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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lin_fusan" data-source="post: 5379976" data-attributes="member: 37085">I think the real problem comes from when a trope is adopted into a story or campaign without realizing its context or origins. Using the OP's example of the haunted graveyard, I think the trope is being seen in the wrong way. The graveyard is a fixture of life, nearly universal if different in other cultures, and is assumed to be part of a town or village. Then the idea of the walking dead or gravediggers or the like comes around, and now it sounds like a spooky, gothic adventure. But after nearly 20 years of D&D, it has become such a staple, astute players and GMs start to deconstruct the idea and wonder, like OP has done, why anyone would want to have a graveyard when it is the main source of undead. So the solution is not to blindly take a trope, but to see how it fits in your campaign world. The OP has decided to choose the make the trope so ubiquitous, that even the NPCs are aware of it and adjust their culture accordingly by eliminating graveyards.Other people have suggested that it's not graveyards that are the problem, but it's the lack of consecration. So now you can keep your graveyards, but people or clerics now know a ritual that prevent undead from rising.By examining the origins or context of the trope, it gives you a place to add detail to fix what you might see as a plot hole, and the result is that you end up adding depth to your setting. So I say that a trope's fine, it's blindly adopting a trope that's the problem.</blockquote>

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