Quote from: Brad;727444Recently, I've noticed way too much "unspeakable evil" crap. Did half the OSR just discover Howard and Lovecraft?

Much as I'm a giant REH fanboy, I have to agree. Way waaaaay much "Savage Sword of Conan" type stuff recently.

Also, "lookit edgy!!!" stuff.

Quote from: smiorganInstead of asking what's overdone, it may be more interesting to ask what's ripe for being subverted.

However, sometimes it seems like some subvertions are getting more hackneyed than the tropes they subvert.

Well, all of them of course, love them though I do, they're all worn thin as a temple whore's transparent robe.

I wonder if Shadowrun gets a medal for beating the tropes of two genres into paste?

Really, I think a big part of it is visualization.  Rpgs are very dependant of visualization and when I say, "You see a dragon," the players know what I mean.

I've run some Dark Heresy and Death Watch for the kids at the shop lately and it's interesting to see the difference between the players who know 40k and those who don't.  One kid in particular simply has no frame of reference, visually or conceptually.

Perhaps that's why proprietary sf games do so much better than generic ones.  They know what the Enterprise and Millenium Falcon look like and have a general concept of what they can do.

It's all in the execution of course, subversions can be as dull and trite as earnest homages at this point.  It's up to the DMs and writers to breathe life into the old, faded, and stained tropes and make them new again.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;727424This is one of those threads where, inevitably, the good conversation shifts to talking about how to execute these tropes competently so that they don't feel tired and worn out.  So, rather than waste a billion posts getting there, let's skip to the useful bits.

Really, it comes down to execution, and execution requires two things: that the GM do his fucking homework, and that the result of that preparation be applied to actual play where the players will see it and want to deal with it.

What product then has taken a tired old fantasy trope and executed it in such a way that it became fresh and new?

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;727424This is one of those threads where, inevitably, the good conversation shifts to talking about how to execute these tropes competently so that they don't feel tired and worn out.  So, rather than waste a billion posts getting there, let's skip to the useful bits.

I like this attitude.

My current hobby horse for refreshing a fantasy trope is an idea I want to rip out of an anime show called Soul Eater*: The magic weapons are all people (they can assume human form, sort of like were-weapons) and the strength/compatibility of their relationship with the wielder is crucial to success. D&D has long had intelligent magic items of course, but the idea of amplifying and foregrounding that normally minor aspect of the system is very intriguing to me.

* I'll point out that anime in general seems notably good at finding new angles on old fantasy/scifi tropes.

Quote from: jeff37923;727496What product then has taken a tired old fantasy trope and executed it in such a way that it became fresh and new?

I submit Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved.

Fantasy races that are "not the same old same-old" and yet feel archetypically familiar. The wise, heroic, caretaking and absolutely insufferable Giants; the diminutive, nimble and magic-adept Faen; the proud warrior race lion-folk Lithorians; the learned, eldricht and mistrusted reptilian Mojh; the bald, crimson-skinned, coldly logical and psionic Verrik.

Same thing with classes. Warmain are warriors, Unfettered are rogues, Magisters are wizards and Mageblades are gish; those are fairly straightforward. But then there are Totem Warriors, which you could say are rangers, only they also have the specific animal affinity going on for them (e.g. a Bear Totem Warrior is not the same as a Hawk Totem Warrior); or that Greenbonds are your run-of-the-mill druidic or shamanic type healer, but they have the whole "connection to the Green" (think DC's Green from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing comics, or WoW's Emerald Dream) going on for them; or that Oathsworn are monks, but there's the bit that they derive their power from single-minded determination to fulfill a very specific vow, rather than the typical monk's "merely" deciding to become a kung-fu badass for whatever reason.

And the setting, well... there was a big war that ostensibly took place between Good and Evil and the land was saved, but in spite of one side being clearly evil (as in, a race of friggin' dragon-demons), the "good guys" comes across as overbearing at best, and outright conquerors at worst, keeping the continent's old tenants (humans and the other races) under their "protection" for the following millennia. For their safety, of course.

None of this strikes me as particularly original. But I think it's how you manage these stereotypes, how you flesh them out and breathe life into them beyond cardboard cut-outs, that really makes the distinct elements of a fictional world, no matter how hackneyed at first glance, come together into something lifelike in its complexity.

I think many things get overdone because they work and players like them. The tavern is a classic example. It is the biggest cliche in fantasy rpgs but it is also not a bad way to start a campaign. My own opinion is, rather than worry about whether something has been done too much or not enough, is to just focus on doing what I think fits and feels right for my group. That is going to mean tired tropes in some cases, new things in others.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;727509My current hobby horse for refreshing a fantasy trope is an idea I want to rip out of an anime show called Soul Eater*: The magic weapons are all people (they can assume human form, sort of like were-weapons) and the strength/compatibility of their relationship with the wielder is crucial to success.

Wasn't there some older non-English language RPG where the PCs were the magical weapons of the various adventurers... that the adventurers might die or lose the weapon... but the weapon/PC would go on and whoever picked it up next would be a new augmentation for the PC (I'm going on vague memory there).

Read Diane Wynn-Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasy Land

Its basically every over-used trope in fantasy fiction ever crammed in one book. And its brilliant.

Quote from: jeff37923;727496What product then has taken a tired old fantasy trope and executed it in such a way that it became fresh and new?

Potentially controversial but honest opinion: the Warcraft universe.

It's cliche as fuck in a lot of ways, but it takes those cliches with just the right blend of not-so-seriousness, new spin, and a less homogeneous set of influences, and the result is pretty good. The metaplot has its problems at times, some pretty fucking serious ones at the moment really, but the setting itself is probably my second favorite after Tolkien's, and probably my preferred one for gaming purposes.

Quote from: J Arcane;727552Potentially controversial but honest opinion: the Warcraft universe.

It's cliche as fuck in a lot of ways, but it takes those cliches with just the right blend of not-so-seriousness, new spin, and a less homogeneous set of influences, and the result is pretty good. The metaplot has its problems at times, some pretty fucking serious ones at the moment really, but the setting itself is probably my second favorite after Tolkien's, and probably my preferred one for gaming purposes.

Yeah, keeping up with the Warcraft "lore" is one of my guilty pleasures. Great assessment. I'm particularly fond of the Kirbyesque science fantasy imagery and mythos around the Titans, and the whole eredar-Burning Legion-draenei debacle. I'm leveling an Orc Warrior right now and redoing the Burning Crusade content for the first time in several years, and I'll be damned if I'm not having a blast.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;727438Far too much ' saving the world'. Its just a days work in the supers genre but it has become all too common as a fantasy game thing. It promotes the worst kind of predetermined crap because the PCs can't possibly fail or the world literally ends.

That's a good one, yup. "Save the town the PCs are living in" functionally works just the same as "Save the world", but is a much more credible threat.

I think one 'save the world' is ok for an entire campaign or novel series, eg 'save Westeros from the Others' in ASoIaF works because it's very long term and presumably only resolves at the end of the series. My Loudwater campaign has a building 'save the world from Thay/Orcus' theme, again that is one instance played out over 30 levels and 6 years, and will probably only resolve at or near the end of the campaign. Babylon 5's 'save the galaxy from the Shadows' worked (albeit made season 5 pointless); Buffy/Angel's 'save the world every couple weeks' eventually got old even as humour.

Quote from: S'mon;727573That's a good one, yup. "Save the town the PCs are living in" functionally works just the same as "Save the world", but is a much more credible threat.

I think one 'save the world' is ok for an entire campaign or novel series, eg 'save Westeros from the Others' in ASoIaF works because it's very long term and presumably only resolves at the end of the series. My Loudwater campaign has a building 'save the world from Thay/Orcus' theme, again that is one instance played out over 30 levels and 6 years, and will probably only resolve at or near the end of the campaign. Babylon 5's 'save the galaxy from the Shadows' worked (albeit made season 5 pointless); Buffy/Angel's 'save the world every couple weeks' eventually got old even as humour.

My view on world saving adventures is they can be fine in small doses but i want the GM to be willing to go through with it if disaster isn't averted (whether that means total destruction of the world or a radical shift in focus like the Midnight setting).

Quote from: J Arcane;727552Potentially controversial but honest opinion: the Warcraft universe.

I don't think it is controversial at all. I personally am not interested in computer games because the gameplay does not engage me, but WoW rises above the rest with its rich background which I love. I have the D&D conversion book for it and find the history of the setting a great read.

Quote from: Simlasa;727546Wasn't there some older non-English language RPG where the PCs were the magical weapons of the various adventurers... that the adventurers might die or lose the weapon... but the weapon/PC would go on and whoever picked it up next would be a new augmentation for the PC (I'm going on vague memory there).

Can anyone pinpoint this for me?

Quote from: The Butcher;727522I submit Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved.

Fantasy races that are "not the same old same-old" and yet feel archetypically familiar. The wise, heroic, caretaking and absolutely insufferable Giants; the diminutive, nimble and magic-adept Faen; the proud warrior race lion-folk Lithorians; the learned, eldricht and mistrusted reptilian Mojh; the bald, crimson-skinned, coldly logical and psionic Verrik.

Seconded. Monte Cook may have (in my opinion) some problems as a game designer, but once in a while he comes up with pretty cool settings.

Another good example of races that feel familiar while still being somewhat outside the norm is the Legend of Zelda universe.