The King (who has been on the lunatic fringe lately) is always accompanied by a strange foreign woman nobody knows the history of.She is just a brainwashed country girl under the effects of mind-control courtesy of the King. He is using her as a decoy so he can pin the blame on her once the adventurers "save" him by killing her.
>>43969907
Post more, m8.
>The enemy kingdom has 4 generals that correspond to the 4 elements
>A character's love interest has been lying about something tremendous but can't bring themselves to confess it directly.
>>43969907
The party has to go save the princess. "The Princess" is a boat.
>>43970026
Stolen from Froggert the 3-D platforming game?
Don't ask me why I know this.
>>43969907
The party has to clear out a cave filled with goblins.
The goblins are not vicious, but instead throwing a wild party and are drunk off their asses, and the party has been called upon to enforce the noise ordinance and make sure the drunk goblins get home safely.
The King's heir is a degenerate and evil bastard, and the king's ducal brother in his 50s is a far better candidate for the throne.
>>43969907
The "Evil Empire" conquering the land is trying to unify it, so that as one they can beat back the horde of invaders approaching from across the sea. Only the empire knows they are coming.
Outlying farmland around the town is being torn up and uprooted, with gigantic gashes in the ground. The party has been sent to investigate, and discovers a troll is behind it.
The troll did not mean to destroy property, but was simply looking for his favorite club that he had buried in a previous drunken fugue, and volunteers to pay restitution to the farmers.
Nation in the setting based on Japan.The nation is warlike, samurai are corrupt and the status quo is enforced with violence, with ninja helping the mistreated peasants by striking against the cruel lords.Not!Japan just seems to always get the peaceful/clean/honarabu treatment in games where the main focus is not!Europe.
An ancient evil from beyond the stars awakens.
It is from beyond the stars, and is indeed ancient, but people only think it's evil because it looks like a purple xenomorph queen with freddy kreuger claws. It's CN at worst.
the Kobolds are actually like an ant colony and the Dragon their Queen, the "Golden Treasure" are her eggs. you were sent to steal them because the King wanted a Source of easy labor
The orcs don't actually find humans or elves attractive in any way. But the elven women have everyone convinced the orcs are out to rape them all.
>>43970142
Why not just tell people? If everyone knew about hordes of invaders coming to kill them all, there might not need to be a violent unification. Even if peaceful unification is impossible, they still gain almost nothing by not saying anything.
>A kingsmoot is called in the wake of some calamity, calling all the kings of the world into one city at one time
>everything goes perfectly well, the kinds work out an agreement, and no incidents of any kind happen
>>43970231
Language barriers, people not believing them, underplaying the magnitude of the threat, or too much bad blood.
>>43970171
An ancient evil from beyond the stars awakens.
It's fucking ancient, so it groans once, sighs, and rolls back over because it's not living much longer anyways.The real threat are the millions of astral parasites and God-cadaver thieves waiting to harvest it for some tasty ass power.An ancient evil awakens. You must put it on life support.
>>43970256
Okay so it might not work, like I said though, why not even try? Nothing you listed is a reason not to try. If nobody else agrees to help, the empire can proceed to conquer anyway, but it would be absolutely retarded of any smart emperor to not even attempt an alliance.
>>43970187
>Orcs are actually into the elven men more
>This makes the women so angry that they start a campaign of defamation
>>43970231
Time is of the essence, and nobody believes them. Think of it like the Romans. If your military is strong enough, and your neighbors fear or hate you anyways, sometimes it's just better to say fuck-it to diplomacy when time is running out.
>>43969907
The princess is kidnapped by orcs. A wandering band of adventurers hears of this and makes the journey to offer their services in rescuing her. As they close in on the kidnapped princess they pass into orc territory and begin to wonder at how verdant and beautiful it is, until it is finally discovered at the prison camp that the princess is a sadistic sorceress who has been working with her father to wipe out the orcs and take their fertile land for his kingdom.
>>43970313
How would they be able to tell elven men and women apart? They're all thin, and slight of build, with long, braided hair!
![[Oinks Internally].png](https://i.imgur.com/hfnmL32.png "[Oinks Internally].png")
>>43970413
They can smell it.
>>43970357
Time is of the essence, and they're fighting other kingdoms instead of preparing for the invasion? If the neighboring kingdoms are hard to conquer quickly, then they are wasting military resources. If the neighboring kingdoms are easily conquered, then they wouldn't be any help against an invasion. And in either case, they are ruining any chances of ever having a good diplomatic or trading relationships with everyone.
This is either the dumbest, most politically suicidal plan any ruler could ever come up with, or after the fact apologia to excuse war crimes, just like the whole "The Star Wars empire was really preparing for the Yuuzhan Vong the whole time" crock of shit.
>>43970465
Clearly you are wrong, because the Star Wars Empire was fuck-huge and had an insane amount of ships and resources, so clearly their strategy was efficient and productive.
>>43969907
A swarm of giant insects with a Hivemind descend upon the land.
Turns out they're actually very friendly, and practically ecstatic about discovering other sapients. They immediately set about helping make society more efficient in any way they can, trying to be as helpful as possiblebecause they see us as the "special needs" children who can't into telepathy or collective conciousness.
>>43970489
I'm not arguing that it wasn't, I'm talking about how the idea that it was all to prepare for the Vong is some retcon apologist bullshit, made to try add depth to what was intentionally to be an objectively evil and wrong empire.
>>43970465
Eh, they're doing both.
And if your strategy and tactical planning trumps your neighbors, then you can outmaneuver their armies, and capture their capital with minimal time.Blitzkrieg
>>43970557
Doesn't matter... Vong war was stupid as shit anyways, and isn't even canon.
>>43970550
GURPS Aliens actually had a species like this. They were a planetary consciousness that existed in every living thing on the planet, and after a rough first contact, fell in love with the rest of the universe and became super eager to help as a sort of super individual.Everyone in power hates and fears it and is looking for every possible solution to have it killed or enslaved.Estimates and models show that trying to do this is beyond hopeless in every single simulated scenario.
>>43970550
>What is Macross Frontier?
>>43970606
So apparently they don't have planetbusters?
Or does it just have some sort of psionic power that can 'absorb' other people?
>>43970011
>The enemy kingdom has 4 generals that correspond to the 4 elements
It's little more than a naming convention.
Their personalities or strategy aren't associated with their element in any meaningful way.
They aren't even that good at fighting and are perfectly willing to surrender once the party closes in on them.
>>43970652
It exists off the planet. It can make more modules of itself in all kinds of varieties. The planet is it, every animal and plant on it is it, but it exists all over the place now helping people out and learning about other species.
>>43970436
Source?
>>43970606
Mmmm
>>43970142
So...Star Wars, then?
>>43970142
The Evil Empire is revealed to not be evil, as they cry for unification in the face of a powerful enemy coming from beyond - all nations rally and unite with the Empire, forging an almighty harmony of power never before seen in all history!The Evil Empire is unaware that their leader has planned for this, and when the invaders come, hands the entire unified empire over to them.
>>43970608
>show up and start wrecking shit
>choose to just fuck off and do their own thing at the end
Close, but the Vajra don't really fit as "helpful," other than that time they shielded that one vessel with their own bodies. They avert the Evil Bug cliche, just not in the way I described.
>>43970606
Cool. Are they bug-people, or anything-from-that-planet people?
>>43970736
Except without the whole good vs evil, jedi, spaceships, blasters, bounty hunters, or Vongo bongos. So no, not lik Star Wars.
>>43970550
I'd like once for the giant insect race to work like it does IRL
>4 castes: breeder, worker, drone and soldier
>no super telepathy/hivemind, they're just really good at guessing what needs doing
>different hives get into fights over nearby resources all the time, even between same species
>hives without breeders are forced into the winner's hive
>>43970794
>Cool. Are they bug-people, or anything-from-that-planet people?
Anything from that planet. And because of ultratech and its own power, it's learned how to make itself anything it wants, even something mechanical, within reason. Though it tends to take on an insectoid motif.
>>43969907
An ancient race has awakened far below the known limits of the surface.
They've sent diplomats to every corner of the known world in a vast array of social roles -bodyguards, assassins, concubines, mercenary military officers, sages, clerics and more. If one is destroyed or banished, another returns with a different approach 'til something sticks.
They message is the same everywhere: we want an alliance. You can conduct your affairs any way you want, but we want an alliance. They go to combat against each other without hesitation; displaying no greater allegiance than is what's required to secure an agreement.
>>43969907
>twist a cliche
More like twists are a cliche.
>>43970828
But anon, mindless insect colonies like that aren't nearly as interesting, mostly because the only thing such a hive would do is sustain it's own hive.
Plus Starship Troopers came close to that, minus competing with other hives.
>>43970780
Huh, that's a neat map. I wanna play a Native American campaign now.
>>43970794
Yeah, but the whole explanation for their encounter in the first place is that Ranka was engineered with their cells, so she can communicate with them, and the whole "wrecking shit" angle was them trying to save her from the weird species that they didn't understand. After the Galaxy and their league of evil scientists got taken out, the Vajra allowed the humans to settle on their *home planet* and would presumably live in harmony with them. Shielding Island-1 was just the first instance in the show where they understood how humans worked because it was the first time they heard another Human (Sheryl) and suddenly understood that they communicated with each other differently and weren't some sort of scary evil things that had kidnapped the little queen. It could be assumed that they would continue to live peacefully, and helpfully, with at least the Frontier settlement.
>>43970292
>An ancient evil awakens. You must put it on life support.
Call the wizard!
>>43971010
>mindless
Anon never said mindless. Quite the opposite, in fact. Each bug alien is an individual mind, they just work together much better than any group of human individuals. There's plenty of room for interesting fluff, especially given the weird twists on human society an almost 1-to-1 adaptation of ant colonies would take. There's no reason a Bug colony can't do all the stuff a human society does narratively.
>Bug people are vicious warriors and capture slaves, but the slaves are treated no worse than any other worker and these new workers accept their lot easily. Conflict when they try it with other races.
>One group of Bug people eventually grows into such a monolithic megacolony, there only other Bug people are part of the same colony. But they still run into problems of resource conflict, but the mores of intra-colony conflict prevent open warfare
>Herds of domesticated, cow-like insect beasts that excrete sugar substances out of their asses
>Bug people are super good at working together, self sacrifice, and communication, but occasionally there are "insane" Bugs that, for whatever reason, are autistic and just can't be on the same wavelength. Bug people don't really know how to deal with them besides exile or execution because they're too disruptive
>Don't understand most forms of coercion of or lying to allies
>Have a complicated but easily accepted direct democracy system, facilitated by their preternatural communication abilities and usual lack of in colony conflict
>In colony conflict can still arise when some Bugs try to usurp the normal breeding lines surreptitiously
>Weird spider monsters can camouflage themselves and infiltrate hives to munch on babies
>Fungal disease induces a strange, religious like experience in the Bugs before they wander off to die, fruiting body sprouting from their heads as they kneel in prayer into the windGoddamn I'm obsessed with ants
>>43971507
What about a bug race of individuals, but what scares other races is just how EASILY they cooperate and submit to their system's authority? Like they seem to dream and desire and feel same as anyone else, but just very easily slip into a loss of self for the sake of what the colony and race needs.
>>43971507
>>Don't understand most forms of coercion of or lying to allies
That has got to be so insanely evolutionarily disadvantageous it can only be explained with "Wizards did it"
>>43969907
The Duke has hired a new court wizard; ever since then the Duke's mind has grown weaker and the influence of the wizard grows ever greater. Lesser warlords are beginning to rise up and chaos is the only respite from the wizard's harsh new laws.The Duke has dementia and the court wizard is a loyal citizen trying to hold the land together. What appear to be cruel actions are just a scientific mind processing society as though it were a series of simple variables.
>>43971562
I meant "allies" in the sense of in the colony itself. Only a few, more wasp-like ant-species have workers that sometimes try to sneak some of their own personal eggs in to the pile. Most typical ant species run like well olied machines, and any social consciousness that arose with individuals would have little reason to practice social deceptions and coercion to further their own ends. Their own ends would be everyone's ends and vice versa. A lot how ant colonies work comes from the emergent structure of their very clear chemical signals.
Obviously, when they eventually run into non-Bug people races and maybe form alliances with them things would begin to go belly up. They shouldn't be morons, you couldn't just tell an obvious falsehood to their face and not have them be suspicious. But they'd be highly confused. Why would you need to coerce your ally into doing what needs to be done? Surely they understand such basic social concepts like clear communication of the reason something needs to be done and knowledge that, if correct, everyone will obviously accept it because others will have come to the same conclusion? Diplomacy would be a nightmare. No reason not to trick the bajeezus out of the enemy, though.
But yes, if we're going giant bug people, wizards or bug gods are probably involved anyway. The list wasn't really meant to be an exhaustive thing for a single race, but a bunch of ruminations of how to translate eusocial ant behavior into a sapient society of individuals and maybe do some interesting things not usually done with them, sane or not. It doesn't seem very fun if they don't come across as insane.
>>43971768
>furiously copies ideas down
>>43971768
It'd be advantageous for them to be able to lie, since then the hive could use them to lie to other people in diplomacy. But I like them coming across as insane.
![louis_philippe_charte_1830_musee_louvre[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/QBl9l7k.jpg "louis_philippe_charte_1830_musee_louvre[1].jpg")
>>43970074
>Post-restoration main branch Bourbons
They're all degenerates, and have been since Louis XIV. Orléans, Bonaparte or bust.
>>43970059
Its a pretty old literary device actually. Definitely before Frogger.
>>43969907
Dwarves are all the same.Because they're the same person. The Dwarves have developed a cloning device which they used to clone the single strongest and smartest Dwarf there. Said Dwarf had ambition and chased all the others out with am army of clones. Deep inside the caves are the facilities to create more clones.
>>43971904
>Citizen-King
>Not the epitome of degenerate
>>43970142
After playing Fire Emblem Awakening, that's pretty much a great deal of the villains.
![Lar1_court_001z[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/odXeoAk.jpg "Lar1_court_001z[1].jpg")
>>43971986
>Not seeking to unify the monarchial past with the revolutionary future
Admittedly Louis-Philippe failed horribly where Napoleon III succeeded. In fact, the only thing Louis-Philippe had going for him was technically being a Bourbon.
>>43971879
Pretty much. You need to be able to trick the enemy to win fights, but why would you ever need to trick your ally? You're always on the same wavelength. It's in everyone's best interest to be honest, because "best interest" doesn't mean the same thing to bug people as it does to humans.
Imagine they make first contact. Realize these strange sack creatures aren't necessarily an enemy colony. They try to establish some kind of alliance. Maybe a joint mining concern. Slowly, they realize something is going wrong. It's not as efficient as it should be. Resources are missing or, strangely, ending up in certain, slightly fatter than average, sack creature pockets. Workers are unmotivated, being forced to work unreasonable quotas, and generally not being taken care of. It's almost as if each individual can't properly talk to each other. When, confused, they try to figure out what's going on, the sack creatures are evasive, unclear, or even spouting falsehoods. Horror comes upon them. All these sack creatures are clearly insane. They've stumbled across a race of mental patients out of touch with reality. Somehow, it works for them, but it's going to seriously fuck the bugs over. Scared out of their wits, the bug people either withdraw or raze the area to the ground in panic, thinking they've run into some crazy fuckers out to kill them all (you only trick your enemies, after all).
Eventually, they collectively realize what was going on. This individuals of this species somehow manage to treat their allies as both comrades and rivals at the same time, using honesty and lies, cooperation and opposition, in equal measure to achieve their own, personal ends. (Probably a consequence of their highly inefficient reproductive systems.) Eventually, they figure out how to "lie" to their friends so a more cooperative, if annoyingly inefficient, alliance can be forged.
Or they could go full Krikkit and realize the only option is to gas the humans, race war now.
>>43969907
The King (who has been on the lunatic fringe lately) is always accompanied by a strange foreign woman nobody knows the history of.His wide-ranging reforms, while better for the kingdom overall, are bad for some of the older families, who have been slandering his name, plotting against him, and deliberately crashing the economy. She is the daughter of an old ally of his from a far away land, the only one he can fully trust.
>>43970736
Also the plot of Fable 3.
>>43969907
A nearby nobleman has several former adventurers in his employ as guards or domestic servants,one of whom the party only sees at night and is later found to be a vampire.The nobleman knows because she told him the moment she got there and was just genuinely looking for something useful to do with her unlife. Upon further investigation, it's revealed that everyone knows and that the maids and butlers under her geas took it on willingly, knowing it would allow them to focus better on their jobs and live peaceful lives rather than stewing in the paranoia they'd lived in before.
>>43969907
The mysterious cult trying to call forth their ancient god is actually just a bunch of crazy people and their elaborate ritual doesn't do anything except make a few deities chuckle sensibly at their expense.
>>43973215
>final battle
>the ritual goes through!
>IT'S TOO LATE, WE FAILED!
>NO!
>IT COMES!
>...
>Is that the Trickster God?
>Why is she laughing
>Oh
>Oh no
>No
>NO!
>NO GOD DAMMIT SHE'S BEING HANDED $20 FROM THE GOD OF DARKNESS
>KAZ
>>43969907
The king of the land hire the party to find the princess.The king was only trying to help the party with self-actualization, they were the princess all along
Personal favourite, and one I like to use in my campaign settings:
>A warlike nation strikes a peaceful country, pushing them to the brink of destruction. The strong-willed young monarch pulls the last of the nation's troops together and, with some help and the use of clever tactics, repels the enemy invasion.The monarch is not satisfied, and uses the opportunity to starve the invading nation of resources and begin a campaign of conquest far worse than the original.
The reasoning is different for different settings, but that's the framework.
>>43970074
>this actually looks like a history post
Good job Stannisfag.
>>43969907
This implies that kings getting brainwashed by mysterious foreign girls is a regular enough occurance that it would be a reasonable possibility for a king's unusual behaviour. Why is this a thing in your world
>>43974090
Learn to read.
>>43972163
Third option: decide to teach the sack creatures efficiency through example. Change the system so that drones/bug-people are working side-by-side with sack creatures, take over distribution of resources since the sack creatures are clearly inept at it, so forth and so on.
So the fatter sack creatures were unhappy that they were not receiving more; that did not excuse sending warriors to try and force their inefficient system back into place. Thankfully it was a minor nuisance; even Workers were an even match for these warriors.
The sack creature workers are certainly much happier, since they now receive fair compensation and are no longer overworked.
...it'd probably blow up somewhere down the line, but that's part for the course with first contact.
>>43974240
>The sack creature workers are certainly much happier, since they now receive fair compensation and are no longer overworked.
They would never believe they were receiving fair compensation.
There would be accusations of corruption, revenge plots, and racism fueled hate crimes as those not content with their current standing aspire for more.
When given the real numbers, they either dismiss them out of hand or grumble back into silence until they have a cause to "believe" in to strike back anyway.They are sabotaged by the people who DO appreciate efficiency, but make themselves look good by "effortlessly" killing give members in staged combat and manipulate events to reach "compromises" that completes the hive's original intent anyway.
>>43971562
>>43971768
>>43971879
Counter-point: they never see the need to lie themselves because they don't need to. Just because they're willing to be friends does not mean they like being taken advantage of, nor are they unfamiliar with the concept of retaliation.
A friendly race of giant bugs is still a race of giant bugs. Trying to screw them over will lead to very very bad things.
>>43972934
Came here to say this
>>43973391
But if I was the princess all along, then who was that in the tower behind the Dragon?
Also, what about the time I spent scrubbing horseshoes and polishing armor as a squire? Was none of that real?
>>43971768
>you couldn't just tell an obvious falsehood to their face and not have them be suspicious.
Yes you could.
They would literally have never developed lies.
>>43970736
Not anymore thank god.
>>43970162
But that's just actual history.
>>43975873
The key thing here is "obvious." They wouldn't just believe you, they would correct you, then start growing frustrated if you continue to insist.
Not developing lies does not mean an inability to understand "that's wrong." It means an inability to understand why you would be wrong on purpose.
>>43975873
Just because they never developed lies doesn't mean that they are unaware of misinformation.
Let's say that a bug asks another bug where a tool is and when he gets to the supposed location the tool is not there. That is misinformation.
If you tell the Bug Diplomat that the asteroid field you're mining has minimal amounts of titanium in it but the bugs already surveyed the field and know that it contains rich deposits of titanium, they'll know that you're spreading misinformation which weakens the cause.
Weakening the cause is the most heinous crime in their culture.
>>43975873
Not lies among themselves, but if they're going to be hunting and fighting even just other bug people, deception should be known. It's not a pressure internally, because the entire nest/hive/colony is a single reproducing "unit." The good of any and all is the good of all and any. The proper functioning of it, searching for food, managing the rotation of jobs, dealing with threats, making decisions about moving, all requires each individual to be able to near perfectly communicate information not only to other individuals, but for those individuals to then continue to near perfectly communicate it onwards. The more perfectly information can be passed on, the better the colony can work as a group. Doesn't mean individuals can't be wrong, and it doesn't mean they can't all be wrong as a whole.
And, like real ant colonies, sometimes there's bugs in the system. Some bug fucks up or can't communicate properly or is just kind of off. If they're going to be sapient, other sorts of mental problems come to the fore to. That's why there's the focus on insanity in the original argument. They'd be familiar with being wrong about something in a way that doesn't make sense with their groupthink. They'd just think you were mistaken or slightly crazy. When they realized the scope of it eventually, depending on the situation you could probably get away with a lot for awhile, they'd think you were really crazy and freak out. Or just revert to thinking you're an enemy, because that's who tries to trick you on purpose.
That's just for full on communist bugs. You could go with something like wasps or bulldog ants or something. Where there's less cooperation and a lot more infighting. But a sapient analog to your standard ant isn't going to have the kinds of even white lies humans have to grease social wheels, because despite not having a "hivemind," they work very much like a singular organism. They just wouldn't be motivate or work the same way as, in this conception.
>>43970305
Perhaps they have tried and someone shot the messengers. Maybe out of distrust? Maybe to keep the larger threat unknown?
>>43974352
The whole example was a not so subtle dig at the differences in individual motivation between ants and humans. My thought was, the bug people would be communism that works. Because, unlike people, they wouldn't be wired towards personal or even small group goals, but the "good" of the entire society. To them, humans are crazy inefficient and infighting, but they don't look so good to humans either. You could imagine a scenario where the group comes to a faulty conclusion, but there's enough mistaken individuals for it to overwhelm the correct one. Every bug person would nod along and go off and be wrong until it caught up with them. And maybe, like humans, bullheadedly be wrong for quite awhile. They'd have a hard time understanding why the human miners woouldn't just work because it'll improve the lot of them as a whole.
Wasteful with lives is another possibility, though it feels too much like the cliche. But they'd certainly be freer with lives, and each individual would be only too glad to go off an die. Not even passionately, but just as a matter of course. It's what needs to be done, of course. This anon made the point that they'd come off as almost cultish, >>43971560, and they're not wrong. In this instance, you wouldn't have a hierarchy or authority that's separate from the population, because all the bug people are on the same page all the time, "voting" as it were on the important decisions. Some know more than others until the information spreads. It's like they're all the same person, almost. They're individuals, but it's very easy to understand each other and what they're thinking. I thought of it like they've got the Id and Superego, but no Ego. They've got base instincts and the social conditioning, but there's no conception of a separation off themselves from the group. They are the group and make major decisions as a group, except for the day to day stuff they've been drilled to do exactly right.
>>43970828
What is Shinseki Yori.
>>43971037
With no horses, those scales are far too vast to traverse in a reasonable amount of time.
>>43970011
>The enemy kingdom has 4 generals that correspond to the 4 elements
...only in this world, the four classical elements are completely different. Beware the four generals of Dark, Light, Wood and Metal!
>>43970026
"The Princess has been kidnapped by a Dagon!"
"Was that a typo?"
"No. He wants revenge on boats because of the steamer that beaned Cthulhu in the head."
>>43975260
In fact it was not.
>>43977153
The party then discovers the Elder God's do not, in fact, cause insanity. It's just that the only people to announce their existence to the world were already loco; the sensible people knew they were grumpy when their nap got disturbed, so generally kept their mouths shut about it.
Oh, they're still terrifying, but that's because they're huge and very angry. Once they calm down they're very pleasant conversationalists.
>>43974090
>This implies that kings getting brainwashed by mysterious foreign girls is a regular enough occurance that it would be a reasonable possibility for a king's unusual behaviour. Why is this a thing in your world
different anon here
is this your first time hearing about fantasy books?
The charismatic heir to a well-established merchant dynasty strategically invests his wealth to instigate a popular uprising against the despotic king of the realm and establishes a new, democratic order.He does so because he owns the majority of the country's printing shops and with the monarch gone, he'll be able to rule the country unopposed by simply keeping the voting population "informed" about the "right" things in the "right" ways, and nobody's even going to suspect him of doing so.
>>43975964
In actual history ninjas arent heroes of the peasantry. They were pawns and agents in the games of the higher classes, used for dirty work where families didn't want to leave fingerprients
>>43980474
Ironically, the Ninja tended to be the most loyal guys in the waring states period. Once Ieyasu had their loyalty he kept it until the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Alien Invasion. It's one alien. Moon-sized ship, Kardashev scale IV or V. Wants to conquer humanity, appoint local authorities, bring humanity into a new golden age where the humans reach out into the stars because he thinks our leaders are idiots but the race has great potential. Comes up with a "Contest Of Champions" to minimize bloodshed.
People trying to figure out how to lose contests on purpose after seeing what the alien's plans are like...
>>43970550
HQQ?
A great warrior has two sons, each of whom he pits against each other in an attempt to determine the strongest of them.They're best bros and ignore their father's prodding, eventually getting him to fuck off.
>>43969907
>Two countries at war with each other
>The little country gets fucked over and yadda yadda the militia/rebel forces/ stand up and butt fuck the bigger country
>Oh no it turns out the king was being brainwashed/manipulated by the ancient evil!
>The big country gets pushed aside as you start defending your own country against the evil
>The fights start off large and with heavy casualties but eventually they slow down to a crawl, as you only get the occasional unorganized demon warband attacking that one village off the coast that takes for FUCKING ever to protect
>you wonder what the fuck is going on so you and your merry band of men travel to the big country
>It turns out the king of the big country is pissed as FUCK so he's rallied his entire people against the ancient evil and now he's going to dive into hell's asshole just because they tricked him
>he offers you to come along
Oh hero you are our only hope against the demon lord, we bestow upon you our most holy relicThey give you an AK-47 and 3 magazines, in this world bullets are used instead of gold, however guns are exceedingly rare and are the stuff of legends
>>43983772
>guns are exceedingly rare
Take a side trip to the 'Murrican ruins. You'll have the party geared up in some good shit in no time.
>>43983819that's where the demon lord is, any fool hardy adventurer who gets within a couple meters of the M'urrican borders gets lit the fuck up by the royal guard
>>43983722
I've considered doing something like this
>The 'evil' king has been rused his entire life to act cruelly because it'll allegedly save his nation
>Fights the party out of desperation to keep his dream alive
>Wounded and bleeding out, he doesn't relent
>In his moment of vulnerability he's betrayed by those who have rused him, all the atrocities he committed are for naught
>He dies of his wounds as the party leaves
>As time passes, his spirit arises as a Death Knight with a weak memory but still retains an idea of what he must do to avenge his betrayal and make amends for what he has done
>His frame destroyed in the final battle, he is finally allowed to pass on and
>His memory restored reveals his true identity to the heroes who killed him and thanks them
>>43983898
For sure, as long as you don't make the ruser someone from his court, then it just sounds generic since it'll be the court jester/advisor manipulating the dumb king cliche
>>43983722
Isn't this basically the plot of Fire Emblem: Awakening but with a reversal on the "crazy king" trope it runs with?
>>43983936
It's the plot of EVERY game that involves two countries at war, it's always satan or a third country pulling the strings
>>43969907
The party explores an ancient temple and finds weapons and armor forged by the precursor races in the first age of the world.
The age where making weapons and armor out of metal instead of stone was still a kinda new idea, so they were made with kinda shitty materials and primitive forging techniques that make them far, far weaker than the weapons and armor the party already has, but extremely valuable historical finds to sell to scholars.
>>43970231
>maybe if I don't tell them, their countries will get destroyed and I can take them over if I survive
>>43983963
I dunno i can recall more than a few stories where the antagonistic country are genuinely just assholes.
Making the "evil" king realize he done wrong feels just as tropey as the trope nowadays though.
>>43984106
I believe VC had the prince just being a giant asshole if I recall, breaking the trope would be the king taking the lead and leading the army himself into hell instead of you recruiting him and helping his country
>>43977666
>everything I know is a lie
Thanks, Satan.
>>43970142
this has already become another cliché
like, this twist is used so often that i would be more surprised if there WASN'T an invasion coming from across the sea
>>43984203
>breaking the trope would be the king taking the lead and leading the army himself into hell instead of you recruiting him and helping his country
Like in Yggdra Union?
