[students’ names withheld]
Featured Cliché: MacGyver Rule
In RPGs that use the MacGyver Rule, the protagonist can make a powerful weapon out of objects that the average person wouldn’t normally associate with weapons. They can lay waste to hordes of monsters or defeat a powerful boss by throwing poker cards at them, or battering them with a heavy textbook. A protagonist can pick up these weapons made from mundane objects throughout their adventure, or they can buy them from in-game shops. The weapons are usually strong, despite their components seeming relatively harmless.
Source: TV Tropes: Console RPG Cliches
Breaking the cliché
Instead of having a weapon made of everyday objects be one of the strongest weapons available, an RPG protagonist could build a MacGyver-style weapon expecting it to be powerful, only for the item to fail them spectacularly.
Storyboard
The character could be in a fight with a terrifyingly strong final boss, with a much greater power level and range of attacks than the protagonist no matter how much the player has upgraded them.
To add extra tension, the main character’s inventory could be stripped of their strongest swords or axes, leaving only two seemingly innocuous items they collected earlier in the game – like a stick and a rock. When punching the enemy proves ineffective, the protagonist would slap together a weapon with the two items, fully believing that with enough hope and focus, they can defeat the villain with the makeshift item. The finished item is a huge sword glowing with energy; it looks like it could slice through steel beams like butter.
Then the protagonist takes a swing at the foe, only for it to bounce off their armor, dealing a staggering 2 hit points from a health bar of thousands of them. The villain doesn’t even flinch. The protagonist stares on, utterly shocked, cueing to the player that the boss fight will be a lot more difficult than they may have initially expected.
Credits
Student A: Editing, HTML Formatting
Student B: Storyboard Panels 1 and 2, picked out the trope
Student C: Storyboard Panel 3, wrote the story.
