Cliches?

[Cerebus]

The more you advance, the more things are expensive.
The big city in which you start sells short swords for 100 golds and the INN costs 10.
The small town you arrive in sells Mithril Long Sword for 1000 golds and the INN costs 100.
The poor little village you visit sells Golden Swords of Power Focus and Strength Divined by Gods for 10000 golds and the INN costs 500.

Yet for some reason, the poor village's merchant has enough money to buy all your stuff even before you spend a single coin in his shop and the village is still poor even when you buy equipments for all your party.
The merchants are just greedy capitalists who care not for the fate of the world.

[supasora]

Love triangles that involve 6 people including an anime version of Mr. T with a machine gun hand.

[Valiere]

The poor little village you visit sells Golden Swords of Power Focus and Strength Divined by Gods for 10000 golds and the INN costs 500.

Well, they're poor! They need money!

[HackersTotalMassLaser]

Invisible walls. Like the ones in final fantasy 13. That's what made the game fail.

[A Forgotten Legend]

http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=13104.0

Look in there.

[Archem]

"The entire world will be destroyed by a being of pure evil unless our small group of rag-tag, Chosen Ones consisting mostly of young folks, a token geezer, and a woman or two for healing purposes can use the power of our hearts to destroy the Evil Lord who is attacking everything good for no real reason."

So, yeah, we've got the age thing, the gender/class limitations, "the only ones who can save us", over-playing good vs. evil, no believable motivation for the villain (who is also a Chosen One of some sort, apparently), and the entire world being threatened.

Seriously, about that last part, why can't we just have a more localized plot that doesn't involve the fall of humanity? Can't we get a few more "Save Grandma's house from being bulldozed" scenarios? Perhaps a little more epic, but not too over-the-top?

[Musha]

All female characters who join your party are in love with your main character.

Falling ridiculous distances will never do anything more than knock your character unconcious.

Your main character is incapable of jumping, climbing or otherwise navigating over shin-high ledges.

The hero's home town gets destroyed.

Technology is evil.  Good guys live in quaint little peasant villages and sylvan forest sanctuaries and use swords and bows, while bad guys get to live in a steampunk metropolis and use machine guns and war mechs.

Enemy soldiers are either irredeemably evil or hilariously incompotent.

If you ever sell anything to a shopkeeper, it is gone forever.

All rumours, legends, and myths you hear are entirely true.

No matter how hard you just killed the recurring boss character, he manages to run away in a cutscene and will show up again later for a rematch with more hitpoints and better attacks.

All major villains have the ability to teleport, and they will inevitably use this power to appear or disappear at the most annoying time possible.

All bookshelves contain no more than one readable book, which only has enough written in it to fill up half a page.

No matter how outlandish a vechicle you acquire, your main character will be able to pilot it.  It's just a question of finding the steering wheel.

Spells such as Petrify, Silence, and Instant Death will always work when enemies cast them on you, but will fail 99.99999% of the time when you cast them.

There are always, ALWAYS boulders/crates/statues that must be moved onto swithces or out of your way.

The grumpy old man who's blocking your path is not at all intimidated by your giant swords, gatling guns, or summonable dragons.  Until you've completed all the story-related events in the area, he's not budging from that spot.  Of course, you never have the option of using any of the afore-mentioned items on him, anyway.

If someone asked you a question such as "will you save the princess?" you MUST answer "yes" to progress through the game.  No mater how many times you answer "no" he'll just keep saying "Oh, but oyu must!" until you cave in and say "yes."  In short, there are no choices, only the illusion of choice.

No matter how many times you talk to an NPC, he'll say the exact same thing again and again.

[A Forgotten Legend]

Some of that is just plain unavoidable though. =/  I mean, how long would it take for you to write huge novels and then have different ones on every schelf, or even more than one.  That could take longer than creating the game itself.  Not to mention why would the player sit down to play a game and then read a novel instead when they can just pick up a book in the first place?

[Prpl_Mage]

• First dungeon is a forest. Preferably with simple animals like rats, squirrels or wolves as enemies.
• Hero uses  swords
• Evil person is controlled by evil force
• Your party members will complain as long as you do a slight immoral thing
• NPCs say the same thing, even though you solved the thing they're talking about
• Delayed messeges. You get information about an event occurring AFTER you found out.
• Hard dungeon puzzles for chests, the same items can be bought in the store of the town directly afterwards.
• A dark-skinned party member or NPC dies to save you from something evil
• Simple items can cure most wounds
• Spells being awesome in cutscenes but useless in fights
• Someone got a mask
• character/enemy with a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE weapon
• No quick jumps
• Amnesia
• Evil twin/doppelganger
• Large mechanic boss even though the setting is pretty medieval
• Characters dress VEEEEEEEEEEEERY different from all the NPCs, even if they are from the same village, town or country. The characters will have special clothing with shiny colours or one shoulder pad even though everyone else walks around like farmers.

[Prpl_Mage]

@AFL: Just say "All these books are too complicated." or "I cant read" or "Crammed full of pokemon books".
But you know, games like Morrowind or Oblivion actually have books that you can read. Most of them are 2-5 pages long. I have no idea why they do that. I never read them anyway.

I actually read all the books in WoW, basically because Blizzard changed a bunch of stuff so that parts of the old games and history were no longer cannon.

[Cerebus]

Well, they're poor! They need money!

But then again, they remain poor even when you buy equipments for all your party.
And as I also said, the merchant will have enough money to buy everything you have, even if you didn't spend a single coin in his shop. The merchants are heartless bastards, they're full of cash but don't help anyone and still expect the hero of light to pay full price for their items. They should be considered villains.

Also, continents with one village.

[A Forgotten Legend]

This just seems to be a thread about things that happen in RPGs that don't make sense.  Not cliches. =/

[fruckert]

There is always one boss enemy that is far more powerful than the final boss, but nobody ever notices that it was there, or that it is now gone because of you.

[Legacy of Elecrusher]

I <3 super bosses.

Evil ancient monsters/weapons are always ungrateful brats and usually kill the guy who revived them first. Though that's more for video games in general.

In the game I'm working on, I think I'm doing a good job of avoiding cliches. For one, the main character is like 30 with two alive average Joe parents.

[Angel Walter]

If the first dungeon isn't a forest, it's a sewer, or a cellar (generally somehow related to a pub). And it's filled with giant rats along with that other classic staple of RPGs: the slime (see Baldur's Gate).

If the game was originally Japanese then the pubs will all have become coffee/milk bars (this one depends on the age rating).

If you are surrounded by a small army, the soldiers will always take it in turns to attack you in groups of however many is normal for the game. This is followed by the obligatory General fight who is tougher than fighting the rest of the army at the same time!

Male-Hero angst.

Female-Hero angst.

Evil zombies! I can only remember one RPG with zombies that weren't evil.

The peculiar quiz guy! That random dude that turns up to ask you practically impossible questions about past dungeons, towns, monsters, items, etc. that you will only be able to answer if you take screen-shots every 5 seconds! Then if you succeed (if you do, you must have a photographic memory) you get something that will probably only be useful in a completely side-quest!

The Moogle. All the best RPGs have a moogle equivalent. The lovable, fluffy thing which may serve a useful function (save-points, shops, information, deus-ex-machina rescues and so on).

You get to ride a dragon! Yay!

You can't accept the villain's bribes/recruitment attempts.