I'm really, really afraid of... cliches.

[Winthur]

So, here's my problem with DMing. I am a relatively fresh DM, and I'm having issues doing this. My players aren't really disciplined, but I'm working on it. The problem is with my adventures. I am too afraid that things like evil villain with intent on destroying the world or something is well too cliche or laughable or well-known. It transforms to this: everything I saw ever in television or books I'm afraid to use because... it was used already. But then, I come up with bizarre stories that are pretty bad because I just wanted to avoid the tropes at all cost.

So here's the thing. I understand possibly that you can use those with ease if you only support it with a good storytelling. Could you give me some examples of hypothetical adventures with cliches like finding powerful MacGuffins or a mighty, world-shattering villain? I don't want whole-drawn creations but some tips on this.

Thanks from the mountain... ...In America.

[Kurald Galain]

Ages ago, when people were still fooled by the Dark Lord and thought he was a Light Lord, said lord created twenty different belts. He gave eight to the orcs, six to the humans, seven to the sentient lizards, and kept the last one for himself. This one is the Black Belt, which has the mystical power (tm) to govern all those other belts! So now, before all else is lost, the protagonist heroes have to make an unlikely party of one orc, one lizard, two humans (one of which is secretly half-orc in his past), a sorcerer who's really some kind of angelic demigod, and four kobolds! Because only kobolds can safely carry a mystic belt, of course. Together they must secretly travel all across the world to toss the Black Belt into a geyser in the Valley of Mood!!!!

[Tsotha-lanti]

Stop being self-conscious about your writing. It is literally impossible to be original on the level you're thinking about. Even 3000-year-old Greek legends weren't original when they were written or told. Indeed, stories that are completely separate from each other on all conceivable levels still have striking similarities.

[Saph]

It always surprises me when this issue comes up. You're not the first one to ask it on this board by a long way - loads of would-be DMs have said the same thing.

My advice would be don't worry about it. Really, it doesn't matter. Just do whatever story you think is cool, and don't pay attention to whether it's cliched or not.

There are a dozen reasons for why worrying about cliches is a bad idea. Here are just a few of them:

DMing is not the same as writing a novel. In a novel, the story comes from the writer's ideas. In a game, the bulk of the story and all the bits that are most memorable are going to come from the players' interaction with each other and the world. You can have a hilarious game that people remember for years in the most cliche setting imaginable.
Whether an idea has been used before has very little to do with how interesting it is. It's all in the execution. An old idea done well and with skill is far more effective as a story hook than a new idea presented badly.
Everyone has a different definiton of what is and isn't a "cliche". Something that seems totally cliched and boring to you may be absolutely fascinating to a player.
Much of the time, players don't care about your story anyway. They're interested in more immediate things, such as whether they'll get enough XP to hit level 5, who's killed the most monsters, how to figure out if the new magic item can blow things up, and whether the NPC sorceress is hot. Accept this and deal with it.

- Saph

[mikeejimbo]

Remember, good writers borrow. Great writers steal.

[lisiecki]

It transforms to this: everything I saw ever in television or books I'm afraid to use because... it was used alrea

Hey, don't be afraid to use it.
Honestly, i can not, for the life of me, create an original idea
Even Vaguly original...
What i CAN do is combine and number of cultural refrences in to something that my players haven't seen before.

I mean really, look at the forum your on.
It has a thief with a heart of gold.
An arrogant Wizard
and a Thor worshiping dwarf with a Scottish accent.
and yet, despite it all, its a compelling read that's been going on for 5 years

[Tsotha-lanti]

Also, cliches are used to much because they are great (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreNotBad).

Relatedly, if you're a good writer, it doesn't matter how many cliches or tropes you use. If you're a bad writer, it doesn't matter how few you use.

Good writing involves making use of tropes and cliches, but giving them your own twist. Sure, sending the PCs against a Dark Lord who was defeated long ago but is now gathering his power in a far-off land walled off by mountains is a really bad use of the cliches involved (Robert Jordan, I'm looking at you...r grave?). But using a reborn ancient villain is not a bad trope in itself.

[kamikasei]

You have your Heroes.

You have a Bad Thing that will happen if they don't prevent it. (It's a better narrative than a Good Thing that won't happen unless they bring it about.)

Somehow, their actions have to matter; they have to have some stake in things so that higher-level NPCs wouldn't just solve the problem without their input.

There doesn't have to be one BBEG, there can be multiple factions any of whom it would be Bad to have win but who are fighting each other as much as the PCs.

Maybe the celestials have to enact a ritual once a century that preserves the balance of the world, but this century the darklords have made an unprecendented alliance to disrupt the ritual, killing most of the participants in a series of surprise attacks. The PCs come upon one of the celestials fallen and wounded, who goes into hiding by merging with one of the PCs, dormant within the host. The party must find the other participants, dead or in hiding, and each of them take on the celestials' power in some way so that they can channel the appropriate energies and stand in for them in the ritual. Along the way they must first avoid detection by the darklords, then fight their minions, then attempt to play them against one another.

Note: guys, he's not asking how to avoid being cliched or unoriginal. He's asking for ideas and examples of how to use a cliched trope but use it well enough that it's okay.

[Inyssius Tor]

Stop being self-conscious about your writing. It is literally impossible to be original on the level you're thinking about. Even 3000-year-old Greek legends weren't original when they were written or told. Indeed, stories that are completely separate from each other on all conceivable levels still have striking similarities.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."

You will never (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OlderThanDirt), ever (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OlderThanFeudalism) be original on that level; the best you can hope for is to be good. Which is much easier, and handily enough lets you use tropes all the time.

And everyone above me is right, so listen to them.

[JaxGaret]

Much of the time, players don't care about your story anyway. They're interested in more immediate things, such as whether they'll get enough XP to hit level 5, who's killed the most monsters, how to figure out if the new magic item can blow things up, and whether the NPC sorceress is hot. Accept this and deal with it.

Quoted for relevance and because I lol'ed.

D&D isn't rocket surgery (or it doesn't have to be), you're not creating The Ultimate Campaign (or you don't have to be), just have fun and make a world that the players would enjoy romping around in.

[hamishspence]

the only time to fear cliches is when you are travelling through the Libraries of Space and Time, where the wild thesaurus roam :smallbiggrin: (Terry Pratchett reference)

[RebelRogue]

I agree with just about everybody else: learn to love your cliches. Half the fun of this game is using cliches and/or twisting them in interesting ways. Cliches are cliches because they work! Also, take a look at the PHB/MM: it's jampacked with fantasy cliches! It really is the backbone of what constitutes D&D, and it would feel wrong if it wasn't, at least to me.

[lisiecki]

Here come the sound-armored whales of Armageddon! But there's no time! We have to reverse the polarity of the Wold-Newton Engines before the sentient handshakes cross the grape-flavored breach in the barrier built of solid time!

There, that's the game you will run.

[JaxGaret]

sentient handshakes


solid time!

How? What? Who?
:smallsmile:

[13379\/\/4R]

Your job as the DM is to entertain, not to be original.

[lisiecki]

How? What? Who?
:smallsmile:

Damn, dose that come up in your game often enough to be a cliche? :smallfrown:

The other game i would suggest, is that you run a game where the players are angelic bounty hunters who are looking for love. But as it happens the stars are coming into perfect alignment for the Old Ones to awaken?

[Eorran]

I'd like to add that some use of cliches / tropes is good because it immediately puts the players on somewhat familiar territory. Trying to avoid all cliches can result in the players feeling lost or uncertain about what they're doing.
To make your cliches good, get some feedback from your players. What other media do they like? Are they huge fans of Lord of the Rings? The Matrix? That horrible D&D movie?
I mostly use character tropes, rather than plot tropes. It helps me personalize my NPCs and ad-lib responses, if I identify the Death Knight as Darth Vader-ish, or the gruff guardsman as Sam the Eagle (from muppets).
Plot cliches (throw the Ring into the Cracks of Doom, retrieve the Sword of Win before time runs out) need a twist so the players don't know the end at the beginning, and so they don't feel constrained to follow the plot.

[SuperPanda]

When I DM I've gone to great lengths to plan original stories, events, NPCs, encounters, monsters, settings... and more for my players. I've done everything I could to avoid Cliche's in the main story and then throw in little references or other things in the past for fun to break the tension in between important story arcs. Do you want to know what the two most memorable parts of all of that has been over the last 3+ years?

1) Killing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2) The Jamaican Witch Doctor who talked with his shrunken head (unfortuneatly without the inuendo I wanted when I wrote the character).


Number 1) was from an Oriental Adventures game I ran and was just a silly random encounter with 1 Nezumi and 4 of the Medium Turtle like humaniods who happened to have headbands and appropirate weapons... There was no talking, and no role play... the group found the Turtles and the rat sleeping in one room of an abandoned temple and decided to kill them because it looked like the most secure lookout point they had found so far.

Number 2) was intended to be a random NPC who spoke like a Warcraft Troll and was more a smile and nod towards the Warcraft players in my group than anything else... but he creeped them out to the point that my 6+ player party (9+ by the end) were terrified of him. The session after I introduced him I went home and quickly wrote up stats for him.


Its the jokes and well told/played events that they'll take away from the game and hold most dear. Instead of being afraid of cliche's make them work for you. One I saw on these boards a while back (which I'd love to attribute to the right person but can't remember who it was) was to place a sword in an anvil somewhere. The sword has an inscription which says "Only the true king may retrieve me." Then have the sword and rock be mundane, with a false magic aura... and he Sword is stuck in the stone with DnD's version of crazy glue... Its not a plot point, but its what they'll remember as the plot flies by them, and moments like that will make them love your plot all the more.

[Person_Man]

Isaac Asimov wrote 515 books, totaling well over a million pages. Within all of those books were maybe half a dozen original ideas. The rest was basically rewriting other stories, and/or making comments and observations about existing works or technology. For example, he wrote guides to Shakespeare, a guide on Volcanoes, several guides on his own writing, etc. He was also fond of rewriting classic stories, especially Greek myths and Bible stories.

He sold millions of books, and is generally considered one of the most prolific and recognized writers of the 20th century.

I don't know you from a hole in the wall, but I'm guessing that you are not nearly as creative or smart or talented as Isaac Asmiov. I know I'm not. So get over it. Pick a story you like. Put it in a different setting. Add your own observations and commentary. Add sex and violence. Viola! New story.

[xPANCAKEx]

you're BBEG doesn't have to take over the world

why not run a lower level campaign (say lvl 1-12) where they're trying to take control of a city. Not all BBEG use open warfare or even announce themselves. Why not do it in a more subtle fashion?

If you really want to hook the players in - make them aid the BBEG in some way unwittingly earlier in the campaign, then when the BBEG shows his true intent and lets them know how they helped him, they'll be driven to stop him to right the wrongs. Of course that only works with the standard "party vs evil do-er" campaign set up

[MickJay]

Very much depends on who are you DMing for and their expectations. Some post-modernising authors like to twist cliches to the point where Snow White becomes a revenge-driven bloodthirsty maniac, while others play the tropes rather straightforwardly, but do so in an interesting manner. Generally speaking, telling story from the loser's point of view has a significant potential, if you don't mind getting cynical.

Most of really memorable moments will happen regardless of the main plotline. Sometimes having your campaign derailed, crashed and flying around in small pieces will provide more fun for everyone involved, including DM, than following the original plot, too. Heck, if you have the talent for it, you may even use most obvious cliches for comical effect; but check from time to time if your players are having fun with that, or are just rolling their eyes.

[insecure]

Really, don't be afraid of clichés. Instead, find out which ones your party prefers and use those.

[Eorran]

Do you want to know what the two most memorable parts of all of that has been over the last 3+ years?

1) Killing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2) The Jamaican Witch Doctor who talked with his shrunken head (unfortuneatly without the inuendo I wanted when I wrote the character).

Both of those are hilarious.
My favorite recent plot involved the PC princess rescuing the dragon from the clutches of the evil Prince Charming, and his seven dwarf bodyguards.

[Blackfang108]

Both of those are hilarious.
My favorite recent plot involved the PC princess rescuing the dragon from the clutches of the evil Prince Charming, and his seven dwarf bodyguards.

PRICELESS!!!!

I like it! (I may steal that for a one-shot some time.)

[Tokiko Mima]

So here's the thing. I understand possibly that you can use those with ease if you only support it with a good storytelling. Could you give me some examples of hypothetical adventures with cliches like finding powerful MacGuffins or a mighty, world-shattering villain? I don't want whole-drawn creations but some tips on this.

Thanks from the mountain... ...In America.

Ok, to sum up the issue: You want to tell enjoyable stories. But the problem you're having is you can't come up with anything original. So the problem is you're looking for something entirely different than what you want to find.

Original and enjoyable stories are two entirely different things. Original stories are something you look for almost for their shock value. They would be unfamiliar and alien, like your first time reading Cthulhu only worse because Cthulhu is almost a comfortable cliche these days. Original stories are hard or nigh impossible to come up with, because nearly every person that has ever lived has tried at some point to be original.

Enjoyable stories are usually put together with parts of many stories you've heard of, in a quilt. Your role as the story teller is to arrange things in a way that entertains your audience, usually in with a novel arrangement. Consider an anime I recently watched (Scrapped Princess): It begins with the story of Sleeping Beauty, except instead of her dying on her 16th birthday, the princess is prophesied to usher in the end of the entire world. Obviously this leads to many people to try to kill the princess before that birthday comes in the hope that it would prevent everyone from dying. The heroes in this series are the family that took the princess in and want her to live, believing the prophesy is wrong. Then antagonists are everyone else in the world that wants to live for more than a decade or so.

You can pull out cliches out of a story like that left and right. There's Oedipus elements, lots of generic fantasy elements, fairy tales, soliloquies on the righteousness of murdering an innocent to save yourself, even a mecha battle or two (It is an anime after all.) But in the end it's a compelling and entertaining story even though it's constructed out of the bones of many cliches.

So find a story you want to tell, and tell it. You'll do a lot better working with something you understand and enjoy than you would with something totally unfamiliar. If an aspect of your story feels tired and overuse, turn it on it's head. Maybe that farmer isn't just a boring typical dirt-plower. Maybe he's actually a powerful wizard using a disguise to get close to the characters!

[Artanis]

It always surprises me when this issue comes up. You're not the first one to ask it on this board by a long way - loads of would-be DMs have said the same thing.
This made me giggle. "Being so scared of being unoriginal is unoriginal." :smallbiggrin:

[Darrin]

It transforms to this: everything I saw ever in television or books I'm afraid to use because... it was used already.


Ever seen the South Park episode, "Simpsons Already Did It"? Although it's not exactly the problem you make it out to be... there are a limited number of tropes and plots because you can use them over and over again. Anything you could possibly think of has already been done... by Shakespeare, the Greeks, or even before then.

The dirty little secret to cliches is people keep using them because they *work*, over and over again. Don't try to reinvent the wheel, you'll just get frustrated with square-shaped failures. But you don't have to copy everything exactly. There's a quote from Picasso that goes something like, "Good artists imitate. Great artists steal." So yes, you're going to use something that your players have seen before, it's inevitable. The trick is to dress it up and slap on enough paint that you give it your own unique flavor.

Another important part of cliches are they tell the players what type of game to expect, what genre you're trying to evoke, and what types of behavior might be expected. They help set the stage and lay down what's at stake. For example, if you present the players with a spy caper, then they may conclude that a hulking barbarian may be at a disadvantage in social encounters or stealth operations. Or a post-apocalyptic zombiegeddon might not be an appropriate campaign to bring in the pixie prankster.



So here's the thing. I understand possibly that you can use those with ease if you only support it with a good storytelling. Could you give me some examples of hypothetical adventures with cliches like finding powerful MacGuffins or a mighty, world-shattering villain? I don't want whole-drawn creations but some tips on this.


Most epic fantasies start off with Plot Coupons. Collect enough pieces of X, and you get the MacGuffin of Whatever.

http://www.ansible.co.uk/Ansible/plotdev.html

Once the players have the MacGuffin, it becomes a handle to yank the players in a particular direction. This isn't immediately a bad thing, unless you are really blatant about dragging your players around. Think of it as more of a big piece of cheese or a rolled-up newspaper. If they players go where the MacGuffin points them, they get the big piece of cheese. If they go somewhere else, whack 'em with the newspaper.

The MacGuffin level is also where you can start subverting player expectations. This is where you can take the cliches, turn them upside down, yank them out from under the players, and get them to rethink what trope they're dealing with. When the players get through with a large dungeon crawl and suddenly a trusted NPC turns on them, steals the MacGuffin and turns it over to a group of cultists, are the players still in the dungeon crawl trope or have they switched to a spy caper? If the MacGuffin turns out to be an elaborate fake and they discover clues that the cultists are working for a secret multidimensional megaconspiracy, have they switched into an X-Files "investigate weird stuff" game?

Just when your players figure out what to expect next, then you can yank the rug out again, throw them back into a dungeon (epic campaigns should involve some recursion... you get to the end by going back to the beginning), and slap on some Minibosses/BBEG that leads up to a Final Battle. Make the good guys pay some kind of price, and then let them win.

Your job as DM, in a nutshell, is to do two things at once: 1) give the players something familiar that they enjoy (cliches, regurgitated pop culture/sci-fi/tv shows/etc., naked fragile indescriminately wealthy animals/creatures/catgirls) while 2) simultaneously surprising them with challenges they don't expect and may not know how to deal with. Even if you never get to 2) or bungle it really, really badly, most gaming groups will be entirely happy with lots and lots of 1).

[valadil]

I used to have similar problems. Everything I did had to be original. I got over it. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Cliche does not equal trope. A cliche is an overused trope. Starting your game in a tavern is cliche. Bad guy taking over the world is not. Feel free to avoid cliches, but use trope all you like.

Original is not necessarily good. You already touched on this. If a story hasn't been told before, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe a thousand other GMs before you though of that story, but dismissed it because it was crap. Don't be the GM who gets stuck with that crap.

You have no way of knowing what is and isn't original. Have you seen every TV show out there? Read every book? Played in every RPG session? Even if an idea is new to you you'll never know if it occured to someone else previously. The bottom line is that you can't know if an idea is original, so why worry about it? If you run a game that seems new to you and one of your players tells you he just saw that plot on CSI, two things can happen: you can keep playing becuase you don't care if you're original, or you can get upset and not enjoy the game because you're stressing out over something beyond your control.

Now, here's a positive note about originality. The premise for a story may not be original, but the twist you put on it will be. Pick a scene from a movie and plug that into your game. Not the whole movie, mind you, just a scene. First of all, the characters involved are different. Where they came from is different. Where they head afterwards is different. And if you did your homework you probably incorporated a part of your story into that scene. So, even if the premise was blatantly ripped off, characters * intro * premise * conclusion will be a novel experience. And unless you rip off that scene really badly your players won't even know they just walked through a movie set. Mine don't. You have to keep in mind that your players will approach that scene from a first person perspective. If they had your birds eye view, they might recognize the scene from elsewhere, but they don't.

I've actually written an article elsewhere on this topic. (http://gm.thuranni.net/?p=11) Oh and here's a story (http://gm.thuranni.net/?p=75) from my first ever game showcasing how well stealing can work.

[Satyr]

Don't fall the nothing new under the sun trap. No art is ever done to an end. The idea of good fiction is almost always the same: Take an idea you find enthralling and follow it through with the most strongly focus on the plausible plausibility. That is pretty much the prerequisite for any good narrative.
Take an idea, taking it out of context and recontextualise it anew to break the stereotype. Stay away from anything that include world-wide plots, world domination or destruction.

And the most important thing, DO NOT INSULT THE INTELLICENCE OF OTHER PEOPLE. It is always, without exceptions better to aim too high on the complexity than too low. Understanding is a reward, and should never be cheapened through free giveaway.

[Tokiko Mima]

Remember, good writers borrow. Great writers steal.


..."Good artists imitate. Great artists steal." ...

:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

You're both right! :smallsmile:

[Prometheus]

Yeah, don't worry about cliches. If you can't bear yourself to do a particular piece of plot, than don't and make it unexpectedly different. Someone has hidden motives, or is misunderstood. There was an unexpected difficulty on the way to the quest. That quest was all a big distraction from the "real" evil. It's all been done before, but you just want to make sure your PCs don't guess beforehand. Do enough random stuff, they won't guess and the plot will still make sense.

Oh here is a list of cliches off the top of my head that have been in my past campaigns that have all went over well: a snake-worshiping cultists, evil holds the highest political office, civilized savages, giants like to conquer things, all prophecies are true, all tavern rumors are true, the first city is on a plains and is ruled by a noble king, the campaign starts in a tavern, an alien invasion complete with a spaceship, a wizard who wants to live forever, forbidden love ticks off a prince who forced someone to be his bride, the desert people are nomads, religious extremists, communists, feudalism, democracy, mobsters, bigots, a never-ending war between two similar nations, a king manipulated by a close adviser, a quest to retrieve a secret ingredient needed for a cure, a quest to retrieve parts of an ancient magic item, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, secret-identities (too many times), a character with amnesia, a character orphaned by monsters, a character obsessed with training, a character who went crazy in the fast, a character of noble (and subsequently lost) a whole plane that is a universal marketplace, treasure-hunting in old and still active ruins, a haunted house, witches in swamps, proving yourself to a tribe via a gladiator-fight, acting as a messenger with a code-word, a wizard with a love of books and knowledge, a fortune-teller that is also an occultist, an acrobat from poor upbringing, a lovable oversized oaf, a curse that makes monsters and people go mad, a search for a lost lover, a search for a lost sibling, a powerful artifact that corrupts, an ancient and mysterious society plunged into the depths of the ocean by calamity, a chain of islands specializing in trade, a perilous mine-cart ride, a malfunctioning teleporter, a secret society, a predominately male military system, a reluctant vampire, an ogre ruling goblins, cannibalism of one humanoid species by another, slavery of one humanoid species by another, a boat ride fraught with sea monster attacks, mining so far that you discover an underground species, a monster that likes to eat jewels and gold rather than hoard them, a dragon with a hoard of treasure, attempts at appeasement are subsequently betrayed, characters are revered as gods by an obscure tribal religion, after characters are revered as gods they find out that one of them needs to be sacrificed, a place where the influence of other planes is the greatest, a blind prophet, a mischievous heir to the throne, a reasonably minded heir to the throne, a city of thieves, and more still.

[Blackfang108]

:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:

You're both right! :smallsmile:

Writers are just a subset of artists.

Especially the Tech Manual Writers. Poor SOBs.

[Dervag]

The trick is having enough original ideas that you don't end up being despised as the next Chris Paolini, without winding up with something incomprehensible. If every one of your ideas is original, the odds are that the ideas don't fit together very well.

A good plot has to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Some examples of this:

Characters must have sensible motives that explain why they are doing what they are doing. A motive that makes sense in one context (quit drinking in an attempt to win back ex-girlfriend) makes no sense in another context (conquer world in an attempt to win back ex-girlfriend).

Events must have both logical consequences and unpredictable consequences. For instance, insulting someone predictably makes them angry, but it can have unpredictable effects like making them act foolishly to prove the insult isn't true. If you don't have predictable consequences the plot becomes random and comical. If you don't have unpredictable consequences, you lose the impression of living in a real world. Real life is predictable, but imperfectly so, and people's plans often go wrong.

Effects should be proportionate to the causes that trigger them. Wars do not start over a single insult at a diplomatic reception, except in comedies. This relates back to the previous thing- things should happen for a reason that makes sense in setting, rather than happening purely because God the Author willed them to happen.
__________

The reason this is important is that an attempt to create as many "original" plot ideas as possible will get in the way of creating a plot that fits together. You wind up having to bash the ideas together with a chain of coincidences and unrealistic behavior.

The problem is that most of the simple, convincing reasons a person might do something are common fictional tropes. People desire power, and we know it happens in real life, so a lot of fiction uses it... and thus, powerhungry people become cliches.

So what you want is to find places where you can put a new idea into a frame of old tropes without making it seem out of place. "X must save the Y from the Z" is a cliche framework, yes... but what happens if we use an unconventional X, Y, and Z? When it's the princess who rescues the dragon from the knight, you have a new story with an old plot.

Of course, then you have to make sure that the princess, dragon, and knight have logical motives and character development. Which is the nasty part.

[Jayabalard]

Being afraid of cliches is pretty cliche.

Really though, there's nothing wrong with tapping into the power of stories

[Berserk Monk]

Stop being self-conscious about your writing. It is literally impossible to be original on the level you're thinking about. Even 3000-year-old Greek legends weren't original when they were written or told. Indeed, stories that are completely separate from each other on all conceivable levels still have striking similarities.

Tsotha's right. Just think up a plot, fill it with monsters, treasure, and EXP and the PCs will have fun.

Also, stop thinking your campaign is a major Hollywood movie. You don't need to have an epic oots style campaign with an end of the world macguffin. Just send your PCs out on adventures: retrieve this sword, clear out my basement of dire rats, catch a criminal, explore an old dungeon. Come up with minor quests that don't occupy an entire campaign. You might learn that the PCs hate this quest and don't do it or side with the villain. Then what?

[AslanCross]

I agree with all the "don't worry about it" statements. Even my Creative Writing professor in college told me that all possible plotlines have been told. It's the details that differ and those are what make stories special.

I think if you throw your players for a loop enough and add more intrigue (if they appreciate it anyway) it might be more difficult for them to say "Oh last adventure we played was like that."

[Saph]

So what you want is to find places where you can put a new idea into a frame of old tropes without making it seem out of place. "X must save the Y from the Z" is a cliche framework, yes... but what happens if we use an unconventional X, Y, and Z? When it's the princess who rescues the dragon from the knight, you have a new story with an old plot.

See, I'd say that even this isn't really necessary. "Save the princess from a dragon" is quite a decent plot. You have violence (with the possibility of death), money (dragon's hoard + reward) and sex all in one package. That's pretty much the Holy Trinity of human interests right there.

A cliched plot is actually pretty fun if you've never done it before. I mean, I've never been in a party where a king has asked me to rescue the princess from a dragon. It'd be kind of cool to be able to say I'd done it.

- Saph

[TengYt]

If you somehow have some kind of amazingly original idea that no one has ever thought of before... why waste it on a tabletop game?

[Izmir Stinger]

Don't worry about it. Everything is cliched.


What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

[Inyssius Tor]

"Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."

Ha ha, beat you to it. :smalltongue:

[Nero24200]

I think it should be mentioned that cliches are cliches for a reason, usally because they're good. How many novels/movies do you like which feature hordes of cliches? There will probably be alot, does it make those movies any less interesting?

Besides, cliches are usally vague as well. The cliche story of a knight who battles a dragon to save the princess, for instance, whilst being a cliche, still doesn't tell us much about the knight and his motives, or why the dragon has the princess etc. If you're still worried about cliches, try just simply putting a spin on them. What in the example above, the knight was a tyrant and the dragon was really creature who was really helping the princess to escape assassins from her homeland?

[MickJay]

Then the knight eats the dragon, you kill the princess and marry the knight, and everyone else in the kingdom except you two is miserable ever after.

^ And this has some serious potential if you think about it, though you might want to cut the part with "ever after" short if you want to play the same character more.

[Samakain]

Someone, i forget who, but he's famous and dead said that "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy"

This is also true for plots and PCs, or at least it is in my group

I can spend hours delicately carving and forming each piece of an elaborate story till it resembles some beautiful stain glass window, then some bastard comes along and pulls the one thread i didn't see and bam! whole things 1000 crystal shards slapping me in the face :P

But being broken is what makes being a DM /FUN/ and half the challenge is to make sure your campaign has enough grounding and depth to recover from that breaking, and hell if it doesn't, Make it Up!

Cliches should be kept in a bag as insto-matic-just-add-water plot peices to steer your characters with back on course, or failing that at least away from the cliff face :P, bring em in, and if you are quick enough twist em on the fly to make them interesting. Nothing better than being broken and having to weave cow poo and faerie dust out of thin air

As for cliches i've used or have had used on me? Last eberron game we did have a frosted glass window on a door with "Harry's Budget Inquisitive" on it, and yes we did get one particular job off a gorgeous "dame". Taken down the necromancer in a bunch of old ruins, demon price and his vampiric sorceress lover all done in lovely bondage gear at the top of there oh so evil tower. The fight on top the train cars skit, one of the best was actually a horseback chase through a creepy forest! geesh, so many more. hell we even have had one member of the party being of a forgotten royal line and found a super cool intelligent magic sword and eventually claimed the throne :P and our next party had to take him down cause he turned into a tyrant lol.

thats my 2 cents

Sa

[ericgrau]

Quoted for relevance and because I lol'ed.

D&D isn't rocket surgery (or it doesn't have to be), you're not creating The Ultimate Campaign (or you don't have to be), just have fun and make a world that the players would enjoy romping around in.

Darn, now I want to be a rocket surgeon. Wheeee <slice>.

[Grail]

Have a look at this (http://www.tennscreen.com/plots.htm)

[elliott20]

no cliches? My entire campaign is one gigantic cliche! But then again, I run a lot of Pulp games so...

[Myatar_Panwar]

Cliches only become a problem if your players are truly trying to avoid them (stupidly). If your players find that rescuing the princess is their next quest, and they react to it negatively, well yeah...

Sure, they could all be having fun with a story which has entertained people over the ages, but they are too busy thinking they are above that. :smallannoyed:

Hopefully your players arn't like this though.

[Gardakan]

To overcome the idea of making cliches... i work hard in making 10 characters playing in a RPG game. I write my book in side of that.

I could compare many characters to archetype... but i work fine to make that my own... but i have always the comparison of my paladin who fall in love with a nasty sorceress/mindbender who have a debt at the paladin. She could'nt kill him of his hand but when she reach the 7th level she cast suggestion on the fighter to kill the paladin. The paladin don't die but the sorceress ran out the group. The paladin and the fighter just chase her in the tunnels.

The paladin is compare to Sturm for his honor sens...

The fighter is compare to Riverwind for his closingmind

The sorceress is compare to Kitiara for his egocentrism...

But at the first... DragonLance don't inspire me...

[Colmarr]

whether the NPC sorceress is hot. Accept this and deal with it.

In my experience, it's usually more a question of whethere the hot NPC sorceress is hot enough to look past the fact that she's also a baby-eating fiend :smallwink:

[Prometheus]

In my experience, it's usually more a question of whethere the hot NPC sorceress is hot enough to look past the fact that she's also a baby-eating fiend :smallwink:
Mine is worse, I had one that turned out to be a man.

[Waspinator]

I love the princess rescuing the dragon from a tyrant prince idea. Bonus points if the dragon and the princess are in love.

[lisiecki]

Don't worry about it. Everything is cliched.

ya, sorry, no.
Just because the bible says it dosnt make it so.

Once again, whales armored by time its self.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

But what if you put in a cliched idea, and a player calls you on it, or they start meta-gaming because they know the cliche and thus know what'll happen?

I always fear that I'll put something in a campaign and someone (most likely my brother), will say "Aw man, you stole that from such and such! You suck and this campaign sucks. Be more original!"

[elliott20]

I love the princess rescuing the dragon from a tyrant prince idea. Bonus points if the dragon and the princess are in love.

God I hope the dragon is female or else that could be very uncomfortable.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

But again, what if your players call you on a lack of originality. People want something fresh, not to play out the same dull stories they've all heard before.

[Inyssius Tor]

Then you can tell them to find a truly original idea. Tell you what: it isn't going to happen.

If your players are bored of the same old cliches, read some books. Watch some movies. Read some brilliant threads. Show them some different old cliches.

[Thrud]

A motive that makes sense in one context (quit drinking in an attempt to win back ex-girlfriend) makes no sense in another context (conquer world in an attempt to win back ex-girlfriend).

Huh. So that's what I'm doing wrong. Oh well, guess you won't all have to worry about being my slaves next week.

*Wanders off to deactivate foolproof plan for world domination.*

[Waspinator]

God I hope the dragon is female or else that could be very uncomfortable.

A lot of dragons have some form of polymorph ability that lets them assume humanoid form. Which, I believe, is how most half-dragons came about. I think what we're describing is a scenario for creating more half-dragons. :smallamused:

[elliott20]

oh thank god. for a second there, this was starting to float towards some disturbing internet porn territory.

[Waspinator]

Here we go:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm#goldDragon
Scroll down to Alternate Form. The dragon can just turn into an elf or something. Heck, the princess who is in love with it might not even know it is a dragon!

On a side note, that alternate form thing that some of the metallic dragons have is one of the big reasons they're the ones usually chosen if someone wants a dragon as their character. Dragons are cool and all, but way too flashy to walk into most towns in most settings without getting way too much attention. Being able to look like some random human farmer is a great ability for them.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Then you can tell them to find a truly original idea. Tell you what: it isn't going to happen.

If your players are bored of the same old cliches, read some books. Watch some movies. Read some brilliant threads. Show them some different old cliches.

What if they don't want cliches at all though? I'm always concerned that if I introduce a plot element, they'll list where it came from.

"Okay so your sword starts glowing."

"Lord of the Rings."

"You're fighting against the forces of an evil emperor."

"Star Wars."

"You need to get your vessel to fly, and the elves know how to attach your ship to a flock of birds."

"James and the Giant Peach."

[Inyssius Tor]

What if they don't want cliches at all though?

"They" are doomed to a lifetime of horrible disappointment in everything they read or watch or play.

[hamishspence]

Its very hard to avoid- better to embrace the tropes without letting knowledge of them spoil the game. if they know this up front, may save time.

Which is not to say they are not entitled to grin knowingly at each other each time something very familiar comes up, but even this can be fun. Trope Drinking Game- seen in Darths and Droids "Chosen One!!!" (chug)

[Waspinator]

The one cliche that really bugs me is the load-bearing dragon. The cave should not start collapsing just because the dragon is dead. If it was a floating fortress, I could maybe understand it falling out of the sky upon it's master's death if he was magically maintaining it, but most terrestrial structures don't have that excuse.