Yeah, the site has crawled up its own ass but I had a kernel of an idea but as Recursions are usually spawned from fiction, either specific sources or general inspiration how about using some of the conventions and, well, tropes, cataloged on the tvtropes site as inspiration or even effective laws for different recursions. These may or may not have mechanical impact but would be just as real as the laws of physics in a particular Recursion. Perhaps a high end ability might allow Quickened character to side step them temporarily or even impose new or different ones on alien Recursions (or the Prime Matter universe to get really odd).

Thoughts?

Quote from: Nexus;884527Thoughts?

Doable. It's actually quite good idea.

The Strange isn't one of my most favorite games, but I've been playing AMBER RPG in the past and now I sometimes have the opportunity to play Lords of Gossamer & Shadows which follows similar pattern of multi-level setting like The Strange does. I've been using similar sites for source of inspiration for quick "world" generation, so I see no reason why not put TV Tropes into action.

I think the best inspiration TVtropes could give would be the TVtropes inversion, where all the lampshades were hanging, people go inside to avoid the Cliche Storms and nothing has a real name just its trope designation.

The problem is, because TVtropes claims to be relevant to everything in all of life, it's actually the biggest incursion, all the other incursions feed it and give it energy, so you can get caught in a never-ending series of TVtropes sub-inversions.

In fact, the only way to leave the TVtropes inversion is to Just Ignore It, because TVTropes is definitely an Attention Whore that requires Clap If Your Hands If You Believe.  If the PCs are successful, they find out it was All Just A Dream, and hopefully not Or Was It a Dream? because that would mean All Recursions Are TVTropes*, which cannot be because All Settings Are Really Cthulhu*.

*Those aren't actual defined tropes but they should be.

Dangerously formulaic, prone to killing wonder.

A single trope as seed at most, but from there is a slippery slope into ouroboros — as CRKrueger just elaborated. There's a looser alchemy at work in Recursion, tapping into the mythopoetic and everyday leaking into another, shaping each other. TVTropes is strict micro-categorization of all-within-all into pontificating, pedantic, bumper-sticker definitions.

Quote from: Nexus;884527Thoughts?

btw...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Settings

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php

Expanding on my original post, my idea was to use the Trope descriptions more as guidelines and basis for special rules that reflect the fiction influenced reality in each of them. More so than basing an entire Recursion on one trope, though there are some that could work for that purpose.

If anyone is familiar with Torg it would be similar to the concept of World Laws from in that game. Some Recursions figurative "laws of physics" enforce some genre and narrative convention by nature so PC might have to adapt their world views while there but can also exploit their innate genre savvy to varying degrees.

Hmm, OK... I just now worry about hyperventilating canon nerdrage now. Like a group riffing on Monty Python or the Family Guy it'll quickly get incestuous with reference and boil out anyone vaguely interested in exploring. Why bother when chuckles in the corner got all the in-jokes and anticipates all the rest (and will likely lose his shit when it doesn't follow 'true to form')?

At some point you got to wrest the world from everyone else and make it yours. It's why metagames suck a lot of less resistant tables down into a suck spiral because the community trope expectations begin to veto actual play. I just think tapping into that community trope expectations pool directly is a short circuit trap to that suck spiral for most unsuspecting Softy GM hands.

But perhaps your viking horn hat can save you? What sort of framework example did you have in mind?

Not sure about The Strange, but when I was trying to get into FATE, I thought TVTropes might be a neat source of Aspects.

Quote from: Opaopajr;884946Hmm, OK... I just now worry about hyperventilating canon nerdrage now. Like a group riffing on Monty Python or the Family Guy it'll quickly get incestuous with reference and boil out anyone vaguely interested in exploring. Why bother when chuckles in the corner got all the in-jokes and anticipates all the rest (and will likely lose his shit when it doesn't follow 'true to form')?

At some point you got to wrest the world from everyone else and make it yours. It's why metagames suck a lot of less resistant tables down into a suck spiral because the community trope expectations begin to veto actual play. I just think tapping into that community trope expectations pool directly is a short circuit trap to that suck spiral for most unsuspecting Softy GM hands.

But perhaps your viking horn hat can save you? What sort of framework example did you have in mind?

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Quote from: Nexus;884954I have no idea what you are talking about.

You are asking to use TVTropes as help building the World Laws of a Recursion. I myself have seen nerds in person rattle off anime or comic book tropes from that website deeper and deeper into a black hole of self-referentiality. The end result of their fevered volley of game ideas was a pitch so boring naught but attention could escape.

What makes you think whatever you write with this tool won't devolve directly into this sort of trivia game at your table?

Quote from: The Butcher;884947Not sure about The Strange, but when I was trying to get into FATE, I thought TVTropes might be a neat source of Aspects.

This is quite an idea.

I admit, I've been using similar sources for Traits in Over the Edge long before FATE, with its "so original" idea of Aspects was conceived.

Quote from: Opaopajr;884960You are asking to use TVTropes as help building the World Laws of a Recursion. I myself have seen nerds in person rattle off anime or comic book tropes from that website deeper and deeper into a black hole of self-referentiality. The end result of their fevered volley of game ideas was a pitch so boring naught but attention could escape.

What makes you think whatever you write with this tool won't devolve directly into this sort of trivia game at your table?

The same thing that keeps our Star Wars games from doing it or D and D games from devolving into endless Order of the Stick jokes.

Don't play with assholes with no self control. Some humor is fine, particularly in a weird setting like this but there's a time and place.  

It hasn't happened with any other genre based game I've played with and it didn't happen when I played Torg which has a similar set up.

I don't see much point of using Recursions (pocket universes based on fiction) if they don't act like the fiction they're based on to some degree. For me, that's part of the game's charm.

The issue I see with using TVTropes is that most settings has multitudes of tropes that they use.  Several at once.

So unless you're restricting your settings to a single trope, which works well for a short gag series, unless you want to run it into the ground, you're settings will need several tropes to use, whether to lampshade or use straight up.

Which isn't using the site as I'm sure you're thinking, but rather using the tropes to build a setting of choice.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;885054The issue I see with using TVTropes is that most settings has multitudes of tropes that they use.  Several at once.

So unless you're restricting your settings to a single trope, which works well for a short gag series, unless you want to run it into the ground, you're settings will need several tropes to use, whether to lampshade or use straight up.

Which isn't using the site as I'm sure you're thinking, but rather using the tropes to build a setting of choice.

Good thoughts, thanks

My idea was to focus on the definitive tropes for whatever genre the Recursion was seeded from, the major ones that make the genre distinct from other types of stories as its figurative laws of physics to better define it. Recursions based on specific fictional works could also draw on tropes that are specific to them and the site would be a great help there too.

I don't think you really could use all the tropes involved. Some just aren't suitable by being largely or purely meta for instance or just passing instances in the stories they appear in. And honestly TvTropes really reaches for examples and new "tropes" much of the time. So a gm would have to pick and chose their Recursions Trope Laws.

To go back to Torg, the World Laws didn't try to capture everything about a Cosm just the broad strokes that gave them their unique flavor. The Axioms helped and the Strange's version of them is much simpler though.

Without actually  having read The Strange, it does sound like a sound and clever idea to me (from what I know of the gist of it).