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Genre Sins


Morrigan
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I can sort of understand the logic of that in medieval times though. I mean in those times when a child turned like 10 they would probably start following in their parent's footsteps. So a blacksmith's son would begin to learn the trade. So that means by the time they were 21 they may well have had at least 5, if not 10 or 11, years of training and experience. That might not mean they're a master... but they'd definitely not be a rookie by any regard either.

 

But for more modern things, like a doctor or teacher? No, it doesn't work at all there. I mean the earliest one could be a full fledged Doctor is like 28. (That's presuming graduating high school at 17, finishing 8 years of university and then at least 3 more years of residency.) 

 

 

 

Now for something from supernatural (the genre, not the TV show) based games... 

Untouchable badass witches/wizards.

 

Magic can definitely make a character powerful. But they are not the be-all, end-all of power. In many cases their power has to come from somewhere. And there are usually limits on their power. Whether it's how much they have to accrue/absorb first before they can use a spell, or how much they can channel at one time or whether there are very specific requirements for their spells. (Like needing to wait until a certain time of day or be in a certain location and/or use a certain ingredient in the spell.) 

Magic always has a cost of some kind. So it's good for players not to forget this aspect to make their characters look good/powerful. (Though conversely, consistently having characters who can barely manage even a "low level" spell on their own can also get grating too. I mean if your character is at this prodigious magic academy and they can't even do basic stuff... how long do you think they would remain there? Probably not long. What I mean here by this is that there should be a balance. Your character probably wouldn't struggle with a basic spell, under normal circumstances... but if they're trying to pull off some huge feat, like summon a powerful entity... they should definitely struggle.)

 

In cases where witches/wizards don't have innate power that means someone has to be lending them some. So that means there is someone even stronger than the witch/wizard. A demon or angel or something that's granting access to a portion of their power in exchange for something.

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  • 1 year later...

Necromancing this thread here, but I thought it was interesting enough to respond to regardless.

 

The one that bothers me is the sexy, can't-harm-me vampire or witch. They're beautiful, perfect, and they know exactly how to provoke others without being provoked themselves. They are normally represented by flawless PBs in their twenties or thirties. Charming, sexual, seductive (but only in a good way).

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I think one of the main things that irks me is when original characters have to play a part in every important event in a fandom, even when logically, they wouldn't have had any involvement in it, for instance, a fan created love interest for Luke Skywalker is with the group throughout the entire original trilogy. Bonus points when they 'steal' the role of a main canon character.

 

The character that is turned 'bad' and join's the bad guy's side, is a slave to the bad guy, does a load of things that would make the 'good' guys hate them, go back to being 'good' and the writer expects the friends/relatives/entire race of the ruler they murdered/caused the downfall of to be bestest of best friends with them... (Yep, something similar to this really was in the character background of a fandom OC, and the writer claimed they weren't a Mary-Sue...and they were a centuries old, perfectly good looking elf to boot.)

 

Inanimate objects/animal characters that aren't meant to be shape-shifters are human/other humanoid sentient being.

 

Perfect noble women/royalty, that have no real personalty other than their perfection. Oh, and even though they are like 16 of age, they are wiser, more intelligent, better read than a wise old counselor who is vastly more experienced than they.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Icewolf said:

The character that is turned 'bad' and join's the bad guy's side, is a slave to the bad guy, does a load of things that would make the 'good' guys hate them, go back to being 'good' and the writer expects the friends/relatives/entire race of the ruler they murdered/caused the downfall of to be bestest of best friends with them...

 

Yeah, not overly appreciative of this either.

 

Spoiler

In a game I was in a while ago, we were playing out a siege on the enemy main fortress. Like a full scale rebellion with hundreds of soldiers storming the area... explosions going off all over, gunfire everywhere, smoke and dust choking the air, rivers of blood and rafts of bodies. In the midst our characters had encountered a high ranking, and really powerful general... But one ally decided to try to play turncoat to get close. They attacked one of our characters to prove loyalty. Unfortunately they made a mistake in that they attacked my character.

 

My character was known to be unstable at best. (I mean she was an android that had some design flaws. Plus her history didn't help either.) Furthermore my character was also a fair bit stronger than their's. (We had a level up system to actually show how powerful characters were. The idea being helping to further the story would earn you more power while sitting back and going "I dunno what to do" would only eke you by.) So when their character attacked my stronger and more unstable character... my character reacted not exactly well. My character tossed their character into a hill on the other side of the battlefield.  (Not through brute strength mind, but by flying them straight upward and letting gravity and a throw take care of things.)

 

The other character did survive... and they stayed with the rebellion. But they were never trusted after that (always kept out of strategy meetings).

 

Speaking of genre sins...

 

Challenging the massively powerful big-bad by yourself. 

 

I know some games the goal is to be a powerful badass. But going headlong into a fight against a noted superior fighter is going to end poorly. I mean a general who's spent years fighting, years studying battle strategy and is just highly skilled all rounder is not going to end well. I mean it's like someone who took a few boxing lessons stepping into the ring with a Muai Thai fighter... someone's about to get wrecked.

Same thing for demons/angels or other super powered beings. 

 

Go ahead and punch Superman Prime / Darkseid / Thanos / Dormammu / whomever in the face... see what happens. Guarantee that someone's going to be getting a lesson in pain. (Even more an issue if people expect plot armour to save them from their stupidity. )

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  • 2 weeks later...

Modern colloquialisms on medieval-esque sites. This is truly my pet peeve! lol

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Oh! Here's one! When your character knows about something they really shouldn't. Not like the bad writers who "mind read", but like... character who has nothing in their bio/app what so ever to support it knows all about thing from history or whatever. For example: Star Trek setting (shut up, I play a lot of trek), character who is not human, has nothing in their bio about having any sort of interest in earth history, totally knows all about all of the 20th/21st century pop culture.

 

Yeah, no. Not cool.

 

Or character totally has skills/abilities they shouldn't or is a traitor/spy in a situation where they would have been very carefully vetted before being allowed to join. Like, say, you're joining a crew of intelligence agents, and your app makes no mention of being a double agent, you just spring thing is the middle of a plot without warning without talking to admin. Totally not cool. Or your character has an ability like telepathy, that's untrained, and somehow while going through four years of advanced education in a facility that had numerous other telepaths, no one realized this untrained ability existed in the character? Yeah, no.

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  • 7 months later...

Kingdom Hearts: Having a keyblade just because you want a keyblade with no explanation of how you got said keyblade. *shakes head* 

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  • 1 month later...

Names like Tiffany, Justin, Amy in a historically accurate medieval site. Arghhhhhhh. 

 

Similarly, people that disregard the actual history. I get sometimes you just want to get stuck in, but if the site you're joining is a historical site, with no fantasy element, it's sensible to read through - just a skim - wikipedia at least. It'll make it so much easier to plot and get integrated on the site if you just put in an hour of two of actually figuring out where your character fits into the larger historical picture. 

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35 minutes ago, Sara said:

Names like Tiffany, Justin, Amy in a historically accurate medieval site. Arghhhhhhh. 

 

Justin is of Latin origin and it is appropriate on an accurate medieval site, as accurate as Titus, Cesar, Cornelius...

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Just now, Elena said:

 

Justin is of Latin origin and it is appropriate on an accurate medieval site, as accurate as Titus, Cesar, Cornelius...

 

In this particular example it was on a 12thC site with French-Norman names (post-Conquest) as the norm (with a few Saxon thrown in there), so it was pretty anachronistic for the setting and country as classical Latin names were still fairly rare (with obvious exceptions). You'd have lots and lots of Henry's, William's, Geoffrey's etc and only really in the Holy Roman Empire or moving more towards the Holy Lands would you stumble upon a Titus. Although I take your point that it's not completely inaccurate, It was more just an example (and in this particular setting it was combined with a very 21stC surname...)

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@Sara, I am more shocked by using in historical context names which are now of females and then they were of males like they are now, instead of how they were then. (Yes, Ashley, Jocelyn, Evelyn, Leslie... and some others). And also, people who don't understand that the argument of now "His/ her parents liked the name" is not enough excuse for using, in a historical context, a name specific to a country which was in war with yours when the child was born (except special reasons which should be explained - a grandparent or godparent of that origin). 

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I wouldn't call this a genre really, but because the animanga world is overwhelmingly populated by younger characters (teenagers and 20 year olds), lots of people will try to use very young looking characters for very old characters (i.e. 60 year old character whose FC is maybe 20 or younger) - and this is at... like... every animanga forum, it's not just one in particular or done by one person, et cetera. In some cases, it makes sense if it's fantasy and there's that longevity thing like... Legolas and his super beautiful young face for his hundreds years old self (I have no idea how old he really is XDD). But on sites that are, for the most part, "normal" - it's everywhere. xD

 

It is admittedly hard finding good, suitable older FCs... but yeah, our genre sin. xD I try not to do it myself if it doesn't fit the site, but I do see it a lot.

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When people in DRoP worlds play the dragonless (riders who's dragons died and they still live, its terrible and horrid) characters as normal people but mute or just friendless. The dragonless riders basically have a piece of their mind and soul forcibly removed from them, they are not the same in any way, shape or form as they were when they had their dragons. Tacking on a mute issue or antisocial problem and having them go about their day without any real psychological repercussions is tacky. 

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