Afrodyte said:
Racial determinism
Chosen One Syndrome
This one I loathe. Luke/Buffy/Pug/Shandril/etc. are the 'special' people, by birth or power or having unique stuff dropped in their laps, and everyone else rapidly becomes their support team / cheerleaders / sidekicks.
For a novel, it's okay, since Mary-Sue-ism is a valid writing choice. But for a game setting, it's just cheap to have some people be 'specialer' than other people. The setting might be feudal, but *we players are not.* We've mostly gotten past the notion that kings rule by divine fiat and the rest of us are way further down on the 'great chain of being,' and a game setting for modern people kinda needs to be accessible to people who've grown up with the notions of equality and fairness and self-determination, no matter how 'unrealistic' that makes the setting by medieval standards.
Epic
Authority worship
Eurocentric
Given the relative lack of success of Oriental Adventures / Al-Qadim / Maztica / Nyambe / Hamunaptra settings, it seems that Eurocentric game settings aren't going anywhere soon.
Sadly.
For my part, many magic-related cliches seem to come from the failure to think about the role magic plays in the world. I don't mind magic that's mysterious or based on concepts that make quantum physics look like Sesame Street (I honestly prefer this).
Some fantasy books go out of their way to make magic only accessible to a few rare 'special' people (and then, inevitably, make it show up willy-nilly in other races / cultures / whatever, who have inexplicably failed to utterly rule the world with their amazing advantage!), or have the most effective uses of magic be 'lost secrets' (Wheel of Time does this, all magic items were 'made by techniques now lost'), or magic has some awful consequences that prevent it from being used to make any significant change in the setting.
Eberron is one of the few settings I've seen that has integrated D&D style magic into the setting.
4th Edition appears to be going the route of removing spells or magical effects that have non-combat effects (which have been labeled 'boring'), and making Fighters / Rogues / Wizards all have equivalent abilities, so that 'magic' is reduced to 'hacking people to bits without a sword.'
But in cases when magic is analogous to technology, it's hard to imagine why people still have medieval standards of living. A corollary to that is the idea of magic and technology being innately incompatible. An idea I have is that rather than having magic undermining technology (or vice versa), magic allows technology to flourish to a point where nanotechnology looks primitive in comparison.
And that makes perfect sense. It was men of faith, who often had extremely non-scientific views of the world and it's creation, who discovered genetics and astronomy and refined mathematics, etc. The ancient alchemists, looking for ways to turn lead into gold (or, themselves into immortals, more commonly), ended up developing chemistry and materials science and, oh yeah, explosives.
In a world where a magician can use divination spells, the advancement of scientific knowledge could proceed at *ridiculous* speeds.
"Darn, my experiment failed again, I better cast Commune or Legend Lore or Contact Other Plane and consult with someone with an Intelligence of 40 or so, who will tell me that my theory is totally wrong and I should be doing X instead!"
When you can cast the right spell and *talk to Thor,* you can skip the whole tying a key to a kite to see if it picks up a charge from the stormy night sky. Lightning might be a mystery to *you,* but not for long. There's all sorts of elemental beings and genies and dragons and gods who can set you straight on why the fire comes down with the rain.
