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dragoner

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Yuck, ok, maybe that is too gross. Nevertheless, what tropes you like is a good subject. Starting out, I will say I like gritty: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfShinyVersusGritty Like the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek, SW had a dirty feel to it, used, careworn; not grimdark though, that annoys me. I find I like it in fantasy too; some of the synonyms for gritty are "realistic" or "courageous", though also "sordid", nice (just looked that up). I like the normal person vs outrageous odds; where the invincible winner makes me think of Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker:

You're the right kind of dreamer,
to release my inner fantasy
The invincible winner ...*

Just nope, gritty realism I think also helps set the ethos to stand out against the pathos, or the "Against a Dark Background" style, as well as offset the unrealistic against the realistic, so that the unrealistic doesn't seem dull.

* Un-ironically, this might also have influenced my ideas about the term "Heartbreaker".
 
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I like steampunk although I haven't actually run that yet. Grimdark light too (Warhammer FRP and Dark Sun).

Low magic fantasy vagabonds (Forbidden Lands and some Warhammer FRP). Low end of the status pool kicking around with no real job and drinking and getting in trouble.

Exploration with that early 70s feel (Star Trek and Traveller) works for me too. The opposite end of grimdark I suppose.

I like working man's sci-fi (Twilight 2000 and 2300 AD). Blue collar types running around trying to survive, make money or accomplish a goal, and make their gear keep working. Some Traveller fits in here too.
 
This is pretty much taste, but what I find helpful, even if people are basically on the same page, is for the GM to clarify which movie universe you are basically operating in. Having a sliding scale seems like another way to establish that. I am fine with any point along that scale, it can just get confusing if players are on different pages when they come up with schemes or solutions to problems (i.e. how easy is it to light the enemies ships ablaze).
 
dragoner said:
As easy as it is for them to set yours a light, realistically.
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My point is, players often are operating under wildly different assumptions about the setting physics. Saying this is more like Master and Commander, than Pirates of the Caribbean helps clarify expectations if the GM is operating with more realistic assumptions in mind (or vice versa if things are more action oriented and crazy).
 
BedrockBrendan said:
My point is, players often are operating under wildly different assumptions about the setting physics. Saying this is more like Master and Commander, than Pirates of the Caribbean helps clarify expectations if the GM is operating with more realistic assumptions in mind (or vice versa if things are more action oriented and crazy).
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I agree, because Master and Commander means using tactics and thought, vs Pirates of the Caribbean using brute force and calcs of doing damage and how much damage you can take. I have no problem with the latter play style, I just prefer the former.
 
BedrockBrendan said:
My point is, players often are operating under wildly different assumptions about the setting physics. Saying this is more like Master and Commander, than Pirates of the Caribbean helps clarify expectations if the GM is operating with more realistic assumptions in mind (or vice versa if things are more action oriented and crazy).
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Privateers and Gentlemen for the former, Pirates of the Spanish Main for the latter.
 
Ermagerd where do I begin? The tropes I gravitate to most often.
Wooden katanas are better
Xanatos speed chess
The thirty six strategems
Creepy circus music
Magnum opus dissonance
Hard work hardly works
Brilliant but lazy
Last second showoff
Ancient master
Tranquil fury
Wants a prize for basic decency
I didnt play to win, I played not to lose.
A wizard in samurai's clothing
Achievements in ignorance
Fluffy the terrible
Deadpan snarker
Leaning on the 4th wall
Fanservice costumes
The hot springs/beach/public bathhouse episode
And anything related to misdirection by social engineering and 'black ops mind games'
 
Black humour
Historical and genre mashups, cleverly hidden
Strange/surreal tone
 
I mostly use TV tropes to find anime to watch. :wink:

Anyway, tropes I lean on too hard (and have been made fun of for overuse) are as follows. :sweat:

All GM's will be lured into doing these constantly given enough time:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsArmoury

Regardless of starting intent, all my campaigns eventually get polluted with these:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpyFiction
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TuxedoAndMartini

Normal geography gets so repetitive after a few sessions:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EldritchLocation

Humanoids have better roleplaying flexibility, but humanoids are dull compared to big kick-ass monsters. Solution?:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShapeShifting?from=Main.ShapeShifter

Because I love weird relationships between complementary partners and Soul Eater is a retarded show I really liked:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EquippableAlly

Villains (especially nonhuman villains) are great fun to roleplay:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SmugSnake
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AffablyEvil
 
Ooh thats true. If there's any trope I use more than any others, its the shapeshifter, though mine are mostly humanoids bent on misdirection
 
I like "lived-in."

It's like the grime in Star Wars (or how everything is desert earth tones around smuggler worlds). But I also like how it can mean Legend or Labyrinth. So even with their vibrancy there's a clutter that gives semblance to breathing. LOTR hobbit residences are a good example of vibrant, even tidy, but cluttered enough to seem lived-in.

Star Trek, especially TNG, always seemed like Totalitarian Ikea Modernism to me. :clown: Too artificial to feel real. Like pretending to live in a model home, or Stepford Wives, gets into the uncanny valley for me.
 
Gritty and wheels-within-wheels for me, so more Babylon 5 than Star Wars or Star Trek for me (to stick with televised media).
Don't mind characters being the above average homo sapien, have a strong aversion though, bordering on loathing, to being "the chosen one" in RPGs.
 
Please forgive me for not digging up the the TVTropes links — love the site, could spend hours there, but haven't visited in years.

I'm known in my gaming for being (1) the tough love GM, (2) the historical fantasy/horror GM and (3) the gritty sword-and-sorcery GM. (As a player I'm also (4) the guy who takes point. Which is funny because in my WoD days I was the cerebral, Mental Attributes and Knowledges primary guy.)

My games have been, for the better part of the last few years, one-shots and small arcs, so I'm really deficient in the Xanatos Gambit and wheels-within-wheels department.

Humor in my games is an emergent property of the dumb shit PCs do in the game. I don't create characters or situations as intentional comedic relief.

Humans are my favorite antagonists. I try to keep them archetypal and thematic: barbaric ravagers (Wrath), ordinary but dangerous bandits (Greed), grandiloquent tyrants and their armies of jackbooted thugs (Pride), and so on, and so forth.

I like it when there's more to them than meets the eye, and when they have a surprising variety of resources at their disposal — the barbarians have a spy inside city walls (a fur trader); the bandits count on the help of family relations among the villagers to lay low; the leader of the xenophobic totalitarians secretly employs a foreign magician.

In a long enough game, I particularly enjoy playing up their similarities with the PCs, complete with a "not so different, you and I" speech if possible.

When I deploy supernatural opponents I favor stuff you might find in a heavy metal album cover i.e. evil sorcerers, demons, eldricht abominations and the undead. Humanoids, fairy folk and dragons I like to present as duplicitous and human-like.
 
The Butcher said:
Humans are my favorite antagonists.
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Heck yeah.

When you do it well, people don't even notice the absence of elves and hobbits and orcs and such even in a fantasy game, or little green men in a sci fi game.
 
opaopajr said:
Star Trek, especially TNG, always seemed like Totalitarian Ikea Modernism to me.
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Having worked on a couple of productions, it always screamed "we have no set design budget" to me. It's one of the things I used to love about Big Bang Theory when it was still tolerable - there is an incredible amount of detail in that apartment set, 99% of which will never go noted, but if you look closely it's all consistent.
 
As for tropes, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility and It's Like The Fugitive But get a lot of mileage at my table.
 
daniel_ream said:
Having worked on a couple of productions, it always screamed "we have no set design budget" to me. It's one of the things I used to love about Big Bang Theory when it was still tolerable - there is an incredible amount of detail in that apartment set, 99% of which will never go noted, but if you look closely it's all consistent.
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Hah! That's the simpler answer, appealing to mankind's limits, and thus the more likely truth! Great to hear a professional opinion about how applied practices really come about.
 
opaopajr said:
how applied practices really come about.
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99% of all writing and design decisions on genre TV shows are about what's fastest, easiest and/or cheapest to produce. The Wormhole X-Treme! episode of Stargate SG-1 was the producers outright shoving this in the faces of the fans. (I used to know people who worked on the show, and the production team was lock, stock and barrel the team from The Outer Limits. They really had no experience with SF fans and tended to be quite bewildered about the rabidity of their own fan base, especially since none of the crew took the show all that seriously)

SF shows tend to get hit with the Ikea Modernism problem more than most because the entire set has to be built from scratch; you can't just nip down to, well, Ikea and buy stuff to scatter around the set. Production time costs a lot more than materials; if SF TV shows could buy all the set dressing they needed from Neimann Marcus in a day, they would (and sometimes do; there's a page somewhere I can no longer find that tracks every B-grade SF movie and TV show that has used painted Nerf guns as prop weapons)
 
... I wonder if there's a business opportunity there. And how much capital it would need. Could I get away with just a large warehouse that holds already made and used props for resale, a la Half Price Books relying on customers to supply product?
 
I'm not too familiar with most TV tropes, as I don't watch a lot of TV. But there are elements in my campaigns that tend to appear repeatedly.

Some of the most common:

  • An NPC villain/monster that's cute and/or funny but is also utterly terrifying. Usually a female, and usually close to the PCs in some way.
  • Allies that turn out to be enemies.
  • Enemies that turn out be allies.
  • Allies that are actually allies to the enemies in order to strengthen other enemies' allies.
  • Secrets, intrigue, Machiavellian politics, and mysteries. I flavor my campaigns with these liberally, whether my players want it or not, as without these, I'd get bored.
  • I like to inject a humorous situation periodically, outside of the humor the players generate themselves. This is almost always followed by something horrible in the following scene.
  • I like to start small and then expand in scale, raising the stakes, the threats, and the rewards as the game goes on.
  • PC death. I don't try to make this happen. It just happens. A lot. :sad:
  • PCs murdering other PCs. I try to make this happen. I doesn't happen as much as I'd like. :sad:
  • At least one major villain who doesn't monologue, doesn't do deathtraps, and is a ruthless, cunning, scary, son-of-a-bitch.
  • Scary-competent villain henchmen.
  • Actual intelligent guards.
  • All NPC love interests to the PCs have something very, very wrong with them, hidden behind the facade of beauty and goodness. They're usually crazy, and sometime serial killers. Or monsters. I can't help myself. :devil:
  • Lots of food. Seriously, I'll waste game-time describing the food and drink being served.
  • I'm a generous GM. I double experience points (in some cases) give much more treasure than would be normal, and drown the PCs in power...if they've earned it. My favorite part of any campaign is watching my players hit their power threshold, lose their shit, and destroy my setting for no rational reason whatsoever. :happy:
  • Epic, heroic battles, leaving the PCs spent having overcome a nearly impossible victory, only to realize they defeated the vanguard threat and the true danger can now be seen on the horizon.
  • Every action has a consequence. Players who've spent some time at my table learn to think carefully before wacking a guy.
  • If I do evil, which I often do, that evil is as genuine, horrific, and soul-rending as I can make it.
  • The mage walking down the path in splendid robes, decked out in do-dads, with an arrogant look on his face, that tells the PC party to, "Get out of my way! For I am Xanadar, the archmage! My power is second to non-" Is going to get jacked by the party because they know he's a low-level mage who's putting on a show in order to scare off bandits.
  • The mage that's dressed in a simple traveler's clothing, a worn cloak, and is leaning on a regular walking stick, who says something like, "I'm just a simple traveler, and merely a dabbler in the arcane." Is going to received by the PCs with the upmost respect and deference. Because they know that guy's an S-class archmage.
 
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