Rat Stomp/Playing With

Basic Trope: RPG uses rats as the first encountered, lowest level enemy.

• Straight: Alice enters a Town Of Adventure hoping to become a mighty warrior and a hero, but before anyone hires her for any quest, she must prove her worth by killing some rats.
• Exaggerated: Quite a number of the first quests don't have any other enemies besides rats.
• Justified: The townsfolk are used to would-be-heroes who in fact aren't even capable of killing a rat. To avoid sending completely inept people to their deaths on real missions, they use a basic rat-killing quest as a litmus test.
  • Or, Alice enters a Dungeon Of Adventure via sewers, but being such a wimp, even the rats that live in the uppermost levels pose a real threat to her.
• Inverted: Rats aren't seen in the game until near the end, where they are very dangerous or even the Final Boss.
• Subverted: The rats Alice encounters during her first quest are actually formidable enemies, and she's supposed to avoid them.
• Double Subverted: The rats Alice encounters during her first quest look an awful lot like quick and painful death, but it turns out they actually are low-level and easy to kill.
• Zig Zagged: One of the first available quests for a low-level character is indeed about killing rats in a basement, but the rats are very high level enemies and the quest cannot be completed (or even survived) until a lot later. However, the townsfolk treat Alice like a child and refuse to sell her any weapons or other equipment until the rat quest is finished, forcing her to make do with what she can obtain by herself.
• Parodied: Rats are level 0, and completely harmless. If Alice kills one, the game taunts the player for being such a wuss.
• Deconstructed: The rats Alice runs into the first thing were bullied by the other creatures to stay behind and buy them time to flee.
• Reconstructed: ???
• Averted: Rats are not used as enemies at all. Optionally, all or most of the enemies in the game are rats.
• Enforced: "Guys, the boss man called and said we have to do rats for the first dungeon."
• Lampshaded: ???
• Invoked: "Sheesh, I'm way too wimpy and inexperienced to be any kind of a hero. If only there was a weak enemy I could practice my sword-fighting on... something small and not too dangerous, like rats."
• Defied: Even if rats exist in the universe, there is no way Alice can kill them.
• Discussed: "Kill the rats in your basement? Well if that's what it takes to make you trust me with the real jobs."
• Conversed: "You'd think even the devs would get tired of rats as the first battle encounter, but no."
• Played For Laughs: ???
• Played For Drama: ???

---

Back to Rat Stomp.