Icons

Speaking of, there was a thread there a few days ago about a character's appearance, which got me thinking about iconic characters in various genres. This was intensified last night when I went to see Equilibrium, and was treated to the latest Pepsi advert, featuring David Beckham as the least convincing Western bad-ass ever.

Anyway, some genres have their particular icons and motifs, such as the mysterious wandered in westerns, the old man in the bar in fantasy, never-ending ammunition in John Woo films, and the girls and gadgets of Bond. Clearly, GMs should remain aware of these icons when creating a game adhering to the genre in question, and be sure to include them.

So, the ever-presents in the western genre (since that's the one I've been thinking about since last night):

Mysterious Stranger
The Lapsed priest/school-teacher (I don't know why this one crops up so often, but it does seem to)
The cocky outlaw
Standoff at noon/dawn
Posses/Gangs
Laconic characters (no-one in a Western ever seems to say much, or else they die really quickly)
Amoral protagonists.

There are others, but this is a good list to work with. Also, not every icon appears in every story. Still, a good number of them should appear in most stories.

Anyway, when writing an adventure within a genre, I think GMs could do a lot worse than sit down and brainstorm the icons of the genre, and make sure he includes a bunch of them. When designing a game in a genre (say Wild West d20), the designer should try to make an effort to include rules for as many of the icons as possible.

(In Wild West d20, I'd probably add a 'Background' section in the place usually taken by 'Race', which covers the kid/retired gunfighter/whatever stereotypes. I'd use the normal d20 Modern classes, with a number of advanced classes for what I'm trying to do, and I'd use the Iaijutsu duelling rules from Oriental Adventures to model the standoff. Oh, and alignment would, of course, be immediately thrown out and trampled on, like a discarded dog-collar. I don't know how I'd add rules for not talking much.)