[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/KFrosty3]

Yeah, but as a nerd myself, there's only so much you can learn about something before you truly run out of things to learn. 

I can see that argument for things like Indy and GoT, but for the most part, every franchise they name drop have such deep amounts of content that you would have to let some fall by the wayside to get as deep as they claim to be.

Then again, the fact that everything they "know" about most things is surface level probably means they're all just posers

[u/PrometheusMMIV → u/KFrosty3]

Dead name? Do you mean name drop?

[u/KFrosty3 → u/PrometheusMMIV]

Yeah, sorry. I thought of the wrong words for the term. Thanks for pointing it out :)

[u/TimSylvester_ → u/KFrosty3]

Not to mention just because you like a specific namespace doesn't mean you're obsessed with it or that you know everything you possibly can about it.

[u/Badass_Bunny → u/KFrosty3]

there's only so much you can learn about something before you truly run out of things to learn. 

Is that not how you end up with a bunch of fandoms you're into like in BBT?

[u/iPoseidon_xii → u/Badass_Bunny]

I think they’re saying some IP’s are so deep and so full of content that by the time you’re through you don’t really have time for many others

[u/KFrosty3 → u/iPoseidon_xii]

Exactly that 

[u/RivenRise → u/KFrosty3]

It's also a preference thing. Like sure there's only so much content for each franchise and genre but it doesn't mean that I'll like a different genre or even a different franchise in the same genre.