| abstract | - Broken Bridge is one of two bridges in Desolation Point.
- An obstacle, frequently a broken bridge, that prevents you from progressing to the next Adventure Town and advancing the plot further. Once this plot advancement has occurred, the bridge is fixed. This is often a method of "Railroading", as it allows the game designers or GMs of Tabletop RPGs to follow a specific path until the plot has reached the desired point. Not necessarily a literal bridge -- the trope applies to any random obstacle that exists just to keep you from going Off the Rails. Some of the more common non-bridge examples:
* Avalanche or large boulder blocks the mountain pass.
* A person blocks your path or refuses to allow entry past a certain point.
* Impassable body of water, and the boat is currently unavailable.
* A door blocks your path, and cannot be opened, bypassed, or destroyed until you get the proper key.
* Adorable little kid asks for your help with some random task, like saving his lost brother or finding medicine for his mom. One or more of the members of your party (usually The Chick) will feel pity for him and, since they can't resist random chivalry, demand that you stop and help. If you try to leave anyway, they'll whine and stop you.
* You've been declared an outlaw in a particular place, and can't return there until you've cleared your name.
* You're supposed to meet an NPC in a particular place, but they either haven't arrived yet or have gone off somewhere for a brief while. They won't show up until after you've wandered around town for a while and gotten yourself into trouble.
* You've commissioned an NPC to make an essential item or perform some other task for you, but they warn you that it's going to take a while. Since you can stand around for days or weeks without the requisite time passing, the time elapsed in-game is instead measured by the plot advancement.
* A strong enemy that is utterly invincible against your abilities stands in your way. If you follow the plot railroad properly, then you will either get an upgrade that allows the undefeatable enemy to become beatable, someone else will come along to defeat it, or it will wander off. If you're lucky, the removal of the Broken Bridge will logically follow from solving the Fetch Quest (i.e., the person who removes it will be the one you helped in the Fetch Quest), but many game designers aren't that devoted. Often the Fetch Quest is just a Solve the Soup Cans puzzle, and the Broken Bridge just happens to be solved independently while you're off retrieving the girl's necklace or whatever. Another logical solution is to use The Great Repair on a damaged transport. If the heroes go off to fix the bridge, there may be villains to defeat or some plot twist revealed. Tool used by designers to keep you on the One True Sequence. Event Flags are how they implement this. A poorly-designed Broken Bridge (from a mechanical standpoint) will often be the victim of clever gamers. Don't go crying if there's an Empty Room Psych on the other side though. See also Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence. Border Patrol is a variant on the "impossibly strong enemy" idea mentioned above. In mythology, a similar concept is called Threshold Guardians and finally the Beef Gate for when the threshold in question can be overcome if your character(s) have become strong/skilled enough to overcome the aforementioned threshold. While they both use monsters, Beef Gates are different in that a Beef Gate could be beaten by level grinding, skilled play, or exploits. If the monster is made of invincibility until the plot says otherwise, it's a Broken Bridge. If something appears to be a Broken Bridge, but never actually lets you by at any point in the game, see Missing Secret. If a broken bridge or other obstacle prevents you from returning to earlier areas, it's a Point of No Return. Examples of Broken Bridge include:
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