History RuneScape / TropesAToG

* BrokenAesop:
** The "Tower of Life" quest. The moral of the whole story is that meddling with creation is wrong, and life should be treated with respect. Your reward for completing the quest is access to a minigame where you can create new mutant life-forms, kill them, and harvest their organs.

* CultureChopSuey: ''Old School'''s Kingdom of Varlamore is a mixture of {{Mayincatec}} and AncientRome.

** Funnily enough, two of the bosses in Sennisten have conditionally safe deaths; outside of Hard Mode, the Arch-Glacor doesn't trigger a death state, as a literal god intervenes to scoop the World Guardian out of harm's way, and Croseus's way of taking the player out of the fight involves draining their skills to 0, which causes Gorvek to get you out.

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: In the Pest Control Minigame, death merely results in the player respawning at the entry lander of the Minigame, restoring their Life Points, Adrenaline, and Prayer at the mere cost of a bit of running to get back where they were. Similar things will happen if you die in any other "Safe" minigame or combat encounter, in which you keep all items on death.

** The Falador Massacre, caused by an error causing kicked party-goers to still be flagged for PVP in non-PVP areas, became part of the game's lore during the 2015 Invasion of Falador event.

** The Toolbelt provides you with pretty much every basic tool you'll need to do any skilling or quest task in the game, unless it is a very specific item needed for a quest. This saves players long treks or teleports back to the bank for a chisel. Even better, it holds everything without taking up an additional inventory space, which is a huge bonus in a game with only 28 spaces for non-equipment.

** A long time ago, you had to carry a watch and a sextant to dig up a coordinate clue. Not having them in your inventory would result with nothing getting dug up, even if you were standing in the correct spot. ''Old School'' removed the need to carry them, so now you just need to simply dig in the correct spot.

** After complething ''Dream Mentor'', Bird's Eye Jack becomes a banker at the Lunar Isle bank. Since he doesn't require a seal of passage, this prevents you from getting locked out of your bank account while on the island should you forget to bring your seal.

** [=RuneLite=], one of the third party clients approved by Jagex, includes a plethoa of helpful plug-ins that makes the game much less frustration. For example, while on a treasure trail, the cilent will tell you where to go and where exactly you need to dig for a coordiate clue. It will also help you solve puzzle boxes.
** A long time ago, you had to carry a watch and a sextant to dig up a coordiate clue. Not having them in your inventory would result with nothing getting dug up. ''Old School'' removed the need to carry them, so now you just need to simply dig in the correct spot.

* DropTheHammer: In addition of regular metal warhammers and mauls, there's Torag's Hammer, the Terrasaur Maul, and the Maul of Omens used to defeat Vorago. Averted by Tagga’s Corehammer, which is an offhand item for Mining training…except at Croesus, the skilling boss that drops said item, where it can help break away calcified fungus.

** There is an eerie-looking pillar located on Mos Le'Harmless that has seemingly been ignored in both versions of the game since the area was added in 2006. [[spoiler:A focal point of ''Desert Treasure II'' is an identical-looking pillar and the mass psychosis it caused on the inhabitants of the Lassar Undercity.]]

** In the quest Ghosts Ahoy, the player stopped Necrovarus' plan to prevent the ghosts of Port Phasmatys from being able to move on to the afterlife. Later, in the quest Vessel of the Harbinger, they work together to try to stop Rasial from attacking the surface world.

** The "Forgotten Four" bosses unlocked after ''Desert Treasure II'' are some of the hardest solo PvM challenges in Old School, and have "Awakened" variants that are ''much'' harder than just about anything else in the game. The Awakened Leviathan in particular is considered about as hard as or harder than ''the Inferno''. The reward for beating them all? A device that turns your Torva armour red, [[BraggingRightsReward adding no statistical advantage to it]].

*** During the quest, you gain access to a Zarosian intelligence golem that you can input search terms into. Putting in "cats" results in some humorous dialogue, and "horses" causes it to bug out. There are also some search terms that the golem will [[ClassifiedInformation refuse you access to]], such as "Zaros", "Stone of Jas", and "[[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers Romily Weaklax]]" (the pie merchant in the Cooks' Guild).

** Verac the Defiled's set effect has a slight chance of ignorning defences, which will guarantee a hit if the effect kicks in.

* ForWantOfANail: The Dimension of Disaster is an AlternateTimeline where you, the player character, was never born. As a result:
** Delrith and Agrith-Naar were never defeated during the events of Demon Slayer and Shadow of the Storm, respectively. Delrith went on a rampage that destroyed Varrock (which by his own admission was [[VictoryIsBoring disappointingly easy]] without a hero to stand in his way) until Zemouregal showed up and imprisoned him in an abandoned quarter of the city. Meanwhile, Agrith-Naar (as Denath) returned to Infernus and entertained himself by [[TheGadfly constantly making it rain on Delrith]], who was powerless to stop him.
** Hazeel rules over Ardougne and Kandarin, meaning that his cult managed to successfully revive him. Khazard remains his pupil and Philipe Carnillean is part of Hazeel's cult.
** Zemouregal was able to take over Varrock during the events of Defender of Varrock, kill all of the Signature Heroes ''and'' most named {{Non Player Character}}s in Northern Misthalin and Northern Asgarnia; those who he didn't kill were made into undead thralls, with the sole exception of Reldo, who was deemed useful enough to keep around.
** The Fremennik attempted to invade New Varrock, which resulted in the capture of Koschei the Deathless [[spoiler:(really Kharshai the Mahjarrat)]].
** Lucien [[spoiler:massacred the Crux Eqal and Temple Knights with the Staff of Armadyl and the Stone of Jas, before being killed by the Dragonkin.]]
** Azzanadra was never released from his pyramid at the end of Desert Treasure, meaning he's ripe for the picking when a new ritual of Rejuvenation comes around. The same goes for Akthanakos and [[spoiler:Kharshai]], both imprisoned, while Trindine is left in hibernation in Kharid-Et's Shadow Realm and is presumably forgotten and never woken up.
** It's still the Fifth Age, meaning [[spoiler:Guthix hasn't died]]. Understandable, as Orlando Smith, the archeologist that discovered [[spoiler: Guthix's resting place]] can't do much in an undead state [[spoiler: and without a mortal hero whose soul is strong enough to house the World Guardian enchantment, Guthix isn't going to manipulate Sliske into [[ThanatosGambit killing him]] to complete it]]. Because the Sixth Age hasn't started, there are still no gods on Gielinor, as the Edicts of Guthix still hold.
** Though it's not shown, Bandos successfully made Zanik his war-hungry avatar and had her spread chaos. She got all the way to the God Wars Dungeon, where she led the Bandosian army to victory after reassembling the Godsword. Then she opened the door to Nex's prison...[[EpicFail and was immediately killed as a result]]. Nex then stole the Godsword from Zanik's corpse and fled to parts unknown.
** The player not being there to change the past during the quest "Meeting History" caused significant changes to the past, although many events took place InSpiteOfANail. Zaros never came to Gielinor, but Loarnab, who was killed by Zaros in the original timeline, ended up taking Zaros's place in history.
*** To elaborate further, because the player was never born, they never travelled to the past (as shown during Meeting History), and therefore did not influence a pre-teen Jack to become a druid. Instead, Jack grew up to become an EvilSorcerer who terrorized the land until [[BatmanGrabsAGun Guthix was forced to end his reign of terror by killing him.]] Seeing Guthix go against his [[ThouShaltNotKill moral code]] influenced Seren to withdraw from Gielinor and stay in Tarddiad with the elves, which means Zaros was never attracted to Gielinor by her presence and continued to aimlessly wander the universe. As a result, Loarnab grew in power until it gained sapience and took Zaros's place as the ruling god of the Second Age, becoming known as the Dark Imperator. The rest of the events in Gielinor's history mostly take place in the same way as the mainstream timeline afterwards: Zamorak usurps Loarnab, starts the God Wars and Guthix banishes the gods from Gielinor upon his awakening.

** There are also examples of content from ''Old School'' appearing, and sometimes becoming prominent in [=RuneScape=], such as the aforementioned Fossil Island, Zorgoth and Vorkath, and the boss of the Inferno [=TzKal-Zuk=]. In fact, Zuk's appearance in [=RuneScape=] was so well-received that the ''Old School'' team chose to {{Retcon}} his origin story to be more in-line with [=RS3=]'s.

** ''Old School'' has a few of these, and justifiably so. Many of the quests prior to the 2007 backup would be continued at a later date, but this led to some quests that end with cliffhangers (such as "A Forgettable Tale", "Devious Minds", and "Fairytale II") or open questions ("Another Slice of HAM" and "The Eyes of Glouphrie") that have yet to be resolved, partly (largely) due to Old School having a much smaller team with much more on their plates than to develop quests that ended a decade ago. Not to mention that many involve skills or features that aren't in ''Old School''. That said, in 2022 Old School's developers showed interest in backporting RS2 quests that were released after the 2007 backup, starting with "Land of the Goblins."

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Runescape Classic'' has many differences. See the trope page for a detailed explanation.