I comuni stereotipi dei giochi di ruolo per consolle (in inglese)

WARNING! There are spoilers in here for many popular CRPGs. I mean, duh.

•
Sleepyhead Rule – The teenaged male lead will begin the first day of
the game by oversleeping, being woken up by his mother, and being
reminded that he’s slept in so late he missed meeting his girlfriend.
•
"No! My beloved peasant village!" – The hero’s home town, city, slum,
or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before
the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.
•
Thinking With The Wrong Head (Hiro Rule) – No matter what she’s accused
of doing or how mysterious her origins are, the hero will always be
ready to fight to the death for any girl he met three seconds ago.
•
Cubic Zirconium Corollary – The aforementioned mysterious girl will be
wearing a pendant that will ultimately prove to be the key to either
saving the world or destroying it.
• Logan’s Run Rule – RPG
characters are young. Very young. The average age seems to be 15,
unless the character is a decorated and battle-hardened soldier, in
which case he might even be as old as 18. Such teenagers often have
skills with multiple weapons and magic, years of experience, and never
ever worry about their parents telling them to come home from
adventuring before bedtime. By contrast, characters more than
twenty-two years old will cheerfully refer to themselves as washed-up
old fogies and be eager to make room for the younger generation.
•
Single Parent Rule – RPG characters with two living parents are almost
unheard of. As a general rule, male characters will only have a mother,
and female characters will only have a father. The missing parent
either vanished mysteriously and traumatically several years ago or is
never referred to at all. Frequently the main character’s surviving
parent will also meet an awkward end just after the story begins, thus
freeing him of inconvenient filial obligations.
• Some Call Me…
Tim? – Good guys will only have first names, and bad guys will only
have last names. Any bad guy who only has a first name will become a
good guy at some point in the game. Good guys’ last names may be
mentioned in the manual but they will never be referred to in the
story.
• Nominal Rule – Any character who actually has a name is
important in some way and must be sought out. However, if you are
referred to as a part of a posessive noun ("Crono’s Mom") then you are
superfluous.
• The Compulsories – There’s always a fire dungeon,
an ice dungeon, a sewer maze, a misty forest, a derelict ghost ship, a
mine, a glowing crystal maze, an ancient temple full of traps, a magic
floating castle, and a technological dungeon.
• Luddite Rule (or,
George Lucas Rule) – Speaking of which, technology is inherently evil
and is the exclusive province of the Bad Guys. They’re the ones with
the robots, factories, cyberpunk megalopolises and floating battle
stations, while the Good Guys live in small villages in peaceful
harmony with nature. (Although somehow your guns and/or heavily armed
airships are exempted from this.)
• Let’s Start From The Very
Beginning (Yuna Rule) – Whenever there is a sequel to an RPG that
features the same main character as the previous game, that character
will always start with beginner skills. Everything that they learned in
the previous game will be gone, as will all their ultra-powerful
weapons and equipment.
• Poor Little Rich Hero (Meis Rule) – If
the hero comes from a rich and powerful family, it will have fallen on
hard times and be broke and destitute by the time the game actually
starts.
• The Higher The Hair, The Closer To God (Cloud Rule) –
The more outrageous his hairstyle, the more important a male character
is to the story.
• Garrett’s Principle – Let’s not mince words:
you’re a thief. You can walk into just about anybody’s house like the
door wasn’t even locked. You just barge right in and start looking for
stuff. Anything you can find that’s not nailed down is yours to keep.
You will often walk into perfect strangers’ houses, lift their precious
artifacts, and then chat with them like you were old neighbors as you
head back out with their family heirlooms under your arm.
Unfortunately, this never works in stores.
• Hey, I Know You! – You will accumulate at least three of these obligatory party members:
The spunky princess who is rebelling against her royal parent and is in love with the hero.
The demure, soft-spoken female mage and healing magic specialist who is
not only in love with the hero, but is also the last survivor of an
ancient race.
The tough-as-nails female warrior who is not in
love with the hero (note that this is the only female character in the
game who is not in love with the hero and will therefore be indicated
as such by having a spectacular scar, a missing eye, cyborg limbs or
some other physical deformity — see The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Rule.)
The achingly beautiful gothy swordsman who is riven by inner tragedy.
The big, tough, angry guy who, deep down, is a total softy.
The hero’s best friend, who is actually much cooler than the hero.
The grim, selfish mercenary who over the course of the game learns what it means to really care about other people.
The character who is actually a spy for the bad guys but will instantly switch to your side when you find out about it.
The weird bonus character who requires a bizarre series of side quests
to make them effective (with the ultimate result that no player ever
uses this character if it can be avoided.)
The nauseatingly cute mascot who is useless in all battles.
• Hey, I Know You, Too! – You will also confront/be confronted by at least three of these obligatory antagonists:
The amazingly good-looking and amazingly evil long-haired prettyboy who may or may not be the ultimate villain.
The villain’s loyal right-hand man, who comes in two versions: humorously incompetent or annoyingly persistent.
The villain’s attractive female henchman, who is the strongest and most
competent soldier in the army but always lets the party escape because
she’s, yes, fallen in love with the hero.
Your former ally who
supposedly "died" and was forgotten about, until much later in the game
when he/she shows up again on the villain’s side and full of
bitterness.
The irritatingly honorable foe whom you never get to
kill because, upon discovering the true nature of his superiors, he
either nobly sacrifices himself or joins your party.
The insane clown or jester who will turn out to be surprisingly difficult to subdue.
The mad scientist who likes creating mutated creatures and powerful
weapons ’cause it’s fun (and also handy if uninvited adventurers show
up.)
The adorably cute li’l creature or six year old child who fights you and, inexplicably, kicks your butt time after time.
• Hey, I Know You, Three! – Furthermore, expect to encounter most of the following obligatory non-player chararcters (NPCs):
The townsperson or crewmember who wanders aimlessly in circles and never quite gets where he is going.
Hilariously incompetent or cowardly soldiers.
The NPC who has a crush on another NPC and can’t quite work up the
nerve to tell him or her, so instead tells every other person who
wanders by about it at great length.
A group of small children playing hide-and-seek.
The wise and noble captain/king/high priest.
The wise and noble captain/king/high priest’s splutteringly evil
second-in-command. Nobody, including the hero, will notice the second’s
constant, crazed scheming until the moment when he betrays everyone to
the forces of badness.
The NPC who is obsessed with his
completely mundane job and witters on endlessly about how great it is.
He’s so thrilled by it that he wants to share it with everyone he sees,
so given a quarter of a chance he’ll make you do his job for him.
The (adult) NPC who has nothing better to do than play kids’ games with passersby.
The group of young women who have formed a scarily obsessive fan club for one of your female party members.
•
Crono’s Complaint – The less the main character talks, the more words
are put into his mouth, and therefore the more trouble he gets into
through no fault of his own.
• "Silly Squall, bringing a sword to
a gunfight…" – No matter what timeframe the game is set in — past,
present, or future — the main hero and his antagonist will both use a
sword for a weapon. (Therefore, you can identify your antagonist pretty
easily right from the start of the game just by looking for the other
guy who uses a sword.) These swords will be far more powerful than any
gun and often capable of distance attacks.
• Just Nod Your Head
And Smile – And no matter how big that big-ass sword is, you won’t
stand out in a crowd. Nobody ever crosses the street to avoid you or
seems to be especially shocked or alarmed when a heavily armed gang
bursts into their house during dinner, rummages through their
posessions, and demands to know if they’ve seen a black-caped man.
People can get used to anything, apparently.
• Aeris’s Corollary –
Just as the main male character will always use a sword or a variant of
a sword, the main female character will always use a rod or a staff of
some sort.
• MacGyver Rule – Other than for the protagonists, your
choice of weapons is not limited to the prosaic guns, clubs, or swords.
Given appropriate skills, you can cut a bloody swath across the
continent using gloves, combs, umbrellas, megaphones, dictionaries,
sketching tablets — you name it, you can kill with it. Even better, no
matter how surreal your choice of armament, every store you pass will
just happen to stock an even better model of it for a very reasonable
price. Who else is running around the world killing people with an
umbrella?
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Melfice Rule) – If the
male hero has an older sibling, the sibling will also be male and will
turn out to be one of the major villains. If the hero has a younger
sibling, the sibling will be female and will be kidnapped and held
hostage by the villains.
• Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress – Once
you sell something to a shopkeeper, he instantly sells it to somebody
else and you will never see the item again no matter what.
•
Dimensional Transcendence Principle – Buildings are much, much larger
on the inside than on the outside, and that doesn’t even count the
secret maze of tunnels behind the clock in the basement.
• Local
Control Rule – Although the boss monster terrorizing the first city in
the game is less powerful than the non-boss monsters that are only
casual nuisances to cities later in the game, nobody from the first
city ever thinks of hiring a few mercenaries from the later cities to
kill the monster.
• Nostradamus Rule – All legends are 100%
accurate. All rumors are entirely factual. All prophecies will come
true, and not just someday but almost immediately.
• IDKFA – The
basic ammunition for any firearms your characters have is either
unlimited or very, very easy to obtain. This will apply even if
firearms are extremely rare.
• Indestructible Weapon Rule – No
matter how many times you use that sword to strike armored targets or
fire that gun on full auto mode it will never break, jam or need any
form of maintenance unless it is critical to the story that the weapon
breaks, jams or needs maintenance.
• Selective Paralysis – Your
characters must always keep both feet on the ground and will be unable
to climb over low rock ledges, railings, chairs, cats, slightly
differently-colored ground, or any other trivial objects which may
happen to be in their way. Note that this condition will not prevent
your characters from jumping from railroad car to railroad car later in
the game.
• Bed Bed Bed – A good night’s sleep will cure all wounds, diseases, and disabilities, up to and including death in battle.
•
You Can’t Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule) – The good guys never seem to
get the hang of actually arresting or killing the bad guys. Minor
villains are always permitted to go free so they can rest up and menace
you again later — sometimes five minutes later. Knowing this rule, you
can deduce that if you do manage to kill (or force the surrender of) a
bad guy, you must be getting near the end of the game.
• And Now
You Die, Mr. Bond! (Beatrix Rule) – Fortunately for you, the previous
rule also applies in reverse. Rather than kill you when they have you
at their mercy, the villains will settle for merely blasting you down
to 1 hit point and leaving you in a crumpled heap while they stroll
off, laughing. (This is, of course, because they’re already planning
ahead how they’ll manipulate you into doing their bidding later in the
game — see Way To Go, Serge.)
• Zap! – Most villains in RPGs
possess some form of teleportation. They generally use it to
materialize in front of the adventurers when they reach the Obligatory
Legendary Relic Room and seize the goodies just before you can. The
question "if the bad guy can teleport anywhere at any time, then why
doesn’t (s)he just zip in, grab the artifact, and leave before the
adventurers have even finished the nerve-wracking puzzle on the third
floor?" is never answered.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf
Rule) – It doesn’t matter that you won the fight with the boss monster;
the evil task he was trying to carry out will still get accomplished
somehow. Really, you might as well not have bothered.
• Clockwork Universe Rule – No matter how hard you try to stop it, that comet or meteor will always hit the earth.
•
Fake Ending – There will be a sequence which pretends to be the end of
the game but obviously isn’t — if for no other reason than because
you’re still on Disk 1 of 4.
• You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
– During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the
guy you’d thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he
(the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain
yourself.
• "What are we going to do tonight, Vinsfeld?" – The
goal of every game (as revealed during the Fake Ending) is to Save the
World from an evil figure who’s trying to take it over or destroy it.
There is no way to escape from this formidable task. No matter whether
the protagonist’s goal in life is to pay off a debt, to explore distant
lands, or just to make time with that cute girl in the blue dress, it
will be necessary for him to Save the World in order to accomplish it.
Take heart, though — once the world gets sorted out, everything else
will fall into place almost immediately.
• Zelda’s Axiom –
Whenever somebody tells you about "the five ancient talismans" or "the
nine legendary crystals" or whatever, you can be quite confident that
Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of
them.
• George W. Bush Geography Simplification Initiative – Every
country in the world will have exactly one town in it, except for the
country you start out in, which will have three.
• Fodor’s Guide
Rule – In the course of your adventure you will visit one desert city,
one port town, one mining town, one casino city, one magic city
(usually flying), one medieval castle kingdom, one clockwork city, one
martial arts-based community, one thieves’ slum, one lost city and one
sci-fi utopia. On the way you’ll also get a chance to see the cave with
rocks that glow from a natural energy source, the village populated
with nonhuman characters, the peaceful village where everyone knows the
latest news about the hero’s quest (see Guy in the Street Rule), the
snow village, the magical forest/lake/mountain, the shop in the middle
of nowhere, the fantastic-looking place with lots of FMVs just showing
your entrance, the subtropical jungle island populated by friendly
natives, the annoying cavern maze, and a place — any place — that was
destroyed in some past disaster.
• Midgar Principle – The capital
of the evil empire is always divided into two sections: a lower city
slum filled with slaves and supporters of the rebellion, and an upper
city filled with loyal fanatics and corrupt aristocrats.
• Not
Invented Here – Trade of technology will not exist. One place in the
world will have all the techno-gadgets while all the others will be
harvesting dirt.
• Law of Cartographical Elegance – The world map
always cleanly fits into a rectangular shape with no land masses that
cross an edge.
• ¿Quien Es Mas Macho? (Fargo Rule) – Every
powerful character you attempt to seek aid from will first insist upon
"testing your strength" in a battle to the death.
• We Had To
Destroy The Village In Order To, Well, You Know The Rest (Selene Rule)
– No matter what happens, never call on the government, the church, or
any other massive controlling authority for help. They’ll just send a
brigade of soldiers to burn your entire village to the ground.
•
Zidane’s Curse (or, Dirty Pair Rule) – An unlucky condition in which
every major city in the game will coincidentally wind up being
destroyed just after the hero arrives.
• Maginot Line Rule – It is
easy to tell which city/nation is the next conquest of the Evil Empire:
its streets are filled with citizens who brag that the Empire would
never dare attack them, and would be easily defeated if it tried. (This
smug nationalism always fails to take into account the Empire’s new
superweapon.)
• Short Attention Span Principle – All bookshelves
contain exactly one book, which only has enough text on it to fill up
half a page.
• Planet of the Apes Rule – All cities and countries have ancestors that were wiped out by their technological advances.
•
Insomnia Rule – A "free stay at the inn" is never really free. Expect
to be woken up in the middle of the night for a mandatory plot event.
•
The Bling-Bling Thing (Lemina Rule) – No matter how much money and
treasure you acquire, the greedy member of your party will never be
satisfied and won’t stop griping about the sorry state of the party’s
finances.
• I Don’t Like Gears Or Fighting – There are always giant robots. Always.
•
Houdini’s Postulate – Anyone, whether they are in the player’s party or
not, who is placed in any kind of prison, fortress, cell, or detention
block will escape immediately. Party members will be freed either by a
small child they just happened to befriend earlier in the day or by an
unexpected disaster that overcomes the enemy base, NPCs will be freed
by the released party members, and villains will break out all by
themselves because they’re such badasses. Once a person has escaped
from jail, no attempt will be made by the police to recapture them in
the future.
• Zeigfried’s Contradiction – Just because someone is weird doesn’t mean they’re important.
•
Natural Monopoly Rule – No city will have more than two shops, unless
it is crucial to the story that there be a hundred vendors which you
must visit in order (see You Always Travel In The Right Circles.) All
of these shops will sell the same goods for the same price.
• But
They Don’t Take American Express – Every merchant in the world — even
those living in far-off villages or hidden floating cities cut off from
the outside world for centuries, even those who speak different
languages or are of an entirely different species — accepts the same
currency.
• Apathy Principle – Your group is the only bunch of
people trying to save the world. All other would-be heroes will either
join your party or else turn out to be cowards and/or con men.
• The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Rule
a. Any male character who is ugly, malformed, or misshapen is either
evil or so moral, spiritual, and/or wise that it’s a wonder no one’s
proposed him for sainthood yet.
b. Any male character who has a
physical disfiguration that doesn’t seem to impede him (i.e. a
prominent scar across the face or a bad eye) is evil, unless he is the
male lead, since scars are cool and no other good guy can be as cool as
the hero. An exception is made for characters who are clearly ancient,
and therefore automatically not as cool as the young hero.
c. Any
female character who is ugly, malformed, mishapen, or physically
disfigured is evil, since all good female characters are there to be
potentially seduced by the male lead — see Know Your Audience.
•
Henchman Quota (Nana, Saki, and Mio Rule) – One of your antagonists
will have three lovably incompetent stooges whom you fight over and
over again. Although they’re trusted with their boss’s most important
plans and equipment, they will screw up repeatedly, argue incessantly
among themselves, blab secret information, and generally only come out
victorious when their job was to be a diversion or a delaying tactic. A
high point of the game will come when the True Villain reveals himself
and you’re able to convince the stooges you’re all on the same side.
They won’t help you out any more successfully than they helped the
antagonist, but at least you won’t have to fight them any more.
•
Thousand Year Rule – The Ancient Evil returns to savage the land every
thousand years on the dot, and the last time it showed up was just
about 999.9875 years ago. Despite their best efforts, heroes of the
past were never able to do more than seal the Evil away again for the
future to deal with (which brings up the question of just how exactly
does this "sealing away" work anyway, but never mind.) The good news is
that this time, the Evil will get destroyed permanently. The bad news
is that you’re the one who’s going to have to do it.
• Principle
of Narrative Efficiency – If the main villain (or the enemy you’ve been
trying to kill for most of the game before he summons the real final
villain) was ever defeated in the past by another group of adventurers,
one of them will secretly be in your party and one of them will be the
hero’s father.
• Ayn Rand’s Revenge – Outside the major cities,
there is no government whatsoever. Of course, perhaps that explains why
it’s so difficult and dangerous to get anywhere outside the major
cities.
• First Law of Travel – Anything can become a vehicle —
castles, cities, military academies, you name it — so do not be
alarmed when the stones of the ancient fortress you are visiting shake
underfoot and the whole thing lifts off into the sky. As a corollary,
anything is capable of flight if it would be cool, aeronautics or even
basic physics be damned.
• Second Law of Travel – There will be
only one of any non-trivial type of vehicle in the entire world. Thus,
only one ocean-capable steamboat, only one airship, and so forth.
Massive facilities will have been constructed all over the world to
service this one vehicle.
• Third Law of Travel – The only way to
travel by land between different areas of a continent will always be
through a single narrow pass in a range of otherwise impenetrable
mountains. Usually a palace or monastery will have been constructed in
the pass, entirely filling it, so that all intracontinental traffic is
apparently required to abandon their vehicles and go on foot up stairs
and through the barracks, library and throne room to get to the other
side. This may explain why most people just stay home. (In some cases a
cave or underground tunnel may be substituted for the palace or
monastery, but it will still be just as inconvenient with the added
bonuses of cave-ins and nonsensical elevator puzzles.)
• Fourth
Law of Travel – Three out of every four vehicles you ride on will
eventually sink, derail or crash in some spectacular manner.
•
Fifth Law of Travel – All vehicles can be driven or piloted by anyone.
The main character just needs to find out where the bridge or steering
wheel is, as he already knows all of the controls.
• Sixth Law of
Travel – Nobody gets to own a cooler ride than you. If you ever do see
a cooler vehicle than the one you’ve got now, at some point before the
end of the game you will either take over this vehicle, get something
even bigger and better, or else see it destroyed in a glorious blaze.
•
Seventh Law of Travel – When on a voyage to another continent, the
journey will last only as long as it takes you to talk to all the other
passengers and the captain.
• Eighth Law of Travel – There are no
shortcuts, ever — unless you are forced to take them, in which case
they will be much longer and more dangerous than your original route.
•
Last Law of Travel (Big Joe Rule) – As has been described, you must
endure great trials just to get from town to town: locating different
vehicles, operating ancient transport mechanisms, evading military
blockades, the list goes on. But that’s just you. Every other character
in the game seems to have no trouble getting to any place in the world
on a moment’s notice.
• If You Meet The Buddha In A Random
Encounter, Kill Him! – When you’re out wandering around the world, you
must kill everything you meet. People, animals, plants, insects, fire
hydrants, small cottages, anything and everything is just plain out to
get you. It may be because of your rampant kleptomania (see Garrett’s
Principle.)
• Law of Numbers – There will be several items or
effects which depend on the numerical value of your hit points, level,
etc., which makes no sense unless the characters can see all the
numbers in their world and find it perfectly normal that a spell only
works on a monster whose level is a multiple of 5.
• 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.
• Magical
Inequality Corollary – When the enemy uses Petrify, Silence, Instant
Death, et cetera spells on you, they will be effective 100% of the
time.
• Pretty Line Syndrome (or, Crash Bandicoot: The RPG) – Seen
in most modern RPGs. The key to completing your quest is to walk
forward in a straight line for fifty hours, stopping along the way to
look at, kill, and/or have meaningful conversations with various pretty
things.
• Xenobiology Rule – The predatory species of the world
will include representatives of all of the following: giant spiders,
giant scorpions, giant snakes, giant beetles, wolves, squid, fish that
float in midair, gargoyles, golems, carnivorous plants, chimeras,
griffons, cockatrices, hydras, minotaurs, burrowing things with big
claws, things that can paralyse you, things that can put you to sleep,
things that can petrify you, at least twenty different creatures with
poisonous tentacles, and dragons. Always dragons.
• Friendly Fire
Principle (or, Final Fantasy Tactics Rule) – Any attack that can target
both allies and enemies will hit half of your allies and none of your
enemies.
• Dungeon Design 101 – There’s always goodies hidden behind the waterfall.
•
Dungeon Design 102 – When you are confronted by two doors, the closer
one will be locked and its key will be hidden behind the farther-away
one.
• Dungeon Design 103 (or, Wallpaper Warning) – Your progress
through a dungeon will be indicated by a sudden change in decor:
different wall color, different torches on the wall, et cetera.
•
Dungeon Design 201 (or, The Interior Decorators Anticipated Your
Out-Of-Body Experience) – Most dungeons will include "hidden" passages
which are nearly impossible to see from a bird’s-eye view, yet would be
blaringly obvious from the party’s perspective.
• Dungeon Design 301 – All "puzzles" in RPG dungeons can be sorted into one of the following types:
finding some small item and sticking it into a slot;
pushing blocks (rocks, statues) onto switches;
pulling switches or levers to open and close doors;
learning the correct order/position of a group of objects;
entering a certain combination of doors;
something involving a clock or elevator;
something that is unsolvable because a vital clue in the dialogue was mistranslated out of Japanese.
•
Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss! – Defeating a dungeon’s boss
creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is
nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.
• Supply
and Demand Axiom – Killing a powerful enemy will usually yield an item
or weapon that would’ve been extremely useful if you had gotten it
before killing that enemy.
• Edison’s Lament – No switch is ever in the right position.
•
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.
• Guy in the Street
Rule – No matter how fast you travel, rumors of world events always
travel faster. When you get to anywhere, the people on the street are
already talking about where you’ve been. The stories of your past
experiences will spread even if no witnesses were around to see them.
•
Wherever You Go, There They Are – Wherever the characters go, the
villains can always find them. Chances are they’re asking the guy in
the street (see above). But don’t worry — despite being able to find
the characters with ease anytime they want to, the bad guys never get
rid of them by simply blowing up the tent or hotel they’re spending the
night in. (Just think of it: the screen dims, the peaceful
going-to-sleep-now music plays, then BOOM! Game Over!)
•
Figurehead Rule – Whenever someone asks you a question to decide what
to do, it’s just to be polite. He or she will ask the question again
and again until you answer "correctly."
• Puddin’ Tame Rule – The
average passer-by will always say the same thing no matter how many
times you talk to them, and they certainly won’t clarify any of the
vaguely worded warnings or cryptic half-sentences they threw at you the
previous time.
• Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong – Sticking
to the task at hand and going directly from place to place and goal to
goal is always a bad idea, and may even prevent you from being able to
finish the game. It’s by dawdling around, completing side quests and
giving money to derelicts that you come into your real power.
•
Selective Invulnerability Principle – RPG characters are immune from
such mundane hazards as intense heat, freezing cold, or poison gas…
except when they’re suddenly not. Surprise!
• I’m the NRA (Billy
Lee Black Rule) – Opposition to gun control is probably the only thing
you could get all RPG characters to agree upon. Even deep religious
faith and heartfelt pacifism can’t compete with the allure of guns.
•
Three Females Rule – There will always be either one or three female
characters in the hero’s party, no matter how many male characters
there are.
• Experience Not Required – When the main character is
forced to do some complex or dangerous task for the first time, even
though he has never done it before he will still always be better than
the oldest veteran.
• Law of Reverse Evolution (Zeboim Principle)
– Any ancient civilizations are inexplicably much more advanced than
the current one.
• Science-Magic Equivalence (Citan Rule) –
Although mages’ specialty is magic and scientists’ specialty is
technology, these skills are completely interchangeable.
• Law of
Productive Gullibility (Ruby Rule) – Whenever anybody comes up to you
with a patently ludicrous claim (such as, "I’m not a cat, I’m really an
ancient Red Dragon") there’s an at least two-thirds chance they’re
telling the truth. Therefore, it pays to humor everyone you meet; odds
are you’ll be glad you did later on.
• Perversity Principle – If
you’re unsure about what to do next, ask all the townspeople nearby.
They will either all strongly urge you to do something, in which case
you must immediately go out and do that thing, or else they will all
strongly warn you against doing something, in which case you must
immediately go out and do that thing.
• Near-Death Epiphany (Fei
Rule) – If the party is not dealing damage to a boss character, then
there’s a better-than-even chance that someone in the party will
suddenly become enlightened and instantly acquire the offensive skill
that can blow the creature away in a matter of seconds.
• Wutai
Rule – Most RPGs, no matter what their mythology, include a land based
on ancient Japan. Full of pagodas, shrines, shoguns, kitsune, and
sushi, this completely anachronistic place is the source of the entire
world’s supply of ninja and samurai characters.
• Law of Mooks –
Soldiers and guards working for the Evil Empire are, as a rule, sloppy,
cowardly and incompetent. Members of the heroic Resistance Faction are,
as a rule, dreadfully weak and undertrained and will be wiped out to
the last man the moment they come in contact with the enemy.
• Law of Traps – No matter how obvious the trap, you can’t complete the game unless you fall into it.
• Arbor Day Rule – At some point, you’re going to have to talk to a tree and do what it says.
•
You Do Not Talk About Fight Club – Any fighting tournament or contest
of skill you hear about, you will eventually be forced to enter and
win.
• Invisible Bureaucracy Rule – Other than the royal family,
its shifty advisor, and the odd mad scientist, the only government
employees you will ever encounter in the course of your adventure are
either guards or kitchen staff.
• The Miracle of Automation –
Similarily, any factory, power plant, or other facility that you visit
during the course of the game will be devoid of any human life except
for the occasional guards. There will not be a single line worker or
maintenance person in sight.
• Principle of Archaeological
Convenience – Every ancient machine you find will work perfectly the
first time you try to use it and every time thereafter. Even if its
city got blasted into ruins and the machine was then sunk to the bottom
of the sea and buried in mud for ten thousand years, it’ll still work
fine. The unfortunate corollary to this rule is that ancient guardian
creatures will also turn out to be working perfectly when you try to
filch their stuff.
• They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To (Cid
Rule) – Modern-day machinery, by contrast, will always break down at
the worst possible moment (for example, when you only need one more
shot from the giant cannon to defeat the final boss.)
• Place
Transvestite Joke Here (Miss Cloud Rule) – If the male lead is required
to dress up like a girl for any reason, he will be regarded by everyone
as much more attractive than any "real" girl. If the female lead
cross-dresses as a man, she will be immediately recognized as who she
is by everyone except the male lead and the main villain.
• Make
Room! Make Room! – There are always more people in a town or village
than there are houses for them to live in. Most of the village is made
up of shops, temples, bars, secret passages, inns, and the mansion that
belongs to the richest man in town.
• Law of Scientific
Gratification – If the hero needs a new invention to progress, he will
find out that somewhere in the world someone has spent his or her
entire life perfecting this invention, and usually just needs one more
key item located in a monster-infested dungeon before it is completed.
•
You Always Travel In The Right Circles – Whenever you meet a villager
or other such incidental character who promises to give you some great
piece of needed knowledge or a required object in exchange for a
seemingly simple item, such as a bar of soap or a nice straw mat, be
prepared to spend at least an hour chasing around the world exchanging
useless innocuous item after item with bizarre strangers until you can
get that elusive first item you were asked for.
• Talk Is Cheap
Rule – Nothing is ever solved by diplomacy or politics in the world of
RPGs. Any declarations of peace, summits and treaty negotiations are
traps to fool the ever so gullible Good Guys into thinking the war is
over, or to brainwash the remaining leaders of the world.
• Stop
Your Life (Setzer Rule) – No matter what kind of exciting, dynamic life
a character was leading before joining your party, once there they will
be perfectly content to sit and wait on the airship until you choose to
use them.
• Don’t Stand Out – Any townsperson who is dressed oddly
or otherwise doesn’t fit in with the rest of the townsfolk will either:

Join your party after you complete some task,
Be in the employ of your enemy, or
Befriend any female member of the party, and then be immediately captured and held hostage by the villains.
•
Little Nemo Law – If any sleeping character has a dream, that dream
will be either a 100% accurate memory of the past, a 100% accurate
psychic sending from the present, a 100% accurate prophetic vision of
the future, or a combination of two or all three of these.
• Child
Protection Act (Rydia Rule) – Children 12 and under are exempt from
death. They will emerge alive from cataclysms that slaughter hundreds
of sturdily-built adults, often with barely a scratch. Further
protection is afforded if the catastrophe will orphan the child.
•
Missing Master Hypothesis – Almost every strong physical fighter
learned everything he/she knows from some old master or friend.
Invariably, the master or friend has since turned evil, been killed, or
disappeared without a trace.
• Missing Master Corollary (Sabin
Rule) – If a fighter’s master merely disappeared, you will undoubtedly
find him/her at some point in your travels. The master will challenge
the student to a duel, after which the student will be taught one final
skill that the master had been holding back for years.
• Gojira Axiom – Giant monsters capable of leveling cities all have the following traits:
Low intelligence
Enormous strength
Projectile attacks
Gigantic teeth and claws, designed, presumably, to eat other giant monsters
Vulnerable to weapons 1/10,000th its size
Ecologically sensitive
•
"You Couldn’t Get To Sleep Either, Huh?" – If any character in the game
ever meets any other character standing alone at night looking at the
moon, those two will eventually fall in love.
• Absolute Power
Corrupts Absolutely (Althena Rule) – If a good guy is manipulated to
the side of evil, they will suddenly find a new inner strength that
will enable them to wipe out your whole party with a wave of their
hand.
• All Is Forgiven (Nash Rule) – However, when the trusted
member of your party turns against you, do not give it a second
thought. They will return to your side after they’re done with their
amnesia/mind control/hidden noble goal that caused them to give away
all your omnipotent mystical artifacts.
• First Law of Fashion –
All characters wear a single costume which does not change over the
course of the game. The only exception is when characters dress up in
enemy uniforms to infiltrate their base.
• Second Law of Fashion –
Any character’s costume, no matter how skimpy, complicated, or simply
outlandish, is always completely suitable to wear when climbing around
in caves, hiking across the desert, and slogging through the sewers. It
will continue to be completely suitable right afterwards when said
character goes to meet the King.
• Third Law of Fashion – In any
futuristic setting, the standard uniform for female soldiers and
special agents will include a miniskirt and thigh-high stockings. The
standard uniform for all male characters, military or not, will include
an extraordinarily silly and enormous hat.
• First Rule of
Politics (Chancellor’s Axiom) – Any advisor of a major ruler has been
scheming after his throne for quite a while. Thanks to the miracle of
timing, you will arrive at the king’s inner sanctum just in time for
the coup.
• Second Rule of Politics (Scapegoat’s Axiom) – If the
advisor works for an evil ruler, the advisor is as bad or even worse,
and there’s a good chance he’s the final villain. (See Fake Ending
Rule.) If the advisor works for a good ruler, he usually has the good
of the kingdom at heart; not that that helps, because your party will
invariably be made the scapegoat for all that’s wrong with the nation
and immediately thrown in the dungeon.
• Last Rule of Politics – Kingdoms are good. Empires are evil.
•
Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (Ramus Rule) – Twenty-three
generations may pass, but any person’s direct descendant will still
look and act just like him.
• Pinch Hitter Rule – Whenever a
member of the hero’s team is killed or retires, no matter how unique or
special he or she was there is a good chance someone will show up to
replace them that has exactly the same abilities and can use the same
weapons with the same proficiency.
• Dealing With Beautiful Women,
Part 1 (Yuffie Rule) – All good-looking young females are there to help
you. This rule holds even when the girl in question is annoying,
useless, or clearly evil.
• Dealing With Beautiful Women, Part 2
(Rouge Rule) – All good-looking middle-aged females are out to kill
you. This rule holds even when the woman in question has attained your
unwavering trust and respect.
• Well, So Much For That – After you
have completed your mighty quest to find the object that will save the
known universe, it will either a) get lost, b) get stolen, or c) not
work.
• The Ominous Ring of Land – The classic Ominous Ring of
Land is a popular terrain feature that frequently doesn’t show up on
your world map. Just when you think things are going really well and
you’ve got the Forces of Evil on the run, monsters, demons and mad gods
will pour out of the center of the ring and the situation will get ten
times worse. The main villain also usually hangs out in one of these
after attaining godhood. If there are several Ominous Rings of Land or
the entire world map is one big ring, you are just screwed.
• 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.
• Guards! Guards! (or, Lindblum Full
Employment Act) – Everything will be guarded and gated (elevators,
docks, old rickety bridges, random stretches of roadway deep in the
forest) except for the stuff that actually needs to be.
• Thank
You For Pressing The Self-Destruct Button – All enemy installations and
city-sized military vehicles will be equipped with a conveniently
located, easy-to-operate self-destruct mechanism.
• Falling Rule –
An RPG character can fall any distance onto anything without suffering
anything worse than brief unconsciousness. In fact, falling a huge
distance is an excellent cure for otherwise fatal wounds — anyone who
you see shot, stabbed, or mangled and then tossed off a cliff is
guaranteed to return later in the game with barely a scratch.
•
Materials Science 101 – Gold, silver, and other precious metals make
excellent weapons and armor even though in the real world they are too
soft and heavy to use for that purpose. In fact, they work so well that
nobody ever melts their solid gold suit of armor down into bullion,
sells it, and retires to a tropical isle on the proceeds.
•
Materials Science 201 – Everyone you meet will talk enthusiastically
about how some fantastically rare metal (iron, say) would make the best
possible armor and weapons. Oh, if only you could get your hands on
some! However, once you actually obtain iron — at great personal risk,
of course — everyone will dismiss it as yesterday’s news and instead
start talking about some even more fantastically rare metal, such as
gold. Repeat until you get to the metal after "mythril" (see The
Ultimate Rule.)
• Seventh Inning Stretch (Elc Rule) – At some
point in the game the main hero will receive a deadly story-driven
injury and will be put in a hospital instead of having a mage heal him.
This will leave him out of commission for at least the length of two
sidequests; the female lead will also be temporarily out of commission
as she steadfastly refuses to leave the hero’s side. Ultimately a
simple vision quest is all that will be required to bring the hero back
to normal.
• Vivi’s Spellbook Principle – Over the course of the
game, you will spend countless hours learning between twenty and one
hundred skills and/or spells, approximately three of which will still
be useful by the end of the game.
• 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.
• Gender Equality, Part 2
(Tifa Rule) – If any female character, in a burst of anger or
enthusiasm, decides to go off and accomplish something on her own
without the hero, she will fail miserably and again have to be rescued.

• Gender Equality, Part 3 (Luna Rule) – All of the effort you put
into maxing out the female lead’s statistics and special abilities will
turn out to be for naught when she spends the final confrontation with
the villain dead, ensorcelled, or held hostage.
• 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.
• Stealing The
Spotlight (Edea Rule) – The characters who join your party only briefly
tend to be much cooler than your regular party members.
• "Mommy,
why didn’t they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?" – Don’t expect
battle mechanics to carry over into the "real world."
• Gold Saucer Rule – The strongest weapons/items/spells in the entire game can only be found by doing things like racing birds.
•
Evil May Live Forever, But It Doesn’t Age Well – Even though it took
the greatest armies in the world and all of the world’s greatest
magicians to seal away an ancient evil in an apocalyptic war, once said
ancient evil breaks free three fairly inexperienced warriors can
destroy it.
• Sephiroth Memorial Escape Clause – Any misdeed up to and including multiple genocide is forgiveable if you’re cool enough.
•
Doomed Utopia Theorem (Law of Zeal) – All seemingly ideal, utopian
societies are powered by some dark force and are therefore doomed to
swift, flashy destruction.
• Party Guidance Rule – Somewhere in
the last third of the story, the hero will make a stupid decision and
the rest of the party must remind him of all that they have learned
from being with him in order to return the hero to normal.
• Bad
Is Good, Baby! – The heroes can always count on the support of
good-hearted vampires, dragons, thieves, demons, and chainsaw murderers
in their quest to save the world from evil. And on the other hand…
•
Good Is Bad, Baby! – Watch out for generous priests, loyal military
officers, and basically anyone in a position of authority who agrees to
help you out, especially if they save your life and prove their
sincerity innumerable times — they’re usually plotting your demise in
secret (at least when they can fit it into their busy schedule of
betraying their country, sponsoring international terrorism, and
stealing candy from small children) and will stab you in the back at
the most inconvenient moment, unless they fall under…
• General
Leo’s Exception – Honorable and sympathetic people who work for the
Other Side are always the genuine article. Of course they’ll be busily
stabbing you in the front, so either way you lose. Eventually though,
they’ll fall prey to…
• The Ineffectual Ex-Villain Theorem (Col.
Mullen Rule) – No matter how tough and bad-ass one of the Other Side’s
henchmen is, if he bails to the side of Good he’ll turn out to be not
quite tough and bad-ass enough. The main villain will defeat him
easily. But don’t weep — usually he’ll manage to escape just in time,
leaving you to deal with the fate that was meant for him.
• All
The Time In The World (Rinoa Rule) – Unless there’s a running countdown
clock right there on the screen, you have as long as you want to
complete any task — such as, say, rescuing a friend who’s hanging by
one hand from a slippery cliff edge thousands of feet in the air — no
matter how incredibly urgent it is. Dawdle or hurry as you will, you’ll
always make it just in the nick of time.
• Ladies First (Belleza
Rule) – When things really start falling apart, the villain’s
attractive female henchman will be the first to jump ship and switch to
the side of Good. Sadly, she still won’t survive until the end credits,
because later she will sacrifice her life out of unrequited love for
the villain.
• Trial By Fire (Cecil Rule) – Any dark and brooding
main characters will ultimately be redeemed by a long, ardous,
quasi-spiritual quest that seems difficult at the time, but in the
great scheme of things just wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
•
Key Item Rule – Never discard, sell, or otherwise remove permamently
from your possession any items you begin the game with or acquire
within the first town. This is especially true for items that seem to
have no practical use, because of…
• The Law of Inverse
Practicality (Key Item Corollary) – Any item that you can acquire will
have some sort of purpose. Those that seem to be useless and have no
practical value at all, always tend to have great power later on. The
earlier you get the item, the later in the game it will be used. The
longer the span of time between acquisition and use, the more powerful
the item is.
• Way To Go, Serge – It will eventually turn out
that, for a minimum of the first sixty percent of the game, you were
actually being manipulated by the forces of evil into doing their
sinister bidding for them. In extreme cases this may go as high as 90%.
The clear implication is that it would have been better to not get
involved in the first place.
• Gilligan’s Prescription – Any
character who has amnesia will be cured before the end of the game.
They usually won’t like what they find out about themselves, though.
•
Luke, I Am Your Tedious, Overused Plot Device (Lynx Rule) – If there is
any chance whatsoever that major villain X could be the male lead’s
father, then it will turn out that major villain X is the male lead’s
father.
• World of Mild Inconvenience – The devastating plague,
noxious gas, planet-obliterating meteor or other large-scale disaster
that led to the death of millions will affect your party (and your
party’s friends and family members) in no way whatsoever, save that a
few party members may become lost and you can find them later.
•
Golden Chocobo Principle – There will be at least one supremely
ultimate improvement for your weapon or some way to make your trusted
steed capable of going anywhere and doing anything, requiring hours and
hours of hard work to acquire. Once you do achieve this, you will use
it once, and it will be completely useless for the rest of the game.
•
Golden Chocobo Corollary – The magic formula for acquiring this supreme
upgrade will be only vaguely alluded to in the game itself. Ideally,
you’re supposed to shell out $19.95 for the strategy guide instead.
•
Flow of Goods Rule – The quality of goods in the world is dependent
upon the shop’s distance from the final dungeon. It doesn’t matter if
the town you start in has a huge thriving economy and is the center of
world trade, it will always have the game’s worst equipment; and even
if that village near the end is isolated and has only three people in
it, it will have the game’s best equipment.
• Master Key Rule – Any and all locked doors that the characters encounter will be unlocked by the end of the game.
•
"Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb!" – If the villain
needs all ten legendary medallions to attain world domination and you
have nine of them, everybody in your party still thinks it is
neccessary to bring the nine to the villain’s castle and get the final
one, instead of hiding the ones they’ve already got and spoiling his
plans that way. After you foolishly bring the legendary medallions to
the villain’s hideout, he will kidnap one of your companions (usually
the main love interest) and you will trade the world away to rescue
your friend.
• Dark Helmet’s Corollary – After you give up the
medallions to save your friend/parent/lover/other miscellaneous party
member, don’t expect to actually get that person back. Sucker!
•
It’s Not My Department, Says Wernher Von Braun – All space stations,
flying cities, floating continents and so forth will without exception
either be blown up or crash violently to earth before the end of the
game.
• The Best-Laid Schemes – The final villain’s grand scheme
will have involved the deaths of thousands or even millions of innocent
people, the clever manipulation of governments, armies, and entire
populations, and will have taken anywhere from five to five thousand
years to come to fruition. The hero will come up with a method of
undoing this plan forever in less than five minutes.
• Pyrrhic
Victory – By the time you’ve gotten it in gear, dealt with your
miscellaneous personal crises and are finally ready to go Save the
World once and for all, nine-tenths of it will already have been
destroyed. Still, you’ve got to give your all to save the remaining
one-tenth.
• Poetic Villain Principle (Kefka Rule) – All villains
will suddenly become poets, philisophers, and/or dramatic actors when
a) they first meet the hero, b) they are about to win or their evil
plan is finally ready, c) some major event in the game is about to
begin, d) right before the final battle, and e) right before they die,
when they will frequently be feeling generous enough to reward you with
some homespun wisdom about making the most of life while you have it.
•
Compression of Time – As you approach the final confrontation with the
villain, events will become increasingly awkward, contrived and
disconnected from one another — almost as if some cosmic Author was
running up against a deadline and had to slap together the ending at
the last minute.
• Adam Smith’s Revenge – By the end of the game
you are renowned everywhere as the Legendary Heroes, every surviving
government and authority figure has rallied behind you, the fate of the
world is obviously hanging in the balance, and out of nowhere random
passers-by give you a pat on the back and heartfelt good luck wishes.
However, shopkeepers won’t even give you a discount, much less free
supplies for the final battle with evil.
• Adam Smith’s Corollary
– No matter how thoroughly devastated the continent/planet/universe is,
there’s always some shopkeeper who survived the end of the world and
sits outside the gates of the villain’s castle, selling the most
powerful equipment in the game, like nothing ever happened.
• The
Long Arm of the Plot – Any bad guys, no matter how far they run, will
always end up in one of two ways by the end of the game: obviously
dead, or on your side. There is no in-between.
• Apocalypse Any
Time Now – The best time to do side quests is while the huge meteor
hovers in the sky above the planet, waiting to fall and destroy the
world.
• "So, Andross, you reveal your true form!" – You will have
to kill the evil villain at least twice at the end of the game. First
the villain will look like a person or some creature and be rather easy
to kill. Then he will grow to about 50 times the hero’s size and be
much harder to kill.
• In Your Face, Jesus! – Even if you manage
to deal with him that time, you’re not done — the villain will then
transform into his final form, which is always an angelic winged figure
with background music remixed for ecstatic chorus and pipe organ.
•
The Moral Of The Story (Ghaleon Rule) – Every problem in the universe
can be solved by finding the right long-haired prettyboy and beating
the crap out of him.
• 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.
• The Ultimate Rule – Anything called "Ultima
(whatever)" or "Ultimate (whatever)" isn’t. There’s always at least one
thing somewhere in the world which is even more.
• Know Your Audience (Vyse Rule) – Every woman in the game will find the male lead incredibly attractive.