How much do you value princesses in RPGs?

I'm guessing it's an "all else being equal" scenario.

I'VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR A PRINCESS TO SAVE FOR TEN. FUCKING. YEARS.

I AM PERSONALLY BEATING EACH OF YOU HALF TO DEATH WITH THE HILT OF MY FUCKING SWORD AND MY THROBBING MURDERECTION BEFORE HANGING YOU STILL LIVING FROM THAT FUCKING TREE UNLESS I SEE YOU'VE KIDNAPPED A DAMN PRINCESS.

The folly of clever fools worshiping their false gods Wealth and Title mean little to me. That said, the value of the lives of good people are all equal, and I will give all that I can for them.

I mean...

There are so many unspoken possibilities that could make my characters either care or not care. Especially because about half of them are some kind of self-absorbed neutral and wouldn't give a fuck unless it directly effects them in some way or they happen to like these people for some reason or other.

dawwwwwwwww you are the real hero of this board. I curtsy my petticoats to you good sir.

No, no, don't get me wrong, my motivations are purely selfish. I like being treated like a princess.

That's scary and all but there's just one probably with that You still need to find us

Even better~!

I'm honestly not su\re if you're being sarcastic.

>Befriend the daughter of a duke of some grand empire?

Oh, good, and have the party feel all torn up when her daddy inevitably betrays us whether she was on the level or not? At least the friendship of the petty kingdom isn't all but guaranteed to be a trap.

You need to recalibrate your sarcasmometer.

My experience here got way better after I just started assuming anything stupid/ridiculous enough that I'd be annoyed if it were real was actually either a joke or an attempt at trolling.

Im honestly not even joking. Thi sis the problem with the internet. You cant see that I just got back from the gym and am flying high on endorphins. Such is the problem when apparently every hot guy in the condo tower shows up for gym night and its either impress them with your looks or your athletics and guess which ones NOT happening because your in your brothers old sweat shirt? Yeah. So I may have just ran for an hour.

In repayment for the confusion have a cute gif.

Okay. That makes me feel better. I was just concerned someone was pulling the old "LOL WHITE KNIGHT" thing.

That IS a cute gif. My nephew's at that age and it's always fun watching how quickly he goes from "new thing?" to "time for mouth!"

Oh, and another cute gif, in the interest in reciprocity.

Dukes are good people.

It's the counts and the barons you have to watch out for.

I predict princess values will rise by eight to twelve percent within the next six to eight weeks. If you're thinking of investing in princesses, now's the time to do it.

It's not so much his rank that gets me, it's the grand empire bit.

Those guys are ALWAYS bad news, but even when they aren't, a GM offering you an ally that good tends to have a big ol' razor blade in it somewhere. It's like when the king's vizier suddenly wants to be your best buddy.

Crusader Kings has taught me that this is a lie

Geez, maybe people ARE getting too cynical. Maybe the vizier just wants some friends. It's a stressful job, after all. Would it kill you to have a board game night together sometime?

You know, with all the good necromancers you see it kind of surprises me we don't ever hear about the campaign where the Grand Vizier is the goodiest do-gooder to ever do good.

Don't forget the chancellor. Chancellors are never good.

>It's not so much his rank that gets me, it's the grand empire bit.

American detected.

>Geez, maybe people ARE getting too cynical.
No, you're just on what might be the most deliberately contrarian board on Veeky Forums.
I have princesses in my games. Usually, they're either politically savvy figures (which can span the gamut between Machiavellian and just clever) or warrior princesses. Warrior princesses also come in two general flavors- one is the tactician who can hold her ground in combat if need be, and the other is the PC-level force to be reckoned with due to her warrior bloodline, the best equipment money can afford, and a shitload of training.
Most princesses also get magical training when possible, usually clerical because healing magic and wizards having no sense of right and wrong, et cetera.

I had a grand vizier who was good. He was so good that he was a paladin.

The party refused to believe it until he had to beat the barbarian in a duel and the cleric was told point-blank via divine sending that yes, the vizier is a paladin and is fighting on the side of the angels.

And they were STILL suspicious of him for the rest of the campaign.

Fuckin' Jaffar, man. Ruining the job for everyone.

And you can't even trust a vizier who seems friendly, because you're paranoid that you just THINK he's friendly because he's snake-hypnotizing you.

I wonder why my GM doesn't put princesses into his games these days.

Did he have a goatee?

How did you handle it when he did?

What is the term for a kid of a Duke?
Is she not a princess too?

>How did you handle it when he did?
>rance.jpg
I'm guessing ogling, rape, more rape, possibly murder, followed by rape.

Well that's no way to treat a princess.

Rance and Lia's relationship through the series is actually quite interesting.

Rance gets a bit scared off by Lia constantly trying to tie him down but outside of sex they actually get on the best of any of his living girls.

Rance uses his connection with her to his advantage all the time while Lia in turn uses Rance's good luck and ability to be in the right place at the right time to advance her Kingdoms interests.

Princesses ain't shit but bargaining chips.

Unless they have their own class levels and personal power. Then they get to be real people who matter and shit. To be fair, in my games it's the exact same way for everyone, irrespective of social class and gender. Have class levels? You matter. Don't have class levels? You really don't.

I prefer chieftains' tomboy daughters.

Lady

Princesses supply access. She knows all the other royals, she knows the advisors, she knows the dukes and counts, etc. She can set up a meeting.

Princesses supply legitimacy. Being 'her highnesses' devoted servants' will make red tape dissolve and mayors pay attention.

Princesses can matter. Even if not in succession, their sons may be, making them extremely important until the eldest brother has sons. They will marry into another powerful family, doubling their access and soft power.

Maybe for your game that's true. Mine is a lot more cynical. As soon as a dynasty loses its last hero with class levels that matter, its time left is measured in how long it is until someone who does have significant class levels is sufficiently motivated to move in and install themselves.

Little people care about everything you mentioned. The Wytch King fireballs that shit and enforces order with his Deathless Legion, unless you have King Aelfric and his Knights of the Sacred Heart to intervene, or maybe Chief Urich and his Winterborn. Then they have old-timey warfare with the kingdom at stake. Otherwise, the Wytch King rolls. Then he gains a few levels, starts caring more about rare resources on other planes to fuel his arcane experiments, and outsources actually running his kingdom. And the cycle begins again.

Stability is attractive. Obviously, a regime that can't defend itself will topple, but that defence doesn't have to come directly from the dynasty.

The church has a vested interest in the status quo. The dukes prefer a weak ruler to a strong one. Neighbouring kingdoms are much happier with known factors, especially if they're related.

Weakness will be tested, always, and decline is inevitable. But the family tough enough to claw their way to the throne didn't do it alone.

Last time I tried to court a Princess I was forced to lead a suicide charge against an enemy we'd require three times our numbers to conquer. My death lead to war between my country and hers, opening both to be conquered by a third party.

>possibly murder
>murdering princesses

>Princesses ain't shit but bargaining chips.
Lick on dese nuts and suck the dick?

>the king's daughter is missing
>she's been kidnapped by a beast!
>the party ventures forth, tracks the monster, and retrieves the lady
>when they get back to the king's court, they discover that there are a number of adventuring groups and mercenaries also there who also claim to have rescued the princess, all of whom are accompanied by various maidens of roughly the same age but with different talents and graces (e.g., one of them is a graceful flower, the best in the land at weaving; but another is the greatest tactical mind in the nation whose sword knows no peer among the King's fencing instructors; this third one is a prodigy of potent healing magics who was sent to learn in the King's own hospital, etc.)
>succession crisis ensues

...

Never rescued a princess, but we had to escort one once. She was the spunky, adventurous sort, willing to take silly risks in the name of true love.

My character, an illusionist-performer, got hired to put on a play at the wedding of the Shah's eldest daughter (the aforementioned princess). That went great, total knockout performance, but the trouble was at the reception. The new prince, one of the best chefs from another country and a specialist in stew, tasted some stew that was better than anything he'd ever made... so he went off into the highly dangerous swamps full of giant spiders to hunt down the recipe for it.

So, when it was realized that he'd gone missing, we got hired by the Shah to give chase. We traveled by boat since it was the fastest way to get to where we needed to go; my character spent something like a day in a seasick haze of misery before managing to gather enough wits to have a horrible realization, and tell the rogue to check for stowaways.

Sure enough, the princess was on board. She'd hid in one of the supply barrels, so she'd have food... but, in her rush, the barrel she hid in was full of lemons. And she learned the hard way that barrels are rolled up the gangplank.

After a little discussion, we realized that turning back to take her home would mean we'd get even further behind the prince, and she'd just find some other way to sneak out anyway. And concluded that the Shah KNEW this, and probably discreetly bribed the docks workers to look the other way long enough for the princess to hide without telling anyone, including us, because we'd have either refused or demanded higher pay. So she got to have a proper adventure, and we got to babysit. To her credit, she never once complained about trekking through the swamp. Really, she seems to have had a grand time of it...

That's fucking excellent.

...

See, this is what I was expecting.

Wouldn't the king recognize which one is his daughter?

You saw how that worked out for Merlin, right?

I would too except they keep falling for the delicate mage girls.

What about kings?

Yeah, I'm still figuring that bit out. I wanted to make them ALL legitimate princesses, but then I'm not sure how to make it so that each of them have claims to power instead of the rest.

Really, I'm just curious as to how many princesses I can fit into a single political shenanigans hook. The idea itself is still half-baked.

If his real daughter is a massive disappointment and a black sheep, he might "forget" which one is the real one.

Remember, the daughter of any duke, any count, and any baron are also all princesses.

If the law of the land says "a princess may ascend the throne of the queen upon their marriage to a queen", things will get out of hand like you wouldn't believe.

Shortly after the princess was kidnapped, the king was rendered half-blind by a withering illness. The need to find his successor is now more urgent than ever.

Timestream shenanigans, he remembers them all as his daughter but also remembers that he has only one daughter?

lol okay jimmy fagttron.

>"a princess may ascend the throne of the queen upon their marriage to a queen"
But that's forbidden politics!

So all of the King's many daughters were simultaneously kidnapped...? Or is this a clone thing...or the multiverse spat out a bunch of different versions of his daughter?

>Find top shelf waifu material
>Conquer the world
>Make her princess
:3

>a princess may ascend the throne of the queen upon their marriage to a queen
I'm sure you just mistyped, but as read this way it sounds like you're saying that the princesses would be marrying queens. That WOULD be an interesting twist.
I thought about killing off the king, but I like this a lot better. It doesn't fit with the fact that the princesses are all remarkably different in demeanor, though.
Eh, timestreams always feel like cheating to me, in terms of making plots.
>So all of the King's many daughters were simultaneously kidnapped.
That was the original idea, yes. It's sort of playing with the trope of "kidnapped princess."

I figure there'd be something to do with it even if you don't invoke the succession crisis: just trying to figure out how the princesses are all getting kidnapped in the first place, for example.

Whoops. Well, I meant something else, but okay. Reading too many XS quests.

>It doesn't fit with the fact that the princesses are all remarkably different in demeanor, though.
Also, I think almost any dad (even half-blind) could recognize his daughter. Barring some senility thrown in on top of it.

Of course, I would very much enjoy seeing King Old Man McGucket.

>How much do you value princesses in RPGs?

Highly, due to their off the scale headpat quotient.

>headpats
Aw yiss.

...

Giving or receiving?

>Dragon is holding the kingdom hostage
>Demands the king relinquish his oldest daughter or he'll burninate the countryside
>Problem: the King has no daughters
>King says "Yeah sure I'll get right on that"
>Pretends to go senile, says he'll turn the country over to "his daughter" (everyone knows he's childless)
>Sends out adventurers with orders to "rescue the princess" to find the most convincing fake princess and most badass adventurers to pull a stunt on the dragon

>Headpats + being called a good girl
I swear to god if he carries her like a princess...

Both, really.

Bonus points if the party finds out the princess is fake, rolls with it in order to get a reward from her once she becomes Queen, gets alone with the senile old king only for the king to drop his senile act and go "listen fuckos, I know whats up. Here's what you're gonna do if you don't want to meet the royal headsman: you're gonna slay me a dragon".

Depends on the character I'm playing, what their intentions are and what seems more fitting or advantageous.

Ultimately though I like the idea of befriending pretty noble ladies because noble escapades and royal shenanigans are my magical realm.

Duchess. Secure power and wealth are attractive, actual responsibilities make dull or stressed people.

down the hall and to the left

>king promises everyone rewards to get off their ass and save the kingdom from numerous threats
>gets all the heroes together afterwards and tells them that they can have the kingdom
>if they can agree which one did the mightiest deed

You could always go with the plot that he didn't know his daughter well. Either because ruling be hectic as fuck, he has people to handle the raising stuff that isn't directly related to ruling, or perhaps once she reached a certain age they stopped interacting very much due to worries of assassination plots or something. Alternately, the withering sickness makes it hard for him to remember anything but vague truths, or makes it hard for him to actually pick what's true (she had blonde hair... or was it black?)

There's also the possibility that he wasn't very involved because, secretly, the Princess isn't actually the Queen's daughter, but with the lack of other legitimate heirs, this has to be kept under wraps lest the entire kingdom destabilize and fall in on itself.

If the game is political in nature, I'd suggest letting the party have some hand in picking the "right" princess, and have other ones that are sufficiently motivated by the chance at power appear later. For instance, the tactician princess may appear to the party later- perhaps to fight them, for revenge, or maybe to join them? After all, if they can influence a king...

>The courts legalize homosexual marriage, with unintended political side effects.

The chancellor in Super Mario RPG was good.

The only "princess" our party ever saved was the suspected to be the daughter of the fantasy not-Triad's boss and I'm still not convinced she actually needed saving and that she wouldn't have stabbed us in the back if given the chance.