MythicMatt said:
Agent_Z said:
There's never enough though! Every 1 good dragon, there's over 5000 evil ones. And there's a severe lack of games where being a dragon [or even a draconic humanoid] is an option.
Personally, I'd rather just see this game [http://jayisgames.com/review/how-to-raise-a-dragon.php] but much much longer and deeper in scope. I've never seen any game that does playing as a Dragon or any other monster (another thing that is pretty rare) that well, but it doesn't have the length needed to truly deliver on the experience of being a Dragon.
OT: Oh boy... the question isn't where to begin here but where to STOP. A lot of tropes are really cliched, annoying, and have no reason to exist beyond just lazy writing but I'll try to not go off on this for TOO long.
Idiot Ball [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall]
Idiot Plot [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot]
Too Dumb To Live [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooDumbToLive]
Forgot About His Powers [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForgotAboutHisPowers?from=Main.PlotInducedStupidity]
Etc. Basically any of the stupidity tropes should just die already, it's never been anything other than lazy writing. Writers, if you need characters to be really really stupid, incompetent, and refuse to do pathetically obvious things just so your plot can work, you are among the worst writers ever, particularly if you do this to characters that have shown they are usually more than intelligent enough to avoid doing stupid crap just to move the plot along. At the very least make sure you've made the characters responsible for the occurrence of these tropes already generally stupid enough to make it believable that they would do things like this like the comic relief. A threat also isn't particularly threatening
Speaking of the comic relief, I really hate it when they have "funny" characters whose entire purpose is to do stupid crap and be as incompetent as possible for cheap laughs. It's fine if there is a comedic character, but they have to be USEFUL rather than detrimental to the cast as least a good amount of the time whether they work for the protagonists or the antagonists or they will just be annoying rather than actually funny. For example, people didn't hate Jar Jar because he was comedic, they hated him because he was a useless load of a character [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLoad] that only made things worse and never contributed to anything, Jar Jar could not have existed and it wouldn't have changed Episode 1 much at all, not being generally funny anyway didn't help either. C3PO was also comedic but much better received because he was actually funny sometimes but he also had the vital role of translator for most of the characters in the Original trilogy that didn't already speak english and thus actually had a reason to exist. The only time this kind of character is even remotely acceptable is in a series that comedic as a whole, and even then they have to genuinely be FUNNY or the character will just drag everything else down.
Last one: Always Chaotic Evil, [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysChaoticEvil] Always Lawful Good, [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysLawfulGood] or any other trope that locks an entire culture, race, or species into a particularly morality or characteristic, Planet Of Hats [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats] is another example. These tropes are more lazy writing, forcing an entire group to conform to one morality and/or characteristic means that the writer does not have to make any attempt to give that group characterization or worse give them all the exact same characterization. I have always hated the idea of any group that shows very clear indications of sentience being just carbon copies of one another and my tolerance for this has gone down and ability to notice creatures that should apply as sentience has gone up quite a bit lately. I get it writers, you need cannon fodder for the protagonists to go up against, but part of being sentient is the capability to think, say, and do things beyond one's base instincts, for good or ill. If you are going to do this sort of thing, at least make an EFFORT that these "people" for lack of a better word have had good reason to have actually
chosen or be forced into whatever bubble you've chosen for them, instead of just "these guys are all X" and that's it. Preferably even if only as outliers there should always be at least one or 2 characters who don't conform to the rest of the group, even ones who are on the side of the protagonists or antagonists whichever is the opposite of the way the default goes.
