There are only two campaign plots

[Yora]

"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

[Kami2awa]

Well, this might help:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm

In the campaigns I've played in, we have had collect-the-set plots (collect together items or parts of an item) and hidden treasure plots (adventure to find clues to the location of something important).

Rescue/escape missions are popular too (escape getting less so as players dislike being railroaded into capture). There are also things like find-/obtain-the-cure-to-the-disease plots (where the disease is resistant for some reason to standard spells). A variant on a rescue plot is to have to steal something important or assassinate a target.

Also, your villain need not be a dark lord (could even be a dark lady), and need not be out to take over the world. I've recently played a low-powered campaign in the GoT world whose aim was simply to defend a single village from numerous threats. Your villain could also be a group of people or beings. Some villains are too big to take on head-on (e.g. an entire faction or powerful government) and the campaign focuses on resisting its activities.

There are also WoD games (esp. Vampire) so focussed on intrigue that the aim seems to be to climb to the top and *become* the local dark lord.

[NichG]

Here's a few. Of course, depending on how they hash out they can easily end up being Us vs Them type plots, so it requires some management to keep it from being too straightforward.

- Competition for the opportunity to change the world/universe/become god/whatever. Rather than 'attack the enemy', its 'race for the objective'. Alliances/etc can be more shifting than with a Us vs Them plot.
- Discover the horrible/wonderful/etc secret of (thing). Mystery plots basically. Related to the above, but here the question is do you find out the secret in time to make a particular choice correctly.
- Versus Nature plots. Natural disasters, armageddons, post-apocalyptic scenarios, etc. The characteristic of this plot is that you can't 'overcome' the disaster through direct opposition, but you can survive/escape/rebuild/etc.
- Road to riches plots. The characters have a (well-defined) target goal, and the plot is about how they get to that point. 'I need money to pay off my debt'/'I need to become a great cleric so I can resurrect my father'/etc.
- Juggling plots. This kind of story starts with something simple, but every action taken by the protagonists to fix one problem spawns off two more, and the plot is about seeking an end to the cascade. Nobilis is explicitly designed to run like this.

[Chronos]

And here I thought this was going to be "a man goes on a journey" and "a stranger comes to town".

[TheCountAlucard]

Maybe in a number of published adventure paths and such, but how about actual campaigns?

Stopping a dark lord from coming to power is admittedly the present arc of my game, but it's consisted of exactly two adventures so far, and he's at best a threat to a decent-sized island region, not the entire world; also on their plates is liberating an archipelago's people from the grasp of an empire, slaying a frog-headed dragon for a bear-headed dragon, building a pirate fleet, keeping an eye on the big demon that calls himself their ally, getting a tongue piercing, figuring out what's going on with the goddess of dreams, one of the PCs meeting his mother, one of the PCs paying off all his debts, taking vengeance on a band of demon pirates, winning eternal glory, finding the crown of the god-empress who once ruled the world, pursuing romantic interests, telling the goddess of sharks and warfare to step off and leave you alone, returning a stolen possession to the father of one of the PCs, and babysitting a puppy the size of a horse. Some of these even rank higher than stopping the dark lord from coming to power, to the PCs.

Stopping the world-spanning empire from messing with your region is also typically a focus of some Exalted games, but I'd like to point out that the Realm lacks a super-evil super-ruler at present - part of the reason everything's in a state of tumult is that the Scarlet Empress is missing. Games can also be about proving yourself as a martial artist, mastering the highest heights of sorcery, fighting gods, exploring the world, questing to find lore from the ancient world to usher in a new age of glory, et cetera.

Additionally, now that I think of it, I've yet to see a Shadowrun campaign that was about stopping someone from taking over the world. The Denver Missions was like twenty-five adventures long and involved playing politics between a number of different crime families, pulling off heists and such, and ultimately came to a climax in which the players decided to which faction a potent magical MacGuffin would go, but the world was never in danger from it.

[Amphetryon]

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

[Maglubiyet]

Does it count if the "dark lord" is simply a force of nature, like global warming, the draining of the oceans, or the slow extinguishing of the sun?

In general, I've found there's more player investment when they are pro-active forces in the world rather than re-active. Superheroes who simply respond to the latest threat can be fun and it's a great way to get everyone started, especially new players. For the long haul, however, it's better when the players define their own goals.

Some ideas I've done:
Finding the source of civilization that supposedly emerged from the "womb of the earth" thousands of years ago. How and why did the ancestors emigrate to the world, where did they come from, are the progenitors still around, etc.? Underground exploration galore.

Building a nation from scratch, carving it from the wilderness, dealing with internal and external enemies. Forging alliances, establishing trade, conquering. I've done this several times. There may be recurring villains, but the goal isn't vanquishing them, but rather expanding your own power.

Similar to that I ran a post-collapse space scifi campaign where the PC's goal was to re-establish contact with lost systems. As high-technology wielding ambassadors, at first they explored in secret and then began working with the existing power structures to try to create a unified world organization to establish trade relations with.

Trying to "ascend". For example, I had one campaign where the players, for some reason, wanted to find/build powered mech suits. Could also apply to the goal of achieving godhood in Runequest.

[neonchameleon]

"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

Nah. There are only two major adventure paths. Adventure paths are a subset of D&D and D&D is a subset of RPGs.

Hexcrawl sandboxes normally lead to "By this axe I rule". Which is a much older D&D tradition - but is somewhat deprecated alongside its close cousin "Seeking apotheosis".

Outside the D&D tradition there's also "Fighting for survival in a world with the darkest power" (i.e. Noir) - see Call of Cthulhu, WFRP, Paranoia, Shadowrun, WoD, and others.

But with the only partial exception of "By this axe I rule" all these stories have one thing in common. They can be run episodic-sitcom style where each episode resets to the status quo until the season finale. (This almost applies mechanically - at level 1 a Fighter is someone who is hard to kill and better than 98% of the population at sticking a long, pointy bit of metal into people - while at level 20 a fighter is someone who is very hard to kill and better than 99.9% of the population at sticking a long pointy bit of metal into people - but they haven't fundamentally changed in what they do).

The other point about these plots is that they are largely framing devices rather than actual plots. A Dungeon Crawl is essentially an obstacle course. And the Stop The Bad Guy With The McGuffin is generally an excuse to have the PCs take on this obstacle course.

Starting just over 10 years ago with My Life With Master, the Forge and subsequent Indy Games started producing systems where the fundamental nature of PCs changes over time. Where PCs grow (or even get scarred) and change in how they interact with the world and this produces some very different stories. Recommended games to look into for very different stories from the normal run of RPG episodic games include
* My Life With Master
* Fiasco
* Dogs in the Vineyard
* Smallville
* Apocalypse World
* Monsterhearts
* Urban Shadows
* Fate Accelarated (less than most on this list)
* Dread

And yes, My Life With Master has only one plot - overthrowing the Evil Overlord. But it's a different plot to the classic D&D plot. In D&D you are part of a team working together to overthrow the Evil Overlord. In MLWM you are one of the henchmen of the Evil Overlord, and struggling to hold onto your self-respect until one of you snaps and tries to kill the Overlord. Then it's win or die - the game could go either way (and the game ends when the fight is over). But the key difference is twofold. First one of the big questions of the game is "What will it take to make one of the characters snap?", and second the plot gets resolved in about two sessions. (You probably don't play MLWM more than half a dozen times total - but the rules are so simple this doesn't matter).

[Thrawn4]

"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

There have been some published adventures and novels for The Dark Eye that featured storylines of a much smaller scale, e. g. personal goals.

The Banner Saga is a video game about people trying to escape from the perils of war.

And there are many more.

[Wartex1]

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

A ton of them.

Macbeth is an example, and a very good one.

The Iliad is a war story, and the Odyssey is about Odysseus screwing himself over but then growing as a person, returning home.

Macbeth is the story of a relatively good person who goes mad with power, becomes a monster, and is ultimately killed.

[prufock]

Pathfinder's Skull and Shackles adventure path is about becoming successful pirates, as far as I know. Haven't read all the way to the end, but it seems to have nothing to do with a dark lord or the end of the world.

[hymer]

A ton of them.

Macbeth is an example, and a very good one.

The Iliad is a war story, and the Odyssey is about Odysseus screwing himself over but then growing as a person, returning home.

Macbeth is the story of a relatively good person who goes mad with power, becomes a monster, and is ultimately killed.

Macbeth can be seen as either. McB can be the stranger coming to town, as in getting the crown, or he can be the one going on a journey to kingship and madness.

[Wartex1]

Well, yeah, if you break it down completely by removing pretty much every single element in the story and strip all identity away from the piece while stretching the categories.

He's not a stranger, and he's not on a journey. If you mean a transition of character, then all stories are a "journey". By expanding the definition beyond literal terms to create a universal umbrella, then the definition loses meaning. Even a stranger coming to town would qualify as a journey.

It's as pointless as saying that "A sentence is a functioning idea consisting of a subject and a predicate."

Well, yeah, it's the definition.

[hymer]

Well, yeah, if you break it down completely by removing pretty much every single element in the story and strip all identity away from the piece while stretching the categories.

He's not a stranger, and he's not on a journey. If you mean a transition of character, then all stories are a "journey". By expanding the definition beyond literal terms to create a universal umbrella, then the definition loses meaning. Even a stranger coming to town would qualify as a journey.

It's as pointless as saying that "A sentence is a functioning idea consisting of a subject and a predicate."

Well, yeah, it's the definition.

If you can't see the point of the claim that there are only two sorts of stories, then that's on you, not me.

[Wartex1]

Well, first, one of those quotes is objectively wrong.

The second one is also wrong, because all stories would qualify as journeys if you stretch it enough.

That's on you. If you have to strip everything away from a story to make it fit a definition, then that definition is terrible.

[hymer]

Oh, my dear chap, then let me explain it to you: It is not a hard and fast rule, nor a definition. It is a statement, meant to provoke thought, to point to some very interesting traits about stories and how we tell them; that they are at the same time enormously complex on one level, and yet remarkably simple on another (to start somewhere). Whether you say 'there's only the Odyssey and the Iliad' or something else is completely besides the point.

[Wartex1]

It's a statement, but it's a terrible one at that. It provokes thought, but so does the statement "What if all n's in English were replaced by ñ's?"

That doesñ't meañ it's ñot poiñtless.

Sure, it's simple, but only if you take it apart, removing pretty much everything from it. That's not the piece being simple, that's someone making it simple by altering the piece itself.

[Honest Tiefling]

Why not become the Dark Lord yourself? Or perhaps you are forced to work for them, and need to do your job to avoid hostages from being killed (or whatever collateral is being used), while figuring out a way to get free. I guess that is kinda like the Odyssey, but with a whole lot less nymph banging.

With a good DM, you could also do the thing of waking up in a mysterious place and needing to figure out WTF is going on. No real enemy, other then ignorance.

[hymer]

@ Wartex1: I think I've made my point clear enough for anyone else who might be reading this little conversation, and I'll leave it at that.

[Mr.Moron]

If you can't see the point of the claim that there are only two sorts of stories, then that's on you, not me.

There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

[Grinner]

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

Each of those structures seem to indicate the source of conflict. In the first, the character goes out and finds adventure, whereas in the other, the adventure finds him.

What of more....pastoral stories? Stories like Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller? In each of these, the main character finds his adventure by facing the hardships of growing up in a rural setting.

[Glimbur]

There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

I don't know, have you ever seen Waiting for Godot?

[Wartex1]

I don't know, have you ever seen Waiting for Godot?

Should we revise that to be "There is only one type of story: a story"?

[Vitruviansquid]

"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

I remember reading an article about the video game Homefront, which is about a near-future, science fiction invasion of the player's country by another country. Originally, the team wanted to have a story where you play as a soldier who fights off the invasion, and then ultimately fights the leader of the invasion as a final boss and topples the enemy's regime. When they brought on a professional writer, the writer reduced the game's scope by a lot - now the player's role is a member of the resistance who must ensure a convoy of vital supplies gets from point A to point B. This supposedly will cause the emotional elements of the story to hit the player closer to home, as the larger plot is more abstract and the smaller plot is more immediate. I have no idea if this succeeded, as I never got around to buying/playing Homefront, but it's something to consider that seems vaguely relevant to the topic.

As for alternate stories to tell in a campaign, I've always wanted to run this a campaign that is actually in the slice-of-life genre. Problems arise from time to time in the campaign, and some span multiple sessions, but we are actually more concerned with how these problems end up developing the player characters than we are with whether or not these problems get solved in the end. Thus, the plot would more relevantly be described as "Alice works through her assholish personality and becomes a better person" or "Bob finds love, then loses it, then finds it again" than "Alice and Bob overthrow a dark lord or seize the world back from a dark lord."

The problem with running such a campaign is that most RPG's are a lot more concerned with that external part (in other words, how the players shape the world). We are conditioned by a long history of DnD-centric RPG designs to think that what is rewarding in RPG's is to have players accomplish stuff, or get stronger in order to accomplish cooler stuff. We are not really conditioned to think of the RPG's goal as seeing what impacts the external world and zany events of an RPG campaign will end up having on the characters.

[Tvtyrant]

"Prevent a dark lord and his armies from taking over the world" and "Take back the world from the dark lord and his armies".

As much as I've been trying today, I can't really think of any published adventure series (or even fantasy video game) that didn't do one of these two. Isn't there anything else one could do as a long term story? (And by that I don't mean fighting for a country instead of the world.)

Sure there is. Invasive species have arrived from another continent via a shipwreck and are causing a major famine. The party needs to go and find new crops on the other continent and bring them back to stop the death of millions. The problem is that the ocean between the continents sucks, full of rocks, sea monsters and free raiders.

[JustIgnoreMe]

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

Perhaps, but there are thirty-six dramatic situations that occur during the stories.

And you can have a story where no-one arrives or leaves.

[Yora]

The problem with running such a campaign is that most RPG's are a lot more concerned with that external part (in other words, how the players shape the world). We are conditioned by a long history of DnD-centric RPG designs to think that what is rewarding in RPG's is to have players accomplish stuff, or get stronger in order to accomplish cooler stuff. We are not really conditioned to think of the RPG's goal as seeing what impacts the external world and zany events of an RPG campaign will end up having on the characters.

Hence the question. There are no established conventions for non epic world saving plots to work with.

[Vitruviansquid]

Well, the problem is solved by writing an RPG that *is* concerned with characters' internal development, and/or by explaining the slice-of-life paradigm to all your fellow tablemates and then convincing them it would be fun to try to play that style.

Question answered?

[Anonymouswizard]

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” - Tolstoy

"There are only two stories in the world: The Iliad and The Odyssey" - Attribution varies

If you know of stories that are not variations on these tropes, please indicate them.

'A person tries to solve or uncover something'. You can have an 'investigate' story where nobody goes on a journey and nobody arrives.

There aren't two types of stories, there is only one type of story: "Some things happen".

Basically this, I believe that if there is no narrative there is no story, and if nothing happens there is no narrative. From a brief looking over of 'Waiting for Godot' I can tell that stuff happens, it may not be important, but it happens. The narrative of it is the waiting, even if nothing important happens in them.

[TheCountAlucard]

Well, the problem is solved by writing an RPG that *is* concerned with characters' internal development, and/or by explaining the slice-of-life paradigm to all your fellow tablemates and then convincing them it would be fun to try to play that style.

Something like Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, perhaps?