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D&D Ideas — Tropes Revisited

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is tropes revisited, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of tropes we’re leaning into them hard while developing our very first original roleplaying game — Zoo Mafia! In this game you’ll Go Wild and Do Crime as a resident of a city zoo by day and organized crime syndicate by night. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

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As a side note Nerdarchist Ted recalled when it comes to tropes we’d already covered this topic! If you’re curious you can find that material including the live discussion on the website here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Tropes are a time honored tradition in fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons encompassing everything from greedy and suspicious dwarves to adventurers meeting in a tavern. These can be quite cliche but they are also useful. When players hear about a princess who has been abducted they know what to do. Even if they’ve never played D&D before they’ll recognize the expectation.

Instead of thinking of these as groan worthy tropes think about how you can use them in your D&D games as tools. Perhaps the adventurers storm a castle only to discover through a note or from someone they take prisoner that the princess is no longer in this castle, but at another castle. After a series of misadventures they finally track down the missing princess only to find out she’s been in on it the whole time or is even the mastermind behind everything.

In the kingdom, the eldest male child inherits the throne. Being the true firstborn the aforementioned missing princess is outraged by this injustice and decides to take matters into her own hands. She enacts a plot to extort her father and the royal family. All this is a diversion for her true plans to overthrow her father and dispose of her brother who she considers an unworthy dolt.

Set up a well known trope and then add your own twist. Or instead of taking these tropes seriously when you add them to your game let them be an out of game gag that is part of the game. In session one each player’s character has received an invitation from someone they know to meet at a tavern. When they arrive each one is taken to a private room at the tavern. They may or may not know the other adventurers in the room, but the adventurers have now all met in a tavern. Then this benefactor attempts to hire or otherwise get the party to work together and go on a quest. Perhaps they even have several quests for the group and this is how the party comes to work together going forward.

Tropes get used over and over again for a reason. They work and often make sense in the context in which they are being used. Instead of shying away from them try leaning into tropes.

What about the bard who seduces everyone and everything? I think we could even use this one. Step one is to show the bard seducing someone, someones, something and/or somethings. Next have the same bard get into a spot of trouble from which the characters could help them out. Afterwards maybe the bard recounts a tale of woe of how they weren’t always quite like this. In fact they used love quite deeply. The bard fell deeply in love with someone who was married to a powerful wizard. When they discovered their spouses’ infidelity they cursed the bard to forever pursue all things carnal and to be insatiable.

The bard has left nothing but a wake of broken hearts and chaos wherever they have gone since. They’d give anything to end their suffering and the suffering of those they leave behind. The bard has fallen in love, but every time these relationships are heartache for the bard and their lovers. Will the players take up the quest to break the bard’s curse? Just some things to think about when you think about tropes.

From Ted’s Head

When it comes to tropes in D&D you have to ask yourself if you have an issue with tropes or if there’s a way to turn them on the heads and do the opposite when the party thinks one thing is going to happen and it does not. First let’s look at the mimic.

I love mimics and have used them in many of the games I have run. Not only are mimics a lot of fun to use they’re also one of the perfect ambush monsters. The specific lore of the mimic allows each Dungeon Master to tailor mimics in their world however they want. In one of my games I used a mimic that wound up befriended by the party and it assumed a form that looked like a mix of mimic and barrel. The mimic traveled with the party for a while like a pet dog. If I remember correctly the party fed the mimic the bodies of their fallen foes so it made cleanup pretty easy after the fight.

So yes, I say use mimics but find some new ways to incorporate them and make the party second guess all the mimics they have killed over the years.

If you want another trope that falls into the ambush predator there is also the Animated Statue. Maybe predator is not the right word, as animated statues just follow orders. How can we turn this trope on its head and do something different? You could have some fun and play a game on a chess board but this is something I have seen before. How about something trickier?

What if the statues are indestructible or self repairing (like regeneration) and it is not so much about defeating the statues but moving them around the room to trigger certain spots on the battle map? There could be clues either in the room or in previous rooms. Characters either have to use their tactics or a straight Athletics check to shove the creatures around the map. Once each statue locks into place it is unable to move. It might still attack characters who stray too close but it becomes a nice challenge beyond simply beating down the monsters hit points.

Here is a trope which lately has not been something I have cared about — the party watch. This is important as Survival can depend on whether or not characters notice approaching bad guys. But what if it were not important? In my Untraditionally Arcane campaign for the most part the party does not rest until they are back at their tower. In my We All Live on a Boat campaign there are others on the boat with them who also help keep a look out so the party is not relied on to spot danger.

When I look further I have seen some groups play the game very differently than what I have done in the past. Previously the DM would decide if anything was going to happen. If it did then the players rolled randomly to determine during what watch the event would happen. Then the Perception checks would start coming and either the party would be aware or not. I have started seeing some play where only if the party rolls high enough to possibly notice an ambusher then the ambush would go off. Other groups only have the attack if a really high or really low roll happened. There are so many ways to do it but at the end of the day the threat of danger is out there and having to set a watch keeps the party alert and present to the potential danger out there.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

If I’m honest although I kinda know what “trope” means it’s one of those terms I wasn’t 100% certain on the exact definition so naturally I looked it up. My understanding now is tropes are basically figures of speech or more specifically, “a convention or device that establishes a predictable or stereotypical representation of a character, setting, or scenario in a creative work.” Fantasy tropes in particular occur unsurprisingly in fantasy fiction.

There’s a few big ones from this field of fantasy tropes and they’re certainly applicable to D&D. The game classically draws inspiration from a broad swath of myth and legend. As the game and hobby grows creators tinker with tropes for a variety of reasons like comedic effect or turning a trope on its head for a fresh take or simply experimentation.

How do fantasy tropes manifest in your D&D games?

• Good vs. Evil. As classic as tropes come. Clearly evil entities pose a threat and clearly good heroes set out to stop their evil schemes. This trope speaks mostly to heroic fantasy. In contrast stories like those featuring Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser present protagonists who oppose evil but themselves are morally ambiguous. A postmodern twist presents villains who themselves are morally gray, which is a trope I personally don’t enjoy. I don’t want to sympathize with the villain my adventuring party spent the whole campaign trying to stop.
• Hero. What’s a hero? Sometimes there’s a person and well, they’re the person for their time and place. In D&D — especially fifth edition — characters start their adventuring career pretty heroically. Earlier editions of the game saw characters go from zeroes to heroes whereas 5E D&D moves the bar as characters go from heroes to superheroes. At any rate D&D adventurers are capable of extraordinary deeds whether those are physical, spiritual, magical, moral or any combination. I enjoy playing heroic D&D characters. Even if they’re not paragons of virtue they’re ready, willing and able to go above and beyond.
• Dark Lord. Forces of evil personified. One of the conceits of fantasy games like D&D is a centralized figure representing the problem. In my view this is the most powerful fantasy trope because there’s a clear source of evil and no question it ought to be overcome. Sauron, Darth Vader, Manshoon, Orcus and the like all the way down to the necromancer plaguing a small frontier town present a figure upon which the threat hangs. Adventurers shouldn’t wind up feeling sorry for this villain. I recently read an article about the villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was critical of their portrayal. The gist was all the villains they covered could be considered heroes except for the lines they crossed (like murdering innocent people). Well, duh! THAT’S WHY THEY’RE THE VILLAIN.
• Quest. Does it get more on the nose? Whatever the RPG when I’m a player I crave this trope more than any other. Give me a solid quest hook and I will bite. For me the concept of an adventurer is like a vocation. These characters choose to follow a different lifepath than the normal folks. Whatever their backstory and motivation their future relies on the quest, however this manifests. My No. 1 favorite RPG is called Quest and that’s no coincidence.
• Magic. Some supernatural element present in the world. High fantasy, low fantasy, swords-and-sorcery and everything in between all represent where the magic dial is set. In my experience it’s a bit more difficult to elicit a sense of true wonder in a setting rife with magic. I prefer to keep magic a little more rare. In 5E D&D the player characters are more magical than any other time in the game’s history, which for me makes those characters truly remarkable in a setting. But this comes with some expectations upon them as well. They’ve got tremendous power and both me as DM and the NPCs in the world expect more from these folks.
• Ancient World. An RPG setting’s age in long form. All those ruins come from somewhere, right? I enjoy this trope quite a lot because it provides a DM tool to convey information without spilling all the beans. Fragmented records, hints to further knowledge elsewhere and the like pique characters’ curiosity about more than whatever specific quest brought them to engage with the concept of the ancient world.
• Races and Species. Pandora’s Box! Unfortunately a great deal of RPG players and those interested in the hobby seem a bit hyperfocused on this trope. Someone may look at dwarves, elves, orcs and so forth as a lens through which to examine different aspects of the human experience in a literary sense but this is not the baseline assumption in a game sense. Fantasy races are referred to as such not in a cultural way but a biological one. They are completely different creatures. This trope is perhaps the most challenging but also rewarding to explore in your D&D games. What truly makes the various races unique?

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