All The Tropes

Adventure-Friendly World: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Adventure-Friendly World (view source)

Revision as of 08:22, 9 April 2014

256 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (categories and general cleanup)
m (Mass update links)
Line 1:
{{trope}}
{{quote|''"These look like crops! Who the heck ''farms'' in this kingdom?"''|'''Bowser''', ''[[Mario and Luigi Bowsers Inside Story (Video Game)|Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story]]''}}
 
An interesting phenomenon in [[World Building]] in gaming, and certain kinds of [[Speculative Fiction]]: The focus of a game or story dictates aspects of the setting in many subtle ways.
Line 39:
== Tabletop Games ==
 
* ''[[Star Fleet Battles]]'' started out as a licensed [[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]] game of ship vs. ship combat, but then the developers wanted to have battles with more ships in them, so a General War broke out, and then another, and then another.
* One of the reasons the ''[[Warhammer]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40000 (Tabletop Game)|Warhammer 40000]]'' settings are so insane is that every army needs to be able to fight every other army within canon (including ''itself''), so high political instability is the order of the day.
* [[Legend of the Five Rings]] is similar, except without the sense of self-parody that makes Warhammer bearable. Its setting, Rokugan, is a version of feudal Japan where adherence to bushido is turned [[Up to Eleven]]; where extreme racism and classism are considered virtues, and where everyone is pretty much expected to be an emotionless robot existing only to obey their superiors. All of which is fine when you’re playing as a [[Non-Entity General]], controlling an entire clan abstractly via a card game… but then the RPG came along, where you’re actually put into the role of one individual and forced to see just what a [[Crapsack World]] the place truly is, and what an [[Idiot Plot]] the storyline has been in order for it to have turned out that way. It serves as a great example of how a setting can be friendly to one type of game, and hostile to another.
* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' 4E more or less follows through on the logic of this trope with the implied Points Of Light setting in the default game, as noted in the official commentary on it.
Line 49:
** Also many players are [[Intrepid Merchant|traders]], so there has to be a fairly workable economy.
** And there have been at least two collapses, and the Third Imperium is still expanding.
* ''[[Magic: theThe Gathering]]'' has this on the level of the worlds bending towards the baseline iconography and mechanics (mountain dwelling cultures like goblins tend to be impulsive and/or emotionally intense, with magic that specializes in destruction and chaos), as well as with them bending towards mechanical quirks in the individual sets (a block where each color pair has it's own mechanical quirk takes place in a world ruled by a collapsing alliance of guilds that each combines the motivations and tactics of a different pair of colors)
 
 
== Video Games ==
* The [[Excuse Plot]] of ''[[Quake III Arena (Video Game)|Quake III Arena]]'' is basically that the Gods wanted more entertainment, so they put you in the Arena Eternal.
** ''[[Unreal Tournament (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament]]'' has a somewhat similar excuse: the Tournament is backed by the New Earth Government. Unlike ''Q3A'', though, it has some backstory: basically, the NEG reasons that as long as people can sate their bloodlust by watching a [[Blood Sport]], they don't try to kill each other for kicks. And if they do... well, the Tournament is always open to new contestants. Not to mention the hundreds of billions of profit Liandri and the NEG gets out of the broadcasts.
* The "setting" for ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'' is a cartoony, 1960s mod-squad style world in order to handwave the paper-thin [[Excuse Plot]].
* Noticeable in the Warlords franchise, particularly the ''[[Puzzle Quest]]''-related [[Spin-Off|spin offs]]. The relative political stability of the world depends on what this game's plot demands. In some games, everybody is at each other's throats. In others, the factions have set up a peace sufficient to allow the player to travel the world.
* ''[[Recettear]]'' explores how an Adventurer-based Economy would have to work. There would have to be a literal [[Dungeon Master]] who constantly fills dungeons with treasure. Where ''they'' get their resources is not disclosed.
Line 67:
== Webcomics ==
 
* The world of ''[[Dan and MabsMab's Furry Adventures|DMFA]]'' is partially built around the idea of freelance adventurers. Specifically, they supplement the highly corrupt judicial system, criminals are supposed to be sentenced by a member of their own race and society includes creatures who consider beings food.
* ''[[A Modest Destiny]]'' is meant to be a deconstruction of RPG tropes, with an economy dependent on the [[Thieves' Guild]], and a industry of custom made dungeons.
* ''[[The Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|The Order of the Stick]]'' expands on how "a large number of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Tabletop Game)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' settings describe the local monster populations in great detail, but often not how the people in the area actually make their living..." which turns out to be "Killing and eating monsters and taking their stuff, obviously." Thus, there are a large number of humanoid [[Rapid Aging]] [[Explosive Breeder]] races who the gods of the setting created ''solely to be slaughtered by roaming adventurers.'' {{spoiler|Redcloak is a member of one such race who has lucked into an absurd amount of power, and is planning on doing something about it even if it ''[[Well-Intentioned Extremist|destroys the entire universe]].''}}
* [[Overside]], without question - with an indeterminate number of strange, fantastical creatures who are constantly meeting, merging, or competing with each other, with plenty of ancient legends, relics, and ruined empires from the days of yore to go around(some of which get rebuilt and repopulated by successor empires which later collapse and leave new ruins on top of the old ones)... Overside is a world that is made for tale-telling.
 
 
== Web Original ==
* [[Critical Hit (Podcastpodcast)|Critical Hit]]'s Season 1 and 2 World is one of these - it's a loosely affiliated continent of kingdoms, with monsters to the north, ancient ruins of Tiefling and Dragonborn civilizations, an underground city of robots, and even a moon full of Insane Gods and their creations.
 
 
Line 83:
 
== Other ==
* ''[[With Strings Attached (Fanfic)|With Strings Attached]]'' is set in an Adventure Friendly World that ran out of adventure. The society on Baravada is a crumbling anarchy, and the people are literally dying of boredom.
 
 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/925752"