Needs Help: The Lost Woods

What game specific gimmicks? These pages are never very clear on that. Prehistoria is just One Million BC with game specific gimmicks, as is Minecart Madness with Rollercoaster Mine. Just that the setting is in a video game doesn't change the basic narrative purpose of it.

IDK, Minecart Madness for one forces the player to stay on track and avoid obstacles. Video games being interactive by nature means that the settings have to come up with unique, setting-themed challenges to get in the player's way. It's not the same as a work just happening to have a Rollercoaster Mine.

As for this, a work with a vast and mysterious jungle isn't the same from a video game trope where the the player can get lost, has to fight animals, climb trees, swing vines, etc.

I've listed some gimmicks and these two pairs mentions were in the discussion as well, so they may need description cleaning later. Also Video Game Settings don't even have a narrative purpose, it's just zones with specific themes and some themes happened to have repetetive puzzles.

Eh, the description seems clear about it to me. It states that in some games, the character has the ability to go inside trees and such. Also, magical forests tend to be the second level in a lot of games.

We aren't talking about narratives so I am not sure why that was brought up. Not all tropes are narrative based.

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 25th 2022 at 6:40:21 AM

While I raised concerns with Video Game Settings, I think the most important thing for an initial crowner is deciding

1. Are we splitting? (There was some opposition to doing that)

2. What's getting renamed? One or both?

This chat over Video Game Settings was kind of started by me, but I think we should do some wick checks on some of the tropes there and take a look at what we find before we make any big leaps.

Edited by Tonwen on Apr 25th 2022 at 6:43:01 AM

Video Game Settings itself might need a check. I see it used for bad indentation trees infuriatingly often, such as:

• Video Game Settings:
  • The Lost Woods
  • Minecart Mayhem
  • Under the Sea

But that's a different issue for another time.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 25th 2022 at 7:46:45 AM

How about Level In The Woods to parallel Level in the Clouds?

This thread was only created today, so we have plenty of time to hash out what to do with it before we've passed the three day minimum for a crowner.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 25th 2022 at 10:51:11 AM

I'd agree with both points. Video Game Settings don't really have narrative identities, no, but that's because they're game elements more than story elements. Things like Giant Mook, Powerup, Pivotal Boss, Loot-Making Attack, and other things like that also don't have narrative identities — but they have very clear mechanical identities. This is an important distinction to make between "scripted" works (i.e., books, movies, comics, tv shows) and interactive ones (video games, tabletop games also) — a lot of tropes native to second category are going to be defined primarily or even solely by how they're intended to hinder or aid the player's progress through the game. Video game levels fall in this group.

Anyway. Looking through the current The Lost Woods page, the main themes in video game forest levels seem to be:

• Stage in game progression — they're usually either among the first zones you go through, and very simple, or among the last, and darker and more difficult.
• Mazelike layout — they're often convoluted and labyrinthine, with various obstacles obstructing paths or other gimmicks intended to make it easy for the player to get turned around and lost.
• Enemies — forest animals and animated trees seem standard. Haunted forests with ghosts also seem fairly common.

Level In The Woods might works as a name.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Apr 25th 2022 at 11:30:13 AM

If I'm not mistaken, if we move the video game examples to a new name and reuse the name The Lost Woods for a trope that includes non-video game examples, we'd be doing a Trope Transplant.

If we make a solely video game setting trope, how could we differ it from Jungle Japes, Bubblegloop Swamp and others in the description?

Edited by good-morning on Apr 26th 2022 at 10:37:05 AM

The same way those two differ from each other. And The Lost Woods already has a good enough paragraph regarding VG use, just add the gimmicks mentioned and it's ready.

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of "Do a Trope Transplant by restricting The Lost Woods to video game settings and moving non-video game examples to a new name". I didn't upvote or downvote any of the other options.

Also, I'd like to give assurance that I can lend a hand about the zero-context issue with most examples. I have played several video games with mystical forest levels in them, so I should be able to add context to the affected examples once the most voted action is enacted to improve them (I'll bookmark this thread for when that happens).

I was under the impression that the video game setting version involved an area that was purposefully disorienting to navigate, often as the result of magic. The Trope Namer (the Ocarina of Time version in particular) comes to mind, as a single wrong turn warps you to the entrance if you don't know the trick to finding the correct path. I'm highly against a rename due to that.

Splitting off the non-video game examples into its own Enchanted Woods trope is probably the most logical choice.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 30th 2022 at 5:09:58 AM

I kinda like the name Weird Woods. It has some nice alliteration to it.

Edited by MatthewWayne on May 1st 2022 at 9:29:56 AM

Posting this comment to make public that I voted in favor of Enchanted Forest as the main name of the non-VG page. I didn't upvote or downvote any of the other options, though I think Mystical Forest would work well as a redirect.

I'm thinking of adding Magical Forest, but Enchanted Forest sounds better anyways.

I would avoid any name with "Woods" to prevent confusion with The Lost Woods.

Edited by Nen_desharu on May 1st 2022 at 6:00:43 AM

So far Enchanted Forest has the most votes with 18 yeas and 3 nays, but Mystical Forest has a better ratio with 13 yeas and 1 nay. If the ratios stay the same after the crowner is ready to call, Mystical Forest will be the primary name and Enchanted Forest will be a redirect, since ratios take priority over vote counts (with the exception of options that don't have enough votes, which are disqualified from becoming the name regardless of the ratio).

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 2nd 2022 at 2:37:05 PM

Sandbox.The Lost Woods

I split The Lost Woods description into two (with minor revisions) and have the the non-video game specific paragraphs to Enchanted Forest.

Is there more to do or is that good enough?

I also moved the video game examples over to the sandbox. They could use some sorting by genre but that's optional.

Edited by MacronNotes on May 4th 2022 at 7:08:12 AM

Looks ok, but I think it would be prudent to clean the examples up, then sort them out, I will do a bit of cleaning rn.

The sandbox looks pretty good so far! Once that writeup is in effect, I'll offer myself to edit/expand the examples I'm familiar with to emphasize how they fit the definition.