This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
"However just a few pages later the rest of the guards in the prison are fooled by Max writing "out of order" with a piece of chalk on a death ray!"
What's so dumb about that? Out of order signs are usually of the improvised, Post-It-Note variety. If you work there and discover something is broken and possibly dangerous you don't wait for a 'proper' sign to arrive by mail order.
Mattock: I was wondering, what would the concept that the guards aren't stupid, but rather, smart enough to know that a crummy minimum wage job isn't worth risking their lives by checking out every little noise/checking up on the imprisoned psychopathic hero. L Ike..."Oh god, I just saw a ninja. Maybe if I pretend I don't see him, he won't stab me to death. Hey, is that rice?"
Also, I love the trope name, and I like the Goblins example. Should someone add "Hey, someone's throwing rocks at us!"?
Susan Davis: Full marks for the trope name!
Andyroid: Heh, thank you.
Eran of Arcadia: I don't get it, how is the Harold and Kumar example a subversion?
Morgan Wick: Probably for the same reason the Doctor Who example is a subversion: none.
Fast Eddie: pulled out ....
- Oblivion, the stupidly poor AI makes everyone (not just the guards) insane.
- This isn't really a fair assessment. The AI behaves in mostly logical ways, but every character in the game falls victim to the very standard The Guards Must Be Crazy tricks. The AI is nothing to write home about, but calling it "stupidly poor" indicates some extremely high expectations.
- Actually the bad AI throws up subversions of this trope. Did you use your awesome powers of stealth to sneak into a house so you could kill the inhabitants/steal all their worldly possessions? It doesn’t matter how great your sneaking was, the guards already know you’re there and are coming for you in force. Even if you came up through the sewer.
Medinoc: Pulled out this remark about Guineas:
- Give him a break, he's canonically very stupid. He's the literal guinea pig for the process, after all.
isn't stupid.
Masami Phoenix: I want to rant about something without being disruptive so I figured here is the best place. I know it's part of the Overlord guide and all, but I find the "guards are so stupid, they can't tell the sound of a rock being thrown" to be a very annoying element that's always being brought up. Fact is, a rock being thrown sounds no different than a rock being kicked which is much more likely to happen. While we don't see it, chances are, in the guard's experience, there's a greater chance of finding the sneak where the sound was than where it wasn't. There also seems to be this concept that the guard could tell where the rock came from, which unless they have echo location and advanced physics degrees, aint going to happen, so it's a choice of checking where the rock fell, and not doing anything. Granted, there's often a leaving the post element that is stupid, particularly if there are two guards and they both go, but generally it's a "You go check it out" situation, which is perfectly logical.
Okay, done with my rant. Thanks for putting up with me.
Uncola Man: The comment on the intellect of guards in Tenchu: Stealth Assassins leaves out their responses to (poisoned) rice balls. A guard will walk up to a rice ball lying on the ground, pick it up, and start eating it. Worse, after they've recovered from the poison, they'll pick up the remainder of the rice ball that they'd dropped while choking and FINISH EATING IT.
My friends used to joke that their lords were all jerks who'd throw rotten food on the ground to feed their guards, which is why it wasn't considered unusual.
Tal9922: Removed
- Carrying weapons in a prison, in such a way that they are easily stolen by the escaping prisoners.
seeing as it's the farthest thing from stupid and irrational
Unknown Troper: Actually, that's very rational and is common policy in a lot of real life prisons. Most guards in US prisons, for example, will only carry batons and/or pepper spray. The response teams who man the towers and patrol the walls/outer prison are often heavily armed, but the ones who patrol the interior with the prisoners rarely carry lethal or even ranged firearms. This is, naturally, to prevent a prisoner from acquiring these weapons and either making an escape or simply going on a bloody rampage.
Zephid: Moved some quotes over to a Quotes Wiki space. I moved them mostly because they gave the wrong impression of the trope, though I thought they were still related.
