What traditional fantasy conventions are you tired of?

[Galethorn]

Like many, I've done away with the traditional D&D conventions, moreso than fantasy in general, so, here are the ones I don't like, and have dealt with in my Grim Tales fantasy campaign;

• Magic as a crutch
  IMC, relying on magic is a very bad idea, unless you're relying on it to not be a factor in a given situation.
  
• A subrace of elf for every day of the week
  IMC, there's only two kinds of elves, and one of them is more an amalgamation of humans, fey, and elves; there's only one kind of dwarf, no 'exotic because they're weird' weapons, and the different human cultures just count as 'humans' in the rules. There's only three kinds of living, sentient (though not free-willed) 'evil humanoids' (goblins, orcs, and trolls), and they're all essentially from the same progenitor race. As for the 'free' races, there's only six; Human, Elf, Erynedhil (elf-human-fey race), Dwarf, Giant (about the size of 'classic' D&D half-giants; their mythology says they were originally dwarves), and Gnomes (previously known as elflings; they're like small, round wood-elves, basically). Humans make up about 95% of the world's population, with dwarves at about 2%, erynedhil at 1%, elves at 1%, gnomes at 1%, and giants being all but gone.
  
• The Magic Divide
  A factor that's been stated before, I thought I should point out how I've changed the 'default' way of dealing with this;
  
  Magic is its own plane of reality; a mirror to the living world. There's three ways to use magic; academic, instinctive, and innate.
  
  Academic (int-based) magic is generally subtle, and covers abjuration, divination, enchantment, and illusion, as well as only going up to level 3 spells; new spells are generally learned from books/teachers, unless one is very skilled at research in their own right. The magic itself involves a lot of complex verbal components. Most academic casters are scholars and lore-masters, which would include the more scholarly priests, as well as nobles and merchants who want more in life than simple wealth and power. These are by far the most common spellcasters among humans, but they're only about as common and influential as the monks who performed basic science in medieval europe.
  
  Instinctive (wis-based) magic is the 'spiritual' (i.e. subconcious) understanding of the nature of magic, and covers all existing types of spells; new spells are learned through intense introspection/meditation. 'Typical' instinctive casters would include shamans/wise-(wo?)men/'druids', elven spellcasters (in general), and your gandalf-like characters ('more than human' types with a knowledge or meddling fetish). This kind of magic is most common among elves and their fey cousins, but some humans (maybe four or five in the world) are capable of this kind of magic. However, it was much more common in the earlier ages of the world.
  
  Innate (cha-based, for lack of a true 'inner strength' stat) magic is based on the individual 'slipping' partly into the world of magic. Innate magic covers all levels of spells, and all but the most complicated or 'cerebral' types, such as divinations, illusions, and so forth. Innate casters, through some strange twist of ancestry or fate, are closer to the world of magic than most, and simply have 'accidents' with magic at a certain age, and sometimes they learn how to 'bridge the gap between the worlds' on purpose. This kind of magic is amazingly rare, and is equally common among the various races, though that isn't saying a lot; probably 1-in-10,000 people actually have this gift, and only about one in every ten of them ever have their power manifest, and only one of every ten of them learn to use their powers.
  
• Ye Corner Magick Shoppe
  Among humans, magic items simply aren't made. There are some special materials, which make for more effective arms and armor, and there is such a thing as alchemy, but neither is truly magical in nature. In the distant past (yeah, I know, Golden Age of Heroes Syndrome), a few magic items were made, but most of the owners of those surviving know them to be little more well-crafted.
  
• Fiendish Insectoid half-red-dragon/half-troll Ninjas
  The strangest creature IMC is most likely the Ûnglar (singular 'Ûngla'), which (biologically) is a very, very large, very, very mean, very, very fast cross between a boar, a bull, a horse, and an elephant. They don't breathe fire, they're as dumb as horses, and they don't fly. Now, that's not saying orcs, trolls, and goblins aren't strange, but when it comes right down to it, they're just three sizes of 'humanoid minion' made in a very evil mold, whereas the Ûnglar are very different from anything that currently lives on the earth (however, it's pretty similar to some creatures that actually have lived in perhistoric times). I guess you could rank the few undead as being stranger, but that'd be a tossup.
  
• Did I mention endless variety? Well, I don't like the endless variety of monsters either.
  I'll go ahead and list all the 'monsters' IMC that we don't/probably didn't ever have in some form on earth; Ûnglar, orcs (think of hobgoblins instead if 'orc' means 'green, tusked, pig-nosed brute' to you), trolls (think of the trolls in LOTR if 'gangly, fleshy-dreadlocked, regenerating green guy' is the first thing that comes to mind), goblins, larger versions of various creatures (such as 'giant' eagles which are just normal eagles advanced to medium-size), and four kinds of undead ('wronged spirits', animated corpses, and your basic 'spirit that outlived its body by sheer force of will/dark magic'). That's it. Aside from some very fierce predators which did actually exist, those are all the different kinds of monsters.
  
• Inane Exclaimations
  By Clangeddin's twin axes! Great Gond's Goat! By Torm's Teeth!
  
  I don't think I need to explain it any more than that. Now, good exclaimations; I like those.

Now, all that said, these are the conventions I like;

• Elves as a fading race of wise nature-dwellers, who like bows
  I don't care if the archetype is tired and overused; I like it. What I don't like is when people try to keep the appeal by changing them in every way 'except for __'. If you're going to have skinny forest dwellers with pointy ears and long lives, nothing will irk me more than calling them 'Aelflarn' or the like. If you make a race of elves that's just like 'standard' elves in every way, except they live underwater, that's even worse. Now, I'm sure I could think of ways to make matters even worse than that (like making them live underground, be evil, and have a name that spawns disagreements over pronunciation to this day), but I'm supposed to be talking about things I like.
  
• Dwarves as craftsmen and warriors who live under mountains
  Dwarves are cool too, and my dwarf-loving players would sooner LARP with real swords than accept the loss of their beloved shin-choppers.
  
• (a) Golden Age(s) Long Passed
  If things are as good as they've ever been, then what is there to aspire to? Sure, you can have technological progress, but if society is the best it's ever been, it's kind of hard to have epic struggles other than "prevent Osdnaos from ending the golden age!".
  
• A 'Feudal Europe' Socioeconomic System
  Now, I'm not saying I don't like other forms of society, but 'feudal europe' is the only one that completes the atmosphere I like so much. If the 'Kingdom of the Sun' was actually the 'People's Republic of the Sun', it just wouldn't be the same.

Ok, that's it. I've been typing this up for far too long...
<Galethorn begins casting Submit Reply defensively...>

 

[Brennin Magalus]

By the way, I'm 1/8 Portuguese as well (my grandmother's maiden name was Henriques); maybe we're related!

Hmmm. Sounds like we should fuse together to form a Super Saiyan Portugee!

 

[JVisgaitis]

This has been a really great thread and every time I see these issues raised, I feel a need to rear my ugly head. I should preface this with the fact that I like typical fantasy, but after playing for 20 some odd years its getting old to me.

I can go on and on forever about what I dislike about the typical conventions. Hell our entire product line, and our whole company for that matter, was formed out of resistance to atypical D&D games. These are my 3 major areas.

1. Typical Races.
I know dwarves live underground and are master craftsmen and I know elves are aloof and magical in nature. Yawn. Give me new races to play with. In our setting we have all original races which we further define giving them unique racial feats. Also, no subraces. If its a common enough mating of two species, it forms its own race with its own traits.

2. Hokey Religions.
Every god having established clergy and churches and the gods grant them spells? Drives me nuts. We canned all of this and with it the cleric as well. Why do you need a class specifically designed for priests? I'm tired of every priest of a religion being a prophet with extraordinary powers. In our world a priest is an average Joe. We also reworked religion and created a series of faiths that you worship. Through your faith, you can perform rituals to gain additional abilities.

3. England/Old Earth
I went to college and I had history classes which doesn't translate to I want to game in those places. Do I always need to play in a renaissance inspired setting? This was our biggest change. No earth at all. An entirely new world with new flora and fauna. A typical walk in the park turns into something special that's not so typical.

When I said I can talk forever I wasn't kidding. Check out our Design Diary and read why I decided to approach Violet Dawn, our campaign setting, from a unique perspective.

 

[David Howery]

Hmmm.... I can't say I'm tired of any of the conventions of D&D, but I weary quickly of the endless additions... too many subraces, too many oddball weapons, WAY too many magic items and spells that will be useful maybe once in an adventurer's existence. Too many monsters, although the endless variety of Outsider types don't bother me... you'd expect the Outer Planes to be full of bizarre critters. When I last DMd a D&D group, I did my damndest to pare down the game to the basics... few subclasses or kits allowed, almost no subraces (I kept the drow because they made cool enemies, but didn't allow them to be PCs), and banished most of the optional books.
About the only convention I find bothersome is the notion of polytheism with dozens of gods of equal ranks. From what I know of most polytheistic cultures, they had one deity that was supreme over the others, although he might be aloof from the mortal world. The other gods were always lesser beings who took a more active role in the world, for better or worse. I always adjusted the deities of whatever world I was running to reflect this: one greater god, several intermediate gods, and scads of lesser and demi-gods.

 

[Pants]

I'm not sure if I'm really sick of any of the standard D&D tropes. I think that a lot of mileage can be gotten out of the core races as long the treatment they get isn't like 'FR Gnomes, but with TANKS' or something equally ludicrous. Some may say that giving gnomes/elves/dwarves/etc. a radically different spin is just weird for weird sakes, but how is that any different than designing an equally weird NEW race?
Take for instance, China Mieville and his cactus people. I enjoy Mieville, but I've often derided him for some of his really, really weird ideas. They may be unique ideas that no one has ever thought of before, but that doesn't keep them from being weird.

I try to think of myself as a fairly open-minded gamer. I'll play in a high magic or a low magic world. I'll play in FR, Eberron, Midnight, Call of Cthulhu, d20 Modern, Joshua Dyal's campaign, Iron Kingdoms, Scarred Lands, Arcana Unearthed, pretty much anything... except SpellJammer. So for me, it's all about the presentation and if the setting or game jumps out at me and screams "COOL."

Well, with that bit of ranting out of the way, here are the tropes that I am tired of:
- Subraces - I'm sick of them. I don't care which race it is a subrace of, I'm just sick of them in general. Then again, I'm all for making the core races MUCH more generic than they currently are. My design philosophy is, if it ain't in the blood, don't put it in the race.
Why are ALL elves good with rapiers, longbows, and longswords? Why do all dwarves get bonuses for fighting goblins and giants? These abilities work MUCH better as regional feats and make adapting these races into different worlds (where goblins don't exist or are *gasp* friends to dwarves!) much easier.
- Vancian Magic - I can live with this, but I'm sure there are better ways of handling magic.

 

[Templetroll]

1. I made the primary human religion Our Lady of the One True Way. Clerics could be any alignment except N/N and the church, as an entity had problems with the druidic faiths. There were two, a celtic style god in the northern lands and a female goddess based on Ki from the Legends and Lore book, Babylonian I think it was. The church of OLotOTW was trying to incorporate the female goddess in as an aspect of Our Lady and this meant they had to try and quash the celtic faith. The players were a bit annoyed that they couldn't tell which clerics they dealt with might be 'evil' or not; but I liked that bit of uncertainty. Naturally, they ended up with a few celtic druid PCs.

I also made it that alignment language meant you would have a discussion with someone and the terms they used tended to reveal something about their view of the goddess; it was minor but annoying and considered rude to speak like that to those you did not know.

2. I had one ancient empire that controlled things way back when and an magic event that caused it's collapse and provided reason for so many magic items to be scattered so widely. Also, anything in the MM that said a creature was created by foul experiments, a mad godling or insane wizard were all the fault of the Emperor.


[edit] Some folks in Delaware had a game system called Melanda and they ran events with it at local conventions. They had a race called B'norcas. This race ranged in size from small through to large and once in a while a really big B'norca. That was cool with there not being any racial difference for the main bad guys.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I'm tired of worlds where the sexes are the same. From ability scores to career paths, D&D and most settings consider men and women to be identical.

I'm tired of this gender blending not because it's politically correct (it is), and not because it's unrealistic (it is), but because it's boring! I don't want to live in a world where men and women are the same, and I don't want to game in one either. The differences between the sexes are delightful. I want those differences in the game!

(NB This does not preclude women warriors. I love Buffy and Xena, and you can still have them in D&D even if the men have higher average strength scores. You can have them because of another fantasy convention: magic.)

 

[Incenjucar]

The problem there, Ycore, with humans and near-humans, is that it's hard to escape bias. It also gets a little silly, because much of the inequality today probably wouldn't have occured in that manner if magic actually existed. Women are going to have fewer problems if they can more easily survive childbirth, etc.

You also have the fact that there are -real, living- human cultures where the males and females have opposite roles when compared to typical Western Society. Women are, in fact, the burly warriors of the tribe, while men stay home and gab and gossip and gather roots and such.

 

[Sejs]

I'm tired of this gender blending

I have a cousin who's a gender blender. He dresses like a women if she were dressing the same was as a man.

 

[DragonLancer]

The only aspect of typical D&D that I don't like is how Outsiders are portrayed.

Instead of Outsiders being creatures of spiritual nature (as Demons and Angels are seen in our own religions) they are instead just shown as another race - nothing special.