How do we make rescuing captured princesses interesting again?

She was the only child of an old, now dead, king. Due to be married to the princely son of a powerful King, to secure the protection of his armies against the invaders seeking to take advantage of the interregnum.

The invaders cut a deal with any number of brigands, dragons, cults, traitors, and assort assholes hiding in the mountains, cutting them a deal where they'd get their own slice of the kingdom in exchange for preventing the thing from going through.

This is a problem for you, because that kingdom pays your salary, and you'd rather not be out of a job.

>My fetish incarnate

Princess (male)

>How do we make rescuing captured princesses interesting again?

Make the princesses very attractive boys.
Everything else can stay.

something something never change

The only interesting suggestion on this thread.

True, but I would personally throw a dick in there to discourage 'roleplaying'. Also weird mutations and disturbing cyclopean secrets. To keep the players occupied, you see.

I'm serious when I say: Play it absolutely straight.

Heck, do the entire scenario as orthodox as possible. Evil wizard, bad! You, hero, Kill!

I'm willing to bet that most of Veeky Forums has never actually experienced orthodox bubblegum fantasy, mostly having delved into generic intrigue, investigation and dungeon crawl -scenarios.

I've heard from many that bubblegum fantasy would actually be a breath of fresh air with all these dark and gritty games the past 20 years or so.

This. The pendulum has swung far enough that playing things without a trace of irony is actually new and refreshing.

Having love interest in a tabletop session is only ok if you are playing only with your significant other. If you are playing with a group of people, don't do that or create romancable NPCs since it weird everyone else out.

Leave that for video games and your own online ERP.

Read Ruslan and Ludmila.

The princess has a kidnap fetish. She also really likes turtles.

It was all an elaborate ruse by the king to get you over there for a surprise birthday party.

This is probably just as cliche as before but
>King: "PLEASE HERO, MY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER HAS BEEN CAPTURED BY [Villains]! SHE'S SO CUTE AND HARMLESS AND DEFENSELESS SHE WON'T MAKE IT VERY LONG OUTSIDE THE CASTLE WALLS! PLEASE YOU HAVE TO HELP HER!"
>You get to [Lair]
>There's lots of blood everywhere and definite signs of struggle
>You find find a trinket that the King mentioned to be his daughter's keepsake
>You: "Oh no! Are we too late? Did they already kill her/sacrifice her/eat her/rape her?"
>As you continue deeper into [Lair] you hear sounds of battle and wonder if other adventurers were sent in here too
>When you reach [Room] you're surprised to see a single woman clad in armor with a great sword absolutely wrecking the [Villains] 1v5
>After killing all of them while barely breaking a sweat she turns to you and asks who you are
>You: "We were sent here to rescue the princess of [Kingdom], have you seen her?
>Masculine Woman: "Yeah I've seen her, she's right here."
>You: "Where?"
>Princess: Me, you [Insert Region Specific Insult]!

Then she explains that she came here on purpose because the [Villains] were threatening her townsfolk. You then realize that she could probably take on all of you and wonder why you were sent in the first place/how the King thought she was defenseless. When you get back, the princess says "I have something to do, I'll meet you in the throne room." When you get there and the king asks you where his daughter is, she comes from behind you dressed in normal princess attire and starts acting like daddy's little girl, telling the King how she was so scared. She is so obviously pretending that you start to speak up, but then she tells the King how (You) and your party busted through the door just in the nick of time and beat up all the bad guys heroically. The King is satisfied and throws you a bag of gold and a Macguffin as the princess gives you a smile and holds up an okay sign like pic related.

princes is dead and dismembered, her remains have been scattered in the enemy's 8 fortresses.

Mario pls

Ooh, I like playing Raise the Dead.

did you reply to the wrong post

It was still cute, user, have a (you).

The princess has been kidnapped! You must save h- oh she was found in Wisconsin? In the castle. Ok. What do you mean Princess Wisconsin is missing? ...she's WHERE?

And then the players slowly realize every princess in the world has been kidnapped and is trapped in Another Castle. They must all be put back.

I like it!

Leonor Princesa de Asturias was kidnapped by terrorists. You are a commander of an elite special operations unit of the Spanish law enforcement and you are charged with the rescue operation. You storm the terrorists' base and advance through it, searching for the princess, but the operation turns out to be too difficult, you fail and the terrorists kill her. Only it was a simulation in a specially built copy of the base, and it was your fourth attempt. The government is forced to pay ransom and free several convicted terrorists.

>You kill the mercenaries
>Rescue the princess
>Take her back to her kingdom
>Told you will be rewarded handsomely.
>Reach her kingdom after days of travel.
>People in the streets cheer you as a hero
>You hand her back over to the king
>Expecting your promised reward
>Given gold, land, and title
>Discover something awful that ruins mood
>King, and clergymen are into Lovecraft b.s.
>Princess is to be sacrificed in ritual
>Entire kingdom is along for the ride
>Ritual to summon a Great Old One.
>The princess has ben coheresed into it.
>The mercenaries you killed were the heroes
>Heroes kidnapped the princess from kingdom
>Tied princess up so she wouldn't run off
>Heroes were deciding what to do with her
>Then you showed up

Well, time to rise to the occasion.

And with some luck, so will the princess.

Sounds like an obscure video game plot desu. I'd play it.

great, sounds like your turn to capture princess

On a lonely road, you find a girl dressed regally, she explains that her kingdom has vanished.

And as soon as you get her safely away you're tracked down by a team of heroes.

Sounds like a big mimic.

We're not obliged to stupidity in order to set the plot in motion, so we'll talk it out and show them all the evidence we gathered.

You were the princess all along

I'm still miffed that this comic didn't say "A faggot in a dress"

not if we persuade them to our cause

That's some obscure thesaurus shit user. I like it.

Overdone in the 90's

Name 3 video games, 2 movies, 4 short stories that this happened in

>Shhhh user, of course he can't, but he so badly wanted to sound knowledgeable !

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DamselOutOfDistress

touche you cheeky bastard

>if I don't know something, none knows it

I've played PnP for more than a decade, almost half of that being DnD/Pf and I've never once rescued a captured princess

>Help, the good sir knight (until recently) has kidnapped the princess!
>Turns out, the princess wants to take it upon herself to become an explorerer, adventurerer, treasure hunter, hero bandit pirate antiquarian boy-chaser whatever.
>Knight is bound to protect the princess, no matter what, so is forced to follow along even against the wishes and orders of the king.
>She is competent, at least, decently so, and always seems to be after the same thing the party tend to be, or working with the same allies (Or even villians) that they seem to run into.

>Has to posts links to tvtropes, because he can't recall even a single one of those examples by himself, even though he just claimed that they were "Muh So Overdone"

I ain't even mad, just quite amused.

This.
In 25 years of gaming, I have never saved a princess from a dragon, but people swear it's a played out idea.
How is it played out if people don't do it?
Shit, you know the last time I ran into a dragon in Dungeons and Dragons?

> sir knight
>acting against the wishes and orders of the king
How can he call himself a knight if he does not obey his king?

>I am right
"no, you're wrong"
>my proofs?
"here is a list of proofs"
>lol you posted proofs, what a loser

The princess is in fact two smaller princesses in an overcoat.

plot twist. you were the princess the whole time and you just fell deeper into the trap

What I mean is that it is NOT overdone, if you can't even recall any of those so-called OVERDONE cliches from the top of your head, you dirty triple-mongoloïd.
Way to miss the point.

Now this is something new.

>turns out the princess was "insert random monster here" the whole time
>you gotta save the queen, the princess is rather miffed that she was overlooked
>the princess(male) needs to be saved
>the princess was being kept in the tower because she was super evil and powerful
>that's not a princess! It's a bomb!
>you were the princess all along
>the princess never existed
>the princess AND the tower/dungeon never existed
>you must capture the princess and stop local adventurers from saving her, increasing the defenses of your tower/dungeon as the hordes grow stronger!

She already tied herself to the pole, just leave her there. She even did us the convenience of placing the genuine princess into an easily portable bag, too.

>If you don't hold the names of X number of stories with Y traits in your head at recall at all times for just such an occasion, your point is invalidated

Not even him but that's pretty shitty arguement desu, especially considering that if he had just listed the names verbatim from the site then your argument would have no ground to stand on.

Sorry people don't find your "damsel in distress is secretly a strong, independent, woman who don't need no man" routine fresh anymore.

You can't possibly be this retarded...
Not even the user you replied to.

The princess is a humanoid gateway to the elemental plane of Princess; the font from which princess power flows into all princesses across the world.

>trying to imply that is a narrative fetishism of mine
As if, you triple-moron.

You got me red handed

>stick an enormous banner over the entrance to your fortress
"Fuck off! The Princess is a cultist!"

>not tickling her with a feather

Overdone in media X doesn't mean overdone in media Y.

When have you last encountered a princess rescue campaign? I have barely even heard of one. Go to the explain your game in under 10 words and ctrl+f princess.

Implying you guys gave the first group of heroes half a second to explain themselves, or that the third group is going to try as well.

This.

Also need some sort of blindfold and if token magic dude could make some ice that would be super useful.

What were we doing again?

if rescue princess was not done enough playing it subverted is stupid

>the princess is actually your sidekick and was with you this whole time!
>the princess is an allegory for your suppressed memories and the dragon is your mother!
>you find the princess dead and must investigate her murder!
>you have to infiltrate the dungeon disguised as a goblin, but the princess herself is a goblin in disguise, and the evil wizard is the king in disguise and the king back in the castle is the princess in disguise!
>wait, then where is the real evil wizard?
>it was you all along!

running is a good trick, it will give enough time to explain ourselve

There is no princess.
What there is, however, is a dungeon full of increasingly lethal traps intended to cull the adventurer population and eliminate potential usurpers.
Anyone who retreats will have their reputation ruined, since they're cowards.
Anyone who doesn't will never make it out alive to spread the truth.

>Overdone in media X doesn't mean overdone in media Y.
They have examples from 15 different media. I'm beginning to wonder why I'm bothering to spoon feed this to you. Why don't you take a look at the page?

>BBEG needs cash
>holds princess for ransom
>realizes he's upholding a sexist cliché
>writes ransom demand
>letter includes long-winded explanation on how this capture doesn't reflect poorly on the princess, how she's still a strong individual, how the BBEG respects women
>BBEG proceeds to list all of his female friends

>The Heroes save the princess but leave you alive for whatever reason
>GOO is summoned
>You go back in time to try again
>You disguise yourself and capture the princess again
>Your past selves track you down, kill you and return the princess to kingdom

Closest I've done:
>the princess is a member of your party and a sister of one (or more) of the PCs
>and in fact it's you who's "kidnapping her"
>because the game started with a coup by an evil vizier

The princess is actually the daughter of an Ogre King in disguise, and the capture is a ruse to find her a husband. Will you make this sacrifice and save your kingdom from the revenge of the Fey King? Or can you find another way out of this mess?

Anything that lets a guy jack off is worth SOMETHING.

The first quest I ever ran had the party rescuing the princess from a necromancer who was trying to syphon some kind of power from her.

Upon fighting the necromancer it was revealed that the power within the princess was the fact she was the phylactery of the King.

youtube.com/watch?v=kdhhQhqi_AE

>You weren't meant to interfere and you've ruined some elaborate plan
>The entire thing was a theatre production you thought was real
>It's actaully a monstergirl princess, the recruiters left that out
>She's bound to the castle and just wants some excitement
>She's actaully more than capable to free herself but uses it as a screener for possible lovers she's also Yandere
Any of those options

You might want to know you're arguing with two different anons. Nonetheless, all I'm saying is that yes, Damsel in Distress is the most overplayed trope in all of history, but.

But.

I'm just pointing out that actual damsels in distress are actually very rare in TRPGs. That's what I'm getting at. And I'm arguing only about TRPGs, I don't think Haramanon is right.

My only point is that I could bet that most people on Veeky Forums has never either rescued or kidnapped a princess in game, even though the trope is so popular. This screams opportunity in my head, because the classic becomes novel when the subversions outweigh the original, or as in this case, both are extremely rare.

Much like the meme of Benebot Conderdash, the meme got so bloated that saying his actual name is considered novel these days.

>You have completely ruined some insurance scam and are asked to help her and her family to pull off another one to save the family mansion

>You were hired by the insurance company to keep the princess safe.

Then what's stopping us from going the full carnage route and killing the entirety of kingdom?

Read a fairytale for the demonlord.

>The princess was willingly captured and was doing so to gain valuable information knowing full well that someone would be sent to rescue her
OR
>The Princess was married off by her parents to a prince of a far off kingdom for the purposes of expanding their wealth before discovering that the other kingdom was almost entirely broke

The princess developed Stockholm syndrome and now you have to convince her that you did the right thing rescuing her. In the process you find out that the capturer really wasn't that bad and maybe you shouldn't have interfered. When you return her to her kingdom her parents force her into an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't like at all.

I like this

I like the first one.
And the second one could be really good, especially if the new royal family is able to restore the kingdom now that they have the legal authority to do so- and thus the far-off kingdom ends up becoming more powerful than the original one.

You throwing a dick in there is "roleplaying". Stop.

Your quest was one of self-discovery. The princess was the you all along.

The problem with most of these "The people you saved the princess from were good and the king is evil" things are that there is nothing stopping the captors from just telling the party what's up.
Hell, even if the party doesn't believe them the princess is there to vouch for them. The only way it would work is if the party was all murderhobos who don't care about doing the right thing, at which point the twist is wasted on them.

>it's interesting because you're a bad guy

Um... wut? You're not.

By the time you get there, they're dead.

She was dead all along.

> BBEG is a nu-male
I love this idea