Over used themes and plot devices

[Bastrophian]

So, ive heard it said that having "teen/child/highschooler heros/protagonists" is over played. I dont really remember where i heard that, but what do yall think?

Do you have any other opinions on what you think is over played?

 

[Kes]

To some extent it will depend on the personal taste of the player, but speaking for myself - my heart sinks when I see yet another such protagonist come over the horizon, unless it is specifically a 'coming of age' game.  Even then I think it has got a bit threadbare.  If it's a 'hero saves the world' then no, please let's not have any more.

 

[Razoir]

Well, there's no "good" or "bad". It's just that a teen will have less fun playing with adult character cause he will have an harder time identifying to them. As a 18 year old myself, i still have a tendency to prefer, and write, main characters that have around the same age as me. Overall, it really depends on the game, but for a RPG, having a character with the same age as you really increases immersion. And writing-wise, it is far more easy to create a believable character cause you actually know how someone of that age range works.

So it really falls to what's your age and what's your target's age. And if you stay away from big clichés, it shouldn't pose a problem.

 

[Bastrophian]

To some extent it will depend on the personal taste of the player, but speaking for myself - my heart sinks when I see yet another such protagonist come over the horizon, unless it is specifically a 'coming of age' game.  Even then I think it has got a bit threadbare.  If it's a 'hero saves the world' then no, please let's not have any more.

I mostly agree with you. Im on the "I do think it can still work well" side of things though. Im planning out a story line with a Highschooler characters. Its definitely not a "save the WORLD" story....maybe save the town, the world is just to big for one little adolescent. lol 

 

[noctiluca]

It is overplayed I suppose, but when you take into consideration the ages of the writers and the fact that most of these games are aimed at teens it can make more sense. Older writers remember their adolescence and it's easy to write about. It might seem a little lazy but if done well it can be a nice reflective and insightful work. For younger writers, though, adolescence is all they know and it's often super obvious/cringeworthy when they try to write from the perspective of an adult. Especially when they try to overcompensate with the "maturity" thing. As important as it is to learn writing out of your element when you are serious about writing, baby steps first.

Basically, adolescent characters are universally relatable and it's an age where people go through a lot of development, so it feels natural in adventure stories that are common in RPGs... it's not bad but it's playing it safe/generic.

What's more annoying is how anyone over the age of 21 or some other young age is treated like a fossil in a lot of games. I find that more alienating than playing as a protagonist who is half my age. And I'm not talking amateur games made by 12 year olds, but actual commercial products >.>

And you can argue the same thing about gritty 30 something dude protagonists (aka bald space marines) in western games. They're even worse IMO

 

[Milennin]

Because a lot of RPGs are aimed at the teenage demographic. In the case of RPG Maker, it's because a lot of developers are actually teenagers or in their early twenties.

I myself am nearing my thirties already, but I still prefer younger protagonists. It's what I grew up with in the games I played, so it feels natural for me to have a protagonist something between 15-25 years old.

 

[Ramiro]

Yup, your protagonist if they are more than 26 years old they are war veterans.

Probably heroes are always teenagers because being a teenager is something people remembers, of course, this may not be always the case, but you know, talking about overused themes is because people actually like 'em.

Even then, when you play as a 16-18 years old guy, you made some choices than may not be even guessed by that age, so they may have 18 years officialy, but they behave as if they were 24-25, That's something quite frecuent on rpg games.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

I'd say you could be 26 and already be a war veteran. If you started your career in arms around 16. Squires were knighted around 16. And in ancient times, you were considered "adult" around 14.

In ancient Japan, the genpuku ceremony, coming of age for boys of the samurai caste, was happening between 13 and 17, depending on the need of a clan. In times of war, you would come of age early. In peaceful times, boys were given more time to mature.

It can so depends on the setting. If average life expectancy is 40, being an adult at 16 makes sense.

Young heroes can help as well in terms of exposition. A young wandering hero will not know much of the world, soit gives more leeway to introduce specifics of your setting than say if the hero was a seasoned 30 years old wandering warrior.

It might be as well than many JRPG relates to the Shonen tropes.

In Saint Seiya, the boys are performing amazing feats, and participate in world saving conflicts, but they are supposed to be 13, yet they are far from childish (except when Seiya farts in Balrog spectre tribunal ).

 

[Ms Littlefish]

I actually do know a lot of war veterans under the age of 25. But that's aside from the point. I think I still know what people are getting at. An otherwise youthful character that has a hardened, gritty, "I've seen some stuff; terrible stuff. The way this world works. The world is black." kind of thing. 

I think the only time that kind of character (or a lot of character arcs for that matter) bothers me is if they are too static, and unchanging. Overall, most people are quite dynamic.

Some things are definitely done a lot but I think it only really feels that way when it suffers from bad placement and bad writing.

 

[Astel]

I see it this way... most RPGs are about adventure, and in my eyes such things relate more to young characters. If you are 30 or older, you are most likely to have a stable work, and be married with a family (not always but you get the point) why such character is going to roam around in caves/dungeons/enchanted forests/whatever unless it's a very immature person?

Also, when you are young all your potential is there to be unlocked, while when you are on the top the only thing remaining is to go down... i guess it's things that older player wouldn't like to think about, even more with the modern mentality that even at 50 you can always start over and keep growing, while in an older setting people would be lucky to get to that age.

For a boy, going to war could be an adventure... for an old soldier going to war is just business.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

Well, there's no "good" or "bad". It's just that a teen will have less fun playing with adult character cause he will have an harder time identifying to them. As a 18 year old myself, i still have a tendency to prefer, and write, main characters that have around the same age as me. Overall, it really depends on the game, but for a RPG, having a character with the same age as you really increases immersion. And writing-wise, it is far more easy to create a believable character cause you actually know how someone of that age range works.

So it really falls to what's your age and what's your target's age. And if you stay away from big clichés, it shouldn't pose a problem.

I can't really agree with this. My main characters are different from me in many ways -- age, gender, cultural background, tastes, experience, knowledge of the world, abilities and weaknesses. Writing the characters as themselves and making them believable is a challenge, but it's a fun challenge. And even if I stuck to main characters of my gender and age, they still would be themselves and not me, so I would still be faced with the same challenge of trying to think inside their heads.

On the flip side, from the player's perspective, when I'm playing a game I don't care whether the character is of my age or not, I just want the story to be told well and the characters to feel realistic. Empathy is more important than identification.

So I don't believe in the concept of a "target age", unless you're writing for young children and have to think about appropriate levels of vocabulary and complexity. Recently, I was sharing an in-progress novel with my writers' group, and one of the members asked whether it was aimed at teenagers, because of the age of the protagonist. My response to that question is always: "It's aimed at anyone who would enjoy reading it."

 

[Astel]

 Empathy is more important than identification.

As many things, it depends on the reader

 

[Mouser]

Look online for "RPG cliches" - there's a pretty famous list out there somewhere. The one you're referring to is known as "Logan's Run Rule."

Most writers have a target audience in mind. That doesn't mean they set out to exclude others, but the writing is 'directed'. The 'viewpoint' character is a pretty good indication of this. Writing for 'families' where the main plot is accessible to children but with enough innuendo and call-outs to keep older viewers happy is a real art.

Adolescence is an easy target for video games for many reasons. One, it's a time of life where a persons view of the world can be changed (see: Lord of the Flies - if it were a bunch of forty year olds on the island, it would have played out very differently). Two, it's a time with much potential for your life. If you are an adolescent, you've got your life in front of you. If you aren't, it's one of the "what if?" points of life. Either way, it's easy to become invested in a character there faced with great choices. Historically, adolescent males were the primary purchasers and players of video games (this has changed somewhat).

Having an adolescent protagonist doesn't mean you have to follow all the other tropes and cliches, but you should be aware of them. It's an easy road to find yourself going down, since the tropes exist for a reason (basically, the Story of the Hero applied to an adolescent). Pick the themes you want your story to explore, set up the conflicts, and then make sure everything makes sense in that framework.

 

[noctiluca]

Mmm a lot of those assumptions are made that the game takes place in historical medieval times (where the shorter lifespan was simply due to poor sanitary conditions, famine, and/or being killed in a skirmish, and in a fantasy setting a lot of that stuff isn't even relevant if, say, there's magic healthcare).

I also see the common assumption that all protagonists are young soldiers enlisted in a war and so by the time they are in their early 20s they are already seasoned and wise because they've seeeeeeen things (which is so not true, combat experience is a very specific category of life experience. FFIV had an interesting way of working around this by giving the battle veteran protagonist a class change).

While I haven't been actively working on any of my games lately, I do have a few different stories going on and one of them is a science fiction where the main character is 23 and I suppose the equivalent of a nun. Because of the culture, she's still considered young though and lived a relatively peaceful and sheltered life, so while it sounds atypical it doesn't really make an incredible difference.

In the end just write whatever you want to though, there's no point in actively avoiding clichés if it backs you into a corner.

 

[kaukusaki]

I'm pretty jaded in the RPG department and hadn't played a game proper in a decade (so my familiarity stops about 2005). I'm working on a game I wrote 15 years ago about an elderly magician who goes on a quest to clear his name for a crime he didn't commit (i thought this was ingenious when I wrote it lolz). I always strive to overturn tropes and think differently. Someties I run the rnd (or dice ) and see what I come up with. Quite a few whacky adventures came about that way. Now it's just programming the damn things...

 

[Kes]

I disagree with this whole "you should make it a teenager because that's the main audience and they can identify with the hero" line.

First off, that audience demographic has changed considerably. Players are now not overwhelmingly male, it's much more even than it was. And there are now many, many players who are not in their teens.

Second, and more fundamentally, are people really saying that teens are so lacking in imagination that they cannot identify with a protagonist who is not very like them? That has not been the experience in literature, nor in games. Sure, there's plenty of lazy writers who churn out stuff, books, games, movies, which don't require any leap of imagination, but that is a reflection on them, not their audience.

For example, in my second game, which has sold very well, the main protagonist is a man old eniugh to be married and have an infant son. In my last game the main protagonists were a black woman computer engineer and a fairly seasoned journalist caught up in time travel. None of the people they team up with is a teenager and that is selling well too. So how to explain that if it's teenagers wanting to identify with the heroes?

 

[Astel]

I wonder why this cause so much conflict in some people...

I don't think it's overused... if anything it's overplayed. Of course if you are 30 something, and have been playing games for the last 10/15 years of course some things will feel repetitive... but it well feel fresh to someone just starting. Also, going against all the cliches is really pointless to me, going through a list of things trying to avoid or subvert sounds really unfunny to me e_e

Why have bandits to kill men, steal cattle and abuse women? That's so cliche... lets better make bandits which steal men, kill women, and abuse cattle

 

[trouble time]

So, ive heard it said that having "teen/child/highschooler heros/protagonists" is over played. I dont really remember where i heard that, but what do yall think?

Do you have any other opinions on what you think is over played?

I think that idea is really misguided, since there are as many, if not more, adult protagonists in games.

Second, and more fundamentally, are people really saying that teens are so lacking in imagination that they cannot identify with a protagonist who is not very like them? That has not been the experience in literature, nor in games. Sure, there's plenty of lazy writers who churn out stuff, books, games, movies, which don't require any leap of imagination, but that is a reflection on them, not their audience.

To be fair, I've seen posts on this very site about adults being unable to identify with teenagers like they never were one.

 

[Niten Ichi Ryu]

Mmm a lot of those assumptions are made that the game takes place in historical medieval times (where the shorter lifespan was simply due to poor sanitary conditions, famine, and/or being killed in a skirmish, and in a fantasy setting a lot of that stuff isn't even relevant if, say, there's magic healthcare).

What about post apocalyptic settings? The conditions would apply as well, without being medieval...And the "magic healthcare" is really something utopical possible only in Light fantasy were magic is very widespread.

In "realistic" fantasy settings, poor people would still die young from war, sickness or famine.

Don't be mind restricted by the fact that RPG are often medieval. Healthcare and extended lifespan is really something that came in modern times (and yet modern times saw world war 1 and 2, disastrous for lifespan...) And 19th century had as well short lifespan.

So the assumption on some of the assumptions is slightly wrong. The only thing said is that it depends on the setting, ie what you define your world is. (See even in present days, in Africa, Children are in war at 13, and life expectancy is barely above 40 years old)

Now, on another hand, @professional Swallow, is that question related to what you had posted in the plot feedback thread?

If yes, don't be worried about the young teenagers tropes, your setting seem really different from the classic shonen/young JRPG hero pattern.

Look at Stephen King as I said, the beginning of It, or stand by me are good examples of young characters.

 

[noctiluca]

I did point out that it's an "if"-- for instance if you have white mages in your party you have magical healthcare. Any kind of magic that materializes out of nowhere is already too far removed from reality, so unless you are going into the social commentary/light SF territory and making white magic some kind of monetized organization for the wealthy elites who get to live forever, you have to think hard about the consistency of your setting. We're talking about overdone RPG cliches here, presumably...

Consider the difference between

A. Billy accidentally cuts himself while training with his sword in the opening cutscene. His family can't afford a casket so they dig a hole for his body just in case the inevitable infection does him in.

B. Billy accidentally cuts himself while training with his sword in the opening cutscene. His family chides him and sends him next door to be patched up by his childhood friend who is conveniently taking up white magic, and needs a guinea pig to test her first cure spell.

Obviously one of those sounds more like the typical fantasy RPG setup where beating up wildlife makes them drop money and exp like piñatas. Option A could be the opening of some great dark humor though.