Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Um, why would I be confused about this? I think you're trying to assert that RPGs can't have their own genres, but this isn't true. D&D is a very strong genre, and the rules support it or you end up with mutiny (see 4e, which actually moved away from the baseline genre of D&D and received strong pushback for doing so).I'm trying to support your understanding of the term genre and what it describes, hoping you'll recognize category (roleplaying game) and genre (fantasy) are separate descriptive terms.
We apparently haven't, because your tropes argument rests entirely on the argument about Inspiration and how BIFTs work.Again, we've moved on from that discussion. We're talking about tropes now.
Or the criminal not seeking redemptions, or the folk hero succumbing to baser desires, or the noble ignoring everything to be a murderhobo. You're cherry picking, and basing your argument on the fact that these are somehow elevated or reinforced, but they aren't.The rules for personality and background contain the tropes: The criminal seeking redemption, the folk hero following her destiny, the noble obliged to his subjects, etc.
So? There are others, and these aren't necessary nor sufficient for D&D. Murderhoboing is far more integral to the definition of D&D than anything you've listed.These tropes are common in the genre of fantasy.
Can you engage those tropes, can your game feature them heavily? Absolutely! But this is that sprinkling on top, because your lawful good paladin will still solve most of their problems with combat, they will still start zero to go to hero, and they will still be absolutely expected to subsume any and all personal traits, bonds, goals, and wants to the party zeitgeist.
It offers no such rewards, by the very rules you're quoting. It offers a possibility of a rewards, but the DMG advice that pairs with this spends more time on other reward structures than it does on rewarding BIFTs.As I said previously, Chapter 4 is instructive. It outlines the common tropes and then offers to reward you for leaning into the cliché.
And it does offer tropes, but these aren't the ones that define the D&D genre, nor are they anywhere near all about alignment, nor are they even coherent with each other. You can use them to get to some tropes, but you have to be aware of that trope and working for it or it's just an accident, because Chapter 4, at best, offers you fragments you can puzzle together -- it certainly doesn't offer you whole concepts.