On the advantage of the cliche and tropes with new players.


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-Recently I've been teaching some Chinese high school students to play d&d. 5th edition. And as they are non native speakers of English, and my Chinese is very poor, I have to do this very slowly and carefully.
-One thing that I've noticed is my heavy use of cliches. This is a Dwarf.
"Like in King of the Rings." Yes. "With an axe and beard?" Yes.
-Or this is a goblin "Kill it." It looks like...'Kill it with fire!"
-In other words I've noticed the cliches are exactly what the players want and expect. They also come to the table with these ideas in their head. It's all very Jung.
-So I'd like to have your opinion or thoughts. Do cliches, such as beer drinking dwarves and tree hugging elves, help to explain the game to new players, or do you think they 'turn off' people from the hobby.
-Another example, a player wanted "sword and magic" but doesn't really care about RP details, so I made them a paladin. The player was happy to have "Magic Sword" and couldn't care less about the RP side of things. Is this a good thing or bad thing?


Yes.

If you depart from cliches too early with new players who have clear expectations, you may lose them.

More people gaming and having fun is always a good thing. Good call on the paladin, it seems they got what they wanted they just couldn't articulate "magus".

Good luck, and yes, very Jungian.


I have always encouraged cliches. I know how exciting it can be to play out a cliched role. And I like to think of it as your first step into playing as someone other than 'you'. As you get more experience playing such roles you will naturally want to expand your options and try out new cliches and later even mix and match or build whole new personae. So it is definitely a GOOD thing. Think of it as role playing 101.


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Yeah, put me onboard with the idea that cliches and tropes are a good thing for new players. It helps them get a feel for the world and how things work. And it will make the times when you subvert the tropes later (once everyone is comfortable) have more impact.


Well the language barrier is another problem. Some people have trouble dealing with nuance in their own language by a native speaker. I can't imagine it'd be easy to bring up high-minded concepts with a shaky grasp of a very difficult language.


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Cliches and tropes work for a reason. They aren't bad in and of themselves, but rather in their execution.

I run some games that are very high on their creativity strain. I often tell people as I'm teaching them to go for the obvious. Don't kill yourself trying to be uber creative, keep the flow going and do the obvious thing. What happens is that once you start the cliche creative endeavor, you spend your energy changing it and making it non-cliche, giving it individual detail.

A recent movie example would be John Wick. A very cliche and trope filled movie. I thought they did just enough twisting of those cliches and tropes though to keep the movie moderately interesting.

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