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View Full Version : Gamer Tales Story Swapping: Best Experiences with Cliche Plots.



Freelance GM
2015-01-11, 11:54 AM
So, I DM a lot, and every time I try to teach a new DM, the pitch for their first campaign almost always begins with, "I'm gonna base it on Zelda!"
Like, possibly more than 70% of the time. It's like companions telling the Doctor his TARDIS is "bigger on the inside."

Now, MacGuffin quests are fun and all every so often, but sometimes DM's and players crave something more. It seems like there's a pendulum swinging back and forth in every DM's head, trying to find a balance between original material and classic fantasy plots.

But sometimes, it's fun to embrace the cliches and just go full, 100% distilled classic.

Here's my question: What's the most fun you've had with an overtly cliche plot? As a player and as a DM?

I'm not just talking about a factory standard-issue Zelda-inspired MacGuffin quest- I mean any of the following classics/cliches:

Meeting the rest of the party in a tavern.
Anything with dungeons based on the four classical elements. Extra credit if they were the resting places of 4 elemental macguffins.
Anything that involves the retrieval or destruction of a single MacGuffin, such as the One Ring or Glowing Briefcase.
Saving a damsel in distress. Extra credit if the captor is the main villain, she's locked in a tower, and/or there is a dragon involved.
Orcs raiding a small frontier village, which the players must defend. Bonus points if it's Seven Samurai-inspired.
A Dark Lord returning from the brink of death to resume his plan of world-dominaton, all Sauron/Voldemort style.
A banished god/Demon Lord gaining enough power to invade the world, like Tharizdun, DA:O's Archdemon, or Abaddon in GW: Nightfall
A corrupt kingdom invading its peaceful neighbors.
A brooding lich raising an undead army to take over the world, all Black Cauldron style.
Uniting several races/kingdoms against a single threat, like in Mass Effect/Dragon Age. Double points if it's because of one of the previous 5 cliche's happening.
The main villain wants to become a god, all Baldur's Gate or DA:I style. Extra credit if it involves ritually killing large numbers of people.
Preventing a mostly-natural disaster/global cataclysm. If the cataclysm is the Moon pulling a Majora's Mask, double your score. Double your score again if you need to recover Macguffins/go to several temples to avert the disaster. If those temples are based on the 4 elements, you win the game.


Running plots like these isn't inherently a bad thing; I run plots like this all of the time, and my players consistently enjoy them. This question is not about bashing, inverting or subverting these ideas. I'm really just interested in hearing some stories about them. I'd love to hear the parodies, plot-twists, zig-zags, deconstructions and reconstructions you or your group have played that made these cliche plots uniquely fun.

mephnick
2015-01-11, 12:21 PM
Meeting the rest of the party in a tavern.
Anything with dungeons based on the four classical elements. Extra credit if they were the resting places of 4 elemental macguffins.
Anything that involves the retrieval or destruction of a single MacGuffin, such as the One Ring or Glowing Briefcase.
Saving a damsel in distress. Extra credit if the captor is the main villain, she's locked in a tower, and/or there is a dragon involved.
Orcs raiding a small frontier village, which the players must defend. Bonus points if it's Seven Samurai-inspired.
A Dark Lord returning from the brink of death to resume his plan of world-dominaton, all Sauron/Voldemort style.
A banished god/Demon Lord gaining enough power to invade the world, like Tharizdun, DA:O's Archdemon, or Abaddon in GW: Nightfall
A corrupt kingdom invading its peaceful neighbors.
A brooding lich raising an undead army to take over the world, all Black Cauldron style.
Uniting several races/kingdoms against a single threat, like in Mass Effect/Dragon Age. Double points if it's because of one of the previous 5 cliche's happening.
The main villain wants to become a god, all Baldur's Gate or DA:I style. Extra credit if it involves ritually killing large numbers of people.
Preventing a mostly-natural disaster/global cataclysm. If the cataclysm is the Moon pulling a Majora's Mask, double your score. Double your score again if you need to recover Macguffins/go to several temples to avert the disaster. If those temples are based on the 4 elements, you win the game.


To be fair it's hard to create a coherent "quest" that doesn't involve an aspect of one of these. Most everything boils down to "stop this guy before he wins" or "destroy this thing" or "rescue this person". I suppose you could make a campaign out of becoming the best magic shop in the land or something, but that's not what most people play RPG's for.

Though as an avid Harvest Moon/Rune Factory fan...maybe that is what I play RPGs for.

Red Fel
2015-01-11, 12:39 PM
Meeting the rest of the party in a tavern.

If you don't see how this can be fun, you've never been in a party of "creative" arsonists.


Orcs raiding a small frontier village, which the players must defend. Bonus points if it's Seven Samurai-inspired.

Okay, story time here. We were dispatched to a small mining outpost, to protect it from raiders. We were informed that as payment for our efforts, we would be appointed the lords and guardians of the place. Those of us who passed a (cliched and obvious) secret test of character were also informed that the reason the place needed protection was that it had a mythal, and those of us who passed were to be attuned to it.

Fast-forward, we've protected the town from minor incursions, and now face the stereotypical and cliched anti-party, who try to take on their counterparts one-on-one. My PsyWar (this is 3.5) is facing a Duergar. The Duergar uses a Telekinetic Sphere to imprison my character and hurl him into the air, where he intends to drop him to his death.

Now, my character was one of the ones attuned to the mythal. And one of the benefits was that, while within the mythal, my character enjoyed Freedom of Movement, and flight with perfect maneuverability. So when the Duergar dismissed the sphere, I just floated in space, waving, before drawing my swords and performing a diving charge at his skull.

Duergar giblets. Good times.

Whole lot of cliches in that one. But I particularly enjoyed that scene.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-11, 01:05 PM
A couple of games I ran were "evil campaigns," so more than a few of the things on that list are something the PCs did.

Jay R
2015-01-11, 02:13 PM
Meeting the rest of the party in a tavern.

I had a great deal of fun trying to let the PCs meet in a tavern. They had a certain level of frustration, though.

In a game of Flashing Blades (role-playing in the world of the musketeers), I was introducing a new PC. So I had them meeting a contact (previously unknown to them) in an outlaw band one of them was in, and the new Rogue was the contact.

But the rogue started by trying to pick the pocket of one of the other PCs. They stopped him, grabbed him, and threw him out of the tavern. Then they tried to find their contact, by accosting other people in the tavern.

Undaunted, the rogue/contact tried to come back in to find the people he was supposed to meet, and they threw him out as soon as they saw him - twice. I couldn't find a way to get them together with their new contact if they would always throw him out the window on sight.

Eventually, they decided that the man drinking alone in the corner must be their contact, and kept trying to talk to him while he kept ignoring them. Finally, absolutely certain that this man was their contact, one PC knocked his mug off the table and demanded that he talk to them.

And that's how one of the PCs got himself into a duel with Athos.

AmewTheFox
2015-01-11, 02:35 PM
I suppose you could make a campaign out of becoming the best magic shop in the land or something, but that's not what most people play RPG's for.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xq9jrUmmV-I/TdB_GmKWSDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/sv6ffWEvlcU/s1600/Recettear-Capitalism.png

...I wanna do that now.

Freelance GM
2015-01-11, 02:37 PM
To be fair it's hard to create a coherent "quest" that doesn't involve an aspect of one of these. Most everything boils down to "stop this guy before he wins" or "destroy this thing" or "rescue this person".

You're right- practically every high fantasy adventure could be boiled down to a derivative of one of those three basic plots. It's not a problem. I just thought it would be fun to swap stories about times where players and DM's have made memorable games out of playing the tropes straight.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-11, 04:07 PM
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xq9jrUmmV-I/TdB_GmKWSDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/sv6ffWEvlcU/s1600/Recettear-Capitalism.png

...I wanna do that now.More than a couple of people have suggested using Exalted to run a Spice and Wolf-kinda game...

AmewTheFox
2015-01-11, 04:31 PM
More than a couple of people have suggested using Exalted to run a Spice and Wolf-kinda game...

...Huh?

I don't understand how that comment is connected to my post...

On topic, the only experience I'm had trying to defy the whole "you all meet at an inn/tavern" is that all the PCs knew each other. Casual acquaintances. It helps that it was a modern setting.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-11, 04:40 PM
...Huh?

I don't understand how that comment is connected to my post...Spice and Wolf is an anime in which a guy and a wolf-goddess go around doing merchant stuff. Exalted is a system that at least in part draws on anime for inspiration with regard to its setting (as well as various myths, kung-fu movies, pulp fantasy, and a bit of real-world economics, politics, and history).

You had expressed what seemed to be interest in the prospect of player characters who are primarily involved in the fine art of buying and selling, as opposed to, say, dungeoneering. Hence my bringing up Spice and Wolf and Exalted.

AmewTheFox
2015-01-11, 04:42 PM
Spice and Wolf is an anime in which a guy and a wolf-goddess go around doing merchant stuff. Exalted is a system that at least in part draws on anime for inspiration with regard to its setting (as well as various myths, kung-fu movies, pulp fantasy, and a bit of real-world economics, politics, and history).

You had expressed what seemed to be interest in the prospect of player characters who are primarily involved in the fine art of buying and selling, as opposed to, say, dungeoneering. Hence my bringing up Spice and Wolf and Exalted.

Oh.

I've never really paid much attention to Spice and Wolf so whoops on that department. I was making a reference to Recettear. It has both too.