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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ekb" data-source="post: 4161714" data-attributes="member: 60999">SubversionThere are cliches in fantasy beyond the character ones. And they can be wonderful to subvert...1 - It was all a dream: had fun with this last night with my main play group. The party is traveling on the road through a haunted forest and find themselves "stuck" by the spirits and make camp. They do the "smart RPGer" things - schedule watches, arrange signals, verify inventory of equipment, set triplines and wards. They all have a shared dream of traveling on a path to a tomb and are woken up  by an owl's cry. So they set out and find themselves on the path they dreamed about and soon encounter the tomb from the dream. Things go rather awry when they do the usual "smart RPGer" things - the weapons and tools they are so used to using start self-destructing or falling to pieces... When it gets too much, they wake up - but with *some* of the "injuries" they received in the dream actually present in the waking world. Gothic as all get out - clanking chains and all - but it works in the end.2 - Monsters are unnatural things: The first session in this mini-campaign featured an imp chasing people about and finally killing some key people. Obviously, the PCs are intended to investigate and possibly destroy the "monster." Turns out that it's someone's pet that is confused by perfumes that people are wearing... nothing supernatural about it at all, but with good GMing it makes things seem unnatural.3 - There is good and there is evil as absolutes: while not wanting to get into a deep philosophical debate on moral relativism, the ideas that are the foundation of this RPG trope don't really hold in a modernist culture such as our own.  There may be some things we agree on (theft bad, child safety good), it's easy to sell someone on the idea that this horrible thing I'm doing to "them" is actually good because it benefits "us," we possess divine right to this thing, it was ours to begin with yadda yadda yadda...4 - Genocide is feasible: okay, who *hasn't* attacked the critters/monsters on sight? If my players are known as peerless killers of orcs, couldn't a strong warband be organized to capture them and put them on trial for crimes against orc-kind? Because, in general, that's what a dungeon crawl often is: regionalized genocide.5 - The party must work together: hogwash! Who's to say that having opposing agendas is a bad thing? The party wouldn't be in existence if there wasn't a need for it, but who's to say that betrayal after that initial goal has been met is poor game-play?That's what I can think of off the top of my head...</blockquote>

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