Making stereotypical storylines interesting

>The villain has kidnapped the kingdom's princess

>The villain has killed the heroes' parents and they seek revenge

>The kingdom has to face an invasion of evil dudes (insert orcs, goblins or whatever flavor of evil dudes you use here) and heroes happen to find the one solution to defend it

>Mad wizard/scientist creates life which becomes evil and has to be stopped

>Alien life is discovered and tries to invade Earth starting of course with New York

How would you use these as base storyline for your campaign in new ways that put a twist on the old dusty plots ?
Feel free to suggest more of them of course I love stereotypes.

As I DM I have used some of these on numerous occasion, most often in comedy games (so in DnD). There, I can make the princess thick, the villain cartoonishly malevolent and the magicians catastrophic nerds without breaking the tone and to the amusement of my players who know these tropes but recognize them as a skeleton for the flesh of fun games.

When I use them in more serious games I try not to use them but when I do I treat them as really serious issues.
The kidnapped princess for example can be an actually big deal when the princess was promised to a foreign prince in order to secure an alliance between kingdoms, the kidnapper was a skilled politician whose goal was to destabilize the country and the heroes have to be very discreet in order not to spread the news of the kidnapping. It helps them actually connect the story to the corld instead of the three thousand other places where it has been used.

> The princess is a changling, the king having been convinced she was simply mildly autistic by his (secretly fae) chancellor, the villain is saving the kingdom from becoming a puppet of the fae. Bonus: said villain is only doing this because they are from a rival fariy court and trying to put thier own changling on the throne.

> Thier parents were abusive and the "villain", who is actually an uncle or familly friend was a vigilante trying to give the hero a better life by brutally murdering every criminal they come across. Child abuse is a crime...

> The invaders are after the same mcguffin and seek to use it to kill thier evil god, who is ordering the invasions and rape-pillage-burn policies, so they can be free to live in peace.

I like those, especially the changeling one but i'm biased about changeling

>Alien life is discovered and tries to invade Earth starting of course with New York
>starting of course with New York

I do get it though
fuck america

>I do get it though
I don't think you do.

>Alien life discovered and tries to invade Earth, starting with New York, of course, as they've decided to fight alongside the Soviet Union, since they feel they will be easier to puppet than NATO nations

why not just directly puppet the soviet union to wipe out the US ? therefore causing only humans to kill each other and not loose any soldiers.

I assume you mean "twists" other than the obvious and incredibly famous ones that have already been done for each of these, like:

>The villain has kidnapped the kingdom's princess
And when they try to rescue her, it turns out the princess is really the villain and they've fallen in to her trap, OR the princess is in another castle, OR she's just in league with the big bad, OR she just kidnapped herself, man.

>The villain has killed the heroes' parents and they seek revenge
And then find out that the villain actually IS their parent who they thought was dead but is now a Sith Lord, etc

>The kingdom has to face an invasion of evil dudes (insert orcs, goblins or whatever flavor of evil dudes you use here) and heroes happen to find the one solution to defend it
But then it turns out the Evil Horde was not actually evil and they were just being manipulated, and it was all one big misunderstanding, and they just want to be friends.

>Mad wizard/scientist creates life which becomes evil and has to be stopped
Turns out the created life isn't actually evil, just misunderstood, and it's really the creator who is the asshole.

>Alien life is discovered and tries to invade Earth starting of course with New York
But the alien life was faked, and it's actually a plot by one of the heroes to head off a global nuclear war by sacrificing one city and uniting all the earth nations against a perceived common enemy.

Because that wouldn't be cool, and it'd be faster that way. I mean, really, what could a bunch of humans do to an interstellar species?

Yes I mean things that your player won't be able to predict from the word go.

You most subversive thing you could do with any of those right now is play them straight and play them well
.

I see what you did there.

At this point, pretty much this.

I don't know, what do you define as 'doing them well' ?

Is that so? Then what are we missing?

>The villain has kidnapped the kingdom's princess
The Princess is in on it.
She’s working with the villain by offering her hand in marriage as a way to increase her inheritance and is planning to betray the villain later. The villain has completely fallen for it, and doesn’t realize how much more clever the Princess actually is.
>The villain has killed the heroes' parents and they seek revenge
The villain killed the hero’s parents because they used to be former compatriots of his who stabbed him in the back and then used their ill-gotten gains to retire without repenting for their crimes. The villain used this betrayal as motivation to become who he is today.
>The kingdom has to face an invasion of evil dudes (insert orcs, goblins or whatever flavor of evil dudes you use here) and heroes happen to find the one solution to defend it
Killing the evil dude’s leader and then forming a peace treaty with his successor. It’s hardly an ideal solution, but it’s better then a sudden war and gives the kingdom more time to prepare and form a stalemate situation.
>Mad wizard/scientist creates life which becomes evil and has to be stopped
The life is “evil” by virtue of having cognitive processes so different from our own as to be nearly impossible to relate to; violent confrontation isn’t strictly necessary, only containment and relocation.
>Alien life is discovered and tries to invade Earth starting of course with New York
The alien life is not humanoid or even sapient, but is a form of organic growth akin to fungus. It doesn’t do anything crazy like animate the dead, but when people die of the Growth (as it is colloquially called) they release spores that are beginning to terraform the atmosphere for more Growth.

Take the aspects of these cliches that made them get that popular in the first place, and instead of parodying, deconstructing, or subverting them; emphasize them. In general, sincere stories are more memorable and enjoyable than subversive ones - look at the original Star Wars trilogy compared to the prequel trilogy, for one example. This doesn't mean to just take the cliches and tropes and play them out perfectly generically with no backbone behind it. The princess, for example, is very likely to try to escape. But the villain is going to be stronger, because the villain needs to be stronger. A truly incompetent main villain makes for an anticlimactic story.

nice too, thanks for sharing

>In general, sincere stories are more memorable and enjoyable than subversive ones
I get where you're coming from but when you think about it the Star Wars story was already putting a twist on an existing structure with the whole father reveal thing. And changing tropes doesn't remove the sincerity to a story as long as you're not telling it out of a need to be "ironic" and just want to tell a compelling story.

ok guys how about

>The villain has been kidnapped by the kingdom's princess

Revealing an antagonist to be related to the protagonist is nothing new. Morded was Arthur's nephew, after all.

It was new to the mainstream cinematic world, proof being that people didn't expect it like they do nowadays and that people remember this scene more than any other because of their reaction to it

It was the same when the Sixth Sense threw not one, but two plot twists at you, the first one to switch perspective and the second one for the actual reveal. People remember that because it was new and unknown at the time. Now people expect and/or are tired of twists in their stories.
My point is, in order to create classic stories you need to invent new ones.

> Humans(and most multicellular earth life) are an interstellar invasive species grown from a meteor and the alien invasion is trying to return us to our natual habitat in another galaxy to preserve earths only native life: bacteria.

> The scientist can swap minds as well as create bodys and did so, so the scientist gets a free pass to be evil while some innocent schmuck takes the blame when he switches back.

Never heard of those actually. I don't think they're stereotypes.

Those were edits of the alien invasion and mad scientist in OP

>Is that so? Then what are we missing?
Do you recognize the significance of the image posted here

t. M night shamalan

>The villain has killed the heroes' parents and they seek revenge

well one i could think of is that it is a part of a cycle of revenge where the hero's parents killed the villain's or something to that degree and he's tryna get revenge himself

>tfw you unironically think he is a good director but he mostly puts out garbage

>The villain has kidnapped the kingdom's princess

The villain has also kidnapped a milkmaid, a prostitute, a minor noblewoman, and a schoolmarm. He doesn't actually care about the princess's social status; he simply abducts women for aesthetic reasons and forces them to model for his paintings, which are bizarre and grotesque, among other things.

>the alien life is trying to conquer Earth by conquering our hearts
>it's starting from New York because it assumes it should present itself in front of the general assembly of the United Nations
>it knows all the best anecdotes, especially that one about intergalactic choir
>it has a pet called Spotty. It's very friendly, but looking at it causes headaches because it's partially five dimensional
>your mission is to find out its recipe for famous Zerril cookies

You are a genius.

Tropes have been inverted and subverted so many times that simply playing them straight will work.

I like all of them.

>during your mission you find out that you like the same bands

>you wake up in the scientists body and have to figure out how to stop him from ruining your life too

Original plots are difficult to come by. Characters, themes, motifs, settings are more frie dly to originnality. The key to make an old story work is to innovate in other areas than the plot. So lo g you bring a new perspective, something new, you will be fine.

>The villain has kidnapped the kingdom's princess

>The king is basically not-henry the 8th who made a deal with a trickster god to get the perfect hier on the condition that he "never impeads them from taking the throne", was pissed it was another daughter, and even more pissed about her fascination with crazy ideas like equality, welfare and education (basically, a hypercompetent modern politician bringing liberalism and social mobility to a game of crusader kings) and is trying to have her removed from the throne without breaking the deal, hence why, instead of enlisting his army to rescue her, he's sending groups on 4 idiots who are bound to fail...

>terraform the atmosphere
I have the strongest urge to tell you you're wrong, but no idea what would be the correct way to say that.

People have become so obsessed with clever subversions and inversions of tropes that "sterotypical" stories aren't typical anymore.
Play them straight and wonder at how refreshing it is.

Freaking just use them. I don't think I've ever seen a DM go for a cliche storyline even if it would have been satisfactory. There always has to be some twist to it that often gets handled badly.

Damn she looks like you're average cakefaced thot on any instaslut account

>They are secret lovers and want to elope.

>The parents of the hero and villan fought together, before the heroes parents betrayed the villain's, driving them into exile/whatever

>The solution is genocide of orcs

>the mad scientist has abused the life and now is lying to try and hide his crimes

>they also end with new York, and sue for peace after conquering it

The villain is so bored with life that they're literally releasing the sealed evil just for the sake of spicing things up. Here's the kicker, if they succeed, they'll help the heroes take down the evil afterwards.