but it worked!!

[alsih2o]

in preparing more material for my newbies i tended towards thinking of archetypes to include to make the game more familiar. i wanted to avoid stereotypical situations while still including pieces of myth and standard traits they could connect with.

this leads me to ask "what piece of cliche tripe have you seen pulled off succesfully? why?"

i wanna hear about the time your dm put you in a minotaur maze and found a way to make it fun...that kind of thing.

any stories?

 

[Len]

We all met at an inn... How's that for a cliché?

But since it was Neverwinter Nights, the DM started us in an OOC lounge area, and when we were ready to play we went through the door leading to the inn. However, due to a module editing error, we found ourselves in a crypt instead. Then, as the DM was manually jumping us to the correct location, I guess she mis-clicked and killed my PC.

When we finally got organized in the inn, two of the players decided to treat the crypt accident as a "dream sequence". The discussed the strange coincidence of having similar dreams in which "some lady died". My character overheard them and said she'd had a similar dream (except I said she'd been fighting goblins - her favoured enemy). The other two, recognizing the person who had died in the dream, fell silent.

This was carried through the next few sessions - my character had nightmares, the others worried that these dreams foretold my death. Until we found ourselves in an actual crypt, and I was killed by vampires (and then raised). I took that as the fulfillment of the dream's prophecy, and a satisfactory ending to that little story.

So I guess my advice is to set up some trite situation, and then accidentally screw it up somehow. That seems to work.

 

[Kichwas]

A movie and literature cliche I've always wanted to try in a game is to start it out right in the middle of a battle. Then let the players roleplay out how they go there and what's going on as we move through the conflict.

I suspect this would work in a large military battle moreso than it would in a small skirmish.

 

[Crothian]

Amnesia!! The party all woke up with no memories, nothing but rags on their bodies, on a sandy beach. It was back in second edition, and it worked really well.

 

[Silveras]

Not cliches to newbies

One thing to keep in mind is that, to newbies, the trite thingss are not yet cliches.

For example, unless they know something of Mythology, Minotaurs in a maze are not a cliche. Even if they do know something of Mythology, Minotaurs in a maze would be "where they belong", so to speak.

Likewise, starting off in a bar is only a chiche the third or fourth time around for the players.

Now, as to how to make it interesting... well, if they were to meet when one of them is thrown out of the bar and lands at the feet of the others... that's not quite as cliche.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there really are only a limited number of basic plots that exist (I think the number mentioned in writer's manuals is 13). All stories are just one or another combination of these. It is hard to avoid repetition when your task is to create adventure after adventure out of those elements.

Of course, you could have a little fun with it. Perhaps the "damsel in distress" is not in as much distress as her loving parents believe (she is perfectly capable of saving herself, and already has, for example); or the "black knight" villain the party is supposed to defeat is just a well-meaning klutz with a curse.

 

[Cedric]

For the rest of my life I will continue to use and reuse some manner of the "You guys are hired on as Caravan Guards" theme.

I may not use it often, but every now and then I will always dust that one off.

Cedric

 

[Christian Walker]

i wanna hear about the time your dm put you in a minotaur maze and found a way to make it fun...that kind of thing.

any stories?

We did the Minotaur maze thing once and it was pretty fun. The walls of said maze were made of stone and 5' wide. We actually got on top of the walls, and were making our way toward the exit. There were lots of jump checks.

The minotaur was prowling about with a bunch of javelins. He'd show up, try to pick players off the top of the wall, forcing us to run away, etc. It was great because he might show up just when you tried to leap from one wall section to another.

Exciting!

 

[Nifelhein]

Hey I use the caravan one often, also have the one that they are met by accident, all of them want the same thing and arrive there at the same time.

Another one is when all of them are arrested for some reason and end up on the same prison, same cell.

Anyway for the minotaur I had a great idea recently when a friend bought a minotaur miniature, the miniature had an axe and in it there were some patterns that inspired me: A maze where a beast of immense power protects a relic of old, the beats is a man with a bull's head and even though it is powerful beyond reason it is also slow, the only problem would be that the Axe it carries would have the only map of the dread maze, they can either run from it for ages or defeat it and get away soon, of course they would take a time to know that.

 

[Steverooo]

I read this retelling on an old cliche, once:

So the characters start off in the typical tavern, where some guy is seeking "Adventurers for Hire". They each get a chance to give him their spiel, as do the NPCs. Finally, the guy chooses his party, and leaves the Inn...

The PCs, still sitting there, go "Well! THAT never happened, before!" They then form their own party, and venture off!

 

[Gnarlo]

I've found that some of the twists on the cliches have became cliche themselves; my group has gotten to where they naturally assume that the damsel in distress they are supposed to be rescueing is either a) a doppleganger, hag, or some other monster, b) a lure for the setup their "patron" is putting them into, or c) some rebellious noble who has run away to live with her orc boyfriend. They would probably fall on the floor amazed if it were to turn out actually to be a damsel being held by a monster