Bluhman's guide to Cliches

[Kinslayer]

I have one!!!!!!

Dragon Rule:

Dragons are EVIL, there is no way that they can be of help, and if they are, it's after you had a hard-*** fight with one of those.

Avoidable: Well, dragons are often mighty in legends and it's always a hero's hardest task to fight one, but it is avoidale. In the game I'm making, I have the idea of letting a small dragon join the party.



About secret Passages...:

They are always bookshelfs, big stones that you can see.

Avoidable: yes, if you have imagination.

[MrMister]

Originally posted by Grandy
Bond, James Bond (Cait Sith Rule)
 You won't ever find a spy. If theres a spy in your party, he will tell you personaly. If theres a spy in the enemy's army, he will be found and killed, unless the hero rescue him or the hero is the spy himself.

Name another instance of that, right now.
When it's been used once, it's not a cliche.

[Kilyle]

1. Out of the way, citizen!  Your Goods Are Mine

The indiscriminate stealing of normal people's objects has got to go.  I have seen two interesting ways to deal with this:

1A. Morality Matters

Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, being entirely concerned with virtuous behavior, makes it an end-game requirement that you do not steal (much).  You cannot get the end-game special armor and weapon or beat the game if you have done too many bad things.  If your game includes a reward or sidequest dependent on virtuous behavior, the player will at least have some reason to play nice.

1B. The Law Has Teeth

While Exile/Avernum has made random stealing annoying (you find hundreds of pieces of odd clothing worth pennies at the shops), some games have added better consequences: cops.  If a citizen finds you rifling thru his drawers, he'll call the police, who cart you off to jail or fine you or something.  Not that the jail term lasts very long, but it does provide a measure of incentive to avoid random stealing.  You can vary this by having the citizen attack you, or set the dogs on you, or by having traps in the drawer, a trap that locks you in the room, etc.

The Kleptomaniac Hero is covered on TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KleptomaniacHero


2. Hide-and-Seek Is All We Know

Well, I've seen tag, too--but you're right.  On the other hand, these two games are very visual (and don't require custom graphics), whereas sitting in a circle betting on how many rocks the leader's holding is not that visual (and does require custom graphics).  So making new games would take some effort, but then, creating a game the player hasn't seen before is well worth it, don't you think?


3. TOKEN KIDDIES CLICHE

Despite the abundance of townsfolk (too many for the houses to hold), a town never has more than five kids, and they are all the same age (no babies, toddlers, adolescents, or teens, except older teens indistinguisable from adults).

I do understand that this is mostly a graphical problem (not many pixels to work with there), so it might be difficult to avoid.  One way is to mess with movement: A toddler could look identical to a six-year-old, but walk off-balance, sit down or fall down, struggle to get to his feet, sometimes crawl, etc.  Or he could be always looking up.  It's all a matter of designing good sprites and making good use of poses and movement planning.  Another method is to distinguish by color: Kids start by liking red, then blue, and then start to split into gender-distinct colors--and a group of preteens might wear hot pink while older teens wouldn't be caught dead in it (same might go for pigtails).


4. Buyback

It's a bit out of the ordinary to allow for buying stuff you have already sold, but other games have done so (e.g. the Game Gear Shining Force, if I recall aright).  One solution that might be simple is to ignore the town, and just shift every sold item into an array that can be accessed as...um, a global routine?  (I'm not that familiar with RPGMaker terminology.)  Or, you could hold an array of just-sold items until the character leaves the area.

Another idea is to tag all items in inventory as either 'sold' or 'notsold', and then to show only the 'notsold' in your inventory and only the 'sold' in the buyback menu.


5. Token Non-Humans

Here is not so much a solution, but me begging game designers (and, well, people who design other storytelling mediums too) to stop using a human bias.  I first got alerted to this trend in Star Trek.  Makes sense in the first series, because it was assumed to be rare that the aliens would deign to serve on human ships.  By Next Generation, they have plenty of aliens to choose from, but the captian is always human.  If you take a look at the progression, Star Trek gives us Young Human White Male, Experienced Human White Male, Experienced Human Black Male, and finally Human White Female (not sure whether to call her Young or Experienced).  I kept waiting for the next series, when surely they'd give us an alien captain!  But no.

Now, I do understand that you can't make the main character's thought processes too different from a human's, or their culture too distinct, or else the poor audience members will get lost and won't be able to relate.  But surely there is room for creativity in this area.  What if the entire group is alien, and lands on a human world?

And don't let the racial stereotypes pin you down.  Try to figure out why a stereotype might exist, and how other people might be mistaken.  I took the "evil hobgoblin" idea and made a slave race under a goblin/orc alliance, so that humans see hobgoblins as simply part of the larger evil forces--but the hobgoblins are planning a revolt, and will in the end ally themselves with the less barbaric races, such as the humans and dwarves.  I took the "evil ogre" stereotype and worked out some physical and cultural differences that could provoke such a negative view of ogres (for one thing, their large mouths and long teeth leave them spitting and drooling a lot)--then had a group of elves meet the ogres, cross the language barrier, and develop a mixed culture, creole language, and hybrid race.

I even took the "evil vampire" idea and messed around with it, from the initial idea that their powers weren't real.  What could provoke such a longstanding belief system?  Well, first of all, the "vampire race" is a clan of humans with a specific genetic illness that (among other things) gives them pronounced canines and makes them albino and anemic (they had to eat a high-iron, and thus high-meat, diet).  This, combined with some odd cultural behaviors (garlic disgusts them), led to mistrust among the townsfolk.  Feeling the level of mistrust, the vampires stayed out of sight most of the time, and began showing up in town only at night.  The mistrust led to gossip that started inventing superstitious traits: They're demons, they're harmed by holy water and crosses.
The mob mentality became a danger to the vampire clan.  In order to protect themselves, they tried to reduce their distinctiveness (which led to the tradition of dying their hair black).  And two beliefs were started by members of the clan when they were in danger: First, "Look!  If I were a demon or dead, I wouldn't have a soul, so you couldn't see my reflection in that mirror!"  ("Ah, he's right!  Let him go, guys.")  Second, "You'd try to kill me with pitchforks and spears and arrows?  You cannot harm me unless you drive a wooden stake thru my heart!"  (Well, not exactly like that, but notice how the stake first of all is not a long-range weapon and secondly makes darn sure that the vampire is not tortured to death or alive when they bury him.)  Eventually, all this became jumbled into one general idea of "vampires" with the various origins lost.

So break out of the stereotypes!  If you start to think about all the little details, you will start to see how they could be viewed in a different way, and maybe a whole new idea will open up to you.


6. Infinite Bullets

What's wrong with counting bullets?  FFIV counted arrows.  And I may be recalling this wrong, but didn't RPGMaker allow for a type of attack to use up an item?

Personally, I'm sick of being unable to gather my arrows back again.  When you kill an enemy using arrows, you should have a chance to gather back some unbroken arrows (see Legolas--at least in the books), and probably some broken ones that you can salvage parts from or even repair.  This won't hold true for certain types of bullets, but it probably could hold true for some (you could find casings, and either reuse them or melt them into raw metal).


7. Villain Teleports to Trophy, see page 5

Why didn't they teleport in there ages ago?  You have to explain the power.  There are plenty of reasons for this limitation.  Perhaps the villain must see where he is going, and was using a spell to see thru the hero's eyes.  Or, similarly, he could teleport to an area near an object, an object that he has contrived to get the hero to carry (or that a spy in the party is carrying).  It's also possible that he can't teleport thru the substance that the door is made of.  Once you explain the limitations, the audience can accept them--even if they're not all that good, at least you put some thought into it.

Oh!  And who says he teleported?  Maybe he was invisible and followed you inside, then just ran forward and appeared.  The teleporting away might be turning invisible again, or his only power might be teleporting to one specific spot or item in his home base.


8. Personal Pocket Universe

Okay, bags that can carry infinite pieces of loot, or infinite weight of loot, are a gaming anomaly.  On the other hand, when you put a number of items limit, you could end up with the Dragon Warrior IV bag, where eight bobby pins means your bag is full.  You won't be able to make a semi-realistic system without a ton of time and effort, and gamers get much more frustrated by lack of space than by illogical abundance, so there's not much of a reward for trying.

However, putting some measure of logical limitation on items makes the player collect and carry with strategy, rather than the collect-everything-you-possibly-can-because-you-might-need-a-tenth-of-it mentality that plagues RPGs.  Take a look at Exile/Avernum (can you tell that I really like that game?) for an idea of how they handle weight.  Each item gets assigned a weight variable--the unit, if I recall, is pounds.  Each character has his or her own backpack, and can carry an amount of weight dictated by his or her Strength attribute.  Up to a certain percentage of total weight, the character is unencumbered (suffers no penalties in combat), but add any more and the character can't act as fast during combat.  It's a satisfying system because it deals with that "I'm carrying five hundred sets of iron armor, whee" annoyance that makes the game less real.

Note that if you do put an upper limit on items, you should provide access to a bank or storage service where the party can leave excess items, especially treasure that won't become important until the last quarter of the game.  And try to work in the weight of the armor that the character is wearing.  Furthermore, a character who uses a particularly active or agile combat style (such as dancing or jumping) might find the weight more encumbering than the other party members do.


9. Anorexia Ain't a Problem in THIS Universe!

Okay, so heroes need to eat.  On the other hand, they shouldn't turn into Tamagotchi pets ("Ooh, let's feed you Caviar today!").  Furthermore, if the player gets to choose the food, she's going to choose the cheapest and most readily available.  You might alter this technique by giving certain bonuses to good food, or by addressing deficient diets with certain diseases ("No citrus in a month, eh?  Scurvy for the lot o' ya!"), but that's going to be a mess of trouble for both the game designer AND the player ("Wait, did I give them enough servings of grain?  What's the nutritional info on this juice drink?"), and it's much more complex than you will ever need.

The easiest way to deal with this, in my experience, is again with Exile/Avernum (altho I saw it in Ultima: Exodus also, I think): Buy food, which goes to a specific food stock (one variable), and depletes on a regular schedule.  Once the food is gone, the party's health depletes regularly--and, if you take this at all seriously, the party's magic should not be enough to keep them sustained in the face of starvation.

The main concerns with this are to make sure that the player knows that food is necessary and to make the food readily available.  My first experience with Exile was The Dance of Death, wherein I left town, walked fifteen spaces, and keeled over.  I did this numerous times before I realized that, had I paid attention to the first character in the game, he would have directed me to a guy handing out free food and equipment.  You might make this discussion a scripted one at the start of the game, or you might allow for the first Death by Hunger to trigger a rescue by town officials, who hand you the forgotten supplies and offer other words of wisdom for newbies.

Oh, and one of the neat bits of Exile/Avernum is that certain towns sell the basic food for a lot less than other towns, which saves you money and makes you feel good about finding the right town ^_^


10. I Didn't Know Gold Was Red, claims Princess of Tolnedra

I love multiple currency systems!  I'm sure that many others don't.  Secret of Evermore dealt with it well and any decent game designer should be able to work out a system if they want to.  However, you don't need to add multiple forms of currency to get the same effect.  That town that doesn't recognize the Elven Silver Wyvern might be willing to bargain for, say, cacao nuts--a rare delicacy.  And you just happen to have found cacao nuts on all the enemies in the forest beyond (which is why the townsfolk are too scared to venture into the forest hunting for cacao nuts).  Barter is an excellent system, and a well-designed bartering exchange can add flavor to an otherwise featureless currency system.

I would love to see more examples of the "market day" scene in Secret of Evermore: twenty-odd booths, each willing to trade Item A if you give them Item B and/or Item C.  But why confine this to a single place?  Make the hero a delivery man who has to move between cities anyway, and can barter and haggle while he's waiting for the ship to arrive.

Be aware that my love of barter appears to contrast with the rule entitled "You Always Travel in the Right Circles"...some people may hate the idea of running errands for NPCs.  You could make it a side quest, or have it coincide with travel that you had to do anyway ("Long as you're headed for East Killingstad, mind giving this package to m'wife?").


11. But Only Killing Yields Experience

Having the major portion of the game taken up with "grinding" (killing random encounters to gain experience in order to improve one's stats and/or pocketbook) may appeal to some people, but it doesn't much appeal to me.  On the other hand, this isn't a tabletop RPG, and you can't do much to reward "playing in character."  However, if you maintain a good sidequest system, you should be able to allow characters to gain experience (and money) from that, which means less pointless killing.  Furthermore, designing a system of choices, mostly implemented in dialog or with "which door/stairway/dark hallway do I enter first?" decisions, could allow for a gradual buildup of a character profile that determines things near the middle and end of the game.  E.g., is the hero the type to rush straight into battle, or to try to talk things out?  Does she listen to the townsfolk's troubles (showing compassion) or try to cut to the point?  Does she donate money to the orphanage, the beggar, or the shopkeeper--or, in lieu of money, does she donate time and effort by trying to find the orphan's long-lost uncle, the medicine that would cure the beggar's crippling disease, or the rare item that would bring the shopkeeper the publicity he needs to keep his shop open?  These side quests can open up possibilities near the end of the game that make up in some way for having less experience or less protective armor, etc.


12. It's LeviOsa, not LevioSA

Name spells "Fire3" and "Bolt5" and you've just shown that you put no thought at all into the system.  Naming your health-refilling spell "Cure" and your poison-destroying spell "Heal" show that you need to pick up an Engrish Dictionary.  But let me call your attention to the other end of the spetrum: Phantasy Star IV.  Here we have a unique naming language that must be memorized in order to be used.  After a while, it becomes clear that, for example, the prefix "gi" intensifies the spell (so "giwat" is stronger than "wat")--but how long does a player wait before he pulls out the instruction book or just picks spells at random?  ("Oh, that's targetting my party, guess it's not the fire spell...um...shoot, that was a global.  Hope it does something useful.")  I love languages, so my annoyance at having to learn the system was minimal, but you could reduce the annoyance further by having someone "teach" the spells (at least some of them) to the character: "So just wave your wand and say 'Alohomora' and the lock will open, see?"

Also, depending on how alien you want the system to be, it might help to give the words a familiar ring to them.  Most English-speaking people are familiar with a number of Greek and Latin roots, whether or not they have actually studied them, so 'Leviosa' isn't hard to remember: It sounds like "Levitate."  Ergo, the spells can sound familiar and foreign at the same time.  And isn't "Incinerate" better than "Fire3"?


13. Nobunaga Moves Quickly

Well, the 'were you waiting for me?' bug might be difficult to fix, but it's certainly not impossible.  Inindo ends the game after a certain amount of time if you haven't beaten it (Nobunaga has taken over the world).  I'm sure that certain things can "go wrong" for the heroes if they don't stay on track.  I've always found a DWIV scene annoying, where the kidnappers tell you to 'bring the bracelet to the town tonight by midnight' and then you mosey in five months later and they just show up as tho nothing happened.  On the other hand, usually when I get to that point I truly lack the stats to go headlong into the dungeon, grab the crystal, and come back to town without resting at least once.  So if you're going to make time limits, make sure that the heroes will have the necessary skills and goods to survive the quest within the time limit.

A related bug is the "Why Won't You Listen to Me?" bug, where you're actually ahead of the game.  Here, you (having played the game before, or watched a friend play it, or having figured out subtle clues far ahead of everyone else) know something before the game wants you to.  You know the password that the guy wants--the game still makes you trot across the world to learn it.  You know that the spy is hiding behind the pillar--the guard won't turn around and look.  You know that General Peters is going to betray the troops, or that a dragon is going to lay waste to the city, but the game refuses to let you warn the people ahead of time.

To avoid this problem, make sure that the inability to relay the info fits the story logically.  I don't just mean that it's metagame knowledge and you're not allowed to use it.  I mean, instead of fetching a password, fetch an item (you can't quibble about that).  Instead of having a guy really hiding there, make sure that he disappears after you see him, so that instead of trying to convince a guard that he's RIGHT THERE BEHIND YOU, you're trying to convince him that some mysterious guy snuck into the palace (and the guard is right to consider you a loony without any evidence--or, if you've built up enough trust, he believes you (and so does the king) but there's not much they can do about it).

On the larger story events, you could force their conclusion (no one listens to your story of approaching doom), or you could make your knowledge actually matter: Some citizens pack up their families and leave, thus escaping the doom, or the people as a whole do listen, and the destruction is avoided or in some way changed (instead of dying when the volcano explodes, they flee by ship and are sunk by a tidal wave).

Personally, I hate games that destroy whole cities or continents just for the BOOM! factor, or, worse, in order to make the player feel that the bad guy is bad.  Or that the hero has lost everything.  So being offered a way to save the people before the disaster hits is wonderful--even if it doesn't have later story effects (like that they thank me by offering me the town's one treasure).


14. You Believe in God?  You Must Be Evil!

I agree with the poster: Please find some way to include religious references that aren't negative.  I certainly have my preferences--every person with a strong belief system would--but anything is preferable to having the only godlike figure being an evil megalomanic creature for the heroes to ultimately defeat.  Or to "I believed in God until I realized that magic was real, and now I can't reconcile the two, so bye-bye God."

On the other hand, if you don't respect the religious beliefs of others, don't attempt to include a system that will poorly represent people of faith, or mock them, or act as though a belief in God is held only by fools.

Also, judging from the vast majority of the movies I have seen: If a religion is portrayed positively, it's either Eastern, American Indian, Pagan, or CATHOLIC.  Star Trek seems to hold that religion is outdated and not to be taken seriously (except for Chakotay's Indian mysticism).  I don't think I could point out a single movie that dealt with Christianity without representing it as Catholicism.  I don't want to get into a debate on whether or not Catholicism is part of Christianity, but it certainly doesn't represent all Christians or even the beliefs of "the average Christian" (if you could conceive of such a creature).  In other words, there's plenty of room for non-Catholic Christians to start writing stories (and games!) that openly include their beliefs.

Another fertile field to plow: an evolution of belief.  That is, a character who starts out believing one thing, then receives evidence that it is not true.  This can go in one of two major directions: either he accepts the evidence and stops believing, or turns a blind eye to the evidence and holds onto his beliefs.  Either course may be right!  Perhaps the evidence is misleading, or actually untrue.
Assume, however, that the evidence is true.  The first character stops believing.  Then, afraid of being tricked again (it is a very serious thing to lose a lifelong belief, so don't take this step lightly!), perhaps he will not belief in a new system that presents itself ("If the person I thought was God isn't, then there truly is no God.").  Finally, the character comes to a point where he can take a leap of faith and accept the new system, and by the end of the story he is at peace again, just as sure of the new system as he had been of the old (altho, we hope, with better evidence, and better chance of it being true).
The second character, tho, having turned a deaf ear to the evidence, holds on to his patently false belief fiercely, even desperately.  If this is false then what is left?  Finally, he accepts that he cannot belief in this any longer.  As with the first character, this character cannot rush into a new faith.  But perhaps someone convinces him that it wasn't an either/or (either I'm right about God or there isn't any God), but rather a choice among a bunch of belief systems, any one of which might be true.  And at the end of the day (or the game), the character is left with the belief that (pardon me) The Truth Is Out There, whether or not he will find it in his lifetime--and he intends to search for it, to weigh the evidence for and against each system, and to try to find a belief that he can embrace wholeheartedly.

I'm writing a short story to this effect (the second example here), and it's an excellent opportunity to get to the bottom of a character.  The main thing is to realize that this person's need to believe in something is very, very strong.  What other sort of man won't accept the very clear evidence that he is wrong?  And it's this lifelong belief that he is right that makes it hard to accept that there may be another path.  That's character development.  That's what makes a vibrant, living person instead of a hollow soapbox shell.


15. I'm Sorry, You Did Mean "Yes," Right?

I saw this on a spoof ballot in which all roads led to voting for Clinton.  The "character who won't take no for an answer" is identical to--no, worse than--the telemarketer who phones you at seven a.m. two hours after you got back from the bar and ten hours before your headache will go away.  I find this bug even more horribly annoying when the question is whether or not to (1) do a stupid thing, (2) do an illegal thing, or (3) do a disloyal thing.  The start of Breath of Fire II has an optionlock question of whether or not you want to run away from the orphanage and enjoy a life of crime.  I think I've seen one where it's "Come on, let's not wait for him, come with me" and one would think that if I said "no" long enough the guy would come back anyway.

Same with forcing the party to jump into a trap to further the game.  Don't force us to be stupid.

Covered on TV Tropes as But Thou Must: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust


16. You Pick Up That Gun, Boy

Well, the rampant use of deadly force by the most devout clerics is odd, but doesn't have to be outside their belief system, especially if they're only hurting villains and/or killing monstrosities that threaten the town.  But it's possible to make a pacifist--I don't mean like FFIV Edward, ducking behind a corner if he's hurt, but rather a guy who cannot harm the enemy.  Obviously, he'll have to be paired with other characters (or very good at running away), but it's possible and, in fact, I have created such a character during a draft of one of my games.  Don't know if he's going to work out, but hey, it's original.

Another possibility is of course to start the maze over, or port you back to the house you were just at ("oooh, my head"), whenever you're attacked.  But this won't work for the entire game, and is likely to annoy the majority of players.


17. Mind If We Change First?

Well, with such limited graphics, it's difficult to change costumes, and the effect is minimal when you do.  However, that "we've been slogging thru the sewer and now we're going to meet the king" could allow for a short sequence to shower--or, similarly, the soldier costumes don't work cuz every henchman smells you miles away.  Another possibility is to make only two or three costume changes, one with armor, one with night clothes, one with clothes for going thru town looking inconspicuous.  These simple changes might be all that's needed to make a ho-hum graphical style into an aesthetically pleasing one.

Additional: In, I think, Slayers Reflect (a fanfic that I can recommend), they postulate that one of the characters holds to the belief that the amount of protection is inversely proportionate to the amount of skin covered--and that by that calculation she is wearing six-inch-thick titanium battle armor (you can guess what she is actually wearing, right?).  Please, please, please make the amount of protection sensibly related to the vital areas covered and the type of material used.  And, realistically, the end-game wool robe shouldn't have any greater defensive capabilities than the start-game wool robe, so explain the defense by giving them magical protection or something.  Or saying it's made from pushmepullyu hair and is virtually indescructable.


18. But You Look Just Like--

One way to avoid the Direct Descendent Lookalike Syndrome is to have it appear to be the lookalike but really be another party member (Bob, who looks nothing like Great Grandfather Beauregard).  Or, change the gender--or race.  One of the stories I've been planning turns on a phrase that is translated "son of a Persian" (well, not Persian, but just for example's sake), which in the priests' dialect means Pureblood Persian, but in the dialect of the people who spoke the prophesy means "one whose father was Persian but who is not Persian himself," so the guy who is pretty much the opposite of a Persian finds out that his father was a Perian and...etc.  Depending on the particulars needed for this Descent, it could even be that the genetic material was transfered to someone in a way other than having children, or the mind of a descendent could have been switched with someone who isn't.


19. You Sure We're Related?

Okay, so a villain's loss of power when becoming a party member might be something we have to live with.  But can we avoid the Cecil/Golbez graphical factor?  I realize that the battle chars are iconic (representative of reality), but still, Golbez in battle is seven or eight times as tall as Cecil.  On the other hand, later on when they're fighting Yang (who had previously been a party member), he's just his battle char.  Now, I do love the rendition of Golbez in battle--it's a pretty cool picture.  But in a sideways battle system, where the characters are represented with little battle chars...I don't know, it bugs me.  I don't have a clue whether this is fixable or not.


20. Men Weren't Meant to Change Belief Systems

Regarding bad guys turning good and then dying, don't know what to recommend, but I did want to point out a version of the problem you mentioned.  In Sailor Moon (ignoring the filler Alan/Ann stuff), fully half of the bad guys who turn good do live.  Which half?  The female half.  Apparently that makes you safe from the forces that immediately destroy a turncoat male.  I don't know if this holds beyond the first two seasons, but so far there have been Nephlite (male--fell in love, turned good, died), Mamoru/Darien (male--originally good, brainwashed, recovered, and died (tho technically every cast member died that day)), The Four Sisters (all female--all turned good, and lived happily ever after), Sapphire (male--tried to nobly save his brother, turned away from evil, died), and Prince Diamond (male--finally revealed his positive motives, turned away from evil, died).  This horrifying trend drove me to write a fanfiction, but that's another story.

Make sure to have good reasons for the death of any character, but especially for the death of a love interest or a character who turns good.  And if many people are going to switch sides, and there are good reasons for many of them to die, make sure that the deaths aren't split down any recognizeable line--or that the line is integral to the plot.  And the reason should be more than just "Well, it's a loose end--he could've helped them win the game much more easily" or "Hey, it's an emotionally charged moment, and what's more emotional than the death of a noble character?"  I should also point out that sometimes the continued life of a character who has been bad has more depth to its emotion than their death could ever have: Will the ones I've hurt ever forgive me, can I even forgive myself, can I figure out how to live a normal life, can I get along without my magic powers (if his powers must be destroyed or he must refrain from using them ever again), can I get along without the luxurious comfort of my floating palace, must I get a job and serve a master when I'm used to bossing all the henchmen around?


Redemption Equals Death is covered at TV Tropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedemptionEqualsDeath


21. People Pay for This Stuff?

In answer to the "Flow of Goods Rule" (you find the worst stuff early and the best stuff late), I offer that you could offer the best stuff early but make the price astronomical (pocket change, once you're ready to use it), make a status requirement to be able to buy it ("Well, you're great heroes now, and the world knows it, so I'm willing to let you buy anything in my shop"), or make a level requirement for each weapon ("Well, you can buy it, but it'll take a while before you can swing a thing like that...").  If you pair the level requirement with a custom backpack system that involves weight and/or only a few items, the player won't carry the sword around for the rest of the game, so it should still work out okay.  Or, the player might have to "learn" how to use a type of weapon--one way I can think of to do this is to make multiple heroes, with and without the (say) Use Spear ability, and just switch heroes (and match levels and transfer equipment) once the character learns the skill.  So the higher-level items, tho available, all look like nobody can use them.


22. Refuting Dark Helmet's Corollary

The villan really should have a good sense of honor in my opinion.

Depends on the villain.  Most villains, I would say, and especially villains on epic-level stories, are chasing goals that prove that they care about nothing but power and/or their own comfort or fulfillment.  The villain who wants to resurrect the Demon Lord so he can destroy or enslave the world is unlikely to care about a few starving orphans, not even enough to steer his car around them instead of run them down (and if he does steer around, it's because he didn't want to damage his Rolls Royce).  On the other hand, if you can make a villain whose motives are good, by all means give him a sense of honor and nobility that makes us sad to see him die.

More important than the Villain's sense of honor is the Hero's sense of intelligence.  Which is to say, the Hero should know (from some understanding of the type of villain he's dealing with) that he is dealing with a dishonorable Villain.  Knowing that, he should also realize that if he drops his weapon(s) and/or hands over the Key to Ultimate Power, the Villain is not going to feel horribly guilty about ignoring the deal they had made.  Furthermore, if the Villain is planning to destroy or enslave the village/city/nation/world, what's the point of freeing the girl?  She's going to die like everyone else if the Villain succeeds, and you've just handed him the key to the city.

I admit that the possibilities change when the scale is less than global, but I haven't seen too many villains who go for the small-scale victories.  I am glad that you mentioned that as a weakness ^_^ but anyway, you can probably tell that I grew up with my dad shouting at the movie characters.  If you make a dumb Hero, you've made a dumb story--unless you can show the Hero's growth from Gullible to Streetwise.  Good luck with that one, because it would probably make for a great story.


23. Addendum to The Long Arm of the Plot

The Sailor Moon fanfic "Tacky Yellow No-Name" posited four classes of people: Heroes, Villains, Mentors, and Innocent Bystanders (any and all who don't fall into the first three classes).  According to this system (it was quite comically used), a Villain who repents (becomes a non-Villain) but does not join the Heroes and doesn't qualify as a Mentor thus is obviously an Innocent Bystander, who therefore can get easily beaten up or killed by other Villains.  (So Malachite, who managed to take over a WalMart, turn it into MalMart, and almost make a life of his own apart from both the Heroes and the Villains, found out that he couldn't even begin to defend himself against the current Villains (altho previously he could've kicked their butts but good), and ended up becoming a Sailor Scout just to save his own skin.  A wonderful if comic example of how a Villain can't just walk away from the battle.  Please don't write like this, unless of course you're writing parody.)

A villain who, in turning evil, loses all his cool powers is covered on TV Tropes as Good Is Dumb: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodIsDumb


MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

You make me want to name my final weapon "The Penultimate Sword" (and then make nothing better)...only I don't think enough people would get the joke, because too many people think that "penultimate" is an intensive form of "ultimate."

What are they doing with MONEY?  What are they doing with SUITS OF IRON ARMOR stuck in their teeth?

Magic can be "scientific."  Scientists can study the, oh, magical energies that provide the power behind the spells, or something.  Or magic might be a racial trait, not open to just anyone.  "Scientific" means that it can be studied, tested, that the results of the tests can be independently and reliably duplicated, and there's no reason to say that that can't be done with magic.
This does not mean that scientists can automatically store magical energies into technological wonders and create e.g. a firebolt gun.  You'll have to decide for or against that in your magic system; perhaps magic can be gathered technologically, or perhaps it requires a soul/spirit (or whatever makes a person different from an animal or machine).  Or, you could stick pixies into little cages in the gun, and poke them so they breathe fire down the tube.  

every store you pass will just happen to stock an even better model of it

What I hate is all the stores selling items just slightly better than what I already have--items that I will find in the next dungeon or as drops from the next set of creatures.  Therefore I never buy weapons or armor unless I find a dungeon/monster that kills me repeatedly (time to upgrade!).

[DarkFlood2]

It's there because I put it there! (Zelda rule)
Nomatter what, the item given to you will always be completely out of reach and while it is possible to obtain it, there are people nearby that could get it for you without any problem, they won't. Instead, they will give you useless information when spoken to.

[Black Massacre]

1. Final Fantacy fangames.


Fianl fantasy games suck.

So, don't make them.

[Meiscool-2]

Originally posted by Black Massacre
1. Final Fantacy fangames.


Fianl fantasy games suck.

So, don't make them.

And you bitched to me about telling someone to not make a pokemon game, lil n00blit.

That's not a cliche, that's an over seen title, there's a difference.

And, it's FantaSy.

[Big_Duke]

COME TO THE DARK SIDE,HERO(Vader rule)
Just about in every game,the Villain wants the hero to join him or her,usually about creation and destruction.

Avoidable:Yes,very.
Recomended:Somewhat,depends if your villain is persuasive,if you have a forceful villain,DO NOT USE IT!

[Bluhman]

Originally posted by Big_Duke
COME TO THE DARK SIDE,HERO(Vader rule)
Just about in every game,the Villain wants the hero to join him or her,usually about creation and destruction.

Avoidable:Yes,very.
Recomended:Somewhat,depends if your villain is persuasive,if you have a forceful villain,DO NOT USE IT!

Er... bump?

But technically, the thread is stickied, so it don't matter too much.

[Legacy of Elecrusher]

Die Moron!

You fight the boss of the game, he's all powerful, you lose. Towards the end of the game, you beat him, he runs away. You hunt him down, he has some big all powerful form that has one big weakness. You beat him. You jump for joy. OMG THE PLAC IZ GUNA BLO! You run to the exit. The boss comes back super powerful, no weakness, you just have to kick his butt.

Avoidable: Yes moron...
Recommended: All depends on you, you can do it if you want, but at least give him a reason for surviving, you can't kill him then him magically come back to life even stronger. A good reason would be, you kill him, his giant computer activates a program for when he dies, the place starts to blow up, you run out of the room, the computer hooks up to him, becomes part of him, and makes him super powerful.


Good thing it was a stunt double!

If someone dies, shout at the top of your lungs and kill the guy how killed him. No burial, no mourning, he just died. Sometimes they remember him at the end of the game.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: If he like pushes you out of the way from getting knocked into a volcano or something and gets pushed in himself, then they sorta can't get buried. But don't just run up and kill the guy who did it and move on. I saw one time that when the hero's best friend was killed, the hero got a new super attack.


How come I didn't see that?

You go into a place, talk to people, come out, everything except for the building you were in is destroyed.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Yes, must I explain.


Very Leaning Tower of Pisa

In some places going up, you take the stairs on the right side of some very big room, and you end up on the far left side of another huge ruge.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Yes, just think about the whole place! Make you map more detailed.


I took the stairs

You see a town surrounded by a ring of mountains. You go through some ridiculously long quest to get the airship and fly in, get attacked by some boss on your way in, and get there just to find people who say they came from some really far of land. "How'd you get here?" "I came through the mountains!"

Avoidable: No, unless you're going to make a lot of events to make your character be able to hike through the mountains. But don't make people in the town be from far off lands, make then a whole new race or something, or make it a ghost town!


Earthquake, could you make me a tunnel?

You go through some really long dungeon, get to the boss, the place begins to fall apart. While the place is collapsing, a conveniantly built tunnel leading almost right back to the start.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: No, don't make the good people run all the way back through the dungeon!


Dungeon cleared, TAXI!

You beat a dungeon, and you're magically out 5 seconds later.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Big yes, 3 solutions!

1) Make some magic portal taking them out
2) Show the hero leaving, (jumping off of the giant flying thingy, running out the way they came in, taking a secret exit, ect)
3) Let the players get out themselves, see "Earthquake, could you make me a tunnel?"


We saved the world and are bored, part 1

The hero saves the world, and it never shows them escape the big bad guys place.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: See "Dungeon cleared, TAXI!"


We saved the world and are bored, part 2

Once you get to the boss of the game, you save, and now you can only fight him, can't get out, can only fight him.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Yes, let them be able to escape...


We saved the world and are bored, part 3

You beat the game, yay! Now all you can do is run up to beat the boss of the game or leave and go train to beat him up harder.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Yes, add plenty of side quests for once they beat the boss of the game, if the beat all of those, give them some other short quest to follow, beat that, give them some cool ultimate weapon, and one small quest. After that, they rock.


Butterknife is still the middle weight champion

The small little weapon give the hero or villan more stat boosts than the big ultimate cool sword that might be in the game.

Avoidable: No, some weapons just need to be stronger than the big one's, but don't the little weapons all powerful, they should be weaker than some big ones, and big ones should generally be strong and such. But liek if your Ultima Weapon's small, then make it better than all the big weapons you want and I won't argue.


Cooler is stronger (Ultima Weapon Rule)

The cooler looking the weapon, the stronger.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: No, cool weapons should be strong, and strong weapons should look cool.

[WarxePB]

Oh, but I do love this thread.


"It wasn't my fault!"

Any antagonist who ends up becoming a Good Guy will claim that they were possessed, brainwashed, blackmailed, etc.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Even if you do have a villain-turned-hero in your game, there's better reasons for them to switch. Or why not have them switch sides, but keep the same morals? That would make for some interesting conversations.


Selective Omnipotence Rule

Any god-like figure that isn't just an invention of the Church will do nothing to stop the current crisis on the planet, even if they possess the power needed to do so.

Avoidable: Probably.
Recommended: Having a god solve everything is a pretty deus ex machina ending, but like any cliche, there is a couple of interesting applications for it.


Thinking Ahead

Dungeon layouts will be perfectly designed so that the hero, with his current abilities, can progress through it unhindered (excluding any areas that contain secret, usually useless collectibles). This begs the question - if the ancients knew so much about the hero, why didn't they do something to prevent the current crisis from ever happening?

Avoidable: Not usually.
Recommended: If you take a look at the Metroid or Castlevania series, the layouts are designed so that they can be explored gradually, and have to be returned to several times to finish the game. This doesn't really work in RPGs, but it's an interesting application. Otherwise, it's unavoidable.

[Legacy of Elecrusher]

I took the stairs, 50 times...

You meet some merchant early in the game, and he's in pretty much every town, no matter what, no matter the trials to get there, no matter how much HP you lost doing it, he will always be there.

Avoidable: Hardly
Recommended: Yes, just don't put him in every town.


We are famous rocks, (FFI Rule)

You either go restore power to four crystals, or something that has to do with the elements earth, wind, water, and fire.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Yes, unless it's majorly important


Would you like to take part in our, "Save the World" program?(FFIII Rule)

You are chosen by someone or something to be the great hero.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: Depends... You don't have to be chosen...


Laws of Time? What's that? (Ocraina Rule)

The game has to have something to do with time travel, or be linked to some far off time period's prophecy.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: No, most RPG's do come forth because of some ancient prophecy or some ancient evil.

Oh all mind controlling sword

As soon as you start the game, you instantly know how to use all equipable types of weapons.

Avoidable: No, though you could give him a reason for why he knows how to use a sword, like my main character for my RPG knows because he was drafted into war and had gone through some training.


Amnesia, you can't touch my skills. (Desch Rule)

If you get amnesia, you don't lose all sword skills and magic skills, even through you claim to only remember your name and some task or promise.

Avoidable: Yes
Recommended: At the start of the

[Kilyle]

I love reading about clichés (the better to avoid them in my own work), and I enjoyed adding my piece to this list.  There are hundreds of lists out there, easily sought out by a beginning with a search engine.  But I thought I'd bring up this site, which I only discovered a couple weeks ago:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/

A trope, as far as I currently understand the term, is a pattern that isn't yet a cliché.  (When it does become a cliché, it's called a "dead trope" or a "discredited trope.")  Some tropes are so general or useful that they will never become clichés.

Clichés are only useful (in good material) when you avoid them, or set the audience up to expect them but change the outcome.  Tropes can be averted (avoided) or subverted (changed), but they can also be used straight, and so this site helps you understand how to do that by going over the standard trope and any subversions already seen in stories, movies, anime, games, etc.

E.g., say you want to use the situation where the Villain has a Hostage, with a gun pointed at her head, and tells the Hero to drop his weapon.  You want to do something different.  You go find the page about this trope (Put Down Your Gun And Step Away: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PutDownYourGunAndStepAway ), which points out several versions that have been seen in television shows and the movies, including (a) Hero shoots Villain anyway, (b) Hero puts his gun away and tells Ally to shoot Villain, and (c) Hero shoots Hostage (with a phaser set on stun).  You may decide to use one of those forms, or make up something new, but at least you know what's been done and where to look it up.

TV Tropes has a section on Anime Tropes, Comic Book Tropes, and Video Game Tropes, as well as Television Tropes.  It also has an amusing section on commercials (my favorite page is Cereal Vice Reward: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CerealViceReward ).

I hope this information helps you avoid clichés as well as learn from the best patterns we have built into our collective literature.  

[Osmose]

A large portion of the cliches people talk about were done in a single game, but because the game was so popular people assume it's a cliche. Or, even better, some were never used but people call them cliches so much that everyone assumes it's a cliche.

Just make a freaking game and don't worry about if someone else did the same thing before you. Worries like that are a sign that you aren't confident in your game.

[Grandy]

Originally posted by MrMister

Originally posted by Grandy
Bond, James Bond (Cait Sith Rule)
 You won't ever find a spy. If theres a spy in your party, he will tell you personaly. If theres a spy in the enemy's army, he will be found and killed, unless the hero rescue him or the hero is the spy himself.

Name another instance of that, right now.
When it's been used once, it's not a cliche.[/B]

 (Sorry, haven't seem this thread for ages)

 When I meant "Spy" it was anyone who is in the party with second intentions, usually regarding how the hero will die.

 Therefore, I could mention:
 -Etna from Disgaea and her mission to finish off Larharl (true, she changes sides later, but it stil counts)
 -Lady Sialeeds from Suikoden V, who succedeed in fooling the main character.
 -Big Smoke and... the slim guy in GTA San Andreas. Not an RPG, maybe, but it's a cliché nonetheless.

 And, if we're counting other forms of media, I could also mention that angel chick from One Piece, who was forced to try and kill Luffy, but still fooled him around and had to tell him for he to know.
 

[j_master]

 

Dragon Rule:

Dragons are EVIL, there is no way that they can be of help, and if they are, it's after you had a hard-*** fight with one of those.

I completely disagree, in fact some of my main characters are dragons.

oh and why not give a small twist on the whole dragon concept:

maybe the dragons are a race of super human creatures working for the greater good or something?