Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Got something to talk about? Be it video games, other tabletop or card games, even random stuff - this is the place to post!

Moderator: The Dread Knights

User avatar
Saintofm
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1755
Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:28 am
Location: California

Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Saintofm »

Not sure if this goes here or in History of the Druchii, but here we go.

Basically What are some some fantasy cliches in your chosen forms of entertainment that you have seen a whole lot of and are t
tired of it. if you want to explain why go ahead.

For me:

Female armor: I can handle full plate that has the boob bulges (useless for deflecting blows, the main purpose of armor, but gives an illusion that this would work that a fictional story needs). However when male armor looks like it could do its job while the female one looks like it belongs on a Madigras float, or Carnival in Brazil, I loose all suspense of disbelief. Bonus points if its covered everything but leaves enough exposed flesh for a cleavage shot.

Good= Modest, Bad = Skanky: Another thing I've noticed in D&D and Warhammer: Good girls tend to be well clothed for the most part, and bad girls tend to go to battle in a chainmail thong.

Wimpy vampires: On behalf of all Latter Day Saints, I apologize for Twilight and the negative influence it has had on vampire stories in the last few years.
Who needs sanity? I have a Hydra
User avatar
Lesebyst
Trainee Warrior
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2014 5:01 pm
Contact:

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Lesebyst »

Anything involving a prophecy leaves me cold.

Oh and ever-lasting quivers - generally speaking, action films handle guns ok (the original Matrix springs to mind), but I can't remember the last film or book where the protagonist had to spend half an hour after each fight wandering around the battlefield pulling arrows out of orc heads to see if they could be reused.
Enslave all the races!!!
My Budget Druchii Army Blog
User avatar
Daeron
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 3975
Joined: Fri Oct 03, 2003 7:36 pm
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Contact:

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Daeron »

Hm, valid points. At least in Warhammer, when the chainmail thong is worn, whether it is for a man or a woman, it tends to count as little more than a chainmail thong. Coming from World of Warcraft where the same thong is considered full plated armor, I do feel Warhammer is an improvement.

In case of the Witch Elves, what I particularly like about GWs take on it is that in their art and model, their viciousness can't be ignored. That is what they are about after all. I find that renders, fan art and other companies' take on them often revolves about naked chicks with a blade, not killers who run in scantly clad.
The Sundering has an interesting passage about why they actually choose this dress style. I thought it was interesting: it's a form of sacrifice. Blood will flow, either that of the enemy, or their own.
But apparently, the same devotion isn't expected for the Executioners. I do think the Witch Elves, or at least the Hags, are considered higher on the hierarchy than the Executioners, fluff wise. For what it's worth, it seems a very female dominated religion which is somewhat uncommon considering the religion is Murder.
But there's plenty of scantly clad Marauders, Warlocks, Ogres and unfortunately Orcs. At least, it is not exclusive to women.

Additionally, the Dark Elves are one of the armies where it is supported and known that Women stand on equal footing in the non Cult or religious based orders. A Master or Dreadlord can be a woman for example. The 6th edition included female torsos for the warriors. They removed those, but realistically speaking female armor never had such cups built in. So I simply assume there is still an equal amount of women in the army whenever the model's heads permit that illusion.

In the books of Tyrion and Teclis we see that some 'liberty' for men and women seems acceptable, unless there is s political reason holding back such freedom. Unfortunately, the writing does use this mostly to demonstrate Tyrion's ability to conquer women with the wink of an eye.

The game doesn't escape cliches. It is but a collection of cliche stories from other fantasy worlds, from Malekith to archtypes used for practically every notable character in the fluff. And as such, it falls back on the same cliches like every other world it copied ideas from. Alas, that means that female beauty which isn't used modestly and serenely is probably shown as evil.

There is a site somewhere.. I'll look up the link tomorrow, that lists all the thropes used in Warhammer in a rather mocking manner. Perhaps it might provide some comic relief.
I love me a bowl of numbers to crunch for breakfast. If you need anything theoryhammered, I gladly take requests.

Furnace of Arcana, a warhammer blog with delusional grandeur.

"I move unseen. I hide in light and shadow. I move faster than a bird. No plate of armour ever stopped me. I strike recruits and veterans with equal ease. And all shiver at my coldest of whispers."
- The stiff breeze
User avatar
Saintofm
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1755
Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:28 am
Location: California

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Saintofm »

True enough, Daeron. I meant my post for Fantasy in general (which is why I mentioned Wimpy Vampires, as ours for the last three editions have a nasty habit of ripping your spine out with one hand and bludgeoning you to death with it).

That said why does the lone female dreadlord look like more of an escaped slave girl or at least a Death Hag and not something that will make me quake in my boots?
Who needs sanity? I have a Hydra
User avatar
Haagrum
PhD in Dark Magic
Posts: 592
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:54 am
Location: The depths of the Black Library

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Haagrum »

I'm annoyed that there's even the concept of a "standard fantasy setting" with the following racial archetypes:

Humans or equivalents - pretty much mediaeval humans.
Elves or equivalents - elder race, graceful, beautiful, magical, excellent archers and swordsmen, better at everything than people are (at least, to the extent that they put their minds to it), usually a bit stand-offish but not evil.
Dwarfs or equivalents - grumpy but loyal friends, 100% bearded, live underground for the most part, excellent craftsmen, drink a lot, no magic, falling into decline.
Orcs or equivalents - Ugly, vicious monsters who live to fight, despoil and kill, usually without any established social structure other than "arse-kicking equals authority".
Evil and good being determinable simply by appearance of characters or animals/beasts, for the most part - unless the villains are deliberately being portrayed as sexy or attractive for some plot-relevant reason.

Other things which annoy me are:

Villains who are only villains to drive the plot - who have no goals beyond power or wealth or destroying their enemies, and no explanation given for why they're so obsessively driven to that one objective.
Only villainous characters are sexually liberated (and overwhelmingly, they're attractive women), while the "good characters" would all be the relative equivalents of staunch Presbyterians or Catholics, and both groups dress accordingly.
Good characters not having fatal flaws.

I also get annoyed by the following tired fantasy plot cliches:
1 - divine intervention, miraculous rescue, or some previously-unmentioned 11th-hour superpower, the appearance of which allows the good guys to win against overwhelming odds;
2 - the bad guys suddenly giving up and quitting as soon as their leader dies, as though there is no redundancy or chain of command within evil organisations or forces - seriously, you've got the numbers and the power to win this battle/war even though you've lost the boss, so unless there's some plot-relevant reason why his/her death should cause you all to stop fighting, you should continue curb-stomping the good guys;
3 - bad guys who are only doing things because they're evil and it's expected by the reader/viewer, not because it fits into their plans or serves their purposes in any way;
4 - mostly-happy endings, particularly where it involves the "No Endor Holocaust" principle, which seems to suggest that everything will be fine after the big bad guy is defeated, with no attendant consequences, even the ones which happened in the story; and
5 - making up words to describe mundane things, simply because it sounds cooler and with no real justification for importing the new words into the story.
"The wrath of a good man is not to be feared. They have too many rules."

"Good men don't need rules. Today is not a good time to find out why I have so many."
User avatar
strategem
Cold One Knight
Posts: 218
Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2013 10:31 am
Location: Queensland - Australia

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by strategem »

Bad guys never being able to hit and wound people
Good guys always being able to hit wound people with one shot/blow
User avatar
CitizenKhaine
Beastmaster
Posts: 330
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:04 pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by CitizenKhaine »

My pet hate is fantasy names with Zs and Xs scattered around to make it sound cool. Especially for evil characters, the most evil person I know is called Grant! Not a Z in sight.
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan - Designed and directed by his red right hand - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (channeling Khaine)

Visit the Citizens of Khaine http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=75270
User avatar
Tarbo
Morathi's Best Friend
Morathi's Best Friend
Posts: 1203
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:06 pm
Location: Flanders, Belgium

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Tarbo »

I hereby knowingly invoke the wrath of the Internet Gods and direct you to the unholiest of resources on the topic: TV Tropes. May your stay there be brief and productive!

There are some good candidates listed already. Recognisable ones are the ancient prophecy, "the boss is dead; I'm clocking out"-mooks, and the good guys' plot armour. All in all some great examples, so I'm going to go against the grain and be the devil's advocate for a bit.

Clichés and stereotypes are so overused because they kinda work. Sure, the neverending quiver of infinite arrows may annoy people, but so would thirty minutes of film showing people plucking those arrows--except, of course, for comedic effect. The prophecy is a reverse deus ex machina: it's a hand-wave reason to attach unlikely protagonists to the plot. In and on themselves, these literary devices are tools and, like all tools, they can be put to good use. They can also be abused.

To paraphrase something I picked up early in my profession, expert tools are for experts, and experts will use the simplest possible tool for the job. Problems occur when authors start using these tools because that's what the experts do, in their opinion. A story must have a prophecy for the hero. The protagonist must have an infinite quiver. She must fight left-handed until the deciding moment. Expert tools, much like tried clichés, can do more harm than good when applied carelessly.

All that said, I do find a thing, one single thing, excruciatingly off-putting: the Überhero story. This is the story that's being told to show how awesome the protagonist is, because it often leads to a false climax (as distinct from an anti-climax, which is fine by me). Awesome guy gets in trouble? Odds are stacked against him? Another opportunity to show how awesome this guy really is. Because you thought he was cool before? Well, he just got 20% cooler, so that sixth assassin isn't going to put a dent in him, either. You should know better than to send trained killers after this guy, dude.

*cough* So yeah, I don't read many fantasy stories for that reason right there.
User avatar
Dragon9
Assassin
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2002 7:30 pm
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Contact:

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Dragon9 »

LIES!!!!! Chain mail bikinis are awesome! Now granted, when I read a story about a female in armor, I picture her in full armor unless the author is going into painstaking detail about what said armor looks like and it's skimpy. In my art, I want bikinis. I could care less what I see in a D&D book, etc. looking at a Vallejo or Royo or Frazetta... Bikinis all the way.

But I'm a perv, so what would anyone expect? :)

My biggest pet peeve is when the supernatural character has to do some form of display before doing something. Examples: a vampire has to take this long head wind-up before biting and gape their moth open to show their teeth. Or even in one of my favorite shows, Grimm, whenever a wesen woges they have to do this weird move where they're either straining their neck forward or doing a hair flip move.
"The dark elves have everything cool. They are pirate blood cultist ninjas riding dinosaurs and flinging magic. They're metal. They're the most metal race out there, rivaled only by Warriors of Chaos. They bring a cauldron of boiling blood onto the battlefield. You don't get much more metal than that." -- Mostlyharmless on Warseer

My Blog: A Small World - My Life in Miniatures

Image Image
User avatar
Saintofm
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1755
Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:28 am
Location: California

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Saintofm »

Well this gives me a few cliches to avoid.

So No evil for evil sake (Daemons of Chaos and Warriors with Mark of Tzneetch aside), check.

Also Deus Ex Machina.


Althoug, could we have a Deus Ex Machinima if its funny? Like a warlord is about to smite out noble hero/savy anti hero only for a constipated wyvern to fly by and drop a load on him?
Who needs sanity? I have a Hydra
User avatar
Daeron
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 3975
Joined: Fri Oct 03, 2003 7:36 pm
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Contact:

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Daeron »

Tarbo wrote:Clichés and stereotypes are so overused because they kinda work. Sure, the neverending quiver of infinite arrows may annoy people, but so would thirty minutes of film showing people plucking those arrows--except, of course, for comedic effect.


Interesting remarks. Two points about that:

- Stereotypes work... to some extent. I prefer to call them "Archtypes" which are more or less the classes available in a game. I like archtypes, because they permit you a very flexible level of depth. Professor Snape could have been that one annoying teacher for the rest of the story and nobody would have minded. Or they could have given him the depth he has now, and make a beautiful story. It would have worked in both cases. Likewise, for a gaming and especially a roleplay experience, this makes the archtypes a powerful tool. You can easily catch their drift, quickly relate or understand the basics of the character and.. depending on how the story evolves.. still be surprised with a depth and a tangent storyline that could have a profound impact on your gaming experience.

- The unlimited arrows is a wholly different kind of cliché which ruins more than it builds. By giving a character an unlimited number of arrows, never ending bullet clips or never tiring arms when punching people you keep the action high paced and fluid. But also meaningless. The story devolves into a display of badassery or gains a focus on the kill and not what the character is going through. Sometimes it's handy to forget about "details" if the focus is to bring across an atmosphere or style rather than the dreary limitations of reality. But then it often steals away from the character as it gives. By making the resources unlimited, is a character really challenged? If I'd have a minigun with no ammo or heat limitations, and a precision to shoot the wings of flies over a footballfield of distance, then why not start the story standing on a hill and have a display all the way to the end of the story of how enemies die under the hail of bullets? When all challenge is gone, is the character still powerful, strong or even a hero?

Now take the Liveship Traders trilogy, possibly my favorite fantasy story for the time being. The characters are interesting and "powerful", because it evolves about the choices they make, how they percieve things and how they are percieved... rather than how well they can brawl.
Not whitstanding, the book didn't escape two clichés I didn't digest too well:
1) The world revolves around a select group of people... And the actual leaders and people in power are only involved by accident.
2) Almost everything had a persistent effect, but still the end felt too much like "now all is well" with a positive look to the future.

In this respect, I think no book or story still matches LOTR. Unfortunately, that book also has some of the most boring passages I've ever forced myself to read through :P
I love me a bowl of numbers to crunch for breakfast. If you need anything theoryhammered, I gladly take requests.

Furnace of Arcana, a warhammer blog with delusional grandeur.

"I move unseen. I hide in light and shadow. I move faster than a bird. No plate of armour ever stopped me. I strike recruits and veterans with equal ease. And all shiver at my coldest of whispers."
- The stiff breeze
User avatar
Calisson
Corsair
Corsair
Posts: 8820
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:00 pm
Location: Hag Graef

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Calisson »

Clichés can be fun, when they are twisted in a humourous, unexpected way.
See all Chuck Norris jokes.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
User avatar
Marxesperat
Warrior
Posts: 56
Joined: Fri Nov 29, 2013 1:30 am
Location: London, England

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Marxesperat »

I generally speaking don't mind a lot of cliches as its not like it really causes trouble or effects my life but the ones that I don't like are:

Humans always just being average except when it comes to protagonists I think LOTR can be left out a bit but it really bugs me whenever I play any RPG or Video Game and i look at racial traits and its basically "Humans are well kind of crap, except ok at everything but seriously meh you won't know what you're playing."

Dwarves seemingly only being blacksmiths and wielding nothing but axes

Elves only ever having bows until they pull out butter knives (LOTR I'm looking at you) but still kill everything in their path because they're Elves.

In agreement of Twillight, Vampires being all hair and while having super speed and strength not having any other cool abilities that has been lost in time or when they're not that they're closer to necro's

When the situation is either "Good guys are crap but have numbers while bad guys are really good, except hero's now that's where the gold is" or "Well the bad guys are just dumb brutes at the only smart evil guys command"
User avatar
Brad
Executioner
Posts: 191
Joined: Fri Aug 29, 2008 6:05 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Brad »

The fantasy trope that annoys me the most is ethereal creatures - they can hit you, but you can't hit them. Come on now, they either have a physical presence or they don't. This ability to phase in and out of existence just at the exact moment their claws rake through the poor victim's body is just an awful, awful cliche.
A missive from the desk of Kylekin, Prince of Nhaeroth, Land of the Setting Sun

8th ed stats (W/L/D)
DE: 1/0/0
DoC: 2/1/0
Empire: 0/1/0
WoC: 0/1/0
User avatar
Syjahel
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1269
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:15 am
Location: UK

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Syjahel »

Turns out there are a lot of things I'm sick of XD I didn't expect all these ... Just to state I am talking about the bad things I am sick of here, not good examples. If you did it well, it's not what I'm talking about :D

Things I want to die

- Terrible, and I mean terrible, characters - walking cliches.

- Has but won't use powers. E.g. Character has psychic powers. Character does not use psychic powers because of a lame excuse. Author wants to give character mega-cool-super button, forgets that anything this powerful is a game breaker, and doesn't bother to fix it, patching it over with a weak excuse instead. "Oh, but I am sworn never to use my powers on mundanes!"

- The only females given any description at all are there for the author main character to have sex with. Sorry, I mean "love interest".

-Female characters who are independent and clever are inevitably sexually promiscuous. Great Khaine. The tedium.

- Punching the V-card. No male character can even be suspected of even the slightest hint of even thinking about being thought a virgin. Some authors will go to ridiculous lengths over this.

Leading to ...

- Shoehorned in sex. Author thinks there "has" to be a sex scene, author shoves in cringe-inducingly bad or totally out of character sex scene. If you feel bad writing it ... we are all going to feel bad reading it.

- ""Lovable" rogue". Seriously. How did "a thief" ever become a character description? So the character is a petty criminal who steals from people. This is not a character description, it's one trait and an overplayed one at that. This is not heroic. This is not interesting. This is not tense. This is a scummy little bastard who ought to lose a hand.

- Magic that is not magic at all, it requires obedience to the laws of physics. It's magic, people! Magic is not supposed to be science. It can have rules, it can have methods, but magic <> science. I want magic to be extraordinary, not some kind of backdoor molecule-swapping. By the way, I love science.

- The weak-ass wizard. If one more mage has the constitution of a wet tissue, I'm going to strain something. Probably my killing hand.

- Songs in novels.

- Poetry at the start of chapters.

- We have dragons. But we cannot use dragons. But we totally have dragons. See "has but won't use powers". An honourable exception for GW on this with Caledor as Caledorians are Melniboneans acceptably badass all on their own.


With hate ... all things are listable.
RIP Group 28
~ We Never Slept ~
User avatar
CitizenKhaine
Beastmaster
Posts: 330
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:04 pm
Location: New Zealand

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by CitizenKhaine »

now that Syjahel mentions it.. psychics that have a nose bleed when they do anything... where did that one come from?
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan - Designed and directed by his red right hand - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (channeling Khaine)

Visit the Citizens of Khaine http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=75270
User avatar
Dalamar
Dragon Lord
Dragon Lord
Posts: 9675
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2002 6:42 pm
Location: Designing new breeds of Dragons

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Dalamar »

Now that you mentioned it... if I ever write a psychic character I'll have them bleed from their ears!
7th edition army book:
Games Played: 213
Games Won: 114 (54%)
Games Drawn: 33 (15%)
Games Lost: 66 (31%)

8th Edition army book W/D/L:
Druchii: 36/4/16
User avatar
T.D.
Killed by Khorne
Killed by Khorne
Posts: 2818
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:51 pm
Location: Hinterlands of Khuresh; The Lost City of the Angels

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by T.D. »

How this thread makes me feel about my own fantasy writing:

Image
OldHammer Advanced Ruleset
- Adding Tactical Depth to Your Favourite Tabletop Wargame
User avatar
Syjahel
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1269
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:15 am
Location: UK

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Syjahel »

No no Tyrannus ... you can't be that bad! :O I'm sure you're not!

*pat pat* There there

... did I do that right? We Druchii are not used to being sympathetic.
RIP Group 28
~ We Never Slept ~
User avatar
Saintofm
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1755
Joined: Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:28 am
Location: California

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Saintofm »

This gives us a chance to think out of the toy box and try to do something creative. There is no reason to have a creative spin on what worked in the past...so long as it isn't too copy pasted.
Who needs sanity? I have a Hydra
User avatar
Syjahel
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1269
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:15 am
Location: UK

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Syjahel »

Yes indeed. By knowing what is a Khaine-awful cliche we can choose to avoid it! :D
RIP Group 28
~ We Never Slept ~
User avatar
T.D.
Killed by Khorne
Killed by Khorne
Posts: 2818
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:51 pm
Location: Hinterlands of Khuresh; The Lost City of the Angels

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by T.D. »

What if I like the cliche's? :cry:


Female armor: check

Good= Modest, Bad = Skanky: check

Humans or equivalents - pretty much mediaeval humans. check

Elves or equivalents - elder race, graceful, beautiful, magical, excellent archers and swordsmen, better at everything than people are (at least, to the extent that they put their minds to it), usually a bit stand-offish but not evil. check

Dwarfs or equivalents - grumpy but loyal friends, 100% bearded, live underground for the most part, excellent craftsmen, drink a lot, no magic, falling into decline. check

Orcs or equivalents - Ugly, vicious monsters who live to fight, despoil and kill, usually without any established social structure other than "arse-kicking equals authority". check

Evil and good being determinable simply by appearance of characters or animals/beasts, for the most part - unless the villains are deliberately being portrayed as sexy or attractive for some plot-relevant reason. check

My pet hate is fantasy names with Zs and Xs scattered around to make it sound cool. Especially for evil characters, the most evil person I know is called Grant! Not a Z in sight. check

Dwarves seemingly only being blacksmiths and wielding nothing but axes. check

The only females given any description at all are there for the author main character to have sex with. Sorry, I mean "love interest". double check!

:o_O:

I hereby knowingly invoke the wrath of the Internet Gods and direct you to the unholiest of resources on the topic: TV Tropes. May your stay there be brief and productive!

There are some good candidates listed already. Recognisable ones are the ancient prophecy, "the boss is dead; I'm clocking out"-mooks, and the good guys' plot armour. All in all some great examples, so I'm going to go against the grain and be the devil's advocate for a bit.

Clichés and stereotypes are so overused because they kinda work. Sure, the neverending quiver of infinite arrows may annoy people, but so would thirty minutes of film showing people plucking those arrows--except, of course, for comedic effect. The prophecy is a reverse deus ex machina: it's a hand-wave reason to attach unlikely protagonists to the plot. In and on themselves, these literary devices are tools and, like all tools, they can be put to good use. They can also be abused.

To paraphrase something I picked up early in my profession, expert tools are for experts, and experts will use the simplest possible tool for the job. Problems occur when authors start using these tools because that's what the experts do, in their opinion. A story must have a prophecy for the hero. The protagonist must have an infinite quiver. She must fight left-handed until the deciding moment. Expert tools, much like tried clichés, can do more harm than good when applied carelessly.

All that said, I do find a thing, one single thing, excruciatingly off-putting: the Überhero story. This is the story that's being told to show how awesome the protagonist is, because it often leads to a false climax (as distinct from an anti-climax, which is fine by me). Awesome guy gets in trouble? Odds are stacked against him? Another opportunity to show how awesome this guy really is. Because you thought he was cool before? Well, he just got 20% cooler, so that sixth assassin isn't going to put a dent in him, either. You should know better than to send trained killers after this guy, dude.

*cough* So yeah, I don't read many fantasy stories for that reason right there.


Love this post, Tarbo.

& thanks for the tropes link

...and yeah -- check for all of the above! :mrgreen:
Last edited by T.D. on Sat May 31, 2014 9:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
OldHammer Advanced Ruleset
- Adding Tactical Depth to Your Favourite Tabletop Wargame
User avatar
Syjahel
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1269
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:15 am
Location: UK

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Syjahel »

Er ... you can ... put a new twist on them? Do them well? Erm.

Report to your nearest Witch Elf shrine for re-education? :P
RIP Group 28
~ We Never Slept ~
User avatar
T.D.
Killed by Khorne
Killed by Khorne
Posts: 2818
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:51 pm
Location: Hinterlands of Khuresh; The Lost City of the Angels

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by T.D. »

Syjahel wrote:Report to your nearest Witch Elf shrine for re-education? :P


Sounds painful :o
OldHammer Advanced Ruleset
- Adding Tactical Depth to Your Favourite Tabletop Wargame
User avatar
Syjahel
Malekith's Best Friend
Posts: 1269
Joined: Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:15 am
Location: UK

Re: Fantasy Cliches You are Sick Of.

Post by Syjahel »

You know what the Druchii healers say, "If it's hurting, it's working!" :D
RIP Group 28
~ We Never Slept ~
Post Reply