Ok, this is something that really bothers me. One of the guys in my Sunday night group CONSTANTLY talks about TV Tropes. Everything that comes up “Ohhhh, TV TROPE,” “TROPE TROPE TROPE”.

And this is coming from a guy who regularly writes Stewie Griffin into his games. TV Tropes is a good example of something that Players (Rather than DM’s) should never, ever be exposed too. It can backfire really badly.

Sometimes I wish some of my players would stick to a cliché. I have one who continues to try to be everything, and not in a jack-of-all-trades cliché kind of way. If makes for an odd character that doesn’t meet his expectations.

And speaking of clichés, I can’t believe Risus hasn’t come up yet. Talk about a game with clichéd characters!

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools

Tropes only become clichés when they’re abused. This site is an endless cornucopia of recurring concepts, characters, and plot formulas from television, movies, literature, comics, video games, and more — including tabletop RPGs.

It’s a great resource for coming up with game ideas, character ideas, background color, and coincidental magic effects for Mage: The Ascension (“Of COURSE the car blows up when I shoot the gas tank!”).

A lot of professional writers have started reading and contributing, and, every so often, careful eyes can see Shout Outs to the wiki on certain shows.

As just a single example:

I’m running a solo Mutants & Masterminds game for my son-in-law. When I started to assemble his NPC allies for the “Hero Joins the Team” episodes, I deliberately used the Five Man Band (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand) as a template.

The character is a Dwarven rogue, who was, long ago, the eldest son of the King of the Dwarves. This king was at war with another Dwarven city. In the interest of saving lives, the Character trapped the opposing kings throne, and killed the king. Now, apparently, dwarves HATE traps and everyone found this very dishonorable, and he was exiled. At 40 years old. Barely an adult.

Suuuuuure.

I don’t have a problem with cliches, but I DO have a problem when players invest massive amounts of time into a convoluted backstory, that ultimately results in a Mary-Sue or Gary-Sue character.

To help, in my current game, I’m limiting my characters to backgrounds that are no more than three (3) simple sentences long. My favourite so far being

“My character is a 45 year old human farmer. He was a member of the militia for a long time. He decided he hates his wife, so he joined the army and sends money when he can.”

The other thing is, truthfully, in my gaming group (and, by baseless extrapolation, all gaming groups!) people just don’t PLAY the stereotypes. There’s never BEEN a stereotypical Knight in Shining Armor in any of my games. Not because I discourage people from doing so, or because any of the players do, but, likely, because everyone thinks “that’s been done a million times” – except it HASN’T. Even in popular gaming culture at this point, you’re practically more likely to hit a Drizzt clone (Unique Snowflake!) than a Knight in Shining Armor.

Food for thought.

Yup, and sometimes that’s just roleplaying character evolution, and sometimes the actual mechanics will change. It’d have to be mostly roleplaying in D&D, since it’s class-based, but other systems allow for lots of change there, mechanics and roleplaying.

I ran a zombie game using the Fudge system at FLGS for Free RPG Day. I stated at the beginning that none of the characters were combat oriented (pre-gens, no cops or ex-military types). That was a cliché that I wanted to avoid – the “we’re playing a horror game so I’m going to make a bad ass character that is scarier than the monsters” cliché to be precise. Yet the pre-gens were cliché characters from zombie films. A paramedic, a football player, a farmer, a handyman, etc. Very generic, and without skills that were directly applicable to fighting zombies with.

The game played very well, and I am glad that I went with the clichés. Everyone was able to step into their role quickly, and we had a blast playing a very tense game where the player characters were scared. Why? Because when you aren’t the walking god-of-war but a mere cliché of a B movie victim character zombies are scary!

BTW – I’ll be arriving at Origins on Thursday evening and am looking forward to hanging out with you for the rest of the con! GS Readers – I do not wear a kilt or goggles. You’ll just have to guess who I am!

1. A Bard named Scratch. Scratch suffered a throat injury years ago that left him with a notably raspy voice. He doesn’t even try to sing, but he is the world’s best story teller.

2. A Paladin (name?) who is world-weary and tired –think Aragorn before the final battle, when he is sure they are all about to die, and then double it. Gloomy and bitter, he does what is right, but with great resentment.

3. A Warlock (name?) who has made a pact (type?) but does not remember making it. She uses her pact powers because they are her only means of survival, but wants nothing more than to get out of it.

There are more, but that’s the general idea.

Actually now I’m reminded of one of my Shadowrun players. He made his character up as a katan wielding “pure strain human” (harkening back to our shared days of ancient Gamma World). No magic and no cyberware.

As the game went on he decided the physical adept would fit his character better. He’d become invested in the character however and neither of us wanted to replace him. He’d started doing community work of all things in the Barrens with his run proceeds and was becoming something of a folk hero. So, to let him keep the same character I had him go through a quest for a master and several ordeals. He had to earn every point of his magic attribute and did a great job of roleplaying it out. His character definitely grew and expanded into a wonderful three dimensional character. I think what is most telling is that from that SR campaign he carries his character’s street name as his personal nickname in our circle of gaming friends.

As Rafe mentions, starting with a cliché and seeing how it grows and twists is interesting. Just because you start as a cliché doesn’t mean you won’t change dramatically.

Also agree; happy/comfortable players = one good game.