What tropes do you want to see more of in fantasy RPGs?

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

What it says on the tin: what setting/story elements do you feel don't get enough love in fantasy RPGs?

Personally, I think sapient non-humanoids as normal members of society is woefully underutilized. I know it's hard for beings without humanoid hands to interact with many combat and equipment systems out there, but I like having to think about how a new body plan interacts with the world.

 

[Ixal]

More detailed nobility, even when it goes into dramatized GoT territory.
In most fantasy RPGs nobility is just something which is there and on the niveau of Disney movies of having a king/queen with immediate family and thats it. If its relevant for the plot there is also 1 evil/good other noble but rarely more than that.

No families spanning multiple noble titles, no divide between nobility and common folk, etc.

 

[Argyle King]

•Classic Knight on horseback...

But with mechanics that don't make having a mount a liability instead of an asset. (Sometimes D&D handles this very poorly.)

•A weapon/item which grows in power as the hero learns how to connect with it (instead of magic items shops and disposable items).

 

[GMMichael]

What it says on the tin: what setting/story elements do you feel don't get enough love in fantasy RPGs?

This isn't what the tin says. Tropes get too much love.

What I would like to see become a trope: cool bards. Somehow, musicians get lots of respect everywhere BUT in medieval fantasy. My money's on the bard if it's him versus the wizard in a swordfight, and the bard is likely the most gallant member of the party, so let's pay some respect.

 

[aramis erak]

Tropes get too much love.

Agreed

What I would like to see become a trope: cool bards. Somehow, musicians get lots of respect everywhere BUT in medieval fantasy. My money's on the bard if it's him versus the wizard in a swordfight, and the bard is likely the most gallant member of the party, so let's pay some respect.

The problem is that, until the 19th C, we really don't have much about significant musicians outside the Troubadours - but those weren't adventurers. (The best documented Troubadour was Henry VIII, who played the local pubs during his royal progress - singing and playing the Tenor Blokflöte (Tenor Recorder)...Much to the annoyance of some of his courtiers.)

In the very late 18th C, we get "The Minstrel Boy" out of the Irish Rebellion a couple decades before, written by Thos. Moore.
And that sets a tone throughout the English Speaking world...
It is Moore's "Warrior-Bard" that is the major influence on the D&D Bards, not the historical Celtic ones, who were teachers and preachers, essentially the junior clergy (~deacons) of the druids (~priests), in training to become the higher clergy (Druids).

 

[Ixal]

Agreed

The problem is that, until the 19th C, we really don't have much about significant musicians outside the Troubadours - but those weren't adventurers. (The best documented Troubadour was Henry VIII, who played the local pubs during his royal progress - singing and playing the Tenor Blokflöte (Tenor Recorder)...Much to the annoyance of some of his courtiers.)

In the very late 18th C, we get "The Minstrel Boy" out of the Irish Rebellion a couple decades before, written by Thos. Moore.
And that sets a tone throughout the English Speaking world...
It is Moore's "Warrior-Bard" that is the major influence on the D&D Bards, not the historical Celtic ones, who were teachers and preachers, essentially the junior clergy (~deacons) of the druids (~priests), in training to become the higher clergy (Druids).

The problem with bards is that it mixes two different concepts. The minstrel and other forms of entertainers and drummers in a military formation who use sound and music to steer troop movement and demoralize enemies.
Its either, or. You can't have both. D&D tried and create a bard who has been the target of jokes for decades because of how silly that is.

 

[GMMichael]

. . . D&D tried and create a bard who has been the target of jokes for decades because of how silly that is.

Hence, the need for a trope.

The problem is that, until the 19th C, we really don't have much about significant musicians outside the Troubadours - but those weren't adventurers. . .

Neither was Bilbo. But I guess we still need a non-hobbit-thief trope, too.

. . . It is Moore's "Warrior-Bard" that is the major influence on the D&D Bards, not the historical Celtic ones, who were teachers and preachers, essentially the junior clergy (~deacons) of the druids (~priests), in training to become the higher clergy (Druids).

It doesn't help that D&D started as/from a war game. If everyone brings death to the table, but the bard brings a recorder, who gets the bad rep?

Teachers and preachers? Now I'd like to see another trope: bards-as-sages. "The ancient, dwarf crypt was sealed long ago, and cannot be entered, save by ghosts. The Bard of Eenwhirl has studied it at length. If you can safely interrupt her lecture-song, she might bestow great knowledge upon your helmed heads."

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

A better bard strikes me as like the Truenamer DD3e tried to do: their entire thing being knowing and saying/shouting/singing words that make the universe do stuff for them.

 

[schneeland]

• I would like to see more western monks (like Friar Tuck) / non-martial artists (there might be a certain overlap with a priest/cleric type.
• Generally, more (bigger) fantasy game with a folkloristic touch (only major game somewhat that comes to my mind which fits that mold would be Vaesen).
• A bit overlapping with the last one: archetypes that follow occult or historic magical traditions (witches, alchemists, shamans, etc.), incl. suitable mechanical representations
• Athletic body types that resemble power lifters more than body builders (generally, a wider variety of body types, but specifically this one)
• Female magic-users with reasonable clothing style (it's getting better, but I still see way too many illustrations that look like entries for a "magic-user or meretrix" questionnaire in the spirit of the old harlot table from AD&D's DMG)

 

[aramis erak]

Teachers and preachers? Now I'd like to see another trope: bards-as-sages. "The ancient, dwarf crypt was sealed long ago, and cannot be entered, save by ghosts. The Bard of Eenwhirl has studied it at length. If you can safely interrupt her lecture-song, she might bestow great knowledge upon your helmed heads."

Umm... probably not. That level of detail is probably the druids, not the bards. But, being primarily an oral-hymnody tradition, we don't have much. We have some of the hymns and tales written in the 6th to 8th C in Cornwall, Devon, and Wales. The written traditions of the Druids and Bards elsewhere are after replacement by Christianity. We have a few bits about them from the Roman invaders.
A bard probably had a repertoire of 20 to 100 songs, most over 10 minutes, used to teach the druidic faith, much as the skalds had with the oral sagas in the Norse cultures.
They're not academics; they'd not be doing research, but maintaining the local traditional stories and rituals, and seeing that the culture retains them shared.