D&D 5E (2014) Which played-out D&D trope needs to die?

[Laurefindel]

Tree-huggers hippie druids. I'm sick of "protect-the-trees!" and "nature is your friend!" druids.

Let them worship nature out of terror, harness the power of nature that they otherwise fear and/or despise, command animals as maniacal overlords.

 

[Umbran]

PC is a farmer with a large family. A blight resulted in a poor harvest. PC still needs to provide for his family that he loves but cannot presently feed.

Perfectly good background. However, not a perfectly good counter argument.

If you cannot put food on the table, your life is not "happy and stable".

 

[Scott Christian]

Anyone remember the old game Bard's Tale. They had you do a rat quest in the beginning. Your character was rolling his eyes. Then you went into the sewers and there was some giant rat the size of a dinosaur. Very cute, and at the time, funny and inventive take on the rat quest. Tropes will always be reinvented.

 

[Helldritch]

Hiya!

What trope, for me, needs to die. It's semi-recent, but pervasive. Multiple threads have been started over the years. Here it is: "Monsters listed as Evil aren't really evil...they're just misunderstood and haven't been given the opportunity to be good". Back when Drow were Chaotic Evil because it was infused into their very blood and souls....not because they just "had a rough upbringing". Kobolds, Orcs, Giants, etc...I much prefer them to be 99.999% irredeemably evil; one in a million individuals might not be evil.

I think that's the only "trope" (even if it's only 15 to 20'ish years old) that I think needs to die.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

This is the ultimately trope that needs to die. I fully agree with you.

During my 41 years of D&D I used many tropes and modifier them heavily. Here are a few that worked out quite well.
1) "You wake up on a stone slab, naked. It is cold, glacial even. You about the room where you are and notice that five others are in the same predicament that you are. The last thing you remember is that you died."

Players found out that they were lost souls that were somehow reincarnated by a powerful caster to accomplish a daunting task. But the caster died before awakening them. They found out clues and the campaign was set in the outer planes but they found out about that very late in the campaign.

2) "Once you were powerful. Kings and emperors trembled at your name. But that was before the tomb of Gargathak. The energy draining undeads failed to kill you, but they took almost all your life energies. You barely escaped with the final wish on the wizard' s ring. "

Players were between level 3 to 5 and had the equipment of 14th level characters. This was 1ed where level drain was a thing and these characters from that campaign were even used in one tournament. Campaign goal? Take their revenge against the horrors in the tomb of Gartak.

And many more tropes were used and modified. So to answer the OP question, no trope is old enough, as long as you tweak it to your players' satisfaction (and yours).

 

[embee]

Perfectly good background. However, not a perfectly good counter argument.

If you cannot put food on the table, your life is not "happy and stable".

But his marriage and family bonds very well may be. "I love my wife and kids and so I'm going to venture out to provide for them. I'm pretty handy with a scythe or a spear. Let me go take care of this goblin problem that is too small for traveling adventurers to care about."

Think of some of the crab fisherman on Deadliest Catch. Some are married, even happily. And, a few times a year, they risk their lives crab-fishing. They go from greenhorn (level 0/level 1) to deckhand (level 2) to veteran (level 3). These are guys who, during most of the year, might run a charter boat operation. And then during crabbing season, they set out to Alaska and risk drowning or dismemberment for a payday. And after that, they go back home.

 

[John R Davis]

I never tire of meeting in a tavern. Most of my great life moments have started that way!

 

[Yaarel]

1) "You wake up on a stone slab, naked. It is cold, glacial even. You about the room where you are and notice that five others are in the same predicament that you are. The last thing you remember is that you died."

Players found out that they were lost souls that were somehow reincarnated by a powerful caster to accomplish a daunting task. But the caster died before awakening them. They found out clues and the campaign was set in the outer planes but they found out about that very late in the campaign.

This "wake up naked" can be interesting, but it requires buy-in during session zero.

As a player, our team began the adventure in an analogous "in media res".

The problem was, we had all thought thru and written up our character including thinking carefully about what items we should pack. At that point, being taken away from our homes and appearing in water, in total darkness, without clothes or other items, FELT like inappropriate railroading.

This friend is a good DM who we trust. But still, I heads up would have been nice. "This adventure starts with no items, so dont bother writing any down on your character sheet." "Ok, no problem."

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Are we confusing tropes with cliches? Is there a difference? Is there a better word?

I believe tropes are very important and useful. They give us touchstones with which to understand or characters and the stories surrounding them.

I really don't have fun when I have to think too much about my character and how they should interact with the plot. That said, I don't want my game to be trite or cliched but I don't want it to be too heavy.

With that said, I have always believed this medium, this craft, this artform is capable of matching and exceeding that of cinema and fiction writing. Look to the heights that video games have scaled. However, interactive fiction is highly dependent on the consumer. Our stories are only going to be as good as we are ourselves.

Some of us will scale those heights in our games, but most of us aren't interested. But even then all games are fertile ground for tropes and cliches.

 

[Bill Zebub]

It just occurred to me that this whole thread is essentially all of us patting ourselves on the back by demonstrating our superiority over other (unspecified) gamers.

Maybe that's the RPG trope (ritual?) I'm most tired of.

 

[Yaarel]

Whether a trope is appealing depends on how straightjacketing it is. If alternatives or variants are possible, it can work as an option. But if the trope is obligatory, coercive, expected, or thoughtless, then it becomes unpalatable.