implement the themes of Lovecraftian horror, give them a small interesting twist, and without the need to shove the Danes Cthullu mythos into everything.

Personally I'd say that if they're not unarmed wizards, priests, or nobility, they'd still look like cattle thieves or troublemakers to the average peasant.

Shoving in full Minecraft and eldritch horrors does reek of laziness. Especially if all they're used for is Coastal cultists with a fondness for tentacles. As though you couldn't accomplish the same with a a giant squid eating a fishing boat and the locals assuming it was some god hungry for tribute.

Is there a Railway Series RPG?

>Race of peaceful spacefaring tree people
>So incredibly peaceful that they will wipe your people from face of the galaxy for having any military within 1 quadrillion miles of their space

I suppose that might be a matter of me having settings be a bit more egalitarian in some regards, since I don't like to have peasants be totally ignorant and not know what magic is or anything like that. Sure, they might not appreciate the fighter walking around in full armor, but I doubt they'd raise a big fuss over it depending on how new to town he is. After all, when the wilderness is full of monsters, someone carrying weapons and wearing armor is a lot more common sense as opposed to real life where that meant you were either going to kill people or kill people killing people. Unless the group starts throwing a lot more money than their looks would suggest, I'd just as soon have them not accused of banditry. Or, if they are, have them asked to help once they deny it.

I prefer to go full rockstar, where adventurers live fast, die young and are beloved by all

often dysfunctional and dramatic, they nonetheless have adoring fans

most people end up being normal mercs because its less likely to end in disaster, but they all secretly dream of being an adventurer, where they get to be their own boss and be super strong, instead of answering to an unpleasant commander and soend their days standing guard

Fair enough, I guess the wilderness being full of dangerous monsters would be a decent reason for well-armed travelers to be a normal thing.

I did like this take on the concept

I think that's sort of where I have it, although I still wouldn't classify an 'adventurer' as something anyone aspires to be. Famous perhaps, but famous in the same way that a captain might dream of being a great general.

Yeah. It's still going to draw some looks, obviously, but if anything I think it'd draw more looks if someone came into town without any sort of weapon at all unless they looked absolutely dirt poor.

I feel like most adventurers are mercenaries, but hate being called that

like how you are mandated to call mercenaries contractors in real life to preven legal issues, but it doesnt capture their job
contractor sounds like you lay drywall, mercenary is closer to being a military service for hire

mercenary sounds like you are a a soldier for hire, who does soldier stuff like garrison duty or war, while adventurer makes you sound like you look for rare treasure or retrieve lost artifacts
and mercenaries are usually contractual, since its institution to institution, while adventurers are based on good faith and a handshake, since they work man to man

I would sooner call them Hunters a lot of the time before Mercenaries. To me, mercenaries only covers it if you want them to fight something, while Hunter feels like it gets across the idea that these are people with weapons who spend a lot of time away from town and bring back things for sale and trade. Granted, in that case it's less 'deer pelts' and more 'jewel encrusted skulls', but it's a similar principal.

apparently not

That was his point

Yep

Most humans? Speak for yourself m8.

And unrealism. Makes it seem like they don't know what the fuck they are doing

Practically no human, let alone any being, can do all those. Often for good reason.

>Races have specialties (e.g. Elves are stereotypically good archers, Dwarves tunnel all the time, etc.)
>That means every member of this race does that profession and that profession only

ffs how do dwarves feed themselves if half their population is in the mines and the other half is busy forging? I can even waive the giant pile of useless hammers being created with !!DWARVES!! but do the humans control the food supply? Is that why they're so powerful despite being shit at whatever everyone else does?

Maybe they just eat rocks and metal.

They mine for truffles

>horrifying implications
?

Being guilty of the occasional lovecraftian bit and always looking to improve, what are some common mistakes that I should avoid/some actual good themes/ideas?

Maybe some of them cultivate mushrooms
I agree that a full race having a specialization that they stick to is dumb, but leading industries (or perhaps stereotypes) make an OK bit of sense IMHO.

>makes humans act like malevolent baboons while claiming he makes them act like humans
lol ok

A good thing to keep in mind is that they are actually unbeatable, and so far above us that they rarely ever notice us. The addition of Cthulhu deities is often just an easy way to add something tougher for the heroes to beat, basically "not only is it evil, but it's super-duper evil + disgusting!"

Wasn't this a quote by a character who banged his mom?

>actually unbeatable
Oh good, that's what I was going for.
>so far above us that they rarely ever notice us
Is "occasionally pokes its terrifying equivalent of a head in just to watch the ant farm panic" OK?
Like how people squish ants and destroy their hills and don't feel at all bad about it.

One of my NPCs in a game I'm running is a high-level Old One Warlock, so I wanna get this right before eldritch shit hits the fan (if it even does, I roll for it)

Don't read much history, I take it?

That's a pretty good level to have them at, assuming a D&D like setting. Cthulu is weird stuff, and a lot of that unbeatability comes from a matter of scope. It's less like ants in an antfarm, since an ant might theoretically be able to get out of that antfarm and bite you, and a whole mess of them could ruin your day.

It'd be more akin to pictures or words on a sheet of paper. You can see them, watch them, interpret them, but as two-dimensional things they would only be able to catch a glimpse of your true scope. The most they can do is catch your attention for a few fleeting moments.

Personally, I prefer to avoid having anything on that scale of powerful in my own settings, so I went for the route of simply having any pacts with old ones be ancient, knowledgeable creatures from the depths of the oceans. They find the surface a curiosity, but few even know of them and fewer still would be able to do anything about it. They aren't invincible, but they operate on such a scale that fighting one would require a small army and several archmages at minimum, and that's ignoring the problems of waging a war at the bottom of the sea, assuming its alone.