TV Tropes
TV Tropes, also known as tvtropes.org, the short address that will take you to the main site, is, like Project Redcap and Wikipedia, a wiki (Wikipedia link).
WARNING (OR DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!)
Yes. The warning does need to be placed before telling you about the site. It can be a HUGE time suck, looking at a trope, then following link to a related trope page or a work. Much time loss, there can be. This presented in a humorous and troperific manner, but the warning is real. Take heed.
What it is and what it has to offer
Most of TV Tropes' pages deal in tropes- conventions or tools used for storytelling in various media (or just see TV Tropes definition) or the works of various media- including literature, film and television (both live action and animated), comics and graphic novels (both print and web), mythology, real life examples, and even RPG role-playing games. If a character has been used through multiple works (say, King Arthus, Merlin, or Baba Yaga), they may have their own pages, which are similar to the pages for
To give a little more on what constitutes a trope, in a manner familiar to Ars Magica storytellers and players, just look all the virtues and flaws that characters can take and boons and hooks that a covenant can take. Basically each and every single virtue, flaw, boon, and hook is a trope. So are plot devices and even game system characteristics.
There are also pages for various creators or collaborators in work, including authors, directors, artists, and actors. Pages for non-fictional works and their creators are included as well, as tropes are certainly used to teach. Just look at the pages for Plato and some of his works, such as The Republic at the site.
The primary thing this site can do for you is give you ideas. The secondary functions include categorizing and organizing tropes (but see other warning, below), and demonstrating how to play with tropes generally ([[User:IMHO IMHO highly recommends looking at this page).
Using TV Tropes
Like Project Redcap and Wikipedia, you can search for various pages. Unlike this wiki and Wikipedia, the search function at TV Tropes is not as good. It will always take you to a search page, never directly to a trope/media/etc page, even if you type in the exact name.
Trope pages basically describe the trope. Usually they include links to similar tropes, super tropes (a broader trope that the one you're reading about falls under), or sub-tropes (a more specific form of the trope that you're reading about), or tropes that help define the trope your reading about through comparison, contrasting, or some through some other way. Then the page lists and links pages to works that use the trope in some way, usually listed by category of work. Each trope listed should include a brief description of how it was used in the work.
Work pages basically describe what the work is about and may information and links about the date the work came out and the creator and possibly other information about the work. The page will then list all the tropes used in some way in that work, again with links and short descriptions of how the trope was used. Character pages are similar to the pages on works, except they will describe the traits most often seen in the character and then should list the tropes associated with the character from all works that have included them. Almost always, for a series, rather than having an individual page for each book, film, etc, there will just be one page for the entire series, but a series page is otherwise handled like a page for any other work.
Creator and collaborator pages will give some information about the person, and then list tropes they (or their characters and works) are known for.
A more tame warning from IMHO
Okay, the time suck TV Tropes can be cannot be underestimated, but there is another thing to be aware of. The presentations of the various tropes and works, and the way they're described and organized, can give you a lot of ideas and possibly even take you out of a box you've been in.
It can also create a new box for you.
I've been told that there is only a limited number of types of stories to be told. We're talking about very general arch-types for stories. Although that may be true, I've never particularly cared to learn them. Because the details of a story, the execution of it, is what makes it really great.
Just keep that in mind as you make use of what TV Tropes has to offer. And as a free resource, what it has to offer is quite a bit . Just don't let it bog you down.
Troper language and its use in Project Redcap
The names of trope pages usually become terms themselves and often can be worked into sentences, and it is not unusual to refer to a trope by it's page title (which only makes sense). Using these titles as terms is essentially troper language or troper speak. Sometimes it can be useful to simply link to a TV Tropes page for a particular trope as a simple short cut or even to refer to a trope by the TV Tropes name. It should be okay to discuss aspect of Ars Magica in those terms. Simply doing so should not infringe upon TV Trope's copyright, but please don't copy whole text of their descriptions over to here.
If you do link tropes, try to list them in a separate section and include a link to this Project Redcap page about TV Tropes so the uninitiated have an idea of what the links are about.
And, of course, TV Tropes has a page on Ars Magica here. As with Wikipedia, if you contribute to that page, don't put so much content from the works of Atlas Games or other companies in that you violate their copyright.