Cheesy In-game things that make you want to scream.

[Fishbone]

Brains and Brawn
Its never really two equal or relatively mechanically similar leaders, is it? One is the beatstick, the other is the magical guy or sheister.
And there can never be equals, oh noneenonono!
The guy with the lower intelligence score is almost always second fiddle, too. One of them always has to be Medium Sized Bad Evil Guy.

 

[ruleslawyer]

What should that matter to the contents of a riddle that should be in another language?

Why is it another language? I thought the entire point was that we're supposed to assume, as we do in everything from Star Wars to Earthsea, that everything going on at the table (or on the page, or the screen) is really happening in the language of the fantasy universe, *including language play and thus language puzzles.*

 

[Slife]

I just prefer to avoid the situation by not using word puzzles.

Number puzzles, now that's something that's universal.

Neither have I. I usually go the extra mile and throw in an attack by ninjas after the pirate gold, though. Ninjas riding dinosaurs.

There's a build for a ninja pirate that rides a dinosaur. I think they might have worked cyborg zombie into the character later...

 

[MarauderX]

The one who got away

PCs figure out who has been committing murders and skip a bunch of dead-end clues to cut to the chase and find out who. We kill most of them -- except one. This one mysteriously outruns the monk, ranger and barbarian to hide in the crowds... of an empty street.

Murders pick up again, with last killer taunting the PCs at the murder scene.

Most vexing.

 

[Wormwood]

City Guards so powerful that they can kick the PC butts without breaking a sweat. Yet when a Bad Guy appears, the PCs are the city's Only Hope™.

Why don't they just hire four City Guards to kick evil's ass instead?

 

[MarauderX]

Ungrateful citizens

PCs save a divided city from external and internal threats. PCs hope to put a system of balances in place so facism doesn't happen again soon. Instead, the PCs don't have the CHA nor diplomacy to 'pull it off', and the town treats them ungratefully as outcasts. And then the townspeople don't understand when the PCs could care less when the town is threatened once more.

 

[Elemental]

The Ever-So-Convincing Disguise
Beings of fantastic evil or singular power trying to disguise themselves will always do so in the form of an 'innocent-seeming' child. Never an young adult, teenager, grown-up, old person, nothing. Always a child.

The only time you memorably encounter children is when they are somehow corrupted or something else in disguise. Unless they're secretly adventure-worthy, children exist solely as background elements.

Oh yes. I had a GM who put three cute, unshockable little girls with awesome powers in the same game. When we starting planning (completely in-character) for how to best kill them when they inevitably turned out to be Pure Evil, he scaled it back a bit. We also discussed disarming traps by throwing the child into them, since her DR 30/plot device would ensure she'd survive unharmed.

I find evil old people far scarier than the "demon child" cliche.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But players fall for it so easily. When someone offers you a dangerous job why in the world wouldn't you check up on the fellow. How many other folks has his sent into the Dread Swamp, never to return?

Heh, I like this variant. It makes good sense. I think I'll have someone try and off the players this way some time. (I recall this being used in non-fantasy movies, but never in fantasy to my recollection, nor in my D&D games.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

PCs save a divided city from external and internal threats. PCs hope to put a system of balances in place so facism doesn't happen again soon. Instead, the PCs don't have the CHA nor diplomacy to 'pull it off', and the town treats them ungratefully as outcasts. And then the townspeople don't understand when the PCs could care less when the town is threatened once more.

It's possible to do this realistically. The second half of "Lawrence of Arabia" is about how being heroic isn't enough for problems that can't just be solved by shooting or stabbing something.

 

[Kristivas]

To be fair, Robert E. Howard did this more than once, although he usually made it seem somewhat plausible (the undead emperor of an ancient empire is finally slain, so his palace collapses around his ears, etc.). He didn't have the equivalent of an orc chieftain's hut collapse when its owner died.

I'll be doing this in an upcoming game, in fact, so I've been thinking about this issue a bit.

Oh don't! Nooo! No no, a thousand times no! Maybe the place shakes every now and then when the PCs are scouring it, and maybe it'll collapse in the near future. The moment after the BBEG is killed just so the PCs can't get any treasure? Booo. Seriously, boo.

It's like going into Archaedes treasure room in Uldaman, looking at all of the gold on the ground, and not being able to touch a single coin.