maybe so, but we still love them

hahahahahah! Oh, that list was pretty funny(cause they''re true)

I especially hate #73

quote: Magical Inequality Theorem
In the course of your travels you may find useful-sounding spells such as Petrify, Silence, and Instant Death. However, you will end up never using these spells in combat because a) all ordinary enemies can be killed with a few normal attacks, making fancy attacks unneccessary, b) all bosses and other stronger-than-average monsters are immune to those effects so there''s no point in using them for long fights where they''d actually come in handy, and c) the spells usually don''t work anyway

82

quote: Well, That About Wraps It Up For God
All major deities, assuming they actually exist and weren''t just made up by the Church to delude its followers, are in reality malevolent and will have to be destroyed. The only exception to this rule is the four nature spirits who have preserved the land since time immemorial, but now due to the folly of mankind have lost virtually all of their power and need you to accomplish some ludicrous task to save them

128

quote: 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

136

quote: Gender Equality, Part 1 (Feena Rule)
Your average female RPG character carries a variety of deadly weapons and can effortlessly hack or magic her way through armies of monsters, killer cyborgs, and mutated boss creatures without breaking a sweat. She may be an accomplished ninja, a superpowered secret agent, or the world''s greatest adventurer. However, if one of the game''s villains manages to sneak up and grab her by the Standard Female Character Grab Area (her upper arm) she will be rendered utterly helpless until rescued by the hero

139

quote: Gender Equality Addendum (Rynn Rule)
In the unlikely event that the main character of the game is female, she will not be involved in any romantic subplot whatsoever beyond getting hit on by shopkeepers

179

quote: Weapon Rule
There''s always a hidden creature who is much harder to defeat than even the ultimate bad guy''s final, world-annihilating form. It''s lucky for all concerned that this hidden creature prefers to stay hidden rather than trying to take over the world himself, because he''d probably win. As a corollary, whatever reward you get for killing the hidden creature is basically worthless because by the time you''re powerful enough to defeat him, you don''t need it any more

(cause in one case, the d*mn thing just ran away so I never could kill it)

136? What about Valkyrie Profile? Female character, male love interest (Lucian).

Don''t think of this list as "your game is going to do these things, whether you know it or not", but as a "because you''re so steeped in others'' conceptions of RPGs, you will probably make these mistakes, so watch out for them."

There were some on that list that I''d never seen in a game before, and about half were from FF7, which is just so widely popular that any feature from it not completely natural seemed like a cliche by now.

Is it just me, or does Dark Cloud (for PlayStation 2) break out of EVERY SINGLE ONE of those rules?

Ok. So the flying castle that is attacked and destroyed against all odds is out. But doesn''t every game need a hero that walks through destroyed towns?

Alot of the stuff is pretty cliche` but there is a pretty good reason for some of it such as unlimited ammo, inns healing everyone, same currency etc... The game would be no fun searching for ammo lossing your characters perminently, or exchanging currency. The person who wrote this probley doesnt like console RPG''s that much are goes out of his way to find faults in them. This guy needs some help the real world is not all that fun thats why people like to escape through a good rpg and if all the rules of real life applied to the game no one would play it.

if we reject repetition and (as I presume) we reject total randomness, where is the mean?

i think you guys are all looking at this the wrong way. I think that the author of the list is a big fan of RPGs, and has played so many of them that he''s started to see obviously repeating trends.

Most of his observations have been the source of humor for me on more than one occasion. I make fun of the ability to rob villagers, and I mock the love story sub-plots, and I always know that the boss character will transform into some huge-ass monster. That doesn''t mean I don''t love and cherish every one of those features. I don''t know how I would have gotten through some of the FF3 areas if I didn''t have the elixers that everyone kept in their stupid clock.

It''s a fan site that''s making humorous observations that only other fans will appreciate. Saying this guy doesn''t like RPGs is like reading Dilbert and thinking how the author (whose name escapes me) must hate corporations to be bad-mouthing them and making cruel stereotypes all the time. It''s funny. Laugh and move on.

Personally, I just do what I want in designing my rpg, and I don''t care what has been done before(with the possible exception of my plot). Heck, if I see a good idea in another rpg, I''ll use it. New for new''s sake can be bothersome. New because you''ve thought of a good new idea is good. Why put in a crappy system just because it has never been done before?

Basically, I think the problem is not reusing stuff, but reusing stuff that''s crap. Most rpgs with many races have humans, so why doesn''t this list have "games with many races always have humans" as a cliche. Quite simply, because having humans is a good idea.

If you want to make a "better" rpg, you are gonna have to use things that have been done before. Hopefully you are picking and chosing based on merit, and not just saying "Ok, I dunno what to do here, so let''s cut and paste from these other rpgs." I do get bothered when I see other game projects that are like "tetris remake with eye candy" or "Ragnarok online clone with absolutely nothing different except that we made it", but I think half the things on this list are going too far seeking out "cliches."



*Only in darkness can one truely shine*