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Yora
2015-05-25, 08:09 AM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

Kami2awa
2015-05-25, 08:17 AM
Well, this might help:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm

In the campaigns I've played in, we have had collect-the-set plots (collect together items or parts of an item) and hidden treasure plots (adventure to find clues to the location of something important).

Rescue/escape missions are popular too (escape getting less so as players dislike being railroaded into capture). There are also things like find-/obtain-the-cure-to-the-disease plots (where the disease is resistant for some reason to standard spells). A variant on a rescue plot is to have to steal something important or assassinate a target.

Also, your villain need not be a dark lord (could even be a dark lady), and need not be out to take over the world. I've recently played a low-powered campaign in the GoT world whose aim was simply to defend a single village from numerous threats. Your villain could also be a group of people or beings. Some villains are too big to take on head-on (e.g. an entire faction or powerful government) and the campaign focuses on resisting its activities.

There are also WoD games (esp. Vampire) so focussed on intrigue that the aim seems to be to climb to the top and *become* the local dark lord.

NichG
2015-05-25, 08:20 AM
Here's a few. Of course, depending on how they hash out they can easily end up being Us vs Them type plots, so it requires some management to keep it from being too straightforward.

- Competition for the opportunity to change the world/universe/become god/whatever. Rather than 'attack the enemy', its 'race for the objective'. Alliances/etc can be more shifting than with a Us vs Them plot.
- Discover the horrible/wonderful/etc secret of (thing). Mystery plots basically. Related to the above, but here the question is do you find out the secret in time to make a particular choice correctly.
- Versus Nature plots. Natural disasters, armageddons, post-apocalyptic scenarios, etc. The characteristic of this plot is that you can't 'overcome' the disaster through direct opposition, but you can survive/escape/rebuild/etc.
- Road to riches plots. The characters have a (well-defined) target goal, and the plot is about how they get to that point. 'I need money to pay off my debt'/'I need to become a great cleric so I can resurrect my father'/etc.
- Juggling plots. This kind of story starts with something simple, but every action taken by the protagonists to fix one problem spawns off two more, and the plot is about seeking an end to the cascade. Nobilis is explicitly designed to run like this.

Chronos
2015-05-25, 08:21 AM
And here I thought this was going to be "a man goes on a journey" and "a stranger comes to town".

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-25, 08:29 AM
Maybe in a number of published adventure paths and such, but how about actual campaigns?

Stopping a dark lord from coming to power is admittedly the present arc of my game, but it's consisted of exactly two adventures so far, and he's at best a threat to a decent-sized island region, not the entire world; also on their plates is liberating an archipelago's people from the grasp of an empire, slaying a frog-headed dragon for a bear-headed dragon, building a pirate fleet, keeping an eye on the big demon that calls himself their ally, getting a tongue piercing, figuring out what's going on with the goddess of dreams, one of the PCs meeting his mother, one of the PCs paying off all his debts, taking vengeance on a band of demon pirates, winning eternal glory, finding the crown of the god-empress who once ruled the world, pursuing romantic interests, telling the goddess of sharks and warfare to step off and leave you alone, returning a stolen possession to the father of one of the PCs, and babysitting a puppy the size of a horse. Some of these even rank higher than stopping the dark lord from coming to power, to the PCs.

Stopping the world-spanning empire from messing with your region is also typically a focus of some Exalted games, but I'd like to point out that the Realm lacks a super-evil super-ruler at present - part of the reason everything's in a state of tumult is that the Scarlet Empress is missing. Games can also be about proving yourself as a martial artist, mastering the highest heights of sorcery, fighting gods, exploring the world, questing to find lore from the ancient world to usher in a new age of glory, et cetera.

Additionally, now that I think of it, I've yet to see a Shadowrun campaign that was about stopping someone from taking over the world. The Denver Missions was like twenty-five adventures long and involved playing politics between a number of different crime families, pulling off heists and such, and ultimately came to a climax in which the players decided to which faction a potent magical MacGuffin would go, but the world was never in danger from it.

Amphetryon
2015-05-25, 08:37 AM
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-25, 08:42 AM
Does it count if the "dark lord" is simply a force of nature, like global warming, the draining of the oceans, or the slow extinguishing of the sun?

In general, I've found there's more player investment when they are pro-active forces in the world rather than re-active. Superheroes who simply respond to the latest threat can be fun and it's a great way to get everyone started, especially new players. For the long haul, however, it's better when the players define their own goals.

Some ideas I've done:
Finding the source of civilization that supposedly emerged from the "womb of the earth" thousands of years ago. How and why did the ancestors emigrate to the world, where did they come from, are the progenitors still around, etc.? Underground exploration galore.

Building a nation from scratch, carving it from the wilderness, dealing with internal and external enemies. Forging alliances, establishing trade, conquering. I've done this several times. There may be recurring villains, but the goal isn't vanquishing them, but rather expanding your own power.

Similar to that I ran a post-collapse space scifi campaign where the PC's goal was to re-establish contact with lost systems. As high-technology wielding ambassadors, at first they explored in secret and then began working with the existing power structures to try to create a unified world organization to establish trade relations with.

Trying to "ascend". For example, I had one campaign where the players, for some reason, wanted to find/build powered mech suits. Could also apply to the goal of achieving godhood in Runequest.

neonchameleon
2015-05-25, 11:35 AM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

Nah. There are only two major adventure paths. Adventure paths are a subset of D&D and D&D is a subset of RPGs.

Hexcrawl sandboxes normally lead to "By this axe I rule". Which is a much older D&D tradition - but is somewhat deprecated alongside its close cousin "Seeking apotheosis".

Outside the D&D tradition there's also "Fighting for survival in a world with the darkest power" (i.e. Noir) - see Call of Cthulhu, WFRP, Paranoia, Shadowrun, WoD, and others.

But with the only partial exception of "By this axe I rule" all these stories have one thing in common. They can be run episodic-sitcom style where each episode resets to the status quo until the season finale. (This almost applies mechanically - at level 1 a Fighter is someone who is hard to kill and better than 98% of the population at sticking a long, pointy bit of metal into people - while at level 20 a fighter is someone who is very hard to kill and better than 99.9% of the population at sticking a long pointy bit of metal into people - but they haven't fundamentally changed in what they do).

The other point about these plots is that they are largely framing devices rather than actual plots. A Dungeon Crawl is essentially an obstacle course. And the Stop The Bad Guy With The McGuffin is generally an excuse to have the PCs take on this obstacle course.

Starting just over 10 years ago with My Life With Master, the Forge and subsequent Indy Games started producing systems where the fundamental nature of PCs changes over time. Where PCs grow (or even get scarred) and change in how they interact with the world and this produces some very different stories. Recommended games to look into for very different stories from the normal run of RPG episodic games include
* My Life With Master
* Fiasco
* Dogs in the Vineyard
* Smallville
* Apocalypse World
* Monsterhearts
* Urban Shadows
* Fate Accelarated (less than most on this list)
* Dread

And yes, My Life With Master has only one plot - overthrowing the Evil Overlord. But it's a different plot to the classic D&D plot. In D&D you are part of a team working together to overthrow the Evil Overlord. In MLWM you are one of the henchmen of the Evil Overlord, and struggling to hold onto your self-respect until one of you snaps and tries to kill the Overlord. Then it's win or die - the game could go either way (and the game ends when the fight is over). But the key difference is twofold. First one of the big questions of the game is "What will it take to make one of the characters snap?", and second the plot gets resolved in about two sessions. (You probably don't play MLWM more than half a dozen times total - but the rules are so simple this doesn't matter).

Thrawn4
2015-05-25, 11:35 AM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

There have been some published adventures and novels for The Dark Eye that featured storylines of a much smaller scale, e. g. personal goals.

The Banner Saga is a video game about people trying to escape from the perils of war.

And there are many more.

Wartex1
2015-05-25, 11:54 AM
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

A ton of them.

Macbeth is an example, and a very good one.

The Iliad is a war story, and the Odyssey is about Odysseus screwing himself over but then growing as a person, returning home.

Macbeth is the story of a relatively good person who goes mad with power, becomes a monster, and is ultimately killed.

prufock
2015-05-25, 11:57 AM
Pathfinder's Skull and Shackles adventure path is about becoming successful pirates, as far as I know. Haven't read all the way to the end, but it seems to have nothing to do with a dark lord or the end of the world.

hymer
2015-05-25, 12:04 PM
A ton of them.

Macbeth is an example, and a very good one.

The Iliad is a war story, and the Odyssey is about Odysseus screwing himself over but then growing as a person, returning home.

Macbeth is the story of a relatively good person who goes mad with power, becomes a monster, and is ultimately killed.

Macbeth can be seen as either. McB can be the stranger coming to town, as in getting the crown, or he can be the one going on a journey to kingship and madness.

Wartex1
2015-05-25, 12:21 PM
Well, yeah, if you break it down completely by removing pretty much every single element in the story and strip all identity away from the piece while stretching the categories.

He's not a stranger, and he's not on a journey. If you mean a transition of character, then all stories are a "journey". By expanding the definition beyond literal terms to create a universal umbrella, then the definition loses meaning. Even a stranger coming to town would qualify as a journey.

It's as pointless as saying that "A sentence is a functioning idea consisting of a subject and a predicate."

Well, yeah, it's the definition.

hymer
2015-05-25, 12:24 PM
Well, yeah, if you break it down completely by removing pretty much every single element in the story and strip all identity away from the piece while stretching the categories.

He's not a stranger, and he's not on a journey. If you mean a transition of character, then all stories are a "journey". By expanding the definition beyond literal terms to create a universal umbrella, then the definition loses meaning. Even a stranger coming to town would qualify as a journey.

It's as pointless as saying that "A sentence is a functioning idea consisting of a subject and a predicate."

Well, yeah, it's the definition.

If you can't see the point of the claim that there are only two sorts of stories, then that's on you, not me.

Wartex1
2015-05-25, 12:30 PM
Well, first, one of those quotes is objectively wrong.

The second one is also wrong, because all stories would qualify as journeys if you stretch it enough.

That's on you. If you have to strip everything away from a story to make it fit a definition, then that definition is terrible.

hymer
2015-05-25, 12:33 PM
Oh, my dear chap, then let me explain it to you: It is not a hard and fast rule, nor a definition. It is a statement, meant to provoke thought, to point to some very interesting traits about stories and how we tell them; that they are at the same time enormously complex on one level, and yet remarkably simple on another (to start somewhere). Whether you say 'there's only the Odyssey and the Iliad' or something else is completely besides the point.

Wartex1
2015-05-25, 12:38 PM
It's a statement, but it's a terrible one at that. It provokes thought, but so does the statement "What if all n's in English were replaced by ñ's?"

That doesñ't meañ it's ñot poiñtless.

Sure, it's simple, but only if you take it apart, removing pretty much everything from it. That's not the piece being simple, that's someone making it simple by altering the piece itself.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-25, 12:39 PM
Why not become the Dark Lord yourself? Or perhaps you are forced to work for them, and need to do your job to avoid hostages from being killed (or whatever collateral is being used), while figuring out a way to get free. I guess that is kinda like the Odyssey, but with a whole lot less nymph banging.

With a good DM, you could also do the thing of waking up in a mysterious place and needing to figure out WTF is going on. No real enemy, other then ignorance.

hymer
2015-05-25, 12:41 PM
@ Wartex1: I think I've made my point clear enough for anyone else who might be reading this little conversation, and I'll leave it at that.

Mr.Moron
2015-05-25, 12:42 PM
If you can't see the point of the claim that there are only two sorts of stories, then that's on you, not me.

There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

Grinner
2015-05-25, 12:51 PM
If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

Each of those structures seem to indicate the source of conflict. In the first, the character goes out and finds adventure, whereas in the other, the adventure finds him.

What of more....pastoral stories? Stories like Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller? In each of these, the main character finds his adventure by facing the hardships of growing up in a rural setting.

Glimbur
2015-05-25, 01:04 PM
There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

I don't know, have you ever seen Waiting for Godot?

Wartex1
2015-05-25, 01:09 PM
I don't know, have you ever seen Waiting for Godot?

Should we revise that to be "There is only one type of story: a story"?

Vitruviansquid
2015-05-25, 01:30 PM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

I remember reading an article about the video game Homefront, which is about a near-future, science fiction invasion of the player's country by another country. Originally, the team wanted to have a story where you play as a soldier who fights off the invasion, and then ultimately fights the leader of the invasion as a final boss and topples the enemy's regime. When they brought on a professional writer, the writer reduced the game's scope by a lot - now the player's role is a member of the resistance who must ensure a convoy of vital supplies gets from point A to point B. This supposedly will cause the emotional elements of the story to hit the player closer to home, as the larger plot is more abstract and the smaller plot is more immediate. I have no idea if this succeeded, as I never got around to buying/playing Homefront, but it's something to consider that seems vaguely relevant to the topic.

As for alternate stories to tell in a campaign, I've always wanted to run this a campaign that is actually in the slice-of-life genre. Problems arise from time to time in the campaign, and some span multiple sessions, but we are actually more concerned with how these problems end up developing the player characters than we are with whether or not these problems get solved in the end. Thus, the plot would more relevantly be described as "Alice works through her assholish personality and becomes a better person" or "Bob finds love, then loses it, then finds it again" than "Alice and Bob overthrow a dark lord or seize the world back from a dark lord."

The problem with running such a campaign is that most RPG's are a lot more concerned with that external part (in other words, how the players shape the world). We are conditioned by a long history of DnD-centric RPG designs to think that what is rewarding in RPG's is to have players accomplish stuff, or get stronger in order to accomplish cooler stuff. We are not really conditioned to think of the RPG's goal as seeing what impacts the external world and zany events of an RPG campaign will end up having on the characters.

Tvtyrant
2015-05-25, 01:36 PM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

Sure there is. Invasive species have arrived from another continent via a shipwreck and are causing a major famine. The party needs to go and find new crops on the other continent and bring them back to stop the death of millions. The problem is that the ocean between the continents sucks, full of rocks, sea monsters and free raiders.

JustIgnoreMe
2015-05-25, 01:37 PM
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

Perhaps, but there are thirty-six dramatic situations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations) that occur during the stories.

And you can have a story where no-one arrives or leaves.

Yora
2015-05-25, 01:43 PM
The problem with running such a campaign is that most RPG's are a lot more concerned with that external part (in other words, how the players shape the world). We are conditioned by a long history of DnD-centric RPG designs to think that what is rewarding in RPG's is to have players accomplish stuff, or get stronger in order to accomplish cooler stuff. We are not really conditioned to think of the RPG's goal as seeing what impacts the external world and zany events of an RPG campaign will end up having on the characters.

Hence the question. There are no established conventions for non epic world saving plots to work with.

Vitruviansquid
2015-05-25, 01:47 PM
Well, the problem is solved by writing an RPG that *is* concerned with characters' internal development, and/or by explaining the slice-of-life paradigm to all your fellow tablemates and then convincing them it would be fun to try to play that style.

Question answered?

Anonymouswizard
2015-05-25, 01:53 PM
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

'A person tries to solve or uncover something'. You can have an 'investigate' story where nobody goes on a journey and nobody arrives.


There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

Basically this, I believe that if there is no narrative there is no story, and if nothing happens there is no narrative. From a brief looking over of 'Waiting for Godot' I can tell that stuff happens, it may not be important, but it happens. The narrative of it is the waiting, even if nothing important happens in them.

TheCountAlucard
2015-05-25, 01:58 PM
Well, the problem is solved by writing an RPG that *is* concerned with characters' internal development, and/or by explaining the slice-of-life paradigm to all your fellow tablemates and then convincing them it would be fun to try to play that style.Something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, perhaps? :smallwink:

Vitruviansquid
2015-05-25, 02:03 PM
Something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, perhaps? :smallwink:

Haven't heard of it before, but looks interesting.

Yora
2015-05-25, 02:09 PM
I think game rules are mostly irrelevant for that, though. Not using kingdom management rules seems to me the only thing that would seem important to me.

Much more important would be the setting, which has to provide hooks for things to do that go beyond the lowest common denominator of "we all want to be not dead".

Maglubiyet
2015-05-25, 02:16 PM
Hence the question. There are no established conventions for non epic world saving plots to work with.

There are plenty, you're just not looking in the right place. HINT: it likely won't be in the scifi/fantasy section.

VoxRationis
2015-05-25, 02:28 PM
In my current campaign, the players are working to restore a not-entirely-good queen at the expense of a not-entirely-evil empire and several petty warlords. There's no Dark Lord running about, at least not one with any real power or scope, and the players are not nice people. It's possible I'll have to reboot this campaign, and if I do, the players will each be petty warlords trying to expand at the expense of their neighbors.

Another person at my table is gearing up for an "Explore the uncharted reaches of the world" campaign—nothing to do with any Dark Lord, victorious or not.

There are lots of campaign plots out there.

Aliquid
2015-05-25, 02:48 PM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two.

a couple video games
Ultima IV
Planescape: Torment

Friv
2015-05-25, 03:36 PM
Haven't heard of it before, but looks interesting.

It's pretty great.

It does take a heck of a lot of getting used to, though, due to being an exceptionally narrative, very rules-heavy game based around resource management and narrative control rather than task management and task resolution. If you're playing with people who are used to Fate being the crunchiest narrative game around, it can take some serious adaptation time.

And yeah, while you could run a Dark Lord plot in it, it is very suited to friendly, pastoral games (and to weird, kind of mystical games; my group is in the middle of a Revolutionary Girl Utena-style magical high school / reality manipulation game that's going very well.)

AxeAlex
2015-05-25, 03:51 PM
Ive ran a lot of stories over my years Gming.
Many of them were Dark-lord related, but a few quite different comes to mind:

-You have to escape your captor. (And you discover you were brought to the future by your alien captor and he wishes to learn human history)

-You have to find your adoptive mother. (You go to her funeral to notice she's not in the coffin, but her twin sister is.)

-You have to dismantle a conspiracy trying to trigger a war between the alliance and the Dark-Lord. (And find out that the conspiracy is not evil, the dark lord is not evil, and the alliance is not better or worse than them)

In a more generic idea, "Find the artefact" is also a common plot that is NOT Dark-Lord related.

Lord Raziere
2015-05-25, 03:56 PM
In a more generic idea, "Find the artefact" is also a common plot that is NOT Dark-Lord related.

oh, maybe the world is beginning to naturally die and the PC's need to seek out the artifact of legend that is able to do something about it? like renew or make a new world? or something like that. that would make for a good plot.

Yukitsu
2015-05-25, 04:07 PM
I think game rules are mostly irrelevant for that, though. Not using kingdom management rules seems to me the only thing that would seem important to me.

Much more important would be the setting, which has to provide hooks for things to do that go beyond the lowest common denominator of "we all want to be not dead".

I think this latter thing is why it inevitably leads to that sort of "dark lord" syndrome. All campaigns want to draw people in, and all campaigns want a big flashy finish. I think in that regard and in that context, it becomes very easy to see why you end up with a "stop the evil antagonist" sort of deal. I'm assuming for a second that when you were summarizing the two types of plots, you were basically saying anything that is kind of against you really counts as a dark lord for your purpose. Simpler, smaller ones are OK for modules or quick campaigns, but for a large narrative you typically want some sort of primary antagonist and there has to be some kind of challenge when you finally confront him. Hence that sort of dark lord doing whatever kind of narrative.

Vrock_Summoner
2015-05-25, 04:17 PM
Should we revise that to be "There is only one type of story: a story"?

Knowing how hard people will countertrope just for lols, there is probably, somewhere out there, a story that is not a story. :smalltongue:

@OP: Well, maybe. D&D, specifically, isn't really designed for much except high-fantasy, high-power-curve combat/magic politics. And while it does combat well enough, it's pretty much the worst "magic politics" game other than, like, FATAL. So it's hard to build campaigns that match what the game is designed to handle well that aren't "we work our way up through more and more powerful enemies to reach and defeat a super baddie."

Different games are much better for different kinds of stories. For example, those sorts of stories/plots are extremely rare in games such as Ars Magica or VtM or WtM or most horror games like Don't Rest Your Head or Little Terrors. (Call of Chthulhu often fits the mold, though.)

Amphetryon
2015-05-25, 04:18 PM
In my current campaign, the players are working to restore a not-entirely-good queen at the expense of a not-entirely-evil empire and several petty warlords. There's no Dark Lord running about, at least not one with any real power or scope, and the players are not nice people. It's possible I'll have to reboot this campaign, and if I do, the players will each be petty warlords trying to expand at the expense of their neighbors.

Another person at my table is gearing up for an "Explore the uncharted reaches of the world" campaign—nothing to do with any Dark Lord, victorious or not.

There are lots of campaign plots out there.

So, they're playing the "Odysseus regains his throne" portion of The Odyssey? :smallwink:

Lord Torath
2015-05-25, 05:09 PM
Exploration. X1 - The Isle of Dread.

X2 - Castle Amber is rather sort of a survival/rescue plot.

Hawkstar
2015-05-25, 05:13 PM
Knowing how hard people will countertrope just for lols, there is probably, somewhere out there, a story that is not a story. :smalltongue:

@OP: Well, maybe. D&D, specifically, isn't really designed for much except high-fantasy, high-power-curve combat/magic politics. And while it does combat well enough, it's pretty much the worst "magic politics" game other than, like, FATAL. So it's hard to build campaigns that match what the game is designed to handle well that aren't "we work our way up through more and more powerful enemies to reach and defeat a super baddie."
Actually, D&D is atrocious at the "Defeat a super baddie" part.

Anonymouswizard
2015-05-25, 05:16 PM
Actually, D&D is atrocious at the "Defeat a super baddie" part.

Yes, but that just makes it like all the other plots :smalltongue:

Yora
2015-05-25, 05:28 PM
Exploration. X1 - The Isle of Dread.

X2 - Castle Amber is rather sort of a survival/rescue plot.

Okay, there is a third type of campaign: "Get rich!" :smallamused:

Chronos
2015-05-25, 05:30 PM
There are stories without a plot. Consider, for example, LeGuin's "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas". There are even stories without characters: Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" comes to mind. I suppose that "Omelas" has people going on a journey, but where they're going isn't the point; it's where they're coming from. And if you really want to argue it, in "Rains", the Bomb is the stranger who comes to town, but that's a stretch (it's not a character, and it doesn't even itself show up in the story at all).

Zalphon
2015-05-25, 05:42 PM
I have ran campaigns where the goal of the campaign wasn't stopping a Dark Lord or resisting one, but rather rediscovering who they were. They were great villains once.

One, a Demon Lord who struck fear throughout the Abyss and nearly won the Blood War single-handedly.

One, an Arch Devil who once ruled Avernus, and betrayed all Devils by conspiring with the Demon Lord.

One, a Solar who betrayed his people when they stood side-by-side with the Devils to stop the Demons from winning the Blood War.

And the final, a Yugoloth who had manipulated them all into doing it in belief it would result in the Yugoloths gaining a lot of contracts (which it did).

They were obliterated by the Gods of the Upper Planes, but it was the Yugoloth's profane magics that allowed their spirits to survive. For thousands of years, their spirits laid in dormancy slowly accumulating new forms which would serve as their bodies (the players).

The campaign sadly fizzled out early, but it was likely to progress with them either finishing what they started or leading the charge into the Abyss against Graz'zt (who manipulated the Yugoloth into doing it, knowing it would eliminate his competition (the Demon Lord) and pave the way for him to win the Blood War, and utilize the full forces of the Lower Planes to take Prime Material Planes).

I suppose it could be a "Stop the Dark Lord", but I think the players would have vanquished Graz'zt (not killed) and taken his role. Becoming the Dark Lords, so to speak.

goto124
2015-05-26, 12:02 AM
'Vanquish the Dark Lord... and take over his role!'

(Male sexes and genders not required.)

Guran
2015-05-26, 02:35 AM
Those plots are actually the easiest plots to come up with. So it is not all that strange that most DM's keep themselves to certain story lines. Not everyone behind the screen is an award winning fantasy author and even fantasy authors tend to stick to dark lords and all. Why? Because there are still enough people out there who like that kind of story. (And publishers don't like taking risks, but that is a whole other story.) However, to say that there are only two campaign plots - which even if it was correct I still wouldn't mind it because D&D is about having fun with your friends and doing crazy stuff - is a bit off in my opinion.

Recently I joined a campaign in which we all joined a major tournament hosted by the king. The winning party - who is the first to find some sort of magical crystals spread throughout the kingdom - may make a wish from the king that he will grant them as long as it is within his power. The campaign I DM revolves around an ancient empire collapsing. The PC's are knights serving this empire and try to prevent the downfall and protect its citizens. The campaign centers more on the characters, the pressure they are under and the choices they have to make.

Milo v3
2015-05-26, 07:24 AM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

In the campaign I'm writing currently plot is more..."Prevent neutral lords from preventing a neutral lord and his allies from going too far in his attempt to prevent a neutral lord from returning, so they don't go too far in trying to heal the world."

Which I "think" is.... "slightly" better. Not much admittedly, but slightly.

Anonymouswizard
2015-05-26, 07:48 AM
The last campaign I was in had 'find the BBEG before he summons himself into the world', which featured us coming up with increasingly invasive ways to try and prove our employer wasn't the big bad. The majority of the actual plot was finding out whyso many copies of demon summoning for dummies were being shipped into London.

Lord Torath
2015-05-26, 09:07 AM
+1 DM says there are a few more than two....The 36 Basic Plots (http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/36plots.htm)

Knaight
2015-05-26, 09:19 AM
There are plenty, you're just not looking in the right place. HINT: it likely won't be in the scifi/fantasy section.

There are plenty of examples even in the scifi/fantasy section. Avoid bad military sci-fi and Tolkien ripoffs, and you're pretty much good. To use just a few examples off the top of my head from what I've read recently:

A man tries to get a machine working, slowly bankrupting his family in the process.
Shipwrecked survivors try to make a new home, resisting the temptations of greed that draw them towards danger.
A brilliant physicist leaves his planet to try and advance his work abroad, coming into conflict with the socio-political standards of the other planet.


Videogame examples are a lot harder, and as for module examples I'm not exactly well informed - though the default example in Qin doesn't involve any "Dark Lords", just a couple of corrupt bureaucrats.

Yora
2015-05-26, 09:24 AM
A man tries to get a machine working, slowly bankrupting his family in the process.
Shipwrecked survivors try to make a new home, resisting the temptations of greed that draw them towards danger.
A brilliant physicist leaves his planet to try and advance his work abroad, coming into conflict with the socio-political standards of the other planet.


Those are stories. But can you make a campaign (say 5 adventures or more) with these?

AlignmentDebate
2015-05-26, 09:37 AM
I think you can get whatever low number of stories you want, so long as you define the categories broadly enough.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-26, 09:47 AM
Those are stories. But can you make a campaign (say 5 adventures or more) with these?

No. No you can't. There is no possible way to make a campaign about anything other than challenging a Dark Lord.

Every other suggestion people have made here is a lie. Fortunately you saw through the deception.

Zalphon
2015-05-26, 09:54 AM
'Vanquish the Dark Lord... and take over his role!'

(Male sexes and genders not required.)

Well, at least we weren't trying to stop him.

Flickerdart
2015-05-26, 09:57 AM
No. No you can't. There is no possible way to make a campaign about anything other than challenging a Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord was inside you all along!

Mr.Moron
2015-05-26, 09:58 AM
Those are stories. But can you make a campaign (say 5 adventures or more) with these?



#2 would be a great campaign. I'm not sure it'd work so great in D&D specifically just due to the number of "This isn't a problem" buttons in the magic system, but for a generalized fantasy universe it'd work. So long as challenges like finding fresh food & water, and dealing with diseases aren't 1-action fixes with divine magic it's a really robust setting.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-26, 10:01 AM
The Dark Lord was inside you all along!

So true! :tongue:

NichG
2015-05-26, 10:02 AM
I guess I'd turn it around and say, can you really make a campaign (at least 75 sessions) out of just hunting down and killing a single Dark Lord?

Earthwalker
2015-05-26, 10:03 AM
what plots have we got up to so far ?

Stop the Dark Lord Rising.
Fight against the Dark Lord that has risen and get back to a nicer world.
Explore the unknown (Wilderness usualy)
Build an Empire
Keep making money (A system of one shot adventures just to get more money, ala Shadowrun)

Am I missing any basic plots ?

Jade_Tarem
2015-05-26, 10:21 AM
As has been brought up earlier in the thread, anything is going to look the same if you 'zoom out' and generalize enough that the differences are negligible. Likewise, saying that 'a man goes on a journey' or 'a stranger comes to down' is just a metaphor for 'in any good story, something happens.' Waiting for Godot has already been brought up, and is an excellent example of something that is not a story, but rather a cruel trick played on the audience.

So certainly there are lots of different stories. It gets tricky, though, when you restrict yourself to adventure plots. Given that dark lords (or... powerful political figures, I guess) and world politics shape everything at some level, you can argue that there is no escape from those plots so long as you count 'dealing with any part of the empire/nation' to be a subset of those plots. Adventurers need a long-term goal and tend to rapidly gain power of all kinds - magical, monetary, and even political - which generally propels them to the dark lord's sphere of influence sooner or later.

But that doesn't have to be the case! Tabletop RPGs tend to feature a lot of combat, but there are other available motivations for a band of adventurers.

The treasure motive has already been brought up - maybe your party catches wind of a rad artifact, lost secret, or maybe just a great big pile of money.

For new ideas, you may want to examine the great driver of all adventure - conflict. We're taught that there are four types of conflict - man vs. society, man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. self. Realistically, they'll all show up over the course of the campaign, but you also have to pick one to design the campaign's theme and main plot around. The two types of campaigns the OP brings up, Overthrow the Dark Lord and Stop the Dark Lord, correspond to the first two types of conflict because those are easy to model in the context of an adventure. They are also generally clear cut and easy to understand, which is good because not all adventuring parties can handle a great deal of complexity and nuance in their game, if you catch my meaning. For that same reason, Man vs. Self is rarely provides the basis for a good adventure arc where you Go to New Places and Meet the New Monster Manual.

Man vs. Nature, though, is frequently overlooked as a source of adventure, instead making cameo appearances at low levels before the party can create enough magical output to survive volcanic eruptions and make the weather sit, roll over, and beg.

But, just like the roadside brigand is much more impressive when she's the Bandit Queen of Ruzavia, increasing the scale of the threat can still make for a fantastic campaign. Here are some ideas:

1) Monsters have always been part of the world, but something has changed. Monstrous giant vermin, long-extinct animals, and even freaking dinosaurs are beginning to show up with alarming frequency. The PCs can deal with the local threat, but they'll find that the entire continent - perhaps the entire world - is having the same problem. They'll need to track down the source of the threat and, worse still, unite a divided land in order to enact an organized solution, perhaps against the wishes of those who seek to use the chaos to their own advantage.*

2) After ten thousand years of use, the weather control machine created by an ancient, epic wizard to keep the world from perishing to natural disaster has finally begun to break down. A continent-wide storm is brewing in the middle of the ocean with the demented machine at its heart, and it will wipe the world clean if left unchecked. The players begin as part of a wide-reaching initiative to find someone, anyone, who can fix it (conventional weather magic relied on the wondrous weather machine functioning correctly), and soon find themselves in the sole possession of a key part or password that only they can use. But just having the needed component isn't enough - they must acquire the skills, the equipment, and the plan to get to the machine through the fury of the Ten Thousand Year Storm... and when they get there, they must unravel the old wizard's secrets to once again master nature itself!

3) The players wake up on a strange planet full of stranger beasts. It is clear that civilization once existed, but all that remains are ruins and malfunctioning constructs. They must find a way to tame the wilderness and become self reliant in the immediate sense, but if they ever want to get home, they must also determine where (when?) they are, what this strange new place is, and what happened to it, not to mention how they got here! Once the mysteries are finally solved, they must wrest the means of their own rescue from a world determined to teach them their place on the food chain...


So there you have it. Three adventure ideas, all lacking a Dark Lord and the overthrow or potential overthrow of a nation. Do I know of any published adventure material for this off the top of my head? No, but I bet there's something out there like it. And if there isn't, then you could always run a home game that way.

*While that is a Man vs. Man conflict, it doesn't change the driving force of the game any more than having to fight the mountain weather made Man vs. Nature the driving conflict of Lord of the Rings.

Edit: Parts of this got ninja'd, but I'm going to leave it as-is.

Aliquid
2015-05-26, 10:45 AM
what plots have we got up to so far ?

Stop the Dark Lord Rising.
Fight against the Dark Lord that has risen and get back to a nicer world.
Explore the unknown (Wilderness usualy)
Build an Empire
Keep making money (A system of one shot adventures just to get more money, ala Shadowrun)

Am I missing any basic plots ?
- Solve a mystery

Friv
2015-05-26, 11:04 AM
what plots have we got up to so far ?

Stop the Dark Lord Rising.
Fight against the Dark Lord that has risen and get back to a nicer world.
Explore the unknown (Wilderness usualy)
Build an Empire
Keep making money (A system of one shot adventures just to get more money, ala Shadowrun)

Am I missing any basic plots ?

Assuming that episodic plots don't count...

*) Follow the trail of a missing something or someone of narrative importance
*) Try to become the best of whatever it is that you and your friends do (we will become the world's greatest wizards / superheroes / football team / Pokemon trainers)

Amphetryon
2015-05-26, 11:38 AM
- Solve a mystery

Solving a mystery is a variant of exploring the unknown, itself a variant of build an Empire/make money; the presence (or lack thereof) of a Dark Lord only changes peripherals on the "explore/build" paradigm.

Yora
2015-05-26, 11:46 AM
With "solve a mystery" and "explore the unknown" I feel that it still needs to answer the question why the player characters would care. What would they accomplish if they succeed and why would it be a problem if they don't?

With Invasion, Rebellion, and Treasure Hunt, the unspoken reasons are very familiar to us. To preserve a decent way of life, to restore a decent way of life, and to create a life of wealth for yourself. The motivation comes prepackaged with the action. Mystery and Explorations are means, but they don't have an automatically implied end.
I think Exploration most often is a more specific case of Treasure Hunt, while Mystery is often the beginning part of Invasion (You rarely know the villain plans an invasion of soldiers/demons/undead right from the start; that's commonly the answer to the mystery.)

Anonymouswizard
2015-05-26, 01:07 PM
I guess I'd turn it around and say, can you really make a campaign (at least 75 sessions) out of just hunting down and killing a single Dark Lord?

Why is a campaign 75 sessions long? I've been in two campaigns in the 20-30 session mark, and most don't last that long.

Aliquid
2015-05-26, 02:21 PM
Solving a mystery is a variant of exploring the unknown, itself a variant of build an Empire/make money; the presence (or lack thereof) of a Dark Lord only changes peripherals on the "explore/build" paradigm.
I can buy that solving a mystery is a variant of exploring the unknown. You might not be exploring an unknown location, but you are exploring an issue with an unknown answer.

But I don't agree that it has to be a variant on building an empire/making money. You can easily have a mystery to solve and not make a profit or build an empire in the process.


With "solve a mystery" and "explore the unknown" I feel that it still needs to answer the question why the player characters would care. What would they accomplish if they succeed and why would it be a problem if they don't?
Depends on the player. Personally I'm a curious person, so I'm happy to explore for the sake of exploring.


I think Exploration most often is a more specific case of Treasure Hunt, while Mystery is often the beginning part of Invasion (You rarely know the villain plans an invasion of soldiers/demons/undead right from the start; that's commonly the answer to the mystery.)
It typically is, but it doesn't have to be.

BRC
2015-05-26, 03:11 PM
With "solve a mystery" and "explore the unknown" I feel that it still needs to answer the question why the player characters would care. What would they accomplish if they succeed and why would it be a problem if they don't?

With Invasion, Rebellion, and Treasure Hunt, the unspoken reasons are very familiar to us. To preserve a decent way of life, to restore a decent way of life, and to create a life of wealth for yourself. The motivation comes prepackaged with the action. Mystery and Explorations are means, but they don't have an automatically implied end.
I think Exploration most often is a more specific case of Treasure Hunt, while Mystery is often the beginning part of Invasion (You rarely know the villain plans an invasion of soldiers/demons/undead right from the start; that's commonly the answer to the mystery.)

Invasion is really just "Preserve a good status quo", while Rebellion is "Change a bad status quo". Treasure hunt is "Establish a good status quo", but on a more personal level, rather than for the setting as a whole.

Mystery can easily exist outside the context of changing the status quo . Consider, "My father was murdered. I must find out who killed him".
That's not really preserving a status quo. The evil act is already been done. Nor is it necessarily changing the status quo. The murderer may not be planning to kill again, and bringing them to justice won't really impact the setting very much. It won't even really impact your character's situation very much. Unlike a treasure hunt, your character may not end the adventure any better off than they started it, except for the personal satisfaction of having brought the killer to justice.

It's the job of the GM to provide a reason for the PCs to be interested. This is no more the case with Mysteries than it is with Rebellion plots. You assume that the plot is "Overthrow the evil ruler", because you assume that the GM is making the ruler evil to give the PCs incentive to overthrow him.

If you're going to frame the Rebellion plot as "Overthrow the Ruler that the PCs have reason to overthrow", it's only fair to frame the Mystery plot in the same way. "Solve the mystery that the PCs have a reason to solve".

Exploration can come out the same way, with no real impact on the status quo at any scale, but there is a considerable difference. A Mystery plot has a built-in antagonist, the culprit or conspiracy you are seeking to unearth. An Exploration campaign may have the environment itself as an antagonist, but that's a very different feel. There's at least as much difference between Exploration and Mystery as there is between Invasion and Rebellion.

NichG
2015-05-26, 07:28 PM
With "solve a mystery" and "explore the unknown" I feel that it still needs to answer the question why the player characters would care. What would they accomplish if they succeed and why would it be a problem if they don't?

With Invasion, Rebellion, and Treasure Hunt, the unspoken reasons are very familiar to us. To preserve a decent way of life, to restore a decent way of life, and to create a life of wealth for yourself. The motivation comes prepackaged with the action. Mystery and Explorations are means, but they don't have an automatically implied end.
I think Exploration most often is a more specific case of Treasure Hunt, while Mystery is often the beginning part of Invasion (You rarely know the villain plans an invasion of soldiers/demons/undead right from the start; that's commonly the answer to the mystery.)

A specific example of Mystery from my last campaign:

- The characters all wake up in weird situations with amnesia, in a supernaturally-nuked steampunk city.
- They have various opportunities to discover their past, but also have to deal with other forces in the city trying to hunt them or eachother down.
- The players discover that the gods of the world were shattered when the 'nuke' went off, and that the god-souls got intermixed with other people
- The players discover that when they remember their past, they're actually rewriting the timeline to be consistent, and that they can have some control over what they remember.
- They realize that the other forces in the city are basically squads sent into this place by the militaries of the two forces of the war, trying to rewrite the past so their side won. The players decide they don't like either side.
- The players realize that the gods intentionally sparked off the war and even gave humanity the superweapon because every 10000 years they needed to clean house on the timeline or things got too intertwined for fate to be malleable. But they got caught in their own scheme since the people they gave it to modified it.
- The players also discover that the more they know, the more tenuous their connection with 'this' world becomes, and they begin to fade out
- So the players had to solve enough of the mystery to know what to change about the past and how, without solving the whole thing and becoming unable to influence it.
- What follows is the players trying to rewrite the gods to not be jerks

So the 'invasion' aspect is there, but its secondary to the apotheosis theme - being able to make the world look the way one wants it to. You can basically attach 'Mystery' to almost anything.


Why is a campaign 75 sessions long? I've been in two campaigns in the 20-30 session mark, and most don't last that long.

About a year and a half is the standard for me for something that runs to completion, which is about 75 sessions. The point was more to address the incredulity about certain stories being able to be stretched into campaigns. 'Dark Lord' is not actually a very good plotline for a long story arc, because what tends to happen is that the players plan and execute an assassination scheme once they know who the guy is and where he is. Partially because 'we have to become stronger so we can take him out' tends to feel very meta for characters who aren't explicitly aware of leveling up. Either you'll be able to take him or not, but fighting gryphons on the other side of the world doesn't logically increase your chances.

Centik
2015-05-26, 07:44 PM
Our game is based on character quests. Mine, for example, revolves around amassing enough gold to free my old troupe from slavery at the hands of Red Wizards of Thay.

VoxRationis
2015-05-26, 07:54 PM
'Dark Lord' is not actually a very good plotline for a long story arc, because what tends to happen is that the players plan and execute an assassination scheme once they know who the guy is and where he is. Partially because 'we have to become stronger so we can take him out' tends to feel very meta for characters who aren't explicitly aware of leveling up. Either you'll be able to take him or not, but fighting gryphons on the other side of the world doesn't logically increase your chances.

That's why a well-made Dark Lord story has either: A) a lot of territory between you and the Dark Lord (Lord of the Rings); B) numerous quests along the way to collect resources to defeat the Dark Lord, the acquisition of which "coincidentally" allows the players to gain levels sufficient to tackle him (Dragon Age: Origins); C) numerous quests along the way to answer those questions of "who the guy is" and "where he is," which, again, "coincidentally" allows the players to level up before meeting him.

Amphetryon
2015-05-26, 08:14 PM
I can buy that solving a mystery is a variant of exploring the unknown. You might not be exploring an unknown location, but you are exploring an issue with an unknown answer.

But I don't agree that it has to be a variant on building an empire/making money. You can easily have a mystery to solve and not make a profit or build an empire in the process.


Building an empire/making money stories are about establishing new inroads and expanding frontiers/opportunities; both of these can easily be described accurately as branching out (exploring) into previously hostile/uncharted territory (the unknown).

Hawkstar
2015-05-26, 08:38 PM
Solving a mystery is a variant of exploring the unknownNot really, unless you're stupidly broad in defining "The Unknown"

Aliquid
2015-05-26, 10:51 PM
Building an empire/making money stories are about establishing new inroads and expanding frontiers/opportunities; both of these can easily be described accurately as branching out (exploring) into previously hostile/uncharted territory (the unknown).

You'r argument just supported building an empire is a variant of exploration... Not that exploration is a variant of building an empire.

1Forge
2015-05-26, 10:56 PM
Well i run a campaign that is "stop the stubborn peoples from fighting all the time" (especially the elves with anyone else) and theres also "kill the monsters, and sell the loot repeat as necessary":smallbiggrin:

Stop the Dark Lord Rising.
Fight against the Dark Lord that has risen and get back to a nicer world.
Explore the unknown
Build an Empire
Keep making money
Solve a mystery

and now mediate the dispute (or political intrigue)

Amphetryon
2015-05-27, 12:27 PM
You'r argument just supported building an empire is a variant of exploration... Not that exploration is a variant of building an empire.

A and B are variants of the same concept. I care not whether you're following traditional alphabet order or not.


Not really, unless you're stupidly broad in defining "The Unknown"
Ah, the classic "your argument is stupid" approach, slightly reworded in what would seem to be an effort to avoid personal attacks. Nifty.

Aliquid
2015-05-27, 12:47 PM
A and B are variants of the same concept. I care not whether you're following traditional alphabet order or not.
Not true at all.
You can say that all thumbs are a type of finger, but you can't say all fingers are a type of thumb.

Jade_Tarem
2015-05-27, 11:29 PM
Building an empire/making money stories are about establishing new inroads and expanding frontiers/opportunities; both of these can easily be described accurately as branching out (exploring) into previously hostile/uncharted territory (the unknown).

Yes, but by that definition, having a particularly epic bowel movement in a random, dingy Waffle House bathroom also counts as exploring the unknown. While generalizing to the point of tautology means that you can't be wrong, it also isn't terribly helpful in a discussion that is presumably about creating unconventional campaign plots.

Dimers
2015-05-28, 01:42 AM
With "solve a mystery" and "explore the unknown" I feel that it still needs to answer the question why the player characters would care. What would they accomplish if they succeed and why would it be a problem if they don't?

Why they care is very game-specific. Take the previously mentioned Planescape: Torment, for an example. The Nameless One can have any number of motivations, developing his alignment over time, but if nothing else then he wants to stop getting murdered by shadows. Morte wants to solve the mystery out of guilt -- but also has a lot of motivation to prolong the mystery. Annah's in it for love, or thereabouts, and to a lesser degree to show up her rivals. Grace takes it as an intellectual challenge and a new experience, nothing more. Nordom gloms on because the Nameless One rescues him from his own personal hell and gives him back the structure he needs to function. Dakkon is bound, quite unwillingly, by a promise he made ages ago ... though perhaps you can give him a more positive motivation in-game (ditto Morte). Vhaillor needs to solve the mystery because he's an icon of justice. The only party character who doesn't have their own obvious and unique motivation is Ignus, who appears to be in the game just to have someone evil available.

(Mind you, that's without bringing in all the characters who spend less time with the Nameless One but do have an interest -- Ravel, Deionarra, Pharod, Fell, some of the Godsmen, Trias, Reekwind, Dora ...)

What do all of these characters accomplish if they succeed? It varies. A lot.

Why would it be a problem if they don't? It varies. In most cases it prolongs their torment, but even that isn't universally true.

Planescape: Torment is definitely not an evil overlord story, and it's a fine example of the "man versus self" that Jade Tarem mentioned in passing. In fact, it puts together multiple "man versus self" stories -- Morte and Dakkon are certainly in that category too, and the others to some extent.

The Ars Magica game I'm in at the moment was heavily influenced by one player's motivation to amuse himself with terrorizing peasants, but my character's main motivation is preservation of books, another wants to amass political power through making royalty happy (and occasionally assassinating other mages), and a fourth had nothing more complex in mind than eating honey. Our common motivation is to preserve our little slice of territory. No dark lord in sight (unless you count our guy who likes to terrorize the villagers we own).

darkscizor
2015-05-30, 03:16 PM
Or helping a dark lord and his armies take over the world, of course.

Shadowsend
2015-05-31, 06:13 AM
I've always wanted to run a campaign that starts at all the level one characters finding an all-powerful genie who can grant them one wish. They decide what it is and ask for it, and then the genie grants it and disappears. Ripples ensue.

Gamgee
2015-05-31, 06:56 AM
First campaign ever was DnD 3.5 stop the dragon so yea. Granted this was my first campaign.
Alien Invasion Campaign in modern day where we need to stop them.
I've run conquer the galaxy campaign. (KOTOR Saga Ed)
I've run a military Mandalorian campaign to conquer a world. (Saga Ed)
Numerous other Saga campaigns. From joe shmoes to super important destiny folks.
Conan 2ed Sword and Sorcery game with no overarching plot or large goals. Just out to make some cash.
Warhammer 40k Deathwatch mystery/stop the bad guys from waking up/who the hell is this new faction
Warhammer 40k Only War. A day in the Life. As titled. No over arching plot. Its a military campaign through and through.
Numenera. Stop the bad guy campaign/heal the damage he does to the land. This one takes a familiar premise and flips it on its head.
Saga Edition. Sith Apprentice campaign. This was too ambitious. I wanted everyone to be a Sith apprentice vying for the position of the apprentice the Lord would take. PvP and survival ish. Playing kidnapped kids ect. Too bad no one wanted to be a sith! Except for like two people. Everyone wanted their unique snowflake TM* droids, or battle hardened mercs, or other things.
DnD 5th. This is a plain old simple hope to someday reach level 20 and stop the big bad guy.

TeChameleon
2015-06-01, 02:50 AM
Huh. Yeah, my campaigns (both as player and GM) thus far haven't exactly had an overabundance of dark lords.

* First campaign: memory is a bit dim, honestly- it wasn't that long ago, but it was an Eberron campaign, and I have no idea to this day what the hell was going on :smalltongue:
* Second campaign: This one's still ongoing, actually- seven or eight years and counting thus far. It started off... oog. The overarching plot was initially about making an attempt to prevent Orcus from manifesting into the Prime Material and undeading up the place, which I suppose is at least tangentially related to the dark lord thing, but that fell by the wayside years ago when my character, the party's resident wizard, proceeded to use an ancient artifact to rip the good-aligned lands out the ground in their entirety to make a floating continent.

Fast forward four hundred years, my character wakes up from doing the king under the hill/sleeping in Avalon thing to discover a world that venerates his very memory and a critical success on an Arcana check to help prove his identity was considered him being disoriented and weakened from his long slumber. This, naturally, did not improve his mood any, and he has since decided this whole 'being venerated' thing is for the birds. So he decided to travel incognito using the enormous business empire he had inadvertently created while trying to stop Orcus (he apparently invented the franchise restaurant, which thrived for four centuries and made him rather wealthy), and continue his life's goal of trying to set everything that annoys him on fire.

I was the only one who decided to keep their character from the beginning campaign, and this time around we've mostly been dealing with the fallout of the first party's efforts to thwart Orcus and what happened when the floating continent was created. Most currently, this includes fighting in a civil war in the reborn Dragonborn Empire against the brother of one of the PCs, who framed said PC for combined regicide/patricide/fratricide, when it was in fact said brother (and now the 'rightful' emperor) who did it. Again, some dark lord overtones, but if we lose, the status quo doesn't actually change, and the guy isn't even that bad of a ruler, just kind of a **** when it comes to family. We've also been dealing with the genocidally xenophobic descendants of the elven nation that fled into the feywild when Orcus was advancing on them- apparently four hundred years of their ruling class being messed with by Rakshasa hasn't exactly made them especially stable. And, of course, there's the aforementioned Rakshasa, who are doing... something. We're not even sure what at this point, but given that it seems to include our death, we kind of don't want it to happen. Although we've been having all kinds of fun with that, since the DM gave us a Helm of Alignment Reversal as... almost a throwaway gag, I think... and we promptly started jamming it on as many Rakshasa heads as we could manage, which has kind of thrown a bit of a spanner in the works of whatever they're trying to do :smallbiggrin:

* The Shadowrun campaign I've been running- Shadowrun as a setting doesn't exactly lend itself to dark lords, and I have no real interest in introducing them- it's mostly been the PCs trying to a) find cool toys and b) make the world suck a bit less. Oh, and having the crap scared out of them by small pink teddy bears. I don't run horror adventures often, but I do rather have fun when I do :smallamused:

ImNotTrevor
2015-06-01, 10:39 AM
I have a campaign going that is perhaps seen as a variant of the "stop the dark lord" trope, but I like to think that it is different enough to not be the same.

About 40 years before the first session, the world was rocked by a bizarre natural disaster. Somewhere far away, a bunch of wizards were having a fight and it caused a magical backlash focused through a wayward Labyrinth spell. Within moments, the entire world was converted into a gigantic maze.

Now, the characters have a rather good reason to explore: To survive. Cities that once relied on trade are closed off from one another, sometimes they themselves are split in half by massive stone walls, a section of the city now resting high above the other two. Rivers run dry as they are cut off from their sources. Bandits brave the tops of the walls, allowing them to attack cities from high above. The world sucks, and nobody knows how to fix it.

The maze has an epicenter, but it's not a place where they could likely go. A tower surrounded by a magical maelstrom that defies reality lying somewhere to the west, that will act like a battery that feeds the magic of the labyrinth, and will continue to do so for thousands of years. How are they supposed to take it down?

I have no idea. Maybe they aren't meant to. Maybe the freshly born god that they are occasionally assisted by is guiding them towards making it impossible to undo the labyrinth at all. I don't know. It will depend on a lot of what they do. I don't write the crap out that far in advance. They have a session, and the world responds to them, so on and so forth. The Labyrinth has no agenda, so it doesn't do anything to stop them. Since it's part of the environment, they trouble themselves with solving other issues. They now seem focused on building a world that has adapted to the Labyrinth, and that's fine by me.

I prefer, personally, to not have a "story." Story is what happens after the session is over and you look back on it. That's where the story comes from. Trying to write something out ahead of time can cause lots of problems. I'm a huge fan of importing the Fronts system from Apocalypse World. It's super portable, and makes for an amazing bunch of sessions. Long story short for Fronts:
There is bad stuff in the world. Bad people. Bad places. Bad groups. Bad afflictions. the longer they go unstopped, the worse they become. The more chaos and disruption your characters cause, the more Fronts come into being. My players aren't fighting Shazeldim, Lord of Demons Who Seeks to Conquer. They're fighting The Corrupt Guards and The Skitter Gang and The Meatcutters and The Drought and The Burning Doll. Each their own problems, one of them, the Burning Doll, was literally created by the players. The Skitter Gang only became a problem because the players antagonized them. The others are simply additional issues inspired by things the players were asking about, so I provided things to do in those distant lands.

The players aren't the Chosen Ones who are destined to end all suffering. They're firemen putting out fires, sometimes (and in one case, quite literally) fires they started themselves. I find that this method is:
A) Much more fun, and way less stressful for me.
B) Way more fun for my players, who feel like their actions matter in more ways than just "we killed the things and got the gold."
C) The world feels ALIVE and REAL. It's not just a backdrop sprinkled with dungeons. Things happen out of sight that are important.

The only thing to keep in mind is that the stuff that happens outside of the influence of the characters should NOT screw them over. Screw with them, sure. Screw them over, never.

Remember: ALWAYS give your players what they worked for. But you are never obligated to give them what they HOPED for. ;D

TheTeaMustFlow
2015-06-01, 12:04 PM
If you want to be unnecessarily broad about it, most plots in most media can be boiled down to `make something happen` or `stop something from happening`. This does not prevent a huge amount of variety within those two categories.

D&D&Such just tends to be rather more obvious about it than most media.

Wardog
2015-06-13, 04:32 PM
In the campaign I'm writing currently plot is more..."Prevent neutral lords from preventing a neutral lord and his allies from going too far in his attempt to prevent a neutral lord from returning, so they don't go too far in trying to heal the world."
.

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

dafrca
2015-06-13, 08:03 PM
@ Yora; While I think a few people have given viable alternatives, I would agree that a great number of RPG campaigns fall into the two categories you gave. Why? Because I think they are fun to do and lend themselves very well to the "small party of heroes resolves the problem" mindset of most RPG games.




Well, this might help:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm Thanks for the link Kami2awa, I had not seen that particular site and I like how he listed them out.

Shamash
2015-06-13, 09:04 PM
Fritz leiber plots were most about getting money, getting girls and getting food to sruvive to the other day.

Blake Hannon
2015-06-14, 06:18 AM
Depends on how broadly you define "the dark lord and his armies."

I'd say the two plotlines are actually 1) "Bad thing X is going to happen. Prevent X. You will have to fight bad guys along the way" and 2) "You want to make positive thing Y to happen. Get/cause Y. You will have to fight bad guys along the way." X could be a dark lord invading, or it could be magic retreating from the world, or it could be a plague that you need to evacuate people from or find the cure for. Y could be the end of the dark lord's tyrannical regime, or it could be a long lost magic artifact that will restore the kingdom to greatness, or it could be rescuing someone from the underworld.

The "bad guys" in either case might not necessarily even be at cross purposes with the PC's regarding their ultimate goal. They could just as easily be groups of wild animals, monsters, and brigands that infest the path to the objective and attack anyone who passes through.

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-14, 10:42 AM
"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two.

Baldur's Gate 2
The Witcher
Dragon Age 2
NWN: Shadows of Undrentide (rest of NWN is guilty)

World Conquest isn't that popular as a villain goal.

Steampunkette
2015-06-14, 03:00 PM
There's "Stop the Evil" and "Take back from evil" sure.

But in Dark Sun you can enjoy "Survive and try to keep your tribe alive" or "Build a mercantile empire on the backs of slaves" to go along with "Escape the slavers who took you" and "Defeat a Sorceror King"

In Ravenloft you've got plenty of survival horror while fighting against the evil inside yourself that may one day see you become one of the Dark Lords yourself.

There's also Save the King, Protect the Relic, Recover the Treasure... None of those have to be against a dark lord or anything. You could be saving the king because you like him better than his snotnosed kids. Or recovering treasure because "It belongs in a museum!", Eberron is full of that questline.

And then there's Exploration and Settlement as well. Or Piracy. Just living on the high seas could lead to endless adventure.

Reltzik
2015-06-15, 08:43 PM
Let's see.

Xenophon's Anabasis. You're trapped behind enemy lines (not necessarily evil overlords) and the campaign is getting the hell back to friendly territory.

You ARE the evil overlord, and your job is to come to power.

You're trying to construct something special -- a building, a school, a city, whatever. Gather the resources you need and defend your opus-in-progress against various people who would try to bring it down.

You are a courier. Your job is to get a delivery from point A to point B. Said Macguffin is a monster/villain/lunatic magnet. Bonus points if it's sentient and working against your mission (3:10 to Yuma).

Exploration. You are on a foreign continent / strange plane / impenetrable jungle / whatever. Explore, uncover wonders natural and alien, acquire exotic trade items and pieces of art, convert the natives to your religion by hook or by crook, and hope they are more susceptible to your diseases than you are to theirs.

REVENGE. It doesn't matter if your target is evil, or overlord, or even sentient. Chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames... on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.

Inevitability
2015-06-17, 02:40 PM
My players tend to turn every campaign's goal into 'get filthy rich trough questionably legal means and gain control of at least one city in the process'.

Or would that make them the dark lords?

AxeAlex
2015-06-17, 04:04 PM
My players tend to turn every campaign's goal into 'get filthy rich trough questionably legal means and gain control of at least one city in the process'.

Or would that make them the dark lords?

Yes.

As op stated, there is ALWAYS a Dark Lord in any story. There is no alternative.

You can easily see so with these recent popular tv series:

Pokemon: The Dark Lord tries conquer the world by enslaving one of every animal on earth.

How I Met Your Mother: A man tells his children the zany adventure he had with his friends when he was younger, adventures that led him to discovered the Dark Lord was inside him all along, trying to conquer the world.

Breaking Bad: The Dark Lord discovers the easiest way to conquer the world: Meth.

Drakeburn
2015-06-17, 10:46 PM
Well, I suppose a dark lord probably doesn't necessarily NEED to rule the world.

Looking at Sleeping Beauty and Anastasia, these "dark lords" are out to fulfill their curses so that they may have rest.

That is one campaign plot you can use in a variety of ways. The reasons can range from vengeance, part of a demonic pact, unfinished business, or to fulfill/prevent a prophecy.

This campaign plot has plenty of variety to choose from.

enderlord99
2015-06-17, 11:00 PM
Knowing how hard people will countertrope just for lols, there is probably, somewhere out there, a story that is not a story. :smalltongue:

Indeed. Some stories (http://www.scp-wiki.net/) are wikis.

Jormengand
2015-06-20, 03:31 PM
Knowing how hard people will countertrope just for lols, there is probably, somewhere out there, a story that is not a story. :smalltongue:

Waiting for Godot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot)?

noob
2015-06-20, 04:27 PM
Why is there is always tension or gaining money/power in your plots?
I remember having made an short campaign where players simply studied an dimension they found with some divination spells and they explored it and learned its rules and then they did gained nothing else than knowing it and they are probably not going to do anything with it they also made no encounters with any hostile thing and they never crossed something dangerous.

ShadowFighter15
2015-07-17, 07:17 PM
Really, statements like that have about as much meaning as saying that there are only about five basic long-cons and all the others - Dog In A Bar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmZHpgFulG0), the Badger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_game), The Spanish Prisoner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner) and so-on - are all variations of those five. Still managed to give us things like three Ocean's 11 films, five seasons of Leverage, eight seasons of Hustle and god-knows how many other shows or films based around con-artistry.

kyoryu
2015-07-17, 09:59 PM
Baldur's Gate 2
The Witcher
Dragon Age 2
NWN: Shadows of Undrentide (rest of NWN is guilty)

World Conquest isn't that popular as a villain goal.

Ultima IV.

Brova
2015-07-17, 10:41 PM
Number of plots depends on level of granularity. On the on end of the scale, all plots are "do a list of things". On the other end, you have distinctions between "fight an Old Red Dragon" and "fight a Very Old Red Dragon". Lots of stories involve some variant of world conquest (or destruction), not particularly because that is "the only plot" but because it's very easy to get people on board with that as a good plan. It doesn't take a lot of explanation to convince someone that they should fight the demons that want to eat their soul. On the other hand, plots like "steal the artifact" or "clear out the monsters" totally exist.

Razanir
2015-07-18, 08:21 AM
I guess this one counts as the first (Prevent from taking over the world), but it's framed differently.

So many stories begin with legendary heroes sealing an ancient evil away, only for it to escape 1000 years later for new adventurers to completely destroy. But every time that happens, you only hear about the second set of heroes. What about telling the story of how the evil got sealed in a can to begin with?

Shadowsend
2015-07-19, 12:11 AM
How about this one: The Dark Overlord wasn't so dark and wasn't so over...he had to do things he didn't want to because something worse was coming. Fable 3

Or this one: The Dark Overlord was killed by X and has left a power vacuum. Disgaea

Or this one: Two forces battle to claim/deny the other an incredible device, only to awaken its guardians. Halo: Combat Evolved

danzibr
2015-07-20, 03:11 PM
Does it count if the "dark lord" is simply a force of nature, like global warming, the draining of the oceans, or the slow extinguishing of the sun?
I was thinking undead apocalypse. Yeah, that's like dark lord and his armies.