[Hated Trope] Nerdy characters who don’t understand nerdy things

[u/BlackHandKUR]

There are too many examples of movies and tv fumbling basic nerd knowledge but the one that particularly bugs me is whenever we have nerdy characters not understanding basic DnD lore or mechanics.

Big bang theory is probably one of the worst offenders when it comes to not understanding nerdom but how they do dnd is especially insulting. They don’t understand any of the basic concepts, lore, mechanics or even how races look. Theres a scene where they do a steamy dnd thing and they describe an orc with multiple arms and breasts. Not a single part of that was even remotely close to correct and Sheldon being the atypical rule lawyer type should know that.

Abed from community isn’t much better. Either he doesn’t know the rules or fragrantly allows his players to ruin a session. There is never a mention of initiative, contesting rolls, or scaling. Pierce, a naked hermit of a character, over powers a high level fighter then charms a high level creature to pose this great threat to the party. What?

Stranger things, and possibly the one the gets me the most, off the rip we have a character who misses a fireball attack by rolling low. That’s not how fireball works, that not how fireball has ever worked. Fireball is an AoE spell where everyone in its radius has to have a save to have the damage halved. These are kids that name the monsters after DnD creatures yet they don’t know the difference between fire bolt and fire ball?

[u/No-Educator-8069]

There are some accounts of house rules for spell casting rolls at some tables dating back to the late 70s. Early DMs were not at all adverse to changing the rules however they wished and such was often encouraged by Gygax in DM facing advice. The idea that some effort should go into rules actually being uniform across multiple tables developed later with the push for organized play events.

[u/MonkeyCube → u/No-Educator-8069]

True. Early D&D was so freeform and required the DM to make up so much of it, that it led to entire mini-industry of people making their own versions of the game: Bunny & Burrows, Tunnels & Trolls, Chivarly & Sorcery, etc. In fact, before a more official release, early games even required having the Chainmail rules on hand, because it was a fantasy supplement to another game.

A good read about the early days & the free form nature of it is The Elusive Shift by Jon Peterson, thought I will warn that it reads a bit like a dissertation at times and kinda meanders at the end.