RPG Clichés [Archive] - Cursed Chronicles

CTM

April 25th, 2006, 02:09 AM

I know most of you must know this list, but I found it quite hilarious, and I thought I'd share it in case some of you do not.

RPG Clichés (http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html)

My favorite ones :

Guy in the Street Rule
No matter how fast you travel, rumors of world events always travel faster. When you get to anywhere, the people on the street are already talking about where you've been. The stories of your past experiences will spread even if no witnesses were around to see them.

Wherever You Go, There They Are
Wherever the characters go, the villains can always find them. Chances are they're asking the guy in the street (see above). But don't worry -- despite being able to find the characters with ease anytime they want to, the bad guys never get rid of them by simply blowing up the tent or hotel they're spending the night in. (Just think of it: the screen dims, the peaceful going-to-sleep-now music plays, then BOOM! Game Over!)

Figurehead Rule
Whenever someone asks you a question to decide what to do, it's just to be polite. He or she will ask the question again and again until you answer "correctly."

Law of NPC Relativity (Magus Rule)
Characters can accomplish superhuman physical feats, defeat enemies with one hand tied behind their back and use incredible abilities -- until they join your party and you can control them. Then these wonderful powers all vanish, along with most of their hit points.

Adam Smith's Revenge
By the end of the game you are renowned everywhere as the Legendary Heroes, every surviving government and authority figure has rallied behind you, the fate of the world is obviously hanging in the balance, and out of nowhere random passers-by give you a pat on the back and heartfelt good luck wishes. However, shopkeepers won't even give you a discount, much less free supplies for the final battle with evil.

Seraphy

April 25th, 2006, 10:48 AM

We actually have something like that on the main site. I started a topic a long time ago on another forum I go to, 100 reasons why videogames aren't realistic. I think some of the members there got some from that site.

1) They can carry a heavy load of objects.
2) They never go to the bathroom.
3) The main character usually has an abnormal hair color, a genetic impossibility.
4) Even in a bustling metropolis, there is usually only ONE vendor selling in the whole place
5) Killing enemies gives you money for no apparent reason.
6) There is no apparent need for rest, even after moving for like a thousand miles or something.
7) Heroes never seem to die. In real life, heroes die - for good.
8) Real life always contains mature content.
9) More often then not it will only get dark when you sleep in an inn.
10) No matter how many times you talk to that one soldier all he will say is "Welcome!"
11) Despite the ability to revive your party members, other people who die are unable to be brought back to life due to the aspect of "story-line".
12) You get "lives".
13) Dragons
14) Tents can dodge attacks.
15) You can get hit many times while other bad guys in the game get killed in one.
16) When an enemy dies instead of their corpse laying on the ground it vanishes into nothing.
17) Bosses are often found "waiting for you" deep inside a dungeon
18) Guns never run out of ammo.
19) Infinity enemies exist - If you're in a dungeon and kill a monster, it won't go away; you'll fight it again sooner or later.
20) There are huge monsters that pillage villages.
21) Characters can go months with out food or drink.
22) The characters usually have the ability to jump insane distances, but can't jump over small ledges that mark the "boundaries" of an area.
23) Doors magically open once you destroy all the enemies in the room or something.
24) Characters often don't recall previous times you've tried to do things when you do them again.
25) You can shoot bullet holes into something and come again to see it already patched up as perfect as possible
26) When you put up 15 Mines in one room...the only thing left behind is a Black Spot while later in the game one mine blows up a whole factory.
27) Bomb proof glass.
28) No matter how much you try you can never get immune to all elements.
29) You don't instantly die once being shot, sliced or something.
30) Health Meters.
31) Often, once your characters gets shot, hurt, sliced etc. not even any wounds show.
32) You can get "restarts" if you failed.
33) If you failed an objective, often the storyline doesn't play along.
34) Life never resets when you hit all the buttons at once.
35) You can walk into anyone's house at anytime, and they're always there and will talk to you like they know you.
36) Instead of gradually getting stronger, like in real life, game characters will fight and fight until they "level up" and all their abilities will increase abruptly.
37) When you are tired, you can't hit the Pause button in real life.
38) In games you can hold up to 99 items of the same thing...you can't hold 99 bottles of Elixir as well as 99 of other random things...
39) You never have to wait for life to load.
40. You can't collect little symbols that will give you 1-ups and Continues in real life.
41. When you bop ten tough guys/bullies on the head in a row in real life, you don't get a 1-up, you get beaten up.
42. There are no save states in real life.
43) There's no music in the background in real life.
44) If you steal a car and run over prostitutes in real life, you don't get busted then released back onto the streets; you go to Death Row.
45) You can't fly or gain the ability to fly in real life.
46) You can't run on water, however fast you can go.
47) If there's a prophecy, you can bet it'll come true, and you'll be involved in it.
48) Whacking someone in the back of the head is an instant kill. Even though you're wearing POWERED FULL BODY ARMOR.
49) While most people would drop after about two bullets, you can take a clip and live to tell about it.
50) You can't collect cute little animal with 'pon' or 'mon' at the end of their names.
51) If there was someone evil taking over the world, people won't turn to you as their only hope.
52) You can't rename yourself...as well as other people who join your 'party' whenever you feel like it.
53) You don't meet monsters to fight whenever you visit caves, forests, plains and other places
54) When you fight and win, you don't gain EXP and level up.
55) You can stay underwater forever.
56) Mushrooms will never give you a growth spurt in real life.
57) You can't ride Rhinos, Frogs, Dinosaurs, Yoshis, in real life.
58) Octopuses can't lay Sea Mines.
59) Events are not random in games, but they are in real life
60) If an evil force is trying to take over the world, people are not going to stand around doing nothing about it.
61) Again with evil forces in real life, someone of high power is bound to launch a nuke or something on them.
62) In a game, Inns have healing powers to rival Lourdes. It heals all wounds up to and including fatal. In real life, Inns smell bad.
63) To survive, all one needs is minerals, gas and supplies.
64) Giant metal hands dictate your life.
65) Whenever there is a sequel to an RPG that features the same main character as the previous game, that character will always start with beginner skills. Everything that they learned in the previous game will be gone, as will all their ultra-powerful weapons and equipment.
66) Once you sell something to a shopkeeper, he instantly sells it to somebody else and you will never see the item again no matter what.
65) Crates always seem to blow up
66) The boss is 10x the size of you.
67) EVERYTHING has a self-destruct sequence.
68) If you try to help someone in real life, they don't send you around the world, trying to track that item because the person they lent it to lent it to someone else and so forth.
69) People can die of bullets to the finger.
70) People 80 times your size don't ever think of doing things like, say, stepping on you.
71) People 80 times your size will reel back in pain from being shot with bullets that they would never even feel.
72) Animals talk.
73) The main hero always has weird crazy mega spike up hair.
74) You can't actually say "...", "!?" or "...!!!!" in real life.
75) You can't have a conversation with someone without talking yourself.
76) You can't command your friends to attack each other.
77) The protagonist tends to know little or nothing about the quest when he/she begins.
78) At the end when you defeat the boss, something always blows up!
79) You can have infinite lives.
80) It actually takes a while before you die in poison gas and toxic waste.
81) You find guns laying in the street.
82) You can't jump hundreds of feet in the air.
83) You cannot physically destroy most of the giant bosses you fight in games. It is an absolute impossibility.
84) Bombers/Fighters don't fly several miles then stop dead in mid air for no apparent reason other than their movement range has been used up.
85) Ships do not blow up when they run out of fuel.
86) You cannot capture things by jumping on them. You hurt your legs.
87) Dead people can't come out of the ground to attack you.
88) You don't have a time limit on when you can launch nukes.
89) When you run people over with a car, they DIE, or else suffer massive eternal injuries. They don't just..."lose some of their health bar".
90) The boss always has a mask, face paint, or is a mutated animal of some sort.
91) No matter how big that big-ass sword is, you won't stand out in a crowd. Nobody ever crosses the street to avoid you or seems to be especially shocked or alarmed when a heavily armed gang bursts into their house during dinner, rummages through their possessions, and demands to know if they've seen a black-caped man. People can get used to anything, apparently.
92) Every powerful character you attempt to seek aid from will first insist upon "testing your strength" in a battle to the death.
93) All bookshelves contain exactly one book, which only has enough text on it to fill up half a page.
94) Whenever big fat mean guys are about to croak, they begin flashing red or yellow.
95) Shoot everything. If it blows up or dies, it was bad.
96) A thousand-to-one odds against you is NOT a problem.
97) No matter how long you fight, you can always fight again.
98) You can operate all weapons without training.
99) Piloting any vehicle is simple and requires no training.
100) One lone "good guy" can defeat an infinite number of "bad guys".