Part 2
21. Aeris’s Corollary
Just as the main male character will always use a sword or a variant of a sword, the main female character will always use a rod or a staff of some sort.
Nowadays not so common. Before it is so common.
22. MacGyver Rule
Other than for the protagonists, your choice of weapons is not limited to the prosaic guns, clubs, or swords. Given appropriate skills, you can cut a bloody swath across the continent using gloves, combs, umbrellas, megaphones, dictionaries, sketching tablets — you name it, you can kill with it. Even better, no matter how surreal your choice of armament, every store you pass will just happen to stock an even better model of it for a very reasonable price. Who else is running around the world killing people with an umbrella?
Any object can be used as a weapon. I don’t really know why.
23. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Melfice Rule)
If the male hero has an older sibling, the sibling will also be male and will turn out to be one of the major villains. If the hero has a younger sibling, the sibling will be female and will be kidnapped and held hostage by the villains.
So that the sibling will have its place in the storyline.
24. Capitalism Is A Harsh Mistress
Once you sell something to a shopkeeper, he instantly sells it to somebody else and you will never see the item again no matter what.
That is not even trade.
25. Dimensional Transcendence Principle
Buildings are much, much larger on the inside than on the outside, and that doesn’t even count the secret maze of tunnels behind the clock in the basement.
It’s really like a new dimension inside. Outside is just part of the surface area of what’s inside.
26. Local Control Rule
Although the boss monster terrorizing the first city in the game is less powerful than the non-boss monsters that are only casual nuisances to cities later in the game, nobody from the first city ever thinks of hiring a few mercenaries from the later cities to kill the monster.
Why should they if the group can kill the boss monster?
27. Nostradamus Rule
All legends are 100% accurate. All rumors are entirely factual. All prophecies will come true, and not just someday but almost immediately.
To make it simply interesting story. It tells you the rumors and the prophecies are actually passed on by generations.
28. IDKFA
The basic ammunition for any firearms your characters have is either unlimited or very, very easy to obtain. This will apply even if firearms are extremely rare.
The firearms or ammunition are easy to find so the arms will be put into good use.
29. Indestructible Weapon Rule
No matter how many times you use that sword to strike armored targets or fire that gun on full auto mode it will never break, jam or need any form of maintenance unless it is critical to the story that the weapon breaks, jams or needs maintenance.
This is just plain fantasy. So that one can use the same weapon over and over again.
30. Selective Paralysis
Your characters must always keep both feet on the ground and will be unable to climb over low rock ledges, railings, chairs, cats, slightly differently-colored ground, or any other trivial objects which may happen to be in their way. Note that this condition will not prevent your characters from jumping from railroad car to railroad car later in the game.
Besides ladders, stairs, elevators and inclined ramps to move up the ground, none can be used to move through.
31. Bed Bed Bed
A good night’s sleep will cure all wounds, diseases, and disabilities, up to and including death in battle.
Of course it gets abusive once over levelling.
32. You Can’t Kill Me, I Quit (Seifer Rule)
The good guys never seem to get the hang of actually arresting or killing the bad guys. Minor villains are always permitted to go free so they can rest up and menace you again later — sometimes five minutes later. Knowing this rule, you can deduce that if you do manage to kill (or force the surrender of) a bad guy, you must be getting near the end of the game.
When the party seems to fight the same guy in different places, it seems that guy isn’t hurt that much even if tons of HP damage has been dealt with the familiar villain.
33. 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.)
The villain does is make you hurt little by little but the hero and the group prevail anyways.
34. Zap!
Most villains in RPGs possess some form of teleportation. They generally use it to materialize in front of the adventurers when they reach the Obligatory Legendary Relic Room and seize the goodies just before you can. The question “if the bad guy can teleport anywhere at any time, then why doesn’t (s)he just zip in, grab the artifact, and leave before the adventurers have even finished the nerve-wracking puzzle on the third floor?” is never answered.
It’s easy. So that the group may actually meet the one who has actually stolen the treasure before the group even notices that the guy has stolen without them knowing the treasure.
35. Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (Grahf Rule)
It doesn’t matter that you won the fight with the boss monster; the evil task he was trying to carry out will still get accomplished somehow. Really, you might as well not have bothered.
The thing is the boss monster wanted to make sure to slow the group down before its plans can be screwed by the group.
36. Clockwork Universe Rule
No matter how hard you try to stop it, that comet or meteor will always hit the earth.
It’s real because there’s no stopping beyond the exosphere.
37. Fake Ending
There will be a sequence which pretends to be the end of the game but obviously isn’t — if for no other reason than because you’re still on Disk 1 of 4.
I think it is to fool the customers if they bought the whole 4 disks or not.
38. You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the guy you’d thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he (the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain yourself.
To show that the villain is a real badass, he kills one of his subordinates that the group thought was the real villain to fool them.
39. “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.
Other people might have been affected with the presence of the real villain in other ways or another. We don’t know what but I’m certain that’s what happens at the end of the game.
40. Zelda’s Axiom
Whenever somebody tells you about “the five ancient talismans” or “the nine legendary crystals” or whatever, you can be quite confident that Saving the World will require you to go out and find every last one of them.
All I can say is it’s a real hassle to find this and that repetitively to get along with the game. It’s much even worse than fighting Organization XIII members.
