At a glance, a few of the examples there aren't in games but would qualify, it seems, particularly the Toy Story 2 and Adventurers! examples.
Other than those, though, I agree that most of those entries aren't this trope, and could use a chainsawing.
edited 2nd Apr '12 9:54:58 AM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to TrumpI went through the entire page, and this is what fits the page, but I'm still unsure about the Knightmare example. It is a game, and a damn hard one at that.
- Referenced in Toy Story 2, in which Rex can't figure out how to beat Emperor Zurg in the Buzz Lightyear video game until he finds a Strategy Guide when the characters infiltrate Al's Toy Barn: "They make it so you can't defeat Zurg unless you buy this book. It's extortion, that's what it is!"
- When the group goes up against an action figure of Zurg, Rex manages to defeat it by accident. When he gets back home at the end of the film, he's uninterested in the game. "I don't have to beat it. I lived it!"
- It's implied to be counterintuitive to the point of Insane Troll Logic, because Rex's remark is prompted by Hamm trying to play the game and asking Rex for help.
- When the group goes up against an action figure of Zurg, Rex manages to defeat it by accident. When he gets back home at the end of the film, he's uninterested in the game. "I don't have to beat it. I lived it!"
- Spoofed in this
Adventurers! strip. And also see this one
.
- Good luck getting through Knightmare without divining what you were supposed to do, the game was easily made unwinnable with the no backtracking rule.
- There's several hint sites for the Real Life "How to Find a Mate" Romance Side Quest, but sometimes even that doesn't seem like enough.
edited 2nd Apr '12 11:28:25 AM by Feather7603
The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.
No, it's just funny.
I think tossing them to GuideDangIt.Other wouldn't be a bad idea.
edited 2nd Apr '12 12:14:56 PM by Feather7603
The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.Question: Is there a section in the trope about examples where someone, other than you, gets stuck into this trope? Toy Story 2 example would count.
edited 2nd Apr '12 4:51:55 PM by spacemarine50
Clocking due to lack of activity.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.I moved the short list I suggested to GuideDangIt.Other.
With that done, I'm in favour of cutting GuideDangIt.Non Game Examples.
edited 5th May '12 10:01:04 AM by Feather7603
The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.![]()
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Electronics and software tend to have instruction manuals for most things. Not reading those and not understanding is not Guide Dang It!, but Read the Freaking Manual.
B: (from my last post) Can extend to anything. If you do read the manual, but either it's no help, or doesn't help you enough to do the job (or worse), it might be this trope. It's not failure to Read the Freaking Manual, it's another trope, or this.
Also: Is there an existing trope where there isn't a manual at all? (Losing it or it's missing won't count)
edited 5th May '12 8:06:40 PM by spacemarine50
The closest thing I can think of is No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup, which mentions a lack of documentation in some examples, but doesn't seem to be focused on it.
Also, are there actual examples for those? If there are examples that aren't shoehorned and actually fit the trope, they can still be placed on GuideDangIt.Other.
Anyway, since there is a place for any potential examples that would fit here, and none of the examples here are actual examples, is it fine to just cutlist it now, or do we need a crowner for it?
edited 5th May '12 9:23:43 PM by Feather7603
The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.Crowner hooked.
"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - FighteerThe trope for fumbling with something awesome that you don't have a manual for seems to be How Do I Shot Web?; that was pretty much the entire premise of The Greatest American Hero, which is how I refreshed my memory on that.
online since 1993 | huge retrocomputing and TV nerd | lee4hmz.info (under construction) | heapershangout.com@21 Thanks for that - your post reminded me of why I should vote to cut. I also propose we direct people on the main Guide Dang It! page to How Do I Shot Web? to keep such examples from popping up in the future.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.If Non-Game Examples don't fit this, they fit a sister trope, then. Not having some conversion units explained to you in a game would be a Guide Dang It!, wouldn't it? So why not in an airplane (the Gimli Glider example)? Having no access to what would otherwise be in-game information would fit—so why not in some school software?
My point is: If they don't fit here, where the heck DO they fit?
That would be the trope Read the Freaking Manual. The point is that real life is not a game, so it doesn't make sense that you require a guidebook to "win" it.
Crown Description:
What would be the best way to fix the page?

The trope Guide Dang It! is about parts of the game that you basically need to look up in the guidebook to figure out. That is fine.
However, for some reason this has a subpage for Non Game Examples, which is a contradiction in terms. Obviously, if something isn't a game, then it can't have any parts of the game that you need to look up in the guidebook.
Some examples of this page really are a game, and thus belong on another subpage. Most examples on this page, however, are just people complaining about how learning stuff is hard.
I think this should be cut. Other opinions welcome.