Stereotypical Fantasy with a humorous twist

Hugh Tenfinger looked about his dimly-lit tavern, while polishing the bar in front of him with a mix of annoyance and resignation. It seemed to be going well so far, the sun was setting and nobody had been knifed or started a brawl yet. Maybe he wouldn’t have to replace anything broken today. Mor plough them all, he certainly didn’t expect to be visiting the carpenter every other day when he decided to make a living in this line of work. He wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand and let out a sigh.

One of his patrons, a dwarf who seemed to be deep in his cups, had started singing a song. A song about gold. Typical. As if some unseen force drove them, all the other dwarves in his company followed suit. Shouting and laughing and raising toasts to each other. Of course, this drew a few angry glances from the group of farmers sat nearby, who had to endure the same song nearly every night. One of them looked pleadingly at Hugh, but the grizzled barkeep shrugged helplessly. What could he do, Seven Hells take them? Besides, the short bastards paid much more generously than that bunch of peasants.

Sighing once more to himself, he looked around the tavern once more. There was a hooded, mysterious traveller sat in one of the dark corners. In the other corner, two equally mysterious fellows were discussing something over a tankard of ale. The third corner housed a dark robed man, a mage by the looks of him, for the time being. There was a second hooded stranger sat in the fourth corner, he was puffing from a pipe and starring intently at the door, as if waiting for someone. In the other corner, a shady guy was offering something to the patrons passing by him. All the while, a fiery-haired woman in the sixth corner was sneaking glances at the mysterious traveller. The other two corners were empty for the time being.

Hugh had to smile to himself; he would pat his own self on the shoulder if it wouldn’t look ridiculous. He knew how much these silent, mysterious types liked their dark corners so he had made a tavern not with four, but with eight of them! That was double the mysterious clientele. Furthermore, the torches and fireplaces were keenly positioned, so they would offer a minimal amount of light to the corners. At Hugh’s there was accommodation for all sorts of visitors.

Of course, one thing brought with it another and the second stranger, the hooded one, had asked about any interesting rumours. And, naturally, Hugh was only happy to oblige. He told him about the haunted mill, the treasure in the old baron’s castle, the lost dwarven artefact hidden deep in the mines. Nobody seemed to have solved those yet, so he had tried his luck with them once more.

As any self-respecting innkeeper knows, a tavern without rumours is like a crypt without undead. There’s just no point in going there otherwise – that was his new motto. That’s why Hugh had been gathering rumours for the good part of the last few years. A lot of lonely travellers wanted someone to talk to, after their long journeys, and Hugh had always been on the receiving end. Rumours, gossip – the usual, but only much later did he realise that many other travellers and would be adventurers would show interest and even pay for the very same rumours!

Being a pragmatic and enterprising man, Hugh had wasted no time in setting up a journal of sorts, where he recorded, using his limited writing skills, everything he heard, useful or not. Since then, his rumour-mongering had paid off and what had started as something on the side, was now providing respectable profits to his establishment. It was a bit tricky, true enough – he couldn’t just tell the first green adventure-seeking lad all his treasure trove, but with some practice he had become quite good with it. He would offer bits and pieces, when too many people became interested in one particular thing, he would put it to the side and offer something new. Only for the rumour to resurface a few months later, if nothing had been done about it. It was a good business.

Despite that, Hugh’s eyes wandered to the sword and shield hung on the wall. His memories drifted back to the old days...when he was a mercenary and wandered the lands himself. It had been an interesting life, nothing like the “adventures” kids nowadays used to go on – ahhh, just thinking about it made him want to pop open a flagon of ale and to show that bard over there what a real tale was.

Everything was different nowadays, that sense of excitement and mystery seemed to be gone. And yet....he had heard merchants from far-off lands whisper of some evil arising, dark omens and ancient prophecies hinting that a time of great reckoning was approaching. Was there any truth to that, the innkeep wondered?

Was a new time of heroes approaching?

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Tree-loving elves, drunk dwarves with a Scottish accent, bald men in dark armour - anyone who's ever been interested in fantasy has no doubt met these representatives of the genre. The stereotypes established by settings like the Forgotten Realms, Warhammer Fantasy and the hundreds of derivatives that have followed, have been going strong for many, many years. I am certain that almost all of us have succumbed to these pitfalls at least once in our writing careers, there is just no escaping it. Recently, however, there seems to be a trend which is trying to eliminate that. Settings are intentionally made grittier, darker; characters are presented in a more life-like, realistic light. All for the sake of "breaking the mould".

This RP will be an attempt at something different. Instead of trying to escape from the stereotypical setting, we are going to fully embrace it and revel in its cliched nature. We will go back to the roots of the hero's journey - our group of unlikely allies is going to go on the grand quest of saving the world and whatever princesses we may find on the way. But - you may ask - how will this defer from just about anything which has already been done?

To break away from the pack, we're going to introduce an original element to the characters themselves. Something foreign and completely opposite to the traditional character. A righteous paladin, who has a thing for pickpocketing people? A stealthy rogue, who loves heavy armour? The quiet, gruff ranger who actually hates the outdoors? The absent-minded wizard, who is actually a devious bastard and playing the fool so nobody would pay attention to his real goals? The possibilities are truly endless.

All in all, I intend for this to be an easy-going, light-hearted RP, which will act as a side-project for people to work on. However, I also want it to include a challenge, which I believe will be quite useful for newer RP'ers. I am going to allow you to make the typical character, fitting one of the stereotypes. But, I am going to reveal their unique trait only after you tell me what type of character you intend to play. So, I may have someone saying "Ok, I'll make a rogue character.", after which I will say "Cool, this is the thing which makes them stand out from the cliche." Thus, there will be an element of uncertainty and you'll have to improvise.

As you may guess from the opening part, the adventure itself will start in, what else? A tavern. I plan on giving each person a chance to introduce their character with a single post before arriving at the establishment, but after that - it will be a joint effort. The plot will be what you have come to expect: the standard-fare "save the world" type of thing. Of course, it too will have a twist of its own!

As of now, I have the groundwork laid out for geography, political division, history and gods. That said, don't expect any of it to be in-depth, that is not the goal here. Hence why this being in the Casual section in the first place - the main thing here is for us to have a light-hearted parody of the typical fantasy setting. No rush, no sweat.

Before I write anything else though, how many people would be interested in something like this?

You know I'm in!

this sounds like a good project to be my first group one

This really has my attention! I would definatly be in to this.

"You have my bow!" .

...Gah! I'm too busy as is, but I got about halfway through reading and was hit by something like thirty character ideas...

I guess there's no fighting it-- I'm certainly interested.

Great, it's nice to see that this has attracted interest so quickly!

deadpixel101 wrote:this sounds like a good project to be my first group one

Fair enough. But if you want to be in a RP run by me, I expect a few basic things from my members: proper spelling and grammar, proper punctuation and capitalisation. Don't mean to sound like a dick, but in this post you failed to demonstrate any of that. I'm not a grammar nazi or anything of the sort, however show that you've put at least some sort of effort into it.

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Now, to clarify something about the character creation process:

Each member will have the right to make their character, falling into one of the typical categories (mentioned below); however, their special quality, the "twist" in the stereotype will be a surprise. I will announce it once the player has notified me of what role they intend to play.

Some of the roles available, at the top of my head (meaning, if you think of anything else cliche-worthy, do go with it):

Fighter -> Pretty self-explanatory really. For variety's sake, it could be a melee or a ranged fighter.
Paladin -> The goody two-shoes, vanquishing evil and all that.
Ranger/Woodsman/Hunter -> The guy with a bow and a hood, most likely.
Rogue/Thief -> The witty, charming guy who like pickpocketing people.
Cleric/Priest -> Their characteristics will depend upon their patron god (I will get to those once the OOC is up). Nothing that you won't see in D&D though. I intend to make one of these guys, but feel free to follow suit.
Wizard/Sorcerer -> Could be the intelligent or the absent-minded kind. Or whatever else you can think of.
Druid -> Can't miss the nature-lovers now, can we?

Hope to see more people interested in this. If you have any questions, I'm just a post or PM away.

I think that sums up most of the rolls any way, unless we're getting specific and tossing in the battle hungry Barbarian. But I am sure that would be coverd under the Fighter?

I have my eye on the Paladin or Ranger/Hunter personally unless some one els had there heart set on them, I would be happy with any roll lol. Just let me know when I should be creating my charichter.

I'm thinking Assassin/Thief, myself. But, if someone else has their heart set on that, I can go with straight up fighter too.

Eh, Blackrock, do you have any open spots?

It is still quite open. And I intend to leave it that way until I get a decently-sized group.

So I'll just say: come one, come all!

Hm... This is really interesting... I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by joining more games, but you did say this would be a bit more laid back and more of a side project. It sounds like it could be fun.

I found this list of stereotypical fantasy character classes. It could be helpful when people try to determine what they want to be.

Based on the link I provided, I think it would be cool to have a combination of the Dancer from the Rogue class ((as I was reading through this, that mixture was the first that came to mind)). Either that, or I could have a Druid Magician from the Magician Class. I'd be fine either way. ^^_^^

So, is there such a thing as a wizard who doesn't know how to do magic, only legerdemain, psychology, and running away a lot?

Kathryn Lacey wrote: -snip-
I found this list of stereotypical fantasy character classes. It could be helpful when people try to determine what they want to be.

That is quite a nice find Kathryn, I would definitely add this to the OOC if you don't mind? I'd say that I'm fine with all the classes listed there, except for the more exotic ones - let's try to keep this as "standard' as possible.

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@Eugenides
Rincewind much?

It's a concept I can see working here, but - as I've said in the past - I'm only going to allow you to make the cliched character. The actual twist will come from me, which may give you something you weren't quite expecting on your hands. I view it as an interesting challenge.



Also, since I mentioned the OOC, I'll have it up by tomorrow I hope. The Gods system has been giving me some headaches, but I'm mostly done with that section and it's just a matter of editing after that.

I don't mind at all if you use that. I found it because I thought it would be helpful. =3

By "the more exotic ones," what do you mean? Are you talking about the ones that are a bit more rare to find, or the ones that are sort of Asian based like samurai and martial artists, or do you simply mean all of the classes that fall under the "Rarer Class Archetypes?"

Also, I look forward to the OoC's being posted. ^^_^^

I'd say it's a mix of the rarer class archetypes, the more asian-based ones and the dragon knight. While I don't mind these sort of classes usually, I just think they'll lead us too far away from the "standard, cliche, typical" keywords I've been throwing around.

This is really quite interesting. Count me in... well that is if you have free spots.

It's been a while, but finally here is the link to the most glorious and noble Out of Character Thread!

Apologies for the delay, but I had to undertake a rather unexpected trip, the result of which is that I'm not currently home. Fear not though, I'll still have plenty of free time to keep this thing going.

Also, this is still pretty much open for anyone else who wants to hop aboard.

Sweet! I've read through it all, and I have sent you my PM. ^^_^^

This sounds most intriguing and like a good hoot and fun challenge. I'm interested if there are openings.