It's not bad, I saw worse tropes coming out of the YKTTW after weeks of baking.
Is it sufficiently different from Monster Protection Racket to have its own page? They both boil down to "character covertly causes the problem so he can get paid to provide the solution."
^ It would probably be a sistertrope of that since it requires someone to poison someone else and withhold the antidote until they do X. It's far more specific than Monster Protection Racket. Also, it doesn't tend to be the hero that did the poisoning. In fact, the person is generally pretty open about the fact that he poisoned the other person.
edited 28th Oct '10 10:59:38 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickI Thought It Meant "give someone a slow poison or other time bomb, then offer them the antidote in exchange for services rendered." Which is like this but not exactly...is it different enough to be its own trope or would it be more like a "Type B"?
I was thinking this was a Video game trope from back when RPGs you could only have 1 debuff on a person so you would pre-poison your characters so nothing worse can happen.
Which worked very well with Shin Megami Tensei games
edited 28th Oct '10 10:51:15 PM by Raso
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!@Madraguda: There is a recent YKTTW for a "Break and Fix Racket
" which would be the supertrope to Monster Protection Racket as well as this.
For example, in one Sunday strip of Grand Avenue, Michael offers to rake the neighbor's yard clear of leaves. He does so by raking them onto the next neighbor's yard, whereupon he gives them the same offer.
That's a nice, family-friendly example of a Break And Fix Racket that doesn't qualify for Monster Protection Racket or Poison and Cure Gambit (...and why the latter is called a "gambit" I have no idea).
edited 29th Oct '10 6:04:43 AM by Stratadrake
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Tripped over the Poison and Cure Gambit while surfing through the YKTTW.
No YKTTW archive, very small edit history, definitely in need of some Wiki Magic.
(At least it's indexed....)
An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.