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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MoogleEmpMog" data-source="post: 3582323" data-attributes="member: 22882">All of that is fine and well - if theme (in GNS terms, Narrativism) is a major goal for you and your group.  (Aspects of it also apply to a limited subset of Simulationism, but your main point is 100% Narrativist)In my experience, Narrativists are *extremely* thin on the ground, at least among people willing to play D&D; I run into hard-core Gamists and Simulationists (and Immersionists, and Cheetoists, to add the two major rpg.net additions to Forge theory) all the time, but almost never Narrativists.  Similarly, in online discussions of D&D, where you're dealing with the absolute most dedicated fans, Narrativist issues very rarely come up.SIMULATIONIST REASONS FOR TROPESIf you want to emulate specific existing media - the Lord of the Rings, say, or Final Fantasy 12 - you want to incorporate the trappings of that media.  Even if those trappings are NOT consistent or realistic (both of the two examples listed are pretty good about this, the prevalence of powerful monsters and their relation or lack thereof to the economic system of Ivalice in FF12 being the biggest disconnect in either) or are not relevant to whatever theme ends up developing out of your game based on that source, you still want them because they remind you of the source material.  And the source material is what you're simulating.  This is the most obvious reason to use standard tropes - the very thing you're simulating is defined by them.GAMIST REASONS FOR TROPESFor a gamist-supporting game, tropes are primarily useful to a) as a shorthand that helps you play the game more effectively and b) to speed up setup so you can get into the game.  Since setting information is mostly color informing the gameplay, you don't want to take too much time with it.  Gamists can get to the interesting tactical challenges faster if the setting is defined in broad strokes by standard tropes they already know.IMMERSIONIST REASONS FOR TROPESIt's very hard to immerse yourself in something you don't know anything about!  Using established tropes allows you to quickly get into the head of a character type, which you can then set about personalizing to taste.  A 'standard elf' is familiar enough that you can start climbing around inside his head and asking questions about him as a person, and they protraying and internalizing the answers.  Outside of standard tropes, you're practically developing (or learning) setting elements as you go along; an Immersionist wants to play a character, not a setting.CHEETOIST REASONS FOR TROPESBecause reading the GM's pages of setting description is boring, man!  The Cheetoist wants to roll some dice and pal around with friends.  Standard tropes allow more involved players to explain the game to him - "It's like Star Wars" or "It's like Lord of the Rings" - so he can get down to the important business of chilling out, eating cheetos and swapping Monty Python quotes.D&D is strongly geared toward Gamist support, its broad user base attracts a lot of Cheetoists (who, as a general rule, are not 'system matters' folks <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ), and it has a few words of Simulationist and Immersionist encouragement - almost all in the GM advice.  It has very little support for, or encouragement of, Narrativism, and thus rarely attracts hardcore Narrativists (who DO tend to be 'system matters' folks).Thus, giving a Narrativist argument against standard tropes in D&D (or the broader family of d20 games, most of which adopt similar stances) seems to me somewhat pointless.</blockquote>

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