Thread 96564025

What are some tropes you have a ton of fun following despite being a bit cliche as a DM?

Here's mine

>Party is set off to find a bunch of artifacts around the world to help stop the lich by breaching his indestructible castle barrier
>The artifacts are actually advanced technology from the long forgotten past around space age tier and then gathering it together is them making a EMP rifle.
>Lich is actually a human in stasis playing up the title of Lich to make it more digestible to the medieval tech tier furries that now run the world that they needed to be genocide to make way for the hundreds of pure strain humans that are locked away in crypto stasis

>villains are sexy
Simple as that. I want my players to want to fuck my baddies.

>>96564161
Based.

>Vampires are sexy edgy badboy (and girls) who impress and dominate others
They're the biker gang members of monsters.

>>96564161
>>96564201

How do you make your BBeG into a good piece of eye candy?

I don't wanna do a corruption of champions thing making them turbo hyper endowed but also not go to generic

Currently running a 3.5 campaign

>>96564747
Its rarely a good idea to name specific traits unless you intend to do erp because not everyone is into the same things.
Instead go a more Slanneshi route, give a general description then note them as "flawless", "having everything in all the right places", or "inhumanly beautiful".
Could have it be magical in nature, describing the character's "unusual attraction" to the character and let them fill in the finer details. Hell, if the bbeg isn't the PC's type whatever minor attraction exists just lays on how much hotter they are than the aveage.

Racial subversion. The gnome is a warrior, the dwarf is a mage, the ogre is a musician, etc.

Its so overplayed so there's an inherent cringe to it, but if you play it completely straight it can be a grand time.

My favorite PCs include a full-orc life cleric that spent the early campaign learning what wasn't acceptable in polite society (hitting disobedient children in public almost got him arrested) and a lizardfolk artificer that was an open utilitarian cannibal.

>>96564966
>hitting disobedient children in public
Unless it's the nobleman's child, and even then a clobbering might have been expected, that doesn't seem like it should have been an issue at all.

>>96564747
Part of it is about knowing your players' tastes. If I have a furry player then I'm going to have a hot evil wolf girl.
But also >>96564833 is basically right

>>96564025 (OP)
Pure logic puzzles
Weights and balances, grids, matching tiles, finding patterns, interpreting digital logic, lying guardians, payoff matrices and iterated games, chess and go variant puzzles, programmable automatons, all that

>>96564966
>the ogre is a musician
Henry VI allegedly composed Greensleeves, so it's not really a subversion.

>>96564025 (OP)
>Game starts off with a the PCs having a badass mentor NPC that almost seems like a DMPC.
>Plot kicks off with said mentor NPC dying in the first act to protect the PCs or get them some vital plot macguffin and leaving the rest to them to figure out.

>>96564025 (OP)
I don't know if it's a "trope," but I wholesale stole the plot of The Pirates of Dark Water to run a Spelljammer campaign. Down to the hero's stolen ship, the golden compass, the 13 treasures, and a giant enemy ship constantly pursuing them as an insidious force (red space instead of dark water) creeped into existence and destroyed everything it touched. It was really a wonderful campaign. Oh and they had a giant space hamster, instead of a monkeybird.

This fairy tale in the strict sense, as it contains direct references to defloration, rape, necrophilia, marital infidelity, pregnancy, breastfeeding, infertility, cannibalism, blood, as well as other themes suitable for the audience of adult aristocrats.

>>96564161
>Simple as that. I want my players to want to fuck my baddies.
"She was beautiful in the way only evil can be." from one of the Black Company books always hangs out in the back of my mind.

>>96566587
Henry VI? The timid religious king who lost England its hold on France and the House of Lancaster the throne?

>>96567557
Very based. GMing is the art of stealing liberally, creatively, and untraceably.

>>96564025 (OP)
I very much like playing characters who were former slaves. There is something intrinsically satisfying to me about being able to start a campaign with Doomslayer levels of justified hate towards an individual or faction and letting the DM weave me up an righteous avenger side-plot over the course of the campaign to liberate other slave and bring justice to the slavers.

>>96564025 (OP)
It's really all how you use them. As long as you make efforts to work the ideas a little and your players are reductionist faggots they're fine.

My personal favorites are

>A traveling merchant in the middle of a dungeon or dangerous situation. Even in the presence of an existential threat like sauron or something, even if he knows and recognizes an ontologically good hero, even if that hero just saved him from being eaten by orcs, he's not giving away shit for free.
This is my favorite DM tool by a country mile, it's extremely video gamey and it does bait alignment breaks, which I always enforce. And if the party tries to just rob him usually something bad happens, usually the merchant gets away. Putting pressure on player money is such a strong motivator and carries a lot of heavy lifting for the NPCs. Eventually traveling merchants became an omen in one campaign and my players would get really cagey but the merchants always had good stuff to trade.

>Gladiator arena fights
This is a really easy one to pull off. Every match needs like a sentence or two of backstory for the opponent, a unique encounter (start easy and then get progressively more dangerous), and some good feedback from the commentator. It helps to mine from wrestling and UFC.

>Pirates and Ninjas
Was a brief meme in the 2000s but actually works as a template. Doesn't have to be the hollywood cliche of them either, but putting some flavor of both in is fun for factions. They only take a little tinkering to fit basically any setting, you can swap pirates with vikings and ninjas with assassins for a historical campaign in like the Byzantine Empire. I've been tooling around with a Rogue-themed campaign that features factions based around pirates and ninjas as the central conflict. The people who later tried to add robots to the conflict are the twats who should be gatekept from everything.

>The City watch is incompetent at actual policing but will beat your ass
Peak dystopian atmosphere

>>96569959
fuck, that's a good one

>>96564025 (OP)
Thanks for finding the artifact for me. I'll be taking that.

>>96570650
Nope robots are superior.

>>96564025 (OP)
>The artifacts are actually advanced technology from the long forgotten past around space age tier and then gathering it together is them making a EMP rifle.
A reoccurring legendary artifact I use is the Wand of Quick and Violent Death
It's a curved black wand made neither of wood nor metal, but something completely unknown. It has a series of buttons and levers that need to be pressed in order to operate it, but once activated can be pointed to plant an explosive within its target, which ignores AC from armor, dealing colossal damage and without a major restoration spell and healing will almost always kill the target.
It's a Glock. How it got there is unknown.

Monsters are evil, period, and no amount of kindness, consideration, or space will convince them to do anything good or even to leave you alone. This being what separates them from people and animals.

>>96564025 (OP)
You played a lot of Caves of Qud, aren't you, Anon?

>>96565284
It takes a village to beat a child.

>>96567557
>The Pirates of Dark Water
I'm like 70% finished mapping up a hex crawl across a lost kingdom but now I just want to run something like that instead.

>>96575718
>I'm like 70% finished mapping up a hex crawl across a lost kingdom but now I just want to run something like that instead.
I highly recommend it. I set mine in Spelljammer's Astromundi Cluster. Players had an impetus in the enemy ship chasing. A golden compass that simply said "hey, here's the next adventure!" and a ship to travel through anything that struck my fancy at any given moment. Was probably my favorite campaign I've ever run.

>>96576562
>Players had an impetus in the enemy ship chasing. A golden compass that simply said "hey, here's the next adventure!" and a ship to travel through anything that struck my fancy at any given moment.
God, that just solves so many issues I have sometimes with players picking a direction for themselves or having some sense of urgency.
Could you tell me a bit more about the campaign? Like, how much of a threat was the red space when the setting is so much larger than Mer? Was !Bloth always just hunting the party on every adventure or were they ever too late to find it first?

>>96576769
Sure. So, that's my map. I fudged travel a bit. Random encounters happened whenever they passed through belts (because if you're not passing through a belt, you're basically in empty space).

In the 2nd Edition Astromundi, the Arcane have made a secret deal with the Tinar'ri to sell the entire crystal sphere to the Demons. So the Arcane are manipulating both the Antilan and Illithid Empires. The Antilan (sun mages) are supposed to be collecting a certain stone to make giant mirrors that reflect the primary sun back at itself, therefore beefing up the Sun Mages' powers. The Illithids are supposed to be collecting ancient artifacts to create the "Dark Gate" that will turn the lights out in the sphere. Truth is, these are both Arcane plots. If the Antilans succeed, the sun eventually goes supernova and kaboom: portal to the Abyss. If the Illithid succeed? Yep: sun swallowed and gate to the Abyss. So the Arcane deliver on their deal either way.

One of the gods, Tradifos, has created a golden compass that will lead its possessors to the 13 artifacts needed to create the dark gate/sunslayer/great mirror and prevent either the Antillans or Illithids from succeeding. The players stumbled a seemingly-derilict ship that had a strange suit of armor clutching the compass in its fist. It was a Zodar charged by Tradifos. It failed when the Antillan flagship came outa nowhere and attacked them. Finding one of the treasures but not the compass, and mistaking the Zodar for a suit of armor. The compass first directed the players to the constellation for Tradifos where Tradifos blessed it and charged the players to retrieve the treasures. From then-on, it'd shine to the closest treasure. Flagshippers realized someone else was now seeking the treasures, figured out that the compass existed (because of player incompetence) and stalked them across the sphere but couldn't attack in ports because they didn't wanna go to war with the Calidians.

>>96576894
The Bloth stand-in was the captain of the Antillan flagship. The Red Space was because the sun is getting weak so pockets of the Abyss were beginning to materialize. They'd foul the air (per spelljamming rules) of anything they came into contact with, covering it in red dust and making the little worlds and ships that ran into it die very quickly. Was just a random thing I could toss in now and then when I wanted a threat that couldn't be fought, because what the hell do you do against a free-floating atmosphere of evil? The players would have random encounters passing through the belts. The flagship was trying to catch the players out in space, to not violate any treaties by attacking them in a port. And of course, if we'd finished, the whole plot woulda unravelled and the Arcane would have been seen as the bad guys.

>>96576894
>>96576920
That's honestly a really awesome set up for a campaign and I can't believe I never thought to crib from Dark Water. I might have to write something up to run myself, maybe keeping it seafaring because I've never been able to get that kind of game off the ground.

>if we'd finished
Damn, the network got you too, huh?

heh

>The villain has a monster pet that eats at least one of his own henchman when he tries to feed the player to it.
It's the best, most deranged goddamn cliche ever and it never gets old. It ALWAYS hits. The more disturbing way it eats one of his employees and nobody even fucking cares at all is peak characterization. Even better if it also has a beastmaster that gets upset when we kill it.

>>96566587
>>96569978
I believe he's referring to the myth that Henry VIII wrote Greensleeves (he did not).

Also all of Henry VI's issues come from the fact he became King of England and France at 8 months old. Also his French blood made him weak which is why you should never miscegenate with the French.

Prison Gangs

>>96580090
Gothic was pretty cool about it in a fantasy setting.

>>96564025 (OP)
>Cold warrior obessed with honing his craft and fighting strong opponents to an obsessive degree
>Villain keeps scantily clad slavegirls in chains
>People who in order to combat certain types of monsters take on traits of those monsters
>Assassins and bounty hunters with extremely over the top and unsubtle gimmicks that logically should make them bad at their jobs but don't

What's a trope you're using for your Campaign at the moment and how is it working out with you're players?

>>96581210
>Asshole Rival/Begrudging Ally
I'm running Deathwatch for some friends and another Kill Team is headed by Drusus, a Marines Malevolent that prides himself in his teams "efficiency" and it's turned into this antagonistic but somehow respectful competition of stacking bodies and friendly fire incidents while still saving each other's necks if only to gloat about it later.
He's also an Alpha Legionnaire that's enjoying the rivalry way too much, so we'll see where that goes.

I will never tire of evil aristocrats.
>>96564747
>How do you make your BBeG into a good piece of eye candy?
You can just use pictures, you know. Anyway, with or without pictures, if they're sufficiently close, I add the perfume.

>>96564025 (OP)
Having dungeons and dragons in my game as some of the main points.
Undead knights with tragedy in their past.
Overly articulate goons, thugs and monsters.
Magic power beyond mortal comprehensions corrupting magic users.
Not!Melniboné.

>>96583360
>Overly articulate goons, thugs and monsters.
I prefer overly talkative ones.