D&D 5E Which played-out D&D trope needs to die?

[a.everett1287]

It just occurred to me that this whole thread is essentially all of us patting ourselves on the back by demonstrating our superiority over other (unspecified) gamers.

Maybe that's the RPG trope (ritual?) I'm most tired of.

Yup

 

[Laurefindel]

It just occurred to me that this whole thread is essentially all of us patting ourselves on the back by demonstrating our superiority over other (unspecified) gamers.

Maybe that's the RPG trope (ritual?) I'm most tired of.

Yes, yes. You are absolutely right. Good job (pat on back)

But seriously, yeah. Our ego often gets the best (or worse?) of us, even we we try not to be elitist.

 

[Umbran]

But his marriage and family bonds very well may be.

Oi. Quibbling over definitions. I dunno if it is fair to present such an argument before working definitions out beforehand.

Stable happy relationships are not stable happy home life. You aren't happy in your home life if you aren't feeding your kids, or you are about to lose said home. For this, we can give you the quote: "Tweedly-dee! I just got the eviction notice, and my kids are dying of malnutrition, but we are soooo happppeeeyyyy!" - said by nobody, ever.

And economic stress is the most common cause of divorce. Economic instability is a leading indicator ("leading" not as in "top", but as in "this red light flashes before that one") of relationship instability.

 

[ph0rk]

If you cannot put food on the table, your life is not "happy and stable".

Perhaps, but some people just get bored and want a different life.

And 18-20somethings think they can't/won't ever die, so adventuring doesn't seem that crazy a career path.

In fact, they might come from the most happy, stable, boring family ever, and turning to adventuring is a form of rebellion.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps, but some people just get bored and want a different life.

If you are bored, you aren't very happy, so again, this seems to fail the basic point.

 

[ph0rk]

If you are bored, you aren't very happy, so again, this seems to fail the basic point.

I think you can be bored without having the background of a tortured soul, unless you are defining happy as "all material and existential/metaphysical needs met", and no, one in such a state wouldn't do anything, much less adventure, without being forced.

But even there, it could simply be that they had attained enlightenment atop a mountain peak, until a butterfly of the wrong shape landed on their knee. Thus, nirvana denied and they must go out into the world.

And you don't have to be distinctly not-happy to get wanderlust.

 

[Mercurius]

I think someone said some variant of this early on, but the trope that certain aspects of D&D need to go because I don't like them.

While we're at it, the trope that D&D must reflect the values and morals of the real world, rather than, I don't know, a fantasy world of imagination that is beholden to its own internal logic.

 

[Faolyn]

Tropes exist for a reason. It's clumsily trying to subvert tropes that is likely to cause a narrative problem.


This is a case in point. If someone has a stable happy homelife it doesn't make much sense for them to throw it all away and become an adventurer.

Escaping abusive parents or parental expectations; adventuring is seen as a rite of passage among their people; PC was bored in their quaint little village and decided to leave to see the world: PC got kicked out of home or exiled from their homeland (for stealing everything in sight, for making a pact with an eldritch entity for magic, or becoming a sorcerer, for accidentally stabbing someone while practicing with the blade, etc.); parents are alive but missing (maybe they were adventurers too!) and the PC is trying to find them; parents are living under the thumb of the BBEG and the PC escaped in order to find out how to defeat it...

 

[Bill Zebub]

How about a happy, well-adjusted family like in the Incredibles, except instead of fighting crime as family they kill monsters and take their stuff? "The family that slays together, stays together."

 

[a.everett1287]

How about a happy, well-adjusted family like in the Incredibles, except instead of fighting crime as family they kill monsters and take their stuff? "The family that slays together, stays together."

This is basically Texas Chainsaw Massacre.