http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ameCliches

Go through this list and pick out the cliches that are in your game.

Arc Arath:

Thinking With The Wrong Head - at least for Brad, in the game.
The Compulsories - we got most of those covered.
Garrett's Principle - Everyone's going to have this one.
Hey, I Know You!
Hey, I Know You, Too! - Damnit, this one too
Hey, I Know You, Three! - Just shut up. Not a word.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress - Well, unless the item was already being sold at the time.
Dimensional Transcendence Principle
IDKFA
Selective Paralysis
Bed Bed Bed
Zap!
What are we going to do tonight, Vinsfeld?
Insomnia Rule
Second Law of Travel
Eighth Law of Travel
Xenobiology Rule - most of them, yeah...
Dungeon Design 301
Wait! That Was A Load Bearing Boss! - In just one dungeon, alright?!
Figurehead Rule - once or twice.
Puddin' Tame Rule - This will probably be true to everyone but Ix.
First Law of Fashion
Second Law of Fashion
All The Time In The World
It's Not My Department, Says Wernher Von Braun
Adam Smith's Revenge
The Long Arm of the Plot

If anything, it's a fun read. Just copy and paste the ones related to your game as you do so.

Usuru: Ultimate Story had a couple cliched things about it, including:

"No! My beloved peasant village!"
The hero's home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.

And Now You Die, Mr. Bond! (Beatrix Rule)
Fortunately for you, the previous rule also applies in reverse. Rather than kill you when they have you at their mercy, the villains will settle for merely blasting you down to 1 hit point and leaving you in a crumpled heap while they stroll off, laughing. (This is, of course, because they're already planning ahead how they'll manipulate you into doing their bidding later in the game -- see Way To Go, Serge.)

"What are we going to do tonight, Vinsfeld?"
The goal of every game (as revealed during the Fake Ending) is to Save the World from an evil figure who's trying to take it over or destroy it. There is no way to escape from this formidable task. No matter whether the protagonist's goal in life is to pay off a debt, to explore distant lands, or just to make time with that cute girl in the blue dress, it will be necessary for him to Save the World in order to accomplish it. Take heart, though -- once the world gets sorted out, everything else will fall into place almost immediately.

Zeigfried's Contradiction
Just because someone is weird doesn't mean they're important.

Guy in the Street Rule
No matter how fast you travel, rumors of world events always travel faster. When you get to anywhere, the people on the street are already talking about where you've been. The stories of your past experiences will spread even if no witnesses were around to see them.

Arbor Day Rule
At some point, you're going to have to talk to a tree and do what it says.

Child Protection Act (Rydia Rule)
Children 12 and under are exempt from death. They will emerge alive from cataclysms that slaughter hundreds of sturdily-built adults, often with barely a scratch. Further protection is afforded if the catastrophe will orphan the child.
(this one applies after Usuru)

Sephiroth Memorial Escape Clause
Any misdeed up to and including multiple genocide is forgiveable if you're cool enough.
(God, this one is very overused later in the story)


And finally, the funniest cliche the Ultimate Story runs into
The Ultimate Rule
Anything called "Ultima (whatever)" or "Ultimate (whatever)" isn't. There's always at least one thing somewhere in the world which is even more.

I did this a long time ago, just for myself. I did a write up for Legions of Wrath. I have 19 marked down as follows and 173 as broken (not followed).

HAHA LANTIS.

God, TV Tropes is dangerous. You can get seriously lost in there. I just opened the first 24 RPG cliches and spent half an hour in the site.

My game is only halfway, and I might have missed some, but here it is...

MacGyver Rule: I guess having a character who powers up her attacks by the color of her nail polish falls under this
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Melfice Rule)
Dimensional Transcendence Principle: Yeah, and I'm fully embracing it. There's a character that even comment on hos is that possible.
Indestructible Weapon Rule
Selective Paralysis
Short Attention Span Principle: I laugh because it's true. But I can change that (and be evil about it!)
Xenobiology Rule
Dungeon Design 301
Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong: Super guilty.
Law of Productive Gullibility (Ruby Rule): I think.. maybe it applies to my game.
First Law of Fashion: (Do we have a choice?)

Almost:
Sleepyhead Rule: Ha! My hero is a middle age man woken by his WIFE! Take that!
Single Parent Rule: HA! The hero's living parent is his FATHER! Take THAT!

@ Lantis: Puddin's Tame Rule doesn't apply to my game. Take THAT!

Hey, I Know You, Three: The townsperson who wanders in circles and never gets where he's going. Kind of guilty on one account. She just happens to be in town perusing the marketplace whenever you're there.

Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress: But only because that's the way RPGM3's default shopping system works.

Indestructible Weapon Rule: Guilty. No way to do a Diablo system where equipment has durability with RPGM3, but I wouldn't really want it anyway. It was kind of annoying, having to constantly get my stuff repaired in Diablo.

Selective Paralysis: I think fences and rocks are the only objects you can't reasonably climb over, but they're there for a reason (to block off an area because there's nothing interesting behind the fence). If there's something interesting to see or find, you'll be able to get there. If there's nothing to find or see, the place will be blocked off.

Bed Bed Bed: It's a game! That's one of the rules of the game. Stay at the Inn, get healed up. I don't see the big deal here.

You Can't Kill Me, I Quit: Nobody ever gets killed in my game. Even the lackeys you swath your way through either get knocked unconscious or give up and let you pass (there's no text descrbing this, but that's what happens and the boss encounters hint at it). Bosses reach a point where they give up (and they say so), so that you can converse with them after they're defeated. A dead boss can't give out helpful information that steers the story in the direction it needs to go.

Dungeon Design 102: Two doors, closer one locked, key behnd other one. I suppose this applies. I had a lot of fun designing locked doors and keys you have to find (otherwise my dungeons would be way too nonlinear and probably confusing).

Selective Invulnerability Principle: More like "Absolute Invulnerability" for me. You can walk around in that lava cave that has small lava flows covering the floor. My sister even commented on how dangerous the environment looks.

(Related note: I was originally going to have my lava cave be too hot, and the heroes have to find some sort of magic to protect them from the heat, but I decided against it for the following reason. Our heroes are repeatedly suffering damage from fireballs and blaze spells tossed at them by monsters, and they can't take a little heat in a lava cave? Same goes for an ice cave where it's too cold and a windy cave with gale force winds.)

First Law Of Fashion: It's a game! Who cares?

All The Time In The World: It's a game!

Comments:

Garrett's Principle: While you can walk into peoples' houses, there are no goodies to be pilfered because it makes no sense to me for the heroes to be robbing their neighbors. Lekunder is a small town where everyone knows each other, so the heroine and her friends are welcome to talk to whoever they want. There's even a small scene where a character mentions that she hasn't met the heroine's friends before and cheerfully introduces herself.

Incompetent or cowardly soldiers: The two guys guarding the front gate of the town against monster intrusions repeatedly fend off the same types of monsters that the heroes are fighting elsewhere... by themselves. My sister commented, "Man, these guys must be really tough! We're having difficulty beating down goblins and orcs, and they're talking about it like it wasn't a big deal." Later, these two guys get help from the game's four tutors when the in-game tutorial shuts down.

Guy In The Street Rule: I tried to work against this one by having things take time to come to fruition (Delrath doesn't build his bagel shop overnight). Any instance that looks like it's a case of information traveling too fast is because it's assumed that the heroes tell the NPC what happened before we get his response to it (it would be redundnat to show the heroes telling every NPC what happened, so it's just assumed that they give out the new information and we get the NPC's response to it).

Puddin' Tame Rule: I tried to work against this one, too. Most NPCs have something new to say each time the story advances, although they'll continue to say that same thing until the story advances another notch.

Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong: I worked against this one, too. No confusing side quests. My game's always very focused on the primary mission. Anything on the side is completely optional and usually requires the finding of some well-hidden secret item to unlock it. Side quest dungeons have no battles. They're just fun places to explore and pick up some gold and a useful item or two.

Perversity Principle: This is easily defeated by providing a Quest Journal that tells the player what to do next. I hate not knowing what to do next.

Make Room! Make Room!: I've done better with this in my current project, providing lots of extraneous houses to make it look more like a town.

Vivi's Spellbook Principle: Most of your repertoire is useful against the final boss, including a spell you started the game with.

Flow Of Goods Rule: Heh! Only one town in my game. It has everything. That won't be true of my current project, though. Three towns, and the third will have the best stuff for no appreciable reason.

Adam Smith's Revenge: There's a reason for this. Shopkeepers don't know you're going to win, and the purpose of having a shop is to bring in a profit. What self-respecting shopkeeper would hand out free equipment?

Alright, I started this at first, then gave up because a bunch of these are pretty much normal mechanics/formula for RPGs and, IMO, do not qualify as "clichés". It's like saying "the final boss always has a ton of HP" and calling it a cliché. However, I decided to give this another shot, and mark out the ones that shouldn't count.

10. Luddite Rule (or, George Lucas Rule)
Yeah, the bad guys are the ones with technology. But it can't be helped. RPGM doesn't really give me enough technology to give it to the common man.

14. Garrett's Principle
Not a real cliché. This is just how RPGs work. Granted, I don't have every house in my towns open for uninvitation, but gotta have some homes to explore.

17. Hey, I Know You, Three!
Not a real cliché: aimlessly wandering townfolk. Limitation of technology and way too much effort to do otherwise. A few characters might know where they're going, but unlikely.

20. Just Nod Your Head And Smile
Not a real chiché. If you had every townsfolk in your game react to the fact that you're carrying weapons, it'd get pretty redundant eventually. Besides, my game takes place in a country full of dragon slayers and the occasional hunter. People carrying weapons isn't exactly unheard of.

22. MacGyver Rule
Not a real cliché: increasingly more powerful weapons in shops as you go along. It just wouldn't be good game design to do otherwise.
Also: most of the items they list are odd and it is a cliché when they're effective weapons. But gloves? Come on, have you ever heard of martial arts? A person can fight pretty well with their hands. Grab a pair of gloves with metal studs or spikes on the knuckles, of course it's gonna be an effective weapon!

24. Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress
Not a real cliché. Technical limitations prevent a developer from keeping track of which items are sold to which vendors. Really, I can only recall one game that did.

25. Dimensional Transcendence Principle
Not a real cliché. It's just how RPGs are done. Plus it'd take more memory to make the buildings as big outside as they are on the inside. And it'd be one heck of a walk.

28. IDKFA
It's not really a story cliché, but I think I'll count this one. RPGs have given some weapons limited ammunition since the NES days. I'd do the same in my game if RPGM allowed for it better. Though, there are Mick's shuriken.

29. Indestructible Weapon Rule
Not a real cliché. I don't like it when weapons are given their own HP, anyway.

30. Selective Paralysis
Not a real cliché. RPGs aren't platformers. I will agree, though, pebbles and flowers should not make good obstacles.

31. Bed Bed Bed
Not a real cliché. Can you think of a better way for the party to get fully healed?

32. You Can't Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule)
Actually, yeah, I do have one enemy who bothers you throughout most of the game but you don't fight until near the end.

35. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf Rule)
This is... half-true.

37. Fake Ending
Take the word "disk" and replace with "memory card".



FALSE!! Haha, take that, RPG cliché list!

45. Law Of Cartographical Elegance
Not a real cliché. It's just not good game design if you do otherwise.

50. Short Attention Span Principle
Not a real cliché. You think most games have the memory to have book-length books in their book shelves? Well, maybe Elder Scrolls. Gotta give props to the dudes that took the time to write all those.

55. Houdini's Postulate
Yeah, but would it really be that interesting if the player spent an extended amount of time in a prison cell? Something interesting has got to happen sometime.

56. Zeigfried's Contradiction
I can think of two people in Rockford.

57. Natural Monopoly Rule
Not a real cliché. Unless you count when a shop has more than one person at the counter, it isn't really necessary.

58. But They Don't Take American Express
To be fair, the dragons did use to live in the same country as humans.

59. Apathy Principle
My group is the only group that actually see that the dragon slayers are in the wrong.

61. Henchman Quota (Nana, Saki, and Mio Rule)
The Awesome Trio!

68. Fourth Law of Travel
It's such an old plot, I'm not sure I even realized how overused it was when I created it.

72. Eighth Law of Travel
I suppose there could be a shortcut somewhere. Just need to find a place where the only thing separating a direct route from Point A to Point B is a wall.

79. Xenobiology Rule
Fine, let me see you come up with a more original list. Besides, we're kinda stuck with what RPG Maker gives us.

81. Dungeon Design 101
Actually, the waterfall is the exit to the secret behind it.

83. Dungeon Design 103 (or, Wallpaper Warning)
I hadn't even realized I was doing this until I read this one.

85. Dungeon Design 301
That list is so general, how can one not create a puzzle in one of those categories?

93. Puddin' Tame Rule
Not really a cliché. See my reasonings for the book one.

94. Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
Gotta give the player something to do on the side. Besides, I'd rather have the bosses prepared for those special items a little rather than them becoming a breeze when the player does.

96. Selective Invulnerability Principle
Yeah, pretty much. If I could put different clothes on my characters when they go through said hazardous locations, I would.

102. Perversity Principle
It's not that necessary in most cases, but sometimes the plot won't continue without a little help.

106. Law of Traps
I'm not really sure if this'll be a trap or not. Haven't quite gotten far enough to decide.

108. You Do Not Talk About Fight Club
Actually the dragon slayers happen to be hosting it.

120. Little Nemo Law
Yeah, the first one. And am I the only one who thinks of the fish movie when they read this rule?

128. First Law of Fashion
All of the above. See also: my response to rule #96.

129. Second Law of Fashion
See also: my repsonse to rule #96.

144. Materials Science 101
Not yet. But when I actually get around to naming my equipment, there's always a chance a weapon might be made of gold or silver.

147. Vivi's Spellbook Principle
Spells? Not really. The different strengths just target more enemy members at the cost of more HP. Character-specific abilities? Yes.

154. Gold Saucer Rule
Maybe, maybe not. I haven't decided what the prizes are, yet.

159. Bad Is Good, Baby!
Does it still count if the dragons are the good guys in this game?

160. Good Is Bad, Baby!
Okay.

161. General Leo's Exception
This actually makes up for half the bad guys.

163. All The Time In The World (Rinoa Rule)
Nimuay is in trouble! I've got to talk to everyone, buy items, look in dressers, and check the bookshelf for interesting reading before I rescue her! (Actual example.)

169. Gilligan's Prescription
However, it's not as extreme as most anmesia cases. Rather, it's of one specific event, with the remaining memory intact.

174. Flow of Goods Rule
Not a real cliché. In fact, this is basically another variation of rule #22.

175. Master Key Rule
Maybe.

181. Poetic Villain Principle (Kefka Rule)
Hey, these characters have their justifiable reason for why they're the bad guys.

182. Compression of Time
Biggest worry I have about the game. Even if I can't see any plot holes from using it.

190. Weapon Rule
Which is why I'm coming up with a reward other than some unneeded weapon.

#50) Short Attention Span Principle: All bookshelves contain exactly one book, which only has enough text on it to fill up half a page.

My game doesn't have this (My books are always longer, and I use signs for small messages), but it's always been a favorite of mine.