Am I the only one who hates how every trope and cliche in fantasy has to be subverted and twisted nowadays?

Am I the only one who hates how every trope and cliche in fantasy has to be subverted and twisted nowadays?

just be as the stone and wait 20 years, people will be doing the opposite of what they are doing now.

Subversions that try to adjust something that doesn't make sense into something that makes sense are fine.

Subverting a cliché for the sake of subversion is cancer. It demonstrates a failure to understand what made the cliché so popular, and only makes everything worse for the sake of "originality". Shit like "xDDD the princess saves herself, lol!". Why even have a damsel in distress plot if it's going to resolve itself, faggot? You're neither funny nor even original.

No, because I cannot go two hours browsing without one of you contrarians shitposting.

Protip- Doing generic things doesn't make you special, just as subverting things doesn't either. But posting to an echo chamber shows everyone you don't have an original bone in your body.

Yes.

>why even have it
Because now you and the villain have to work together to sleuth out where in the world the princess dissapeared to.

....not like I don't like the idea, but why would we cooperate with the villain?

> Shit like "xDDD the princess saves herself, lol!". Why even have a damsel in distress plot if it's going to resolve itself, faggot? You're neither funny nor even original.

Basically this. This is sort of why I do whatever I can to firmly establish traditional fantasy whenever possible.

For instance, a big thing of mine is 'no naturally sympathetic goblinoids'. The little fuckers will cut your throat, you're not going to find a noble savage amongst the orcs. And yes, all half-orcs are products of savage rape by male orc raiders of their helpless captives.

No, the Church of that good deity is not inherently corrupt. They serve a GOOD DEITY, who obviously keeps a close eye on the spiritual fiber of his flock. (Though a priest or two may be corrupt, the institution is not).

Paladins don't have to act like Jesus. Old Testament is a good standard.

I include subversions occasionally, but only after establishing the tradition as the baseline. Subversions are only really effective when subversion isn't the expectation. Traditional high fantasy would be a huge subversion nowadays, funnily enough.

Because it makes an interesting story user.

I agree and disagree.
On the one hand, it makes me at least actually feel more invested in the universe because it either knows the premise is absurd, or is at least trying to be something new.
On the other hand, a lot of times I do get annoyed, especially when it is obvious people are subverting them because subverting things is cool, and aren't actually understanding what they are doing in the process.

I don't care, the villain's getting the big sword in his back the moment he gets distracted.

>No, the Church of that good deity is not inherently corrupt.
How many subversion cycles is this particular one on at this point?
I honestly can't tell whether the good church being sketchy, or the good church being legit is the subversion anymore.

Because you each have half of the clue.
And he's not sharing what he knows that easy. Because he's a villain.

Personally I'd say it depends on the time and the view of Christianity at the time, because we all know many Good aligned churches are basically Catholic Church stand-ins. Up until the 50s or so Christianity had a generally good rep in Western society (hell, Pershing's volunteeers to WW1 were even called Pershing's Crusaders), so settings that predate the 60s or 70s generally have good guy churches. Starting with about the 90s (because everything was COOL and EDGY back then) there was a pretty negative view of the church which correlated with both secularism in Western Europe reaching its zenith and the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic church bursting at the seams. I imagine this made fictional corrupt churches the new standard. And then there's Japan, where it's not exceptional for the good deity himself to actually be evil.

Personally I like it when there's corrupt church leadership tricking everyone else, until a bunch of zealots figures out what's going on and purges their own church leaders.

Is the villain female?
Does the story end not with the two of you discovering the princess, but eachother?

Chaos God of Order is one of my favorites.
I think The Elder Scrolls handled it perfectly.

The villain MAY be female. I am not sure. This is a hypothetical!
As for how it ends, well, you're the player here, you tell me.

You know, I've had a player who really has it in for female villains. Like, he coup de graced Queen Ileosa by summoning monsters to devour her alive. He's a great guy, but he seems to find that completely hilarious.

>Old Testament is a good standard
Especially Deuteronomy.

It's more like...You can still be a Paladin and deal out harsh justice.

If a villain goes "I'm sorry for everything I ever did. I repent, truly!" you don't have to let him go through a redemption arc. You can instead say "I know. Go to your penance with a pure heart" and lop off his head.

>not enlisting everyone you beat as a follower/penitent

Not really. Most of these people are simply going to be executed after a trial. Their sins aren't going to be forgiven, so it's only dying now or later.

If you feel sorry about murdering thousands of people, you're still going to get the electric chair (or in this case, the chop). Forgiveness doesn't mean a lighter sentence, and it's not like most evildoers can ever make up for their crimes.

No, a solemn prayer, an execution, and it's off to their final reward. And if they repented out of a wish to survive, that's not genuine repentance, is it? Repentance means acknowledging your wrongdoing and being willing to accept punishment.

Lacie is so cute.

>ywn have a group that accepts a played-straight paladin that still kills villains as not stepping out of alignment bounds

>every trope and cliche in fantasy has to be subverted and twisted nowadays
Hey, it's much easier to do and gets your more attention than making your own stuff

You're not doing it correctly.

>And then there's Japan, where it's not exceptional for the good deity himself to actually be evil.
Have Japan made an evil Jesus yet?
>inb4 Japanese have already done it dozen times

In Drifters, the BBEG is implied to be Jesus.

A warrior-princess of some sandman kingdom might be cool? The party coming to rescue her right in the middle of her own break out attempt could be a lot of fun.

Yes, I've honestly reached the point where it's refreshing to just embrace the tropes and and play them straight.

To wit, as a paladin, I did do this twice, but in each situation, I had enough control and personal power to keep the evil doer from being a threat to others if they stepped out of line.
That is really the crux of it all. Forgiveness is nice, redemption is great, but if the being you are trying to redeem can cause great harm if they backslide, then you must protect others first, rather than stroke your personal ego over a pet project.
In my case, it was a frost giant and a baleful polymorphed skeleton. I had to teach the skeleton what being kind actually was, and funded a reincarnation for him. He became a dwarf.

Your "le epic female warrior" who acts and fights just like a man...but with a qt anime girl picture...is SHIT!

>Veeky Forums
>echo chamber

Holy fuck the salt in you is like a french fry.

You live on a planet with at least 6 billion other people.

Statistically speaking, you are not.

Whoa. That's so totally cool and original.

I feel your pain. I really miss the days of just being able to have a nice, non-morally complicated plotline where the good guys are good guys, and the bad guys are bad guys, but every game I get into nowadays has to be
>LEL IMPLYING OBJECTIVE MORALITY KEKEKEKEKEK

If you GM, have a setting where objective morality is true, and that truth is common knowledge. Have Good and Evil be literal, extant things that have defined codes and causal effects. Have the idea of "subjective morality" be a ploy by Evil to undermine the value of Good. Have the quest be to destroy the notion of subjective morality, which grows in strength if the players have their characters question morality.

I am with you user. I actually like the so-called "cliched" "generic" or "Tolkien-ripoff" settings.

...

I dislike generic fantasy because it doesn't let me have bug people and robots.
I prefer the older times when sci fi and fantasy had not differentiated yet.

Best setting is high science fantasy. Tone and outlook of high fantasy, but with the sci-fantasy aspects like magitech and robots and aliens and the like.

I'd agree with you but I also quite like sinister otherworldly ocean.
Which has a way different tone.

This a million times

I even like when some Lovecraftian stuff is thrown in, especially with a whole "We don't understand it, we don't know if we can even do anything about it, but dammit, we'll do what we can!" kind of attitude.

ISubversion is playing with expectations and improving content with such surprises and interesting dilemmas, but surgace subversion for sake of subversion or cliched subversions are pretty damn bad. If you want to be unique, don't use subversion, start with your own material.

I think I'll just do what I think is cool regardless of whether the particulars involved are standard or nonstandard.

Lovecraftian horrors are no time to panic.
You carefully arm your weapons. And if your eyes melt, you politely ask a crewman to assist in aiming your weapons.

But even in Drifters he's like "I tried to save humans and they crucified me for it, why not give orcs a shot?"

There is Drifters, and JoJo to an extend. In a way. Not really.

No it's not an "interesting story". It's a retarded plot development that you suggest only because you think it's "awesome" (mildly funny) to take retarded premises and playing them straight

Jesus in Jojo is more a neutral force, literally made of Macguffins.

no, what I hate more is how every trope anc cliche in fantasy is based on a couple of popular tabletop games and videogames and have nothing to o with the folklore or literature source

man, the fuck is wrong with aussie-hours Veeky Forums?

because both the kidnapper and the rescuer are villains, and YOU are the princess. And your father the king wants to marry you off to some old fat slob for political reasons.
So now you have to survive going adventuring.

Meanwhile this guy is working together with both the kidnapper and the would be rescuer trying to find you.

Because he isn't actually evil! He actually has good intentions, but hasn't told anyone about them because...um...reasons!

>For instance, a big thing of mine is 'no naturally sympathetic goblinoids'. The little fuckers will cut your throat, you're not going to find a noble savage amongst the orcs. And yes, all half-orcs are products of savage rape by male orc raiders of their helpless captives.

i don't really like "goblinoids are fucking evil fuckers who will fuck you", the rest is fine but i see no problem with something like Warcraft Orcs instead of Tolkein orcs

there's also the Church is good but misguided because they have a simplistic view that doesn't account for the complexity of the world.
Which results in either
- they are easily take advantage of
- they end up doing something bad that interferes with the hero, while trying to do good

>Modern Fantasy
>Be modern day
>Use magic
So gay

Why can't my half-orc come from some hairy human noble forcing himself on a captured orc female?

>I forgive you for the evil you've done to me. But I don't have the power to forgive you for the evil you've done to others. Only they can.
>Now go and aske them for forgiveness
and then he lops his head off.

>sandmans
>having warrior princesses

INSHALLAH THE HARLOT WOULD BE STONED UPON HER RETURN!

Or maybe it's because the Church actually has been extremely evil throughout most of history, especially the times most fantasy roleplaying games are based on, and modern people know enough about history to be aware of this.

Subversion is an easy way to make things unpredictable and somewhat fresh, and they let you play with player expectations to do so.

Assuming it doesnt break setting consistency or come with preachy political bullshit, I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it.

back to r atheism

>If a villain goes "I'm sorry for everything I ever did. I repent, truly!" you don't have to let him go through a redemption arc. You can instead say "I know. Go to your penance with a pure heart" and lop off his head.
No you fucking can't, if the villain is sincere about repenting then all executing him will accomplish is satisfying your own bloodlust.

Because no-one wants to fuck an orc. Orc females look like sows.

Female villains are always hotter than princesses.

Stop giving a shit about reddit, user. It's embarrassing.

Goblins will fucking kill you.

Cancerous DM right here.

I'm fine with good or bad greenskins, or their local equivalents, but I fucking loathe the misunderstood dindu or I'M SAD!!! Shit.
Especially in cases like Warcraft, where they accidentally prove their genocidal intolerant villains like Proudmoore right by accident.

Seriously, fuck those little bastards.

Yeah, only le reddit atheist would think that torturing and murdering people for believing something different than you do is wrong!

Mercy's for chumps, especially when they're basically vermin.

Why do you have so little situational awareness?
Not you, you.

>stop liking what I don't like!

Very good OP. Your opinion is insightful and highly valued. You've made this board a better place for including it.

>i don't really like "goblinoids are fucking evil fuckers who will fuck you"
but that's what they are. If you don't like to have that type of creature in your setting don't use goblins.

OP didn't say that. He just said that he didn't like it, and wondered if anyone else shared his sentiments.

Because the villian has an enlighted tax scheme you can overlook him planning to kill the princess to summon horrors from beyond the veil of maddness for.

>but that's what they are
It's an "user assumes that if something is true in his setting it's true in every setting" episode.

>Personally I like it when there's corrupt church leadership tricking everyone else, until a bunch of zealots figures out what's going on and purges their own church leaders.

This could only be even remotely interesting if it descends into a purity spiral that's only resolved by things winding up roughly where they started with new guys in charge.

Why would that be interesting? That sounds like status quo 90s tv serial shit.

Nig if you're going to pretend to be The Plotline Arbitrator, at least dont have shit taste.

I just like religious zealotism, which is both good and bad.

Having a setting of multiple gods makes it just that much more interesting.

Fuck you subversions, the human spirit is much more fun to think/write about.

>(hell, Pershing's volunteeers to WW1 were even called Pershing's Crusaders)

Gotta remind you that there was a romantic revival of medieval shit back then, as part of the general post-napoleonic nation building efforts taking place in Europe and the western world, so that's more of a (current year) thing for the period rather than some overaching trend.

Evil Jesus was a standard character in fleshbomb-series and appeared a lot in various manga during the 70s, I think.

it's not my setting, it's what folklore and literature since forever has had them be.
Until cheeky fucks decided to subvert the trope and make gobbos green barbarians.

Goblins as the "evil gnomes" works pretty well, also.

Oh right, I forgot how the French Revolution descending into complete purity spiral chaos only to result in the autocratic monarchy being swapped out for the dictator Napoleon was 90s serial shit. Or the Russian revolution experiencing a purity spiral and resulting the autocratic monarchy being swapped out for the dictator Stalin was a 90s serial as well.

>I'm gonna subvert modern fantasy by having my evil humanoids be intrinsically evil in direct defiance of that noble savage shit!

So, rather than coming up with your own thought, you're going to invert the thoughts of other and replicate the original thought they were subverting? Bravo genuis, don't fucking hurt yourself coming up with those wild thoughts.

You do know that benevolent goblins are substantially older than modern fantasy, right?

he's calling modern fantasy cheeky fucks subverting a trope.

Yes.
You're an unique snowflake, literally the only one who's ever had that thought.
Congratulations.

What other small, weirdly colored dudes would you recommend?

I think that makes you the villain user

How?
Unless the villain is the sort of bad guy that gets bullied by all the other bad guys for being an ineffectual little faggot for not actually doing anything, I can't see how stabbing him is a bad thing

But how many are huge big faggots like op?

well for a start you don't actually know why they've been cast as the villain yet do you? And yet your first reaction is to murder them when they're unable to defend themselves

I don't subvert as much as I go balls deep.

Elves are prancy lalala homos that fuck trees and the boys are prettier than the girls?
Bam, my Elves are unisex tree people that posses vaguely humanoid features but are total naturefags.

Dwarves are greedy blacksmiths?
Boom, my Dwarves are borderline insane, lusting after wealth like a mutt lusts after a bitch in heat. The only thing they're good for is their word, and they will keep it to the letter, but after that the only reason they get along is because mining isn't something you can do on your own. They're petty, violent, and the personification of greed. Dwarven Citadels have strong and unforgiving laws because if they didn't Dwarves would backstab each other to death for greater wealth.

Orcs are dumb savages?
Well this one I kind of subvert. Orcs have a culture and civilization, but it's a loose band of tributary states honoring a High Chief, who can be usurped at any time by someone strong enough to kill him. Dirty tricks will get you lynched in Orc society, of course, only if you get caught. They war with the humans and dwarves and elves because it's as much a right of passage for them as the fact they're a violent dog eat dog culture propped up by a strong family hierarchy that does not tolerate weakness. As such Orcs are bigger, stronger, and faster than any of the other races... once they mature. But of course a high mortality rate coupled with the constant power struggle of the Orc Tribes keeps them from taking over the world.

And humans, good old humans, just Medieval Europe on steroids. Powerplays direct and indirect, wars, vassals, arms races and treaties written and rewritten and all the fun of civil wars when there are multiple pretenders with a legitimate claim to the throne.
A world of conflict, yet one where Orcs and Humans and Dwarves fight alongside each other as often as they fight against each other, and the Elves keep to the Old Woods, except when they don't, and no one really knows why.

>well for a start you don't actually know why they've been cast as the villain yet do you?
Can we please not have yet another fucking thread where we all make up details not present in posts and then do mental gymnastics to accuse each other of all sorts of shit?
It gets really fucking boring really quickly.

"lol i stab him" also makes campaigns pretty fucking boring, user.

see

>Yeah, only le reddit atheist would think that torturing and murdering people for believing something different than you do is wrong!
Yeah. Its a good thing the early church put a stop to things like the Colosseum. Thanks early Christians.

Unless you're trying to meme about the Spanish Inquisition who at most killed 5000 people over 400 years which is about a person a month.

Maybe if you stopped visiting reddit people would stop calling you out on it.