In Celebration of Cliches

[Catullus64]

One of the most important things I tell new players and Game Masters is to never be too shy of cliches. Usually, they're cliches for a reason; if they're overused, it's often because they work! And often, the deliberate aversion of a cliche becomes so common as to form it's own cliche; and the new cliche is often worse, because it's motivated by cynicism instead of sincerity.

So what are some of your favorite cliches in fantasy gaming? Is there one you haven't used in awhile? And why do you think your favorite cliches still have merit?

I really like stereotypical cults. Men with daggers and hooded robes, lurking in ruins and oddly spacious catacombs, sacrificing virgins to summon gods that will definitely eat them. Absolutely my jam.

I'm also a big fan of starting games in taverns, or with mysterious strangers at a crossroads by midnight.

I also like my Dwarfs very stereotypical. Gold, ale, axes, clannishness, stubbornness, meticulous beard care, prone to complaining about anything not of Dwarfish make. Make your Elves and Halflings different, by all means, but leave my Dwarfs alone.

I like witch-hunters wearing steeple hats (preferably with buckles) and long black coats/cloaks, regardless of whether that makes sense in the setting.

Chase cliches! Mobs of orphans, fruit carts, jumping off rooftops onto awnings, workmen carrying large panes of glass. Love 'em.

Stock misunderstandings and twists also have a fond place in my heart. Secret identical twins (bonus points for secret royalty), treacherous viziers & chancellors, deities in disguise with secret tests of character. Sadly, loving these tropes often breaks your heart when players shout out the twist at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Quertus]

Wizard in robes. Ideally with staves. In any era.

Fantasy Knights in armor. Sons (and daughters) of nobles.

Clergy as revered, in any era, likely more important than a 7th son of a noble.

[AMFV]

Celebrating cliches is so overplayed.

[Mastikator]

I like my necromancers and undead to be evil.

I also find taverns to be excellent places to start an adventure.

I like my nobles to be often corrupt (but not unreasonable).

I like monologuing villains.

I like secret societies up to no good, in secret wars with other secret societies.

[zzzzzzzz414]

i always have a weakness for a classic Rogue and or/Conman With A Heart Of Gold trope. i dont care how overplayed it is, i love a han solo or music man character every time (and have made too many PCs with that sorta premise lol)

[Pauly]

I like the Grand Vizier/Regent to secretly be the BBEG.

I like the not so bright Villain’s lieutenant who can be turned to good.

I like societies where people no longer believe in witches, but witches are real … and evil. Same for vampires and werewolves.

[King of Nowhere]

I try to either avoid cliches, or give them a twist, or justify them; if the party starts in a tavern and there's a mysterious stranger in a corner, there's generally a perfectly good reason for things to be like that (actually, dressing up as mysterious strangers is a code to hint that you're hiring adventurers).

But sometimes I like to hang lampshades over them clichès and play them for laughs. I am particularly fond of pompous noblemen with ludicrously long and silly names. To the point that I created a culture that does that on purpose, as status simbol - the idea being that if you can introduce yourself as "Frederunt" and nobody laughs at you, it shows you're powerful indeed.
And if I have a stereotypical villain, he will be a joke and easily defeated. I just can't work a villain with all the stupid flaws of a stereotypical villain being all that competent and dangerous. So instead he'll be a parvenu that thinks he's a lot more competent than he actually is, his "master plan" will fall apart quite quickly, and he'll be defeated easily enough.
On the other hand, my main villains - those designed to be taken seriously and actually challenge the party - could recite the evil overlord list in their sleep. backwards.

[Quertus]

On the other hand, my main villains - those designed to be taken seriously and actually challenge the party - could recite the evil overlord list in their sleep. backwards.

A clever Hero can recognize a True Villain by the fact that they always remain within a 5' step of a 5-year-old, whom they consult before taking any important action. :smallamused:

[NovenFromTheSun]

Good and evil as forces of powers, and you can’t expose yourself to either for too long without them affecting how you thinks.

[Easy e]

I love tropes, not so sure about cliches.

What it he difference? I tend to think tropes are familiar story beats that help act as sign posts for the type of story you are in. Cliches are things that have been beaten to death and no longer serve any purpose, even leaning into them might be a bit tired.

For example, cultists in robes, daggers, and such could be a trope in a Call of Cthulhu game, while in a Cyberpunk game could be a cliche.

Maybe it is a distinction without a difference? Who knows.

[KorvinStarmast]

I like my necromancers and undead to be evil.
I also find taverns to be excellent places to start an adventure.
I like my nobles to be often corrupt (but not unreasonable).
I like monologuing villains.
I like secret societies up to no good, in secret wars with other secret societies. They are helpful.
I also like normal NPCs/people with dark secrets that over time become a part of the adventure/setting.
The hooker who also runs a smuggling operation.
The tavern owner who is a spy for the king. (If you have ever seen the movie Ryan's Daughter, that role was quite well done).
And so on.

[warty goblin]

One of the advantages of cliche is that you can do it very earnestly and have that shine through. Earnest, straightforward enjoyment of something can be pretty appealing, particularly in a media landscape as self aware and irony poisoned as ours.

Of course if you aren't feeling earnest, you can spoof cliche at any level from gentle teasing to full on parody. If you're really good, you can gently tease your cliche while still being very earnest about it.

Finally, cliche is extremely efficient, pretty much no matter the mode. This is very handy for something like fantasy, because if you use, say, very dwarfy dwarves, you probably don't have to explain them overmuch. If your players just want to kick goblins in the face, very dwarfs dwarves lets you get there that much faster. This is really important for a good adventure type story, which benefits enormously from a snappy pace and not getting bogged down.

[Pex]

I want Paladins to be Lawful Good. I don't want the bad stereotype. They can drink, not be a virgin, be wealthy, get their fair share of treasure from dead bad guys and tombs, not need an operation to remove a stick, not smite everyone who even just had a bad day, but they are Heroes. They are Team Good Guy all the way. No Anti-paladin. No Champion for something else as an excuse not to be Lawful Good. I want the classic Captain America/Superman Paladin.

[Willie the Duck]

I like me some charming pastoral vistas with wattle and daub or sod farmhouses (or hobbit-houses, for halflings or otherwise) or iron-age roundhouses -- all well outside of the situations where they would be historic. I like elves frollicking in forest glades or ridiculously gorgeous crystal grottos with waterfalls (exactly what this frollicking is, or how it puts food on the table, is unclear). Despite how well bows and arrows actually do in forests, I love elves and rangers to be archers. I like dwarves in mines with roaring fires and lots of ale.

I do prefer bards as they were in 2e -- musicians by profession but who dabble in magic (as done by wizards, not any kind of song-magic or instrument-as-focus magic) and a little bit of thievery on the side -- but I still like them to be starting up songs of the party's exploits at every tavern they come across, and most likely to get the party into trouble.

I like my druids creepy and mysterious with ancient rites they perform at megaliths erected sometime before written history (perhaps dancing naked under the full moon).

[kyoryu]

Breaking expectations can be great - but it's really only interesting when a baseline is set. So, yeah, cults are shadowy and secretive, for a reason. They're trying to hide their identities, even from each other... but then you get the cult that doesn't do that, and it's cool. But you have to set the precedent first.

Otherwise "opposite of expected" becomes the expectation and is normal.

[Bad Wolf]

I like the stereotypical "seducing everything with a pulse" bard archetype. Annoying if you overplay it, but can be funny in the right amount.

One funny DND story I read concerning that had the party fighting a BBEG who was going to use a princess as part of a virgin sacrifice to summon an evil God or something. So while the party was fighting, the bard ran off with the princess and.... yeah.

[Hytheter]

I like the stereotypical "seducing everything with a pulse" bard archetype. Annoying if you overplay it, but can be funny in the right amount.

In a typical fantasy setting, 'with a pulse' is actually fairly selective. :smallamused:

[Bad Wolf]

In a typical fantasy setting, 'with a pulse' is actually fairly selective. :smallamused:

Anything with a hit dice, then :P

[Beelzebub1111]

When having a sword and sorcery game, you have to have a princess chained up to an altar about to be sacrificed to a dark god (or some giant monster that is worshiped as a god) when the players show up to interrupt the ritual and fight the high priest and its god. It's basically a rule.

[Jay R]

The evil character helping the good ones for her own selfish, evil purposes.

I'm about to use an NPC witch. She is going to help the Good PC party return to their home world, for her own reasons. But on their way to see her, she is going to detour them into a couple of her enemies.

[Tohron]

One funny DND story I read concerning that had the party fighting a BBEG who was going to sacrifice the princess as part of some ritual to summon an evil God or something. So while the party was fighting, the bard ran off with the princess and.... yeah.

This strategy is extra-effective for sacrifices that require virgins.

[gbaji]

When having a sword and sorcery game, you have to have a princess chained up to an altar about to be sacrificed to a dark god (or some giant monster that is worshiped as a god) when the players show up to interrupt the ritual and fight the high priest and its god. It's basically a rule.

Except in Call of Cthulhu, where that's "you arrived too late" if the god/monster is already there.

[Telok]

Cliches & tropes are information. Specifically they're mostly culture specific info transmitted via mass media, but that's not really important. The important bit is that they're information. They quickly tell people (who are familiar with them) a great deal about something.

I've been finding major several rpgs recently that have mostly abandoned using tropes, cliches, categories, styles, and standards in their world & monster building. Had a fight in a game recently where the GM described something and showed a picture, which told us jack **** except the thing had a typical arms-legs-head humanoid body layout and no equipment. Sure, we got color (greyish brown), it didn't appear to have flesh rotting off, didn't have giant claws or fangs, and after we asked we knew it was 7 feet tall. After that? Nothing. Caster? Brawler? Undead? Demon? Elemental? Construct? Poison? Smart? Dumb? Treasure? No clue. Someone made a "know stuff" check and got told it was undead and a name... which still meant nothing since there's like 300 random undead with random word salad names and random abilities. Sure, we now knew the protection from evil spell would do something, but no idea of anything else. It might be immune to poison, or not. It might be vulnerable to radiant damage, or not. It might resist necrotic damage, or not. It might drain stats, or not. It might fly & teleport, or not. It might be immune to stunning or turning, or not. It might psychic blast us, or not. It might punch really hard, or not. So what did we do? Haste the fighter and blast a meaningless pile of hit points with force damage until it fell down. Boring meaningless combat encounter because we knew absolutely nothing about it except it had a spell interaction tag of "undead", some hp & ac, and we'd rolled initative.

Cliches & tropes are useful if & because they give useful information. Celebrate giving players useful information without making them flip a coin or giving them near useless pity info for only rolling a 12 on a d20.

[Tanarii]

Cliche's for GMing:

Orcs are always bad guys. Hobgoblins are mean and like to conquer. Goblins and Kobolds will raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer their weaselly black guts out. But they can be dealt with, preferably from a position of strength. Orcs? They just love working for Big Bad Evil Guys, war machines and killing. And they're all out of BBEGs and war machines ...

Starting in a Tavern is fine. Just make sure someone talks to the Quest Giver before Dwarf, Barbarian, or Dwarf Barbarian starts the drunken brawl.

Always ask "Are you sure?"

There's always a dragon.

Cliches for playing:

Fighters wear the heaviest armor available. Dex Fighter is a contradiction in terms.

Clerics shout their Deity Name as War Cries - For Pelor!

Halflings are secretly Kender in disguise.

Never trust the Rogue.

[Satinavian]

In the past there were cataclysmic events that destroyed whole civilizations and there are ruins and lost knowledge. And those lost civilizations where different in some meaningful ways.

(Sure, that kinda contradicts the other cliche of medieval stasis but i can do without that one)

[Bad Wolf]

This strategy is extra-effective for sacrifices that require virgins.

That is actually what I mean to write...whoops. Let me edit that.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In the past there were cataclysmic events that destroyed whole civilizations and there are ruins and lost knowledge. And those lost civilizations where different in some meaningful ways.

(Sure, that kinda contradicts the other cliche of medieval stasis but i can do without that one)
I see medieval stasis as occurring only on average. The cycle of growth and cataclysm and recovery looks like things are mired in unchanging nature, but that's only because the sample rate is too low.

But yes, D&D works best, I think, in a inter-apocalyptic, cyclic history scenario. Not directly post apocalyptic, where the memories and echos of the past are all around (ie Fallout), but down the road a bit. Not so far you're approaching another golden age, but somewhere in the middle.

[Tanarii]

So basically fantasy Moties. Clearly I need to start sneaking in "on the gripping hand" more, since their culture seems to have secretly spread across the Material Plane.

[kyoryu]

Boring meaningless combat encounter because we knew absolutely nothing about it except it had a spell interaction tag of "undead", some hp & ac, and we'd rolled initative.

Cliches & tropes are useful if & because they give useful information. Celebrate giving players useful information without making them flip a coin or giving them near useless pity info for only rolling a 12 on a d20.

Side note, but in general I find that "don't tell the players about the monster" is worse gaming, in general. Make the monster so that even if you know how it works, the challenge is in figuring out how to effectively counter that. Then metagaming concerns disappear.


I see medieval stasis as occurring only on average. The cycle of growth and cataclysm and recovery looks like things are mired in unchanging nature, but that's only because the sample rate is too low.

But yes, D&D works best, I think, in a inter-apocalyptic, cyclic history scenario. Not directly post apocalyptic, where the memories and echos of the past are all around (ie Fallout), but down the road a bit. Not so far you're approaching another golden age, but somewhere in the middle.

Arguably, a number of old school settings (notably including Greyhawk) were exactly this.

[SimonMoon6]

The party fights a particular difficult monster.

Their next encounter involves fighting many of those monsters.

Variation:

The party has a particularly tough fight.

And now the *real* enemy shows up.

[Tanarii]

The party fights a particular difficult monster.

Their next encounter involves fighting many of those monsters.
This feels awesome as a player if there was a trick to defeating the monster, and you discover it, then fight a larger number in the next fight and destroy them.

Not so much if it becomes a dungeon full of them tho

[Cluedrew]

You know, one thing I think people forget about cliches or whatever you call them, is how they became cliches in the first place. A story did them, people realized they liked them and started using them over and over again. So, almost inherently, there is some built in appeal.

[SimonMoon6]

This feels awesome as a player if there was a trick to defeating the monster, and you discover it, then fight a larger number in the next fight and destroy them.

Not so much if it becomes a dungeon full of them tho

Well, there are two kinds of story types that go well with this:

(1) The party has just fought a single MonsterX (whatever it might be). They have learned how powerful one of these creatures is. They know that they were barely able to fight one MonsterX. Then, they see ten of them in a room. This teaches the party that they should not attack but instead try to sneak past or use diplomacy or something else because they now know they cannot fight ten of them.

And that's kind of neat because usually when a group of PCs sees a group of monsters, they are definitely going to attack, knowing that the DM wouldn't have put them in the dungeon (or other scenario) unless the PCs could kill them. This overconfidence can be deadly and it often springs from ignorance. But if you can eliminate the ignorance, you can squash the overconfidence.

(2) Sometimes the party is underconfident. Like, if one of the party members actually took even 1 hp of damage or if one of the spellcasters was forced to cast a single spell, they think that the fight was too rough and unfair and stuff like that. So, quickly you can show the PCs that, no, that was not a tough fight, *this* is a tough fight. Though the PCs might take a lot of damage and use a lot of spells, and even one or two of the PCs might be temporarily dead at the end of the fight, they can still win this fight and that might help the players learn how powerful they really are.

[KorvinStarmast]

SF Horror cliche (the movie Alien captures this quite well).
In space, no one can hear you scream was the poster catch phrase, but the "it's from outer space" horror element covers a lot of ground from Lovecraftian tentacle fish creatures to much else.

1. Andromeda Strain: It came from outer space, and its eating us from the inside out and drying our blood.
2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers - they are parasites that latch onto our brains ...
3. The monster is like nothing you've ever run into before! (Alien)
4. They see Earth / humans as a source of food (To Serve Man and other stories)

Anyhoo, we are in a game called Mothership (it's on a Kickstarter) that leans into Space Horror.

[Kriegspiel]

For example, cultists in robes, daggers, and such could be a trope in a Call of Cthulhu game, while in a Cyberpunk game could be a cliche.

https://s3.birthmoviesdeath.com/images/made/dolph_lundgren_johnny_mn_2_1200_694_81_s.jpg

[Easy e]

https://s3.birthmoviesdeath.com/images/made/dolph_lundgren_johnny_mn_2_1200_694_81_s.jpg

Legit made a character like that in Shadowrun once. A Street Preacher Samurai. Fun-character to play!