Action Movie Cliches

[Vorpalbob]

I am going to write a one-off D20 Modern adventure. Nothing serious, just total, action movie silliness.

I will also create a system for awarding damage/skill bonuses for clever one-liners.

What I need is a list of cliches found in such movies, which I will then attempt to combine into a semi-coherent plot.

We'll be playing this in about a week, and I'm sure I'll have some stories.

[Knaight]

Read the Knacks section of this. Every single one of those shows up all the time in action movie gunfights. I'm partial to Glass Dancer and Reload Ballet myself, but there are a lot of fun ones.

[Velaryon]

You need a car chase scene. Bonus points if someone on a motorcycle escapes by sliding beneath a semi-truck trailer and riding away.

Rooftop chases on foot are also a classic, with participants making improbably long jumps from one roof to another, usually without even twisting an ankle after a long fall.

You can never go wrong with a bar-room brawl. Whether it remains confined to fisticuffs, or people start pulling knives and using broken beer bottles, it should be a fun time. Of course, no bar brawl is complete without someone being slid face-first down the length of the bar, getting covered in pretzels, peanuts, and various alcoholic drinks.

If there is a MacGuffin involved, then of course you need to have the good guys recover it, only for the bad guys to show up with someone they care about as a hostage, and demand they hand it over.

For gunfights, I second that Knacks link posted by Knaight (thanks for that by the way). In addition, making liberal use of the Stormtrooper Effect is probably a good idea.

In fact, now that I think about it, you could do a good deal of research at TV Tropes, if you have approximately 200 hours to kill before you run the game.

[TheThan]

TV tropes to the rescue!

Warning! link may occupy a significant portion of your time/life.

[Maximus:Ranger]

Bonus XP for clever one-liners and puns.

Also a feat that allows you to walk away from explosions without looking back at them while putting on sunglasses.

[Ravens_cry]

Make Sir Isaac Newton cry, bullets punch people across the room.

[Saintheart]

1. Characters can outrun fireballs.

2. When they aren't just walking nonchalantly away from them in slow motion, that is.

[Ravens_cry]

1. Characters can outrun fireballs.

2. When they aren't just walking nonchalantly away from them in slow motion, that is.

Corollary to the above.
If the fireball catches up, it will merely toss them through the air, like being launched from an air ram, rather then be riddled with shrapnel, have their guts turned to jelly from the shockwave, or burned to medium rare.
***
Showing pictures of loved ones will reduce armour and dodging abilities and in fact cause one to attract bullets away from other characters.

[Garwain]

Drive a car down a cliff, but jump out at the very last second. Or better, drive a car into a helicopter.

Parachute from a plane onto a plane. Pull up said plane and prevent it from crashing.

[Talyn]

* Bad guys never, ever, ever lie. When they do, it's a big shock.
* Large caliber handguns are the most accurate types of weapon in the world, easily beating out assault rifles and sniper rifles in duels at long range.
* If you are pretty enough (either gender!) recoil no longer applies to you, and you can use whatever enormously overpowered handguns or shotguns which you can get your hands on regardless of how skinny your arms are.
* A shower and some bandages heal everything
* The human body contains roughly 20 gallons of blood.
* A bad guy's vehicle will explode into a fireball after being shot a few times.
* At least one of the guys your main characters are working for will turn on them in the last fifteen minutes, and reveal that he or she was behind the entire plot.

[Nachtritter]

Characters are immune to explosion damage as long as they turn their backs on it, put on sunglasses, and calmly walk away.

[Radar]

Characters are immune to explosion damage as long as they turn their backs on it, put on sunglasses, and calmly walk away.

Or take cover behind indestructible furniture.

[Saintheart]

Pithy and crude one-liners before attempting something highly bloody and highly improbable attract a +20 circumstance bonus.

EDIT: Oh, yes:

- for "Diplomacy" scenes, remember that any bed with a male and female in it has L-shaped sheets fitted to it, with the vertical part of the L fully covering the woman while the horizontal part covers the man from the waist down.

- The lieutenant is always black, unless he's incompetent, in which case he's always white.

- People don't actually say "hello" or "goodbye" when they speak on the phone.

- Most animals, particularly dogs, are immortal.

- It is impossible for a detective to solve a longrunning case until he has been suspended from the police force.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Entry plot hook: The protagonist's wife and child are hunted down by the BBEG and a small group of named lackeys who are close to him, which causes the protagonist (a good cop, rest assured) to turn bad.

Source: Every Stephen Segal movie, most Jean Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris movies, Punisher

[JonRG]

Here's a whole bunch of them, though not the list I was hoping to find.

http://www.sff.net/paradise/movies.html

[Hatchet91]

Dont forget the bonus to spot and aiming when whering dark sunglasses (and bigger bonuss to night driving)


also every plane has snakes, or a catastraphic failure no matter how many times the pc's check over the plane

[KillianHawkeye]

Diving under water is also a sure way to avoid fireballs.

[Radar]

Diving under water is also a sure way to avoid fireballs.

Which might have some merit, if the blast occured out of the water. Large sound velocity difference will cause the blastwave to reflect from the water surface (moreso if the blastwave is propagating almost parallel to the surface).

[Ravens_cry]

Which might have some merit, if the blast occured out of the water. Large sound velocity difference will cause the blastwave to reflect from the water surface (moreso if the blastwave is propagating almost parallel to the surface).

Not only that, but if it is more a fireball then an explosion (more heat, less pressure wave), waters excellent ability to absorb a great deal of heat without changing temperature, means it would, especially if you dove deep enough, also protect you that way. Or so I am guessing.

[Janus]

Male heroes need a new attractive love interest in each adventure, with no explanation or comment about what happened to the last one.

Make Sir Isaac Newton cry, bullets punch people across the room.

He'd never cry because he was the deadliest son-of-a-gun in space.

[LTwhitebread]

All main characters need absurd names that involve something that sounds awesome, like Jack Explosionfist, or Johnny O'Killbadguy. Also extends to villains, except with scary sounding names, like Steve Bloodmurder or Stewart Clawgore.

Also, include a fight scene where the good guys fight opponents that seemingly overwhelm them, but the good guys gain sudden insight which makes the fight become laughably easy.

Include an ostensibly plucky, but ultimately annoying young sidekick type character, whose only purpose is to get captured or otherwise require protection, and give painful situational one liners.

Include unrealistically cool art deco environs, which include incredibly hazardous sections of terrain thematic to the bad guy (think lava pit, shark tank, vat of liquid nitrogen). Have faceless mooks attempt to use these set-pieces to their advantage, but ultimately fall in (insert pithy one-liner).

Lasers.

Explosions. Whenever it seems appropriate, and more than a few times when it is absolutely not.

Looking back, it appears I could perhaps have spent my time in far more constructive ways. Oh well.

[Cespenar]

The place of the final battle has to contain one of the following:

-High voltage
-Furnace
-Chasm
-Some kind of sharp, jutting outcropping

Needless to say, the final battle has to be in hand-to-hand combat, and its conclusion must use one of the features listed above.

[Traveler]

Friends the hero has always happen to have a position or job that comes in handy, usually to the surprise of the hero. "Bob, when did you start owning a gun store?" "Fred, you're the detective working on this case?" Etc.
Friends of the hero also have a second set of skills that the hero knows nothing about like martial arts, car repair, beyond average computer skills, etc.

[Radar]

Friends the hero has always happen to have a position or job that comes in handy, usually to the surprise of the hero. "Bob, when did you start owning a gun store?" "Fred, you're the detective working on this case?" Etc.
Friends of the hero also have a second set of skills that the hero knows nothing about like martial arts, car repair, beyond average computer skills, etc.

They also tend to die, if the hero is reluctant to take down the bad guy.

[McSmack]

I know it might be painful, but go watch Last Action Hero. It has pretty much all of them.

Remember if you're 2 days from retirement you're gonna die a horrible death.

The classic Stormtrooper effect aka the more enemies there are shooting at you the less likely it is that you will get shot. Thusly the most dangerous situation is vs one bad guy with a single bullet.

[Traab]

If the bad guy is going to get away, is a long distance from you, and everyone will die if he escapes, the hero will have a +24 circumstance bonus for connecting with a disabling hit no matter what the range is, or distractions present. (ie explosions, a computer voice doing a countdown, swarms of bad guys closing in around you, etc)

One of the biggest things to remember is Elans dashing swordsman character. The hero gets a bonus for every one liner, quip, pun, or clever insult he can manage to say during combat. The arnold movie Commando is evidence of this. "Remember when I said id kill you last?" I lied" /coup de grace
"I eat green berets for breakfast." /ass whupping commences. It even works for diplomacy checks. The Running Man "Why should I?" "Because I am going to say... PLEASE." "Well... why didnt you say so?"