quick everyone, post your most contrarian, subversive for the sake subversion ideas so that we can bake them into one unholy, hipster setting
I'll start:
>the age of man has come and gone, and humans are now content to sit in their hilltop forts while the younger races make their place in the world
Disclaimer: not all of these ideas should be bad on their own, its the combination of all of them that'll make the shit sandwich
>Orcs are all misunderstood mixes between Dindus and a native Americans
>Drow are same as Orcs
>Elves are all short lived, rash, impatient, and violent
>Dwarves are lazy as fuck and don't drink
>The Bad Guy is actually the King while the Sorcerer is actually a kindly old person who wants to become overlord so he can care for the Peasants
>Knights are all Stuck-up, irredeemable assholes
>Priests are arrogant, over-zealous, irredeemable assholes
Eclipse Phase but not Anarchist wank fantasy
>Dwarves can and have produced offspring with most of the other races while humans are only compatible with halflings
>Priests are arrogant, over-zealous, irredeemable assholes
Isn't that playing the stereotype straight?
It started as a subversion but then every "enlightened" intellectual atheist (only slightly smarter than the average fedora topper today). Started stealing it and it became a common thing.
But the entire trope exists only to act as a subversion upon the idea that the Church and it's members are holy and good. It is still a subversion, even if it is common.
>Everyone looks 100 percent human they are just called those things
>everyone is brown
>evil people are white
> The longsword is the worst weapon.
> Dual-wielding gives you fewer attacks.
> Magic Weapons are worse than normal weapons.
Shit, that actually sounds fun
The Empire marches from the north and the east, subjugating all beneath it's banner and crushing all dissent under it's laws.
Inter-tribal warfare used to be pretty common place. Now it is not. Tribal elders wanting to settle old scores are butthurt about this.
They are also butthurt that the Empire built and maintains roads that have connected all the world together. And they have the audacity to found hospitals that use tried and tested medicine rather than the folk cures that the grey hairs taught them.
And they keep teaching people to read and write and no good will come of that.
And they insist on trial by jury rather than trial by combat as the war god demands.
Also they are starting to send round the Inquisition to sort out border disputes and accusations of devilry and they can't be bribed and, shock horror, don't abide by local customs at the expense of the law.
Fucking Empire, what about muh indijinus cultural practicies like fucking children and burning people as witches!
The only drinkable liquid is Mountain Dew, which is also actually mountain dew, but retains its green color and ...unique taste.
>The menacing guys in big black armor with spikes on it are all good
>The dwarves dug deep and found great riches with no drawbacks or ancient evils to be found
>Elves got really sick of the trees with birdshit everywhere so they decided to cut them down
Everybody has superpowers
It's set after the end, magic n shit exists thanks to radiation
Would it be more contrarian to play vancian magic straight or to go balls to the walls to avoid it? On one hand vancian is hated by the contrarians, hipsters, and hardcore players, but most major games are straight vance all throughout.
Anyways, here's the "ANYTHING BUT VANCE" magic system
>Only 1 in 10,000 people are born with the ability to use ma'gyk
>Ma'gyk is also spelled weird because
>Ma'gyk has no defined spells, only a nondescript grip on the strings of reality
>To use any power, some form of great sacrifice must be made, varying based on how much you must shift reality to complete the spell
>This sacrifice awakens the most ancient gods
>Wizards are actually called ma'gyk'ellya because
>Wizards/ma'gyk'ellya are feared by the population and often face wizard racism
>Most of the wizards are used as tools of the kings for life
>Peasants are unlikely to ever see a spell
>Spells written in some weird African click language
i actually like magic that's like this a bit
And if we want to play Vancian straight
>Wizards are wizards, magic is magic
>Everyone can use magic if they just learn to say the spells
>All spells use a clearly defined mana pool
>Spells are extremely clearly defined
>All spells written in latin
>it's centered around waifus
>it doesn't have waifus
Not sure what's worse
Are we going contrarian to the Veeky Forums consensus or the reddit consensus?
Which is which?
Necromancers are considers outstanding members of society and are loved by all to the point that most magic users practice or, at least are familiar with, necromancy.
Angels are actually evil, and only Demons will actually bargain with humans and get things done
Humans are extinct. You cannot play as a human.
>And if we want to play Vancian straight
>All spells use a clearly defined mana pool
What?
That sounds like a post written by an extremely contrarian person
but how do we include it into the setting?
mages are incredibly jealous of fighters and spend the day wondering how they can balance against their incredible versatility
One of my players started DMing recently, running a campaign where no one was allowed to play anything aside from humans, elves, or dwarves in a temperate, medieval European setting under the excuse that doing something weird for its own sake is obnoxious.
He had no response when I asked why wizards had to be able to play an instrument and how music was necessary to understand "the threads of the universe".
My early attempts to fix 3e tended to end like that.
Races cannot interbreed. Interracial couples are cool because they can be fuckbuddies without any kind of contraception methods
Everyone burns in the sunlight but for vampires, who go around giving blood to the needful and helping people on the tasks that require working outside in the sun.
Elves are misunderstood helpers of humanity, often at the cost of their lives.
Dwarves and hobbits are human-eaters
Katanas are worse than other swords
Orcs are just humans that were exposed to a form of radiation that stunted their intelligence, and made them great big hulking brutes.
Whenever anyone tries to kill one invariably some village girl who thinks she's nausica of the valley of the wind steps out, spreads her arms to the sides and puts on a defiant face while reminding people that orcs are human too.
Only that what transformed the orcs also increased their lust through the roof and removed all inhibitions, so this kinda stuff ends up murder rape quite often.
>sex doesn't exist
>babies are carefuly handcrafted by the gods themselves delivered by magical storks
That's extremely similar to the premise of Obsidian's Tyranny.
old light vs. dark war finally ended with light triumphing, but at the cost of all the priests and paladins sacrificing themselves. Peasants and secular princes didn't understand how to harness the light anymore but now use the churches as prisons for enslaved demons. These demons raised in captivity have long since forgotten the ways of darkness but eventually discovered how to use the light through some bullshit reason. Using this power the demons of the light wage an underdog fight against the tyrannical and corrupt humans.
This is actually pretty good.
Fund it.
>Knights are all Stuck-up, irredeemable assholes
Does realism even count as being contrarian?
You're just describing the United States, man.
>trying this hard
The keywords that make it Contraian are "All" and "Irredeemable".
Realistically, There were Plenty of arrogant and ethically loose Shitheads, but there were probably also some pretty ok Guys, and a few that at least tried to take the Arthurian Concept of Chivalry to heart.
And Even most of the the Shitheads wouldn't be complete mustache Twirling, puppy kicking, Child-raping, Wife beating, Rose-Bush-Pissing-on, demons. They would still have good and/or relatable sides to them.
Realism is analyzing the tendencies of the time period while also noting that people are different enough that there can be multiple developmental paths and lives for people of the same occupation, while also taking into account the nature of Humans to want to think of themselves as being good and rationalizing their worse actions or attempting to compensate for them by doing good deeds Elsewhere.
Contrarianism is "Everythings Opposite Day because Fuck you"
Mountain Dew is yellow.
No fucking shit