Cleaning & Reorganizing Weaponry Tropes:

Yeah that seems to be the way to go. Hopefully this thread will get more traffic..

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 13th 2023 at 9:34:15 AM

Could / do we have a trope about having a large variety of weaponry available?

Like how Game Gourmet, is "Game has a lot of different food ("a lot", being defined in an objective manner, in the description)."?

Edited by Malady on May 13th 2020 at 7:05:31 AM

Is Walking Armory what you're looking for?

^ - Related, but no.

It'd be like, a game where it's not like Swords, Axes, and Fists, that are available weapons, but, sais, meteor hammer, nunchucks, forks, torches, etc.

A large, variety of different weapons, like how Game Gourmet is a large variety of foods.

I've been thinking about weapon the individual weapon tropes and come up with the following.

I believe that many of the legitimate uses of these tropes (i.e. beyond x character used y weapon that one time) boil down to one of the following super-tropes:

• Weapon Of Choice: The weapon is strongly associated with a character/fantasy race/organisation/religion/character type/fighting style/etc.

• Enhanced Archaic Weapon: The weapon has abilities beyond the real life norm

• In Game Weapon Abilities: Different weapons give different in-game bonuses

• Out Of Context Weapon: A weapon is used because of Rule of Cool.

I would propose creating these tropes where they don't exist and and expanding the sub-tropes of the ones that do while possibly making some of the existing tropes for rarer exotic real world weapons (Sai Guy for example) Useful Notes.

NOTE: I think something like this was proposed in the past but people couldn't agree on Weapon Of Choice sub-tropes and then the thread died.

There are also tropes that (try to) connect the weapon with a specific character trait. For example, when drafting Boulder Bludgeon, I focused on the fact that it was primarily used in situations of adrenaline-fueled desperation, or by characters meant to be brutes in some way. Therefore, the trope isn't just "Character uses a rock as a weapon", but conveys something about the character or situation.

If we can find certain personality traits/situational traits to hone in on, we can probably rework a couple of these "tropes".

Yeah, that is partially the sort of trope I meant by the Character Type in the Weapon Of Choice super-trope

Edited by SebastianGray on May 13th 2020 at 7:35:15 PM

Ah, cool.

Isn't weapons used for Rule of Cool Impossibly Cool Weapon or is that only for weapons that don't exist in reality? The description says impractical weapons count. Chainsaw Sword is definitely a subtrope Impossibly Cool Weapon but I don't know about Chainsaw Good.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 14th 2020 at 10:36:47 AM

The problem with Chainsaw Good, and the reason I would like to make a Chain Weapon trope, is that at the moment it covers real chainsaws used as improvised weapons (which is a sub-trope of Improvised Weapon and Gardening-Variety Weapon) as well as the specifically made weapons never meant as tools such as the chain-katana from The Lotus War Trilogy and the near infinite variety of chain weapon from Warhammer 40,000 (which isn't a sub-trope of the previous two mentioned ones but would be a sub-trope of Enhanced Archaic Weapon, Impossibly Cool Weapon, and possibly Cool Sword none of which would be appropriate for the improvised use of Chainsaws).

Edited by SebastianGray on May 14th 2020 at 5:58:10 PM

Bumping again...but I guess we might just have to use TRS at some point for these tropes.

We don't necessarily need TRS for every problematic weapon trope. If the Appearance and Badass Tropes cleanup threads can cut tropes or turn them into redirects, so can this thread.

Oh I know, it's just this thread doesn't get much traction. It's been dead for months before I bumped (and not much happened when I did it earlier)

I guess we can focus on Sai Guy since it was mentioned before. It has no personality traits or character archetypes attached to it so I don't think this can be salvaged

Edited by MacronNotes on Dec 7th 2020 at 12:05:09 PM

Here is the TRS sandbox entry:

• Sai Guy: Based on the laconic, it seems to think that using sais as weapons is trope-worthy. To its credit, it points out how much artistic license is used in Sai-Wielding, but presumably there is a trope which covers artistic license as it applies to weaponry.

I should add that there is a trope for gardening tools, such as the sai, used as weapons,

Yeah, while I'd like for this to do it's thing without TRS, it simply doesn't have as much attention. It'd be best going to TRS until this thread is popular enough.

I think something like "Sais As Knives" would be a more trope worthy concept, considering they're blunt weapons but many media treat them like slashing weapons for ninja / Asian themed characters.

Edited by BlackMage43 on Dec 7th 2020 at 1:04:36 AM

like the other perpetual clean ups, it might be better to focus on either one trope or one issue at a time, and clearly address it before moving on to the next topic.

That’s what I was trying to do without refocusing the thread on Sai Guy but as said before this thread doesn’t get a lot of attention so we have to take it to TRS instead

Edited by MacronNotes on Oct 10th 2022 at 5:06:58 AM

I am going to morgue this thread as collective clean up threads like don't work like they used to. We can use TRS for problem tropes.