With This Herring/Playing With

Basic Trope: The player begins with incredibly weak equipment.
 * Straight: King of Troperia sends Bob on a quest to defeat Emperor Evulz. He's equipped with a knife and a shield.
 * Exaggerated: Bob begins his quest with an actual, literal herring.
 * Bob starts with just a shield, proceeds to beat every enemy to death with it, the whole way through.
 * Justified: Emperor Evulz stole most king's and Bob's equipment, leaving them with the weakest one.
 * The king that sent Bob into his mission is actively supporting Emperor Evulz from the shadows, so he sent Bob equipped with sub-par gear and into a dangerous mission with the hope of getting rid of him.
 * Bob is a private citizen who set of on his own without proper gear.
 * The king who sent Bob was Genre Savvy and knew that he would be fine without the best equipment.
 * Bob is questing for a legendary sword, a shield that can block anything, and armor that has amazing effects on it's wearer, as either part of or the whole quest, so it might just seem prudent to give Bob enough that he can protect himself against known monster around the village/city he is leaving from, possibly thinking that he will get at least one of the set before he gets into truly deadly areas or just doesn't know that next village over they have a more deadly monster problem.
 * Inverted: Bob begins his quest with Black Hole Generator, and finds progressively weaker ones.
 * Alternately, Bob must use the Infinity Plus One Sword to...chop some very large vegetables grown by the resident Green Thumb.
 * Subverted: Bob begins his quest with a knife and a shield, but there is a shop nearby that sells Legendary Sword of Legendary Overkill.
 * Bob begins his quest with an unassuming wooden sword that later turns out to be the Infinity Plus One Sword in disguise.
 * Double Subverted: ...But it costs 100000 gold.
 * To turn the wooden sword into the Infinity Plus One Sword, you must defeat the Bonus Boss with the wooden sword equipped.
 * Parodied: Bob begins his quest with a bazooka, and finds progressively more powerful weapons.
 * Before he can begin his quest, Bob must turn in all his equipment and cash and get them replaced with a standard issue knife and shield.
 * Deconstructed: Bob's starting weaponry is woefully inadequate to take out just about any opponent, and he ends up stuck on the receiving end of a Curb Stomp Battle very early on.
 * Reconstructed: Bob's starting weaponry is woefully inadequate to take out just about any opponent, so he doesn't.
 * Bob's starting weaponry is woefully inadequate to take out just about any opponent, but he is so good he manage to do it anyway.
 * Bob's dagger is weak, but he isn't.
 * Bob's pebbles are useless at the beginning, and he gets pounded into the ground. Bob practices ten thousand times at throwing the pebbles and they become an adequate weapon.
 * Zig Zagged: Bob begins his quest with a knife and a shield but there is a shop nearby that sells a sword said to be incredibly powerful. The sword costs 100000 gold, but Bob find that much money after he kills the a very weak slime nearby. When he buys the sword it is almost as weak as the knife.
 * Averted: Bob begins his quest with the best equipment he or his king could afford.
 * Enforced: "We don't want Bob to plummet through weak enemies that easily. Do we?"
 * Lampshaded: "Kill Evulz? With this!?"
 * Invoked: "There is no time! Your sword is enough!"
 * Defied: "I will not go until you give me something better!"
 * Discussed: ???
 * Conversed: "Don't you find it ridicoulous for heroes famed worldwide to go on a quest to kill Cthulhu with a sword?

Back to With This Herring.