Cleaning & Reorganizing Weaponry Tropes:

Yes, those would be the actual tropes there for Video Games. I like the way you've laid them out. They also led themselves to much better descriptions on trope, work, and character pages.

We'd still need tropes for gear in other media, but that I think covers video games well. Nice work.

That said, I don't think Character Equip Category is quite right. Character Limited Equipment maybe? Since it's not always a whole category. Sometimes it also includes special items that only one character can use.

edited 6th May '16 12:12:11 PM by shimaspawn

Having an occasional character exclusive items sounds like something else to me, most of those tend to be plot important or gender / racial equips.

Character Equip Category is one of the biggest tropes in this, it's like a Signature Weapon Category but well can be armor as well although 99.999% of the time the armor in the category is not visual thus not part of a character's Signature Outfit.

Say in Final Fantasy X Tidus can equip 1 handed swords and bucklers, that is all he can equip and no one else can use em but there are hundreds of them and any enemy in the game can drop one of them, Yuna uses staves and rings etc. Every single equip item is bound to 1 character and that's it.

It's the standard JRPG thing for weapons but it is not all that common for armor as Armor Classes such as Light Medium or Heavy armor are still there as a relic from D&D which inspired RP Gs in general and are usually non visual so in great variety. It can screw you over when combined with Random Drops too as you can get all this good stuff for 1 character that they can only equip one off and the rest get jack.

edited 8th May '16 5:07:16 AM by Memers

Having a game specific and non game specifc for each of those are redundant.

They should be worded in a way that lays out how they're used in gamse, and how a similar concept can be used in non-interactive media.

None of those are used anywhere outside of Video Games, D&D and such. That is strictly a gaming only trope.

Not a single element is a trope in any other media. For media all that is used is strictly Signature Weapon and Signature Outfit.

Weapon Of Choice right now is being used for 'this character use x weapon' and its subtropes are just Weapon Of Choice sorted by type of weapon. They need to be made into actual tropes.

edited 10th May '16 4:54:43 PM by Memers

^ grammar?

I think i get the gist of what you're saying, but some (not all) could fairly easily apply to other types of media.

They are not tropes in other media. All occurrences of things resembling them, outside of a RPG Episode, mean something completely different or are attempts at shoehorning.

The two all media tropes for Weapon Of Choice would be Signature Weapon and Weapon Stereotypes, everything else is on the chopping block. The latter is the super trope to, or expansion of, National Weapon.

Also I meant for that listing to be one sliding scale trope about Equipment Restrictions which is gaming's use of Weapon Of Choice.

edited 10th May '16 4:54:00 PM by Memers

As a scale, yeah thats limited to games. I'll agree. By redlinking each point on the scale it seemed like you were advocating each to be a separate trope.

They should be separate tropes. They are game mechanics tropes, yes, but that doesn't make them less tropable.

If we don't separate them and instead have them soft split then we have a page type situation which leads to heavy ZCE occurrence. Also, we don't want new sliding scales functioning as tropes. We know from experience that doesn't work. We're trying to eliminate them as anything other than indexes.

edited 11th May '16 8:19:52 AM by shimaspawn

Ok so then actual tropes? I don't see any of them being anything more than gaming and RPG Episode tropes though as they are all purely mechanical.

So what next?

edited 12th May '16 12:01:27 AM by Memers

They don't need to be more than gaming.

As for outside of gaming, I think Signature Weapon covers the majority of what we need.

Should we get a crowner going?

Go ahead.

Since I disagree with Torpedo Tits being even a "Somewhat of a Distaff Counterpart" to Phallic Weapon I created this thread to offer an alternative. But I thought of putting it here before I submit it to YKKTW for consideration.

edited 21st Jun '16 5:29:51 AM by Imoo57

So... can we start cutlisting some of these "weapon X exists" pages, then? As best I can tell for the majority of them (with a few exceptions that can be noted just a few pages back in this thread), it's been about two years of general nodding consensus that they don't really contain anything to salvage and aren't tropes, but when does that consensus get acted upon? I've already nominated An Axe To Grind just because its own page-specific discussion has been dead in the water for years and its own individual trope repair shop trip resulted in absolutely nothing being done (or, indeed, even any indication anything CAN be done), but I'm hesitant to start making actual sweeping cutlist suggestions for other items.

edited 22nd Oct '16 9:51:47 PM by Venatius

As they are right now I agree that most of the Weapon Of Choice subpages need to go and even its super trope too.

I still maintain that we should at least rework them all into Signature Weapon and such.

Unlike with many of its "Weapon Exists" subtropes, I'm not convinced that there's anything wrong with Weapon Of Choice itself, though it may need some reworking.

Because if X person ever picks up Y weapon they make the list, which certain weapons are in subpages like An Axe To Grind as their lists got too large for the main page. Also if X person in a video game has access to A-W weapons they make the list for each one, the multiple choice weapons should be a different trope along with characters that have a signature weapon category instead of a lone weapon.

They need to be a signature element of the character to be an example IMO instead of a weapon of opportunity, which in of itself is probably another trope.

As for the subpages we will still need them if only due to size issues, they really should be just transferred over to like 'Signature Weapon - Axe' instead of tropes like An Axe To Grind.

edited 23rd Oct '16 11:31:24 AM by Memers

I'm not sure I'd consider "a character swings an axe (or other weapon) at least once" to be what I'd call a "signature" weapon, which is what most (if not all) of these "weapon X" trope pages are. Also, unless I'm misunderstanding, "size" seems like an irrelevant reason to keep a page that's completely tangential to the whole purpose of the site, unless it's for reasons of a specific consequence other than "It'd be a shame to delete a page that is really large."

edited 28th Oct '16 7:32:56 PM by Venatius

No it's the opposite of that. the current tropes are 'x person had an x once' or 'an X appeared in this work'. They should changed to 'X person's signature weapon' the one they have on line art, character art, and a huge part of their character.

Luke Skywalker used blasters before but that's not his iconic and signature weapon it's the Light Saber. Indiana Jones has a pistol but his signature weapon is the whip.

Vaan and everyone else in Final Fantasy XII has access to Swords, Guns, Katanas, Staves, Poles, Crossbows, Maces etc and is on everyone of them. The one he is pictured with in character arts and cameo appearances the 1 handed mythril sword, that is his signature weapon. This multiple choice thing would be a trope in of itself IMO as is weapon/armor classes where it is a cadegory of potential weapons.

edited 29th Oct '16 2:43:12 PM by Memers

I think perhaps I wasn't clear, or perhaps I misunderstood the point I was responding to. I agree completely that a character's actual signature weapon is, indeed, an example of a very real trope. And my point is, that's not what any of these weapon-appearance-dump "trope" pages are.

At any rate, if I can brush that off and step back to an earlier post: It feels like this thread has gone around and around and around with general consensus to that end with no sign of ever actually acting on it. So what exactly is the barrier here to getting started on removing them? Unless I've missed some especially juicy disagreement, this thread is two years of people nodding in agreement that these "weapon X exists" pages are completely useless for TVT's purposes. I realize there are a few specific pages that may have more actual significance than "weapon X exists" (Chainsaw Good, for instance, I can see has attracted some reasonable debate), but we've identified quite a few that fail completely to rise above that mark and have remained absolutely untouched. Was there some sizable group I overlooked arguing to the contrary of that? Is there some major hurdle to getting them de-wicked and cut? What am I overlooking here? Maybe the consensus across the board is a lot less clear-cut than it appears to me, but most of these pages (again, with noted exceptions) seem to have attracted zero argument for retention as far as I can discern. In short, what's the plan? Are we instead aiming to keep them but strip out all examples that aren't actual signature weapons? If so, how is that going to work?

edited 13th Nov '16 9:58:49 PM by Venatius

Bumping the thread since it's been a little over a year since the last post and the issue hasn't been resolved yet.

Did the idea of Occupation-based weaponry archtypes / stereotypes get used yet?

Like, Thieves' Daggers, Berserkers' Axes, Knights' Swords? Etc?

Oh, that's sorta like Weapon Of Choice? But, those aren't occupation / classed.

If it were, then Anchors Away would be called something like "Seaman's Anchor Attack" or something.

edited 22nd Nov '17 10:09:34 PM by Malady

As it has been over a year since this last saw any discussion I don't know if there is really the interest in the subject to continue but I would like to suggest splitting Chainsaw Good between "using a regular chainsaw as an Improvised Weapon", that could then be merged with that trope, and "chainsaw like weapons specifically designed to be used as weapons" such as the various chain weapons from Warhammer 40,000, the steampunk chain-katana from The Lotus War trilogy and the robot guard dogs with chainsaw teeth from Ghost in the Shell and the like.

There is also the Horror Chain Saw.

Anyway I still think we just need to cut all the ‘specific weapon for no reason’ tropes and limit Weapon Of Choice to their signature weapon that they use all the time, so much so that they are rarely without that weapon.

And make a Weapon Class trope for games with weapon equipment categories.

The problem is, as I mentioned, there doesn't really seem to be enough interest for what would be a very large project especially with the Occupation-based weaponry archtypes / stereotypes that was mentioned.