Reinventing fantasy cliches

Afrodyte · Apr 7, 2008

A criticism often levied at the fantasy genre is that a lot of it is derivative and cliche. Rather than debate this point, I'm more interested in seeing and creating examples that counter that trend. What are some things you have done or plan to do in your campaign settings to turn cliche fantasy elements into something more interesting? Better yet, what do you do (or want to do) in your game to distinguish it from published fantasy settings (whether as novels, movies, or RPGs)?

DrunkonDuty · Apr 7, 2008

Nice topic. When I have some more time (tomorrow possibly) I'll cheerfully chime in with one of my standard, very long, meandering waffles.

PS: congrats on 500th post!

Rechan · Apr 7, 2008

I want to add a few notions to the mix before we start this discussion in full!

1. Cliches are cliche because they work. There's a reason it's lasted, because it resonates with something. Tossing something out wholesale because it's cliche isn't the best of ideas. As it has been said, there are only seven stories to tell, and everything is a re-telling.

Anything can work if it is done well. The intelligent use of cliches is no exception.

2. The Reverse of a cliche (the good Drow, the feral elf) is itself a cliche. It is often done for shock factor or "Well it's different because it's the opposite!" But keep 1 in mind: the Reverse can be done well.

Rechan · Apr 7, 2008

My fatigue-addled brain can't think of any over-arching cliches I've used/want to use in a campaign. However, one I love to toy with is the nature of certain things like evil, monsters, necromancy, etc.

One I've used in a game was a necromancer. Yes, he was raising an "army" of undead. The twist here is that 1) He was just doing it as a favor to pay some debts, and 2) This gig is just not his style. He'd rather be on a beach somewhere, reading necromantic texts while being fawned on by pretty native girls.

But Necromancy is often the pale guy cackling in his catacombs. Where there are lots of different directions you can take. For instance, Viktor Frankenstein is a necromancer. He studied death, and how to break it. The notion that "Imagine if death could be defeated, a world where Da Vinci had never stopped his work, where you can go to a concert by Mozart, listen to a lecture by Socrates".

In that light, undead can also be seen as mistakes. They're almost-but-not-quite. Or a bi-product of unchecked necromantic energies.

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A completely different train of thought strikes me. I think that the Earth Wind Water Fire elements pitted against eachother thing has been Done to Death in fantasy. Maybe using Chinese elements, or something else that can stand in for the Big Four, but really, that's a cliche I"m not sure what to Do with.

DarkKestral · Apr 7, 2008

Rechan said:
I want to add a few notions to the mix before we start this discussion in full!

1. Cliches are cliche because they work. There's a reason it's lasted, because it resonates with something. Tossing something out wholesale because it's cliche isn't the best of ideas. As it has been said, there are only seven stories to tell, and everything is a re-telling.

I personally believe there are only 3 basic stories, but...

As far as the general topic: I think a good operational definition of a cliche is one you can find at TVTropes: A trope is a recurring element of a plot or story. A cliche is a trope used to the point that it normally must be subverted, inverted, or avoided or at least lampshade hung if the audience is to find it interesting. By the point that something becomes a widely recognizable trope, it is almost assuredly on it's way to being a cliche. So, in other words, we're talking things that are basically "mined out," at least in terms of their dramatic potential. So really, what are we talking about, at least in terms of the fantasy milieu of D&D? I don't rightly know. It's hard to say.

I'd guess Drizzt and the drow come closest, in some respects, as do elves more generally. Usually, when I see drow campaigns that are interesting to me, they're usually involving evil drow as PCs, because every good drow at this point has shades of Drizzt, at least if they angst about it. At the same time, the overall drow are uninteresting to some, as they are often portrayed solely as a matriarchal society with a love on for spiders, Lolth, and some interesting marriage practices, and this hasn't changed in years.

So how would I go about making a game about drow that isn't cliche? Make the good and evil ones work together. One campaign I've been kicking around in my mind has the drow as one of the few bastions of civilization in the Underdark, so they are both a force of good, in that they keep the Underdark semi-civilized and the nastiest beasties away from the surface, but a force of evil because this is through slavery and oppression. So you have a case where good drow and evil drow can co-exist. The good drow are trying to unite the Underdark against the worst evils, and the evil ones trying to wrest control of it from those evils. So both groups have similar goals, and have to work together, but eventually want to gain the upper hand; the good ones work to end the slavery and make a better life in the dark for all, while the evil ones work to bring more power and comfort to themselves, but don't care what happens to anyone or anything besides themselves. One goal would be to see if it can't be doable to make some good drow that aren't Drizzt clones...

Slife · Apr 7, 2008

You should definitely look into the Jhereg series by Steven Brust. He does a really good job of reinventing cliches. And the books are well-written.

Fenes · Apr 7, 2008

I think these days, the anti-clichee has often become the clichee, so the clichee itself is fresh and new in many cases.

Orcs that are not misunderstood humans with snouts, but evil pillaging barbarians who enjoy to cause misery. Paladins that are good and pure, and not either on the way down to evil, or too strict to be really good. Evil Drow. etc. etc.

Whisper72 · Apr 7, 2008

There are certainly some cliche's that people haven't touched with the proverbial 10 foot poles for so long, they are probably ready to return...

Think of the adventurers getting together at an inn.

As to the OP question, as has been debated by others, a reversal of an existing cliche is essentially a cliche itself. The trick then, is to add a twist to a cliche in such a way that it is not a real reversal.

To return to the 'adventurers meet at an Inn' scenario. The 'regular' cliche is that the PCs meet up with some 'mysterious figure' who gives them some sort of mission, sometimes dying in the arms of the PC's, or a damsel is attacked (i.e. in distress) and needs to be saved right on the spot. A nice twist could be to have the Inn be attacked by government forces, and the PC's themselves are the target. They have no clue why or what they are accused of, but now they are either captured or on the run from the law. It is still all happening at an inn, but the idea is changed.

As to the element 'problem' posed by Rechan, the 'normal' elements are physical. Maybe a nice twist is to have the seven vices and seven virtues be the driving 'elemental powers' in the world? Or more abstract powers such as 'nature, death, magic'.

Anyhoo, just some thoughts..

Dioltach · Apr 7, 2008

Something about the Darksun concepts of feral, jungle-dwelling halflings and nomadic, desert-dwelling elves has always appealed to me. I put them in a setting I once created, but I never got to play it.

Another cliche is the 'noble heroes working to topple the evil totalitarian dictatorship'. In my d20 Future campaign, the world is run by a totalitarian dictatorship (Parliament, consisting of 5 members). But the characters work for the government, fighting against the rebels. (The twist is that resources are so scarce that only a totalitarian government is strict enough to ensure a more or less equal share for everyone, and the rebels are selfish anarchists who want to improve their situation at the expense of others.)

Ydars · Apr 7, 2008

One interesting way of using cliches is to take one from a genre where it IS completely mined out and put it into a different genre where it is much less familiar.

Take for instance Serenity/Firefly; this is basically the western cliche recast as Sci-Fi. Or the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, which are murder mysteries set in medieval England, and which have spawned a whole new genre of historical detective fiction that now has more than fifty active writers.

The same can profitably be done with Fantasy. Simply take principals/cliches from Sci-Fi (or other genres) and apply them to sword and sorcery.

For example, I once ran a campaign where the whole world was immensely dangerous because of monsters and humans had to spend their whole lives shut up in huge cities that were controlled by a magical intelligence; in effect, the city was alive and organic. The twist was that humans created all these beasts and the city during their wars with one another in the past and then had degenerated. This is a classic Sci-Fi cliche but it is not so familiar when re-clothed.

It is almost "Logun's run" or a serious version of "Paranoia". The important thing is that although the background story is stolen, the atmosphere HAS to be completely consistent with Fantasy and so you play down anything technological and play up the mysterious and mystical to make it fit.