Ambiguous Name (new crowner 8/2): Dronejam

Don't forget unmanned aircraft. And the name for guided missiles in Star Fleet Battles.

Personally, it makes me imagine theNPCs as purple insect things trying to find a mineral cluster to mine.

edited 20th Jul '12 9:31:01 PM by EnragedFilia

Or it could refer to a substance like Royal Jelly, which is what makes queen bees into queen bees, except that this makes....

Anyway, since it looks like we're going to rename, perhaps our time might be better spent thinking up new names instead of making fun of the old one. It's a bit boring, but Non Player Character Wall seems clear enough.

whoops. ignore this

edited 20th Jul '12 10:06:17 PM by abk0100

Ignore!

also, NPC Roadblock is a good name

edited 20th Jul '12 10:06:38 PM by animeg3282

^ Except in the case where it's a deliberate/narrative roadblock (i.e. Invisible Wall), which is most emphatically not related to this.

<post edited for clarity>

What do you mean? That deliberate use of NPCs as roadblocks isn't this trope? Because that's not true. While the description is somewhat poorly written and overemphasizes the accidental version over the deliberate version, there is no part of it that says it can't be done on purpose (most examples I've seen are deliberate, contrary to what the description says, that part should probably be changed).

If that's not what you meant, I need some clarification, because I didn't fully understand your post.

edited 21st Jul '12 6:00:04 PM by MyTimingIsOff

I think he's trying to say that the trope is describing two different things: NP Cs who are intentionally placed in a location in order to block your passage, and NP Cs that tend to block your path due to their movement patterns.

The first one is a form of Broken Bridge, and the second one is generally unintentional (Although I can see ways in which it may be used intentionally, for example to slow you down and hinder your movements in a chase scene)

I disagree. Annoying NPCs that move around randomly and tend to get in the way is one trope. NPCs that the developers put in the way to keep a player from getting somewhere is a different trope. I have seen them overlap, but I think of cases like that as an instance of They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste at the least, and often closer to parody of the normal, unintentional usage.

NPC's who are deliberately stationed to block passage (such as the case with the page image) are definitely not the same thing as when an NPC randomly wanders into your way (which may or may not be an actual trope per se). And it fails the "logjam" analogy horribly.

An NPC that deliberately acts as a Broken Bridge and an NPC clumsily wandering in your way by accident are indeed different concepts. I never said they weren't. I was merely pointing out that the current description lumps them together.

On a side note, I think this crowner's been up for long enough to be called. But before we start an alt. titles crowner, I think we should focus on resolving the issues brought up with the description first.

edited 22nd Jul '12 1:54:19 PM by MyTimingIsOff

Calling crowner in favor of a rename.

Then we really should have had a PA crowner, not SP.

The issues with the definition were brought up well after the rename crowner was made. I cannot predict the future.

EDIT: Besides, I feel that it was for the better that we addressed changing the trope's name as a separate issue anyway. Trying to tackle both issues at once would've just made things needlessly complicated.

edited 23rd Jul '12 7:00:53 PM by MyTimingIsOff

The name is bad enough that I'm sure renaming was a foregone conclusion, so it's just as well we got the question out of the way. Now we know for sure, and can look at other issues. No harm, no foul.

this YKTTW is relevant. It covers, among other things, NPCs unintentionally getting in your way.

We could limit Dronejam to just the intentional type (using NPCs as a Broken Bridge), and let that trope take care of the rest.

I like this idea.

Works for me, too.

Bumping for more discussion. I also bumped the YKTTW to bring more attention to it as well as this thread.

OK. Since this thread doesn't seem to be picking up any more discussion, I made a page-action crowner.

Done.

edited 2nd Aug '12 1:27:01 PM by MyTimingIsOff

You might want to mention the fact that we've already decided on renaming somewhere in the crowner's header, just so we don't lose track of that. Otherwise, looks good.

Crowner tagged in. Fight!

Bumping for a few more votes, though I'm not expecting the results to change much.

I'd like to see a couple more votes here at least.

Since the current vote is starting to look like a foregone conclusion, maybe it's time to get back to the topic of new names while we wait for the crowner to be called?

I think Animeg's NPC Roadblock still works with the new definition.

Calling crowner: redefine Dronejam.

edited 13th Aug '12 7:00:58 AM by ccoa