Basic Trope: A plot specifically tailored to the team that's facing it.
- Straight: Vaultcracker Vince, Seductress Samantha, and Karate Kevin have to team up to steal a magical crystal ball from the Palace of Stars. When they go in, Samantha charms the guard at the front into ignoring them, then Kevin breaks down the door to the room where the ball is kept with a karate kick, then Vince breaks into the safe containing the ball.
- Exaggerated:
- The obstacles Vince, Samantha, and Kevin encounter consist entirely of seduceable males, crackable safes, and karate-able barriers.
- There's a ten-man team to break into the palace, each with their own specific purpose.
- Downplayed:
- Vince, Samantha, and Kevin use their various skills to break into the palace, but those tasks are only a few of many that they must get through, and the rest require more generic skills that they haven't specifically trained.
- There's an obstacle for the new ranger with an unusual power to show his power off, but the other obstacles are generic.
- Justified:
- On a prior occasion, the team convinced the Palace's chief of security into changing the security protocols to maximize its vulnerability to their specific means of assault.
- The agency Vince, Samantha, and Kevin work for seeking to acquire the crystal ball knew how it was guarded, and hand-picked the team to match the task.
- Stealing the crystal ball is meant to be a test of their abilities and has therefore been designed with said abilities in mind.
- The mission is a Make-A-Wish hoax, Vince and Samantha are actors, while Kevin is the kid who's wish is being 'granted'.
- Inverted: The security seems to be designed solely for the purpose of keeping Samantha, Kevin and Vince off.
- The team is tailored to include all currently known means of infiltration and robbery such that /maybe/ an Outside-Context Problem would be the only thing they would lack the ability to at least attempt.
- Subverted:
- Samantha takes care of the guard, Kevin breaks down the door... and it turns out that instead of in a safe, the crystal ball is in a room patrolled by five or six guards. Bummer for Vince.
- Vince is out of town, which leaves Samantha and Kevin trying to figure out how to deal with the safe.
- Samantha goes to seduce the guard...who turns out to be gay. Looks like they need to find another way inside.
- Double Subverted:
- ...then Vince reveals that he always carries around smoke bombs just in case security gets in his hair while he's cracking. The team is in and out before the guards finish coughing.
- Parodied:
- Anyone who wants to raid the Palace has to make an appointment several days prior. You give your team's names and strengths when making your appointment, and the Palace reorganizes its security to suit.
- The heroes of the story are a cowboy, a sushi chef, a nuclear physicist, and a racecar driver, who are brought together to fight a gunslinging fish-man driving an atomic racecar.
- Zig Zagged: At first their skills easily get them through the palace, then a new set of obstacles stumps them. But then, a new set of heroes comes to their aid with exactly the required abilities to bypass the new security measures.
- Averted: No specialist skills are needed.
- Enforced:Game Master: "I want to rub my player's egos and make their characters look impressive. I'll give them a mission they should be able to ace with their special skills."
- Lampshaded: "Wow, it's like they designed the Palace's security just for us."
- Invoked: A guard comments on how susceptible he is to cleavage and how easy he would be to seduce, the person putting the door in mentions that the materials used were supposed to be karate boards, and the safe maker mentions that he wants to see who and how the safe could be cracked.
- Exploited: A villain lulls the heroes into feeling safe by purposefully adjusting the security so that they get all the way through— to the Very Inescapable Trap Room of Doom, specifically adjusted to nullify the heroes' special abilities.
- Defied: Vince ends up having to seduce the female or homosexual guard, Samantha finds the key to the locked room without having to seduce anyone, and Kevin manages to punch in the code for the vault out of luck.
- Discussed: "Evil Overlord, your security stinks! It's a cakewalk for guys like those pesky heroes! Go change it immediately!" "Yes mother."
- Conversed: "That show's antics got so ridiculous that I stopped watching it. I mean, if I were an evil overlord, I'd make it damn sure to have some asexual or gay guards as well!"
- Implied: Vince, Sam, and Kevin never outright explain their skills, but as they come to a different obstacle, a different member steps up and removes it, implying that was their particular area of expertise.
- Deconstructed: The team is so used to tackling tasks that perfectly suit their abilities that Crippling Overspecialization kicks in, and when they inevitably encounter a task that doesn't fit them like a glove (e.g. getting across a wide chasm), they fall on their faces spectacularly.
- Reconstructed: The team is versatile enough and have wide enough skill sets (perhaps even a minor in each other's skills in case of deconstruction) that they can find solutions suiting their abilities for any problem; in the chasm scenario above, Vince uses his safecracking explosives to blow down several trees, Kevin literally chops the trees into lumber, and Samantha, being a bondage aficionado, ties them together to make a bridge.
- Played For Laughs: The Big Bad gloats about the various security measures he took in order to ensure the crystal ball would not be stolen. A second later, a nervous mook enters the room, tells him the ball was stolen, and exactly how each member of the group seemed specifically suited to beating his security. Cue Oh, Crap! moment for the Big Bad.
- Played For Drama: The heroes have undergone some sort of Heroic BSoD and their confidence is shot. They then take a case and each member regains his or her sense of self-worth as they perform tasks only they can perform during the course of the adventure.
It's going to take your mouse's movement sensor to navigate your cursor over the link back to Plot Tailored to the Party, the right mouse button to bring up the menu, and the left mouse button to click on "Open Link in New Tab". Hope you've got all three! (Or one of those new-fangled specialty scroll wheels with buttons that open tabs....)