Fantasy tropes, sci-fi tropes, etc. Do you like 'subverted' expectations, like the dragon who abducts the princess is actually a good guy trying to save her from something? Or play it straight, the dragon is a bad guy who likes to eat princesses?
What are your favorite fictional tropes in RPGS, and your least favorite?

I like tropes, but a cleverly subverted trope can be amusing.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106453Fantasy tropes, sci-fi tropes, etc. Do you like 'subverted' expectations, like the dragon who abducts the princess is actually a good guy trying to save her from something? Or play it straight, the dragon is a bad guy who likes to eat princesses?
What are your favorite fictional tropes in RPGS, and your least favorite?

I like tropes, but a cleverly subverted trope can be amusing.

Tropes are tropes for a reason. Inverting them well is harder than it looks, and should be attempted sparingly.

I like tropes, and I think using tropes as a starting point is a generally solid plan for building campaigns/story/subplot ideas if something isn't already jumping out at you.

I often like tropes with a twist, or maybe that's just adding some detail to the trope -- the holy knight who is fighting some inner/personal demonic possession. I think the Dresden Files is a pretty good example of this, or of more complete "trope subversion".

I used to really like somewhat subverted tropes, as being kind of a "big twist" thing. Or maybe inverted is more like it. But I've soured on that recently (can't imagine why ).

I think the trick to good "subversion" is something like remaining true to the spirit or the lesson of the trope, even while changing up the details. The dragon who abducts the princess to save her from something is still an example of values like "strong protecting the weak" and "defending other beings is noble", for example, with different individuals in the roles. Ditto if it were a dragon abducting a young prince, or even something like a princess receiving a prophesy that (just making something up here) a protector dragon that resides in her kingdom is going to be attacked by corrupting forces and turned to evil, so she goes to conceal, defend, and save the dragon. That could be cool.

I guess I'd sum it up by 1) tropes are fun starting points and side angles, but don't make them everything, 2) twists on tropes are fun as long as there is some kernel of value that echoes the original trope and isn't just narcissism and nihilism.

I'm not a fan of trope subversion unless its done very well. Its often hard enough to emulate the tropes properly so they come across as powerful and fresh instead of overdone tripe.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106453Fantasy tropes, sci-fi tropes, etc. Do you like 'subverted' expectations, like the dragon who abducts the princess is actually a good guy trying to save her from something? Or play it straight, the dragon is a bad guy who likes to eat princesses?
What are your favorite fictional tropes in RPGS, and your least favorite?

I like tropes, but a cleverly subverted trope can be amusing.

Tropes are great for providing a baseline and make the game more engrossing to the Players. The trick is to to set their expectations with tropes and then throw in just one or two subverted tropes to show that the adventure will not go like everything that has been done before.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1106453How fond are you of tropes?

I don't use tropes or memes. Not a fan.

Fuck'em.

Just another word for cliche.

Quote from: RandyB;1106455Tropes are tropes for a reason. Inverting them well is harder than it looks, and should be attempted sparingly.

Yes.  Tropes with some nuance threaded through them is a better route for variation.

I get the impression that whenever a plot device or anything at all is done on TV or another medium, someone writes it up on TVtropes and voila, it's a thing. I don't really get it.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1106496I get the impression that whenever a plot device or anything at all is done on TV or another medium, someone writes it up on TVtropes and voila, it's a thing. I don't really get it.

There is a cultural pattern. Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, and all that.
I agree that TVtropes tends to drive the topic into the ground, and call every storytelling device a trope.

I like genre/setting elements; it avoids a lot of explaining so the game can get going. I dislike starting from tropes to create an adventure; they're OK if they describe what happened after the fact or follow from the setting. Subverting tropes that arise from the setting details just makes the setting chaotic.

Tropes can die in a fire.

I like tropes, but...

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1106460I think the trick to good "subversion" is something like remaining true to the spirit or the lesson of the trope, even while changing up the details. The dragon who abducts the princess to save her from something is still an example of values like "strong protecting the weak" and "defending other beings is noble", for example, with different individuals in the roles. Ditto if it were a dragon abducting a young prince, or even something like a princess receiving a prophesy that (just making something up here) a protector dragon that resides in her kingdom is going to be attacked by corrupting forces and turned to evil, so she goes to conceal, defend, and save the dragon. That could be cool.

I guess I'd sum it up by 1) tropes are fun starting points and side angles, but don't make them everything, 2) twists on tropes are fun as long as there is some kernel of value that echoes the original trope and isn't just narcissism and nihilism.

This is great too (and well said!).

I do keep half an eye out for when a trope becomes a cliche, eg in my Primeval Thule game over 39 sessions there have been a lot of damsels in need of rescuing from being sacrificed by an evil cult, so I'll be somewhat wary to write another one in. But I'm more likely to put a twist on a trope than subvert it entirely; I reckon the Evil Vizier IMC who replaced the previous (annoying, crotchety, Neutral) sadly-deceased Vizier is just as Evil as everyone thinks, but that doesn't necessarily mean there'll ever be a scripted Downfall moment, he could quite easily stay in power right to the end of the campaign as he manipulates others to ensure his own position, without any scripted obvious screw-ups.

I'm ambivalent about tropes. They easily lead to boring cliche. Intentional subverting of tropes is often even worse. It easily leads to setting incoherence. It can also lead incoherent party conflict where some players try working with the trope while some subvert it. At least one group is going to end up ruining the fun for the other group. I generally prefer to just have the characters and societies in the setting act like they act.

So dragons have some set of behaviors that is, more or less, draconic. Hoarding or guarding treasures is a common behavior. Eating is probably another. The dragon is probably just as happy to eat cattle as damosels, but maybe the superstitious people who live not far from the dragon think that dragons find dainty, virgin flesh especially tasty so they stake out virgins as sacrifices to try and fend off the dragon. And dragons are probably just a bit lazy (helps explain those long naps) and so it will eat the sacrifices set out for it rather than going to the effort of spotting and chasing down a cow. Perhaps, like some man-eating tigers, some dragons do develop a taste for the dainty flesh of virgin sacrifices. But I don't see the situation as replicating or trying to replicate tropes.And the PCs can believe whatever they want about the situation or they can go try to do some research on local history or the behaviors of dragons.

How do you feel about prepositions? Wrenches? The concept of a genre? That's how I feel about tropes. They're tools and convenient ways to organize, describe, and convey material, that's all. They're not something to like or dislike, because they're essential and wide-ranging. It's how they're used and which ones you focus on that define whether they're good or bad. Any discussion of hating or loving tropes in general is based on cherry-picking a limited set of tropes and pretending that's all of them. The reason for that is because we consume media at more than the conscious level, and most things that qualify as tropes pass under our threshold of perception, or immersion. We tend to only notice the ones we consciously look for, or those are specifically called out.

In RPGs, they're particularly useful devices, because it's the GM's responsibility to convey an entire world and scenario almost entirely though conversation. We don't have grand panoramas on screen, a cast of actors who wear social cues written large and evident across their faces, predetermined scripts that can say exactly what we want them to say, or even pages- or chapters-long infodumps (without players revolting). Talking is dynamic and fluid, but it has very limited bandwidth. So we fall on tropes, and those conventions act as shortcuts that allow us to convey all kinds of information, from setting groundrules to behavioral expectations, by leaning on those shared, preexisting assumptions