Fantasy tropes that don't make a lot of sense
I love the fantasy genre and all its sub-genres (sword & sorcery, high fantasy, sword & planet, etc.). There are some tropes though that don't seem to make a lot of sense when you think about them. This thread is for documenting and discussing them. I'll start with two.
First trope. Elves are generally depicted as protectors of nature, especially forests. Yet their most iconic weapons are bows and arrows. Do they chop down trees in order to make them? But that would presumably go against their beliefs, since they should refrain from destroying trees. Maybe they just cut off some branches, without chopping down trees? But technically, that would be mutilation. So how can they even have bows and arrows?
Second trope. The archetypal weapon that dwarfs use is the axe. If this weapon was adapted from a common tool that dwarves used in the past, what was that tool used for? Axes are generally used for chopping wood, but since dwarves live underground and the interior of mountains, there aren't any trees or wood there to chop. Why do they use axes, then? Maybe, instead of wood, they chop down giant mushrooms? But if that's the case, why is it that the handles of their axes are made of wood instead of fungal material?
First trope. Elves are generally depicted as protectors of nature, especially forests. Yet their most iconic weapons are bows and arrows. Do they chop down trees in order to make them? But that would presumably go against their beliefs, since they should refrain from destroying trees. Maybe they just cut off some branches, without chopping down trees? But technically, that would be mutilation. So how can they even have bows and arrows?
Second trope. The archetypal weapon that dwarfs use is the axe. If this weapon was adapted from a common tool that dwarves used in the past, what was that tool used for? Axes are generally used for chopping wood, but since dwarves live underground and the interior of mountains, there aren't any trees or wood there to chop. Why do they use axes, then? Maybe, instead of wood, they chop down giant mushrooms? But if that's the case, why is it that the handles of their axes are made of wood instead of fungal material?
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For the elves, wood from deadfalls would be available even if there were a prohibition against cutting it. I don't really see why there should be though - elves are normally presented as heavily managing their woods, rather than letting them grow entirely naturally. Some elves would also be able to use magic to 'convince' a tree to give up a particularly suitable section ...
For the dwarves, this makes reasonable sense to me. Dwarves are presented as being extremely strong for their size, but not particularly dexterous. Their strength also meant they traditionally wear armor (as do their traditional foes, orcs) and heavy axes are a far better weapon to use against armor than swords - unless you are able to fight with extreme precision.
Then, for the miners, pickaxes are axes too.
From all that, it's a small step to axes purpose-built as weapons. And it's not like all dwarves wield axes; Thorin had a sword.
For the dwarves, they can get away with using coal instead of wood for the forges. But if they really need to use wood for other things like support beams, then it would make sense for them to use axes, and this would also give us a chance to explain why they don't get along with elves. Dwarves would routinely venture into elven forests in order to chop down trees and obtain wood. Elves would be against this, of course. I think that this struggle over a key resource would be a more compelling explanation for their mutual hatred, as opposed to the shallow "I don't like your face / attitude" explanation.
Maybe elves trade wood in exchange for other commodities. The way they protect their forests could be seen as a monopoly of the wood supply by others peoples. The same could be said about dwarves, who would monopolize metal and other underground resources.
Yeah, that one is ubiquitous. Even Lord of the Rings is guilty of this one. When they were in Rivendel, Elrond might as well have said "Hey, I have a lot of soldiers, but they won't accompany you, don't worry about it though, I'm sure that this ragtag fellowship of yours, half of which are untrained no-names, will succeed in what is essentially a suicide mission."
In LOTR's defense, they went with a small group for a legitimate reason. It was pretty much known that an elven army wouldn't have made it into Mordor...
True, but it's a long way from Rivendel to Mordor, they could have used a few elven soldiers in Moria. Galadriel had the same attitude as Elrond: "Yep, got a lot of awesome sharpshooters here, but not one of them can join you. We cool though, right?"
There was also plenty of explanation for how the authorities had held off evil for many generations (think of the role of Gondor and the White Council). That effort had been undermined by corruption - active on the part of Saruman and passive on the part of Denethor. By the time of Frodo's story the resistance effort is over-matched, which is part of the reason why only a small group could intrude into Mordor. The other half of the explanation is the inherent evil of the ring. With its master so dominant, no-one powerful could hope to carry the ring for long without being corrupted themselves.
The wider writings of Tolkien also make clear the cyclical nature he ascribes to the rise of evil. In the book he focused that through an external force, but he was conscious that the same process would occur just in a world of humans (the two World Wars of course shaping his opinions here). Those cycles don't always end as happily as in LoTR - for instance the Second Age ended with the destruction of Numenor and the sundering of Middle Earth. One of the good things about LoTR is that Tolkien spent much of his life developing the world in which it is set. That allows links to be integrated into the main story to the wider mythology (like the role of the palantirs, or Galadriel's glass that harked back to the Silmarils) much more effectively than in most fantasy series.
As for the dwarves, edged tools would still be needed even in an underground society. What I tend to find more fascinating about the dwarves in fantasy settings is their origin; did they first evolve on the surface like other humanoids and then started living underground? Or were they a fully subterranean race that eventually moved upwards and made contact with other humanoids? (If the latter, that raises more questions, because subterranean creatures typically tend to be hairless, so that raises some questions about a dwarf's most famous accessory: beards.
With regards to LotR, I was always under the impression that Frodo HAD to be the Ringbearer precisely because he was a meek, relatively helpless individual. The One Ring exerts a corrupting influence on its bearer, and the more powerful that person, the more likely they are to heed the Ring's whispers, simply because they have greater desires, greater dreams and greater ambitions. Take Boromir, for instance. He succumbed to the Ring because he was used to war, and had the burden of his city's safety on his shoulders. With greater responsibility comes the urge to do more extreme things to protect that responsibility, a weakness the Ring exploited. But the hobbits generally want nothing more than to till their fields, feast and drink, and laugh with friends in the evening. The Ring doesn't have very much to work with, and so the Ring is thus safer in the hands of a humble hobbit than a mighty warrior or wizard (and even so, Frodo STILL succumbed at the end.)
They loot sunken galleys? Just a thought...
A human skeleton is about 20 pounds wet and 10 pounds dry. If an undead critter is reduced to a skeleton, it should be able to run at inhuman speeds and jump like a cricket, because it's so lightweight. If skeletons only have the strength to move their 10-20 pound frame just as fast as a 150-200 pound living human, then they should be pathetically weak and unable to carry weapons that are so heavy.
A skeleton would also need footwraps or shoes to have any real traction on the ground. A realistic skeletal undead would be a springy, skittery spider monkey of a monster that could only comfortably wield small weapons.
tendons join muscle to bone (and thus essential to articulation). Ligaments join bone to bone.
Though I do have to mention that in Baldur's Gate 1 there's a character in Beregost that complains that adventurers always disrupt the economy by selling the stuff that they find in dungeons.
Can I just ask what a merchant is going to do with 400 lbs of armour and weapons and why should he purchase them off of you or any other dungeon delving do-gooder?
There obviously isn’t a market for them anymore as you massacred the alleged threats in the areas to obtain them.
I like that you used the term "alleged" there. Imagine being a simple Ochre Jelly, happily crawling around the cave that you feel is your home, blissfully unaware that sentient beings think that you're a monster. Then some jack-ape adventurers invade your cave, you try to defend yourself as best as you can, but it's not enough. On top of that, they loot all of the cool shiny stuff that you had.
In fairness though, Ochre Jellies have 0 Intelligence. They can't even conceive of the concept of "treasure".
As ThacoBell mentioned above, some RPGs do have a gold limit. I remember constantly running into the gold limit in NWN1/2, and boy is it irritating! XD Fair point on how all the humongous amounts of wealth adventurers bring back into town not massively devaluing the local currency though.
On dragons and gold coins, I actually watched this really fun animated fantasy movie as a kid called "The Flight of Dragons". In it, it explains that dragons sleep on piles of gold coins because gold is actually a very soft metal, and because dragons tend to ignite conventional bedding due to small flame bursts, they instead opt to sleep on soft metals, with gold being preferred. It doesn't say what the dragons used to use before humans came along to start minting coins; maybe the dragons just got by sleeping on the ground or on mud and river pebbles. (Hey, who says humanoids have to be the only race who went through a primitive phase?
"Fiery Axe of Godslaying +6 you say, adventurer? Why, I'll give you 40000 shiny gold pieces for it!"
*Thinking to self* "Sucker! I can sell this to Noober the Farmhand for thrice that!"
"More gnoll halberds? Look, I've already got more halberds in stock than I'll probably ever sell. Still, the metal's decent. I'll give you their scrap value. 2 gold each. Deal?"