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

[Jfdlsjfd]

"The gods are walking the earth!"

Great... what the hell do you expect me to do about it?

Kill them and take their stuff. portfolio.

 

[Charlaquin]

A lot of CRPGs love this one of late. "Surprise! There was no right choice!"

I think there’s a way to do this well, and that’s when there are good reasons and bad reasons for both/all options, rather than both/all options just being crap.

 

[niklinna]

Your first mistake was clearly asking which trope, singular, needs to die.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's no such thing as a useless trope. Story beats only become tropes when they're powerful enough to become fixed in the audience's imagination. What's bad is lazily executed tropes where they're thrown in without proper setup and context, or are an amateurish imitation of the surface details without any understanding of the meaning or intent behind them.

Any trope* can be good if used with proper thought on the implications and how it impacts the specific characters of the story and what unique new resolutions that creates. Any trope will be tired if used by blind route and jammed in headless of the rest of the story.

*Exceptions exist for the "aged poorly" principle, which is less about a trope being played out and more about social standards having shifted over time.

Tropes are not bad. Tropes are not good. Tropes are tools.

 

[Yora]

What we're talking about here are cliches, but that's a trivial difference.

 

[embee]

I wish I could meet in a tavern.

Don't worry.

There's now an app to help adventurers meet up.

It's called Tinder(box). It costs 5sp, weighs 1 lb. and the app icon is a flint, a fire steel, and a dry cloth soaked in lamp oil.

If your predilections lean towards the more dungeon-y, you can also download Delvr.

 

[Gradine]

The evil albino? That one shows up as recently as Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Yeah, the whole "disability and/or disfigurement = evil" trope can go away.

 

[Yora]

The authorities are understanding about some random strangers having killed a couple dozen of the local townspeople and burned down a mansion because they explain that the dead people were secretly evil.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Tropes are not bad. Tropes are not good. Tropes are tools.

Along with capitalism and nuclear fission.

 

[Charlaquin]

Along with capitalism and nuclear fission.

I have a different opinion about that, but the forum rules prevent me from expressing it.