What are some tropes you love seeing in your games or love to include as DM?
>Grizzled mercenary/veteran taking on one last quest
>Chronic loser/coward slowly overcoming his fear and ineptitude and growing into a capable adventurer. May or may not end in an heroic sacrifice
>Ruler who genuinely cares about his people and isn't a power hungry asshole
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>>Gods that interract with people without arrogance or demanding worship.
Mundane Guy who is of authority & generally dislikes the party because they make his life hard even if they do good, coming in with the cavalry when the party needs it the most.
>The Royal Couple have a loving marriage
>Monster races re-imagined as foreign empires
>Agrarian communities that are normally hard-working but pleasant except for extraordinary disasters.
>NPCs are competent at their jobs
Every person of consequence who the party have met band together and aid them in their darkest moment or against the BBEG showing the party that their culminative efforts were not in vain and that they themselves inspired others into feats of heroism
>villain who honestly appreciates his minion's work and personally takes care for their welbeing
>but still clearly a villain with a villianous plan
>BBEG killed by his own creation/plot
I dunno, I kinda like to see hybris destroyed
>Symbols, all the symbols
Most of my important characters/locations have a symbolic name that is their actual name, a code name or a metaphor in a prophecy
I'm a sucker for David Eddings because of that
>villains working towards a grand plan that ends up being beneficial to the world at large (either saving it or launching it into a new era), preferrably with some self-sacrifice
>villains who take up the mantle of BBEG so that nobody else will take it and make the world even worse than it is
>alternatively, villains who keep a greater evil in check through their actions
>villains who are hunted and chased for not fitting in but are just that good at surviving that they ended up slaughtering armies in pure self-defense
Overall I'm a big fan of villains whose goal is clearly, purely and matter-of-factly good (or at the very least relatable, like their own survival), but have strictly no other options than villainy to achieve it. More than one party of adventurers ended up siding with them in the end.
>Ruler is a power-hungry asshole, but also a genuinely good ruler because of it
>Party facing BBEG's unstoppable army
>Hopelessly outmatched
>Allied forces arrive in the most heroic fashion possible
>Combined heroes/allies trash the BBEG's shit
Love this shit
The battle of the black water
the battle of castle black
The battle of the bastards
asoiaf has run this trope so far into the ground that it's not even fun anymore
It works best when the arrival of the allied army has emotional weight to it. If the arriving army is one which was previously reluctant to send aid or which has an emotional connection to the defending force then it works very well no matter how many times it's done. The battle of Pelennor fields pulled this off very well for example
youtube.com
ASOIAF occurrences of this trope are more akin to deus ex machinas really.
>The party encounters the anti-party
>Battlelusty villains with codes of honor a.k.a. blood knights
>Said villains sparing a foe because he has potential and the villain is hoping for a better fight later
>A PC whooping said villain's ass so hard he joins up out of respect/hope for a rematch.
>Honorable enemy who has no personal issues with the PCs, but fights them anyway.
Even better if they hold no illusions of surviving.
>The everyday hero.
>The law will always catch up to you, you can't escape the law!
>The villan with a heart of gold.
Things changing without the players being alerted to it, so they get confused as to what's real.
Villains singing traditionally upbeat songs in a slow and ominous manner while they commit atrocities.
YOU'RE A LOOSE BALLISTAE RIVAIN TENKILLER! THE KING IS ON MY ASS
>total warhammer bretonia run
>final quest: Errantry War Chaos
M'LORD THE PILGRIMS HAVE ENDURED THE TRIALS OF THE CHAOS WASTES. THEY COME TO LEND THEIR AID AND PROVE THAT EVEN THE LOWEST BORN ARE CAPABLE OF VALOR AND CHIVALRY
>cue battle pilgrims, men at arms and peasants swarming archaeon and kolak suneater
You got top tier taste pal. I also really like villains who do it all out of good intentions.
>Revan (pre-TOR fuckery) using the Mandalorian War to turn the whole galaxy Sith in order to defeat the enemies beyond the Outer Rim
>Darth Caedus trying to prevent a terrible civil war by giving the entire galaxy a common enemy through his own horrific strategies
Drew Karpyshyn is involved in all my favourite plots.
I mostly play CoC, or investigative games, and this is truly some npc's I love to play
>lesser villain who is waaaay too friendly with the pc's to be honest (awesome because half the time the group is just completely oblivious to him, like "hey, seems to be a good guy")
>Old man who plays crazy/senile but is in fact completely aware of what is happening (whatever the side he is)
>Two stereotypical grannies sisters
>A suspicious as fuck janitor (might not be related to the plot)
>Crazy old man who is just crazy
>A suspicious as fuck child (might not be related to the plot)
>Inspector who definitely thinks that the pc's are really suspicious, but who is definitely not dumb (the kind that might destroy an entire plan, but who might become a great ally later)
>npc's who are awful toward the pc's but always do the job
On a side note, I love introducing strong false leads (which are in fact almost side scenarios)
Love that when it's done right
an arthurian kingdom with a fate decided by a prophecy. there's no changing it, and everyone is happy cause they don't have to worry about a more tragic end or anything. then the party finds out the prophecy was misinterpreted
Good stuff here, I also like (in te same vein as your first tropes) :
>villain has a goal which is really difficult to classify as right or wrong (Utopia style, or difficulty to know if the new era will be better or worse)
>The fresh faced naive cadet/new adventurer
>The tired fighter who fights because no one else will
>The bard who plays because they love music
>The girl who guards her feelings by being obnoxious
>>The party encounters the anti-party
I'm actually slowly setting up for this.
>Due to time travel hijinx with the Deck of Many Things, there's one party member who was left in an empty afterlife in a parallel timeline while the party member got to live and clearly went insane and turned into a demon
>An imp who was working as a familiar for a party member but died
>A tanarukk who was fascinated by the party member with the parallel demon self but who got killed and met the parallel self in the Abyss
Slowly putting together the Linear Guild.
>Tropes
Ugh.
>Contrarianism
Ugh.
>the lower-ranking bad guy will help the players if they convince him
>the players are directed to a mysterious and powerful witch doctor, gets hyped up as a shadow in the shape of a man or a person who walks between dimensions as we walk through doors, turns out to be a short balding white guy from hackney who runs a shop
>seemingly useless, niche or mysterious item which turns out to be essential
>semi-sympathetic henchman who maybe lets the good guys escape, or lies to cover their trail or helps them in some other way while seeming like a generally good guy
>the powerful but naive BBEG is built as the final boss, [see previous] snaps his neck and steals the mcguffin at the end, revealing his even eviler intentions
>there's the main bad guys who are criminals, but there's also a greedy 'corrupted lawkeeper' faction who want the PCs imprisoned or dead
>before the final confrontation, all the characters the PCs helped along the way arrive somehow to help however they can
And I did a campaign with all of those a while back. It was ok.
>before the final confrontation, all the characters the PCs helped along the way arrive somehow to help however they can
Smell like jojo part2 ending
>chivalrous knight who just wants to see justice done
>villain who is evil for the sake of evil, no edgy "my parents were killed so now I have to kill all of you" bullshit
>kind, well-meaning king who's a bit of an idiot
>said kings heir is a horrible spoiled brat
IT'S OVER, RIVAIN, HAND OVER YOUR SWORD AND YOUR TABARD!
>Ugh
Ugh.
>villain who is evil for the sake of evil, no edgy "my parents were killed so now I have to kill all of you" bullshit
Did this one time at cthulhu : most of the inner circle cultists were people with strong reasons to be here (not shitty nevertheless) but the leader was just pure evil, in a "I want to wipe the earth from the universe" kind of way.