Ideas Are Easy

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Demon Response Team
Civilization runs on magic. It provides food and clothing, builds massive structures, moves people and goods at speed, heals disease, speeds communication, and forms the weapons needed to rule.

It also occasionally goes wrong and summons a demon.

The players are an expert team who detect, track, and eliminate the demons created by this rampant overuse of magic. Some are strong and require martial skill, while others are subtle, and some have arcane powers. All are evil, and with the PC's on the job, All will eliminated.

Someone just saw the "Honey I summoned a demon" thread!

And as for another idea:

Wasteland Arcana:

The Final War had happened. No one knows for sure who fired the first nukes, and few care anymore. Billions dying in a few hours, and millions more in a few months did some funny things to the dimensions. Now there are orcs, elves, dwarves, halfelins, gnomes, demons, kobolds, and weird magical beasts straight from D&D running around the wastelands.

[David Johnston2]

A fantasy setting that features:

1. A tower that seems to be carved out of the tusk of an impossibly big monster. The occupants are a wizard school and the staff are noted for never leaving their tower for any reason.

2. A dense forest that gives everyone in it the uncanny feeling that they are being stalked by unseen foes.

3. A river valley that had every living thing in it killed by a horrible spell and then brought back as undead. Even the plants.

4. A fantasy metropolis slum that is low rent because someone cast a spell that removes the ability to see colour from everyone who enters it. It's a poor area where the law is corrupt and indifferent, and it's actually organized crime that keeps order.

5. A meeting ground enchanted to produce a sensation of calm relaxation for those within.

See whether your players start to see the pattern.

[coronatiger]

Is this a reference to something? I don't see any connection between the dots.

[Daigoro]

First one's an ivory tower. The rest, I've got zilch.

[Anaraxes]

My first thought was "puns", the first being an ivory tower. The rest aren't so obvious to me, though #3 made me think of Plants vs. Zombies, and #4 sounds like the portal to Film Noir World. ("Grey area" is a common phrase, but it doesn't really entail connotations of slums and crime bosses for me.)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

My first thought was "puns", the first being an ivory tower.

Are they all literal interpretations of clichéd metaphors?

The rest aren't so obvious to me, though #3 made me think of Plants vs. Zombies

I thought it might be "uncanny valley", with the undead perhaps referring to the hypothesis that things in the uncanny valley excite a natural human aversion from corpses and the dying sick.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Are they all literal interpretations of clichéd metaphors?

They are, yes. Ivory Tower, Gray Area, Uncanny Valley, Friend Zone...

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Are they all literal interpretations of clichéd metaphors?

Rising majestically out of the bleak Areas of Responsibility, the Broad Range of Issues stretches from the amusing Height of Absurdity on the north to the historic Peaks of Achievement in the south.

Russell Baker, The Sunday Observer, Feb. 20, 1977

[Anders]

Liefeld-world - where people have four to five times the amount of muscles they need, weapopns are much bigger than normal and everyone has enough pouches to carry a small mountain of knick-knacks. And guns. Lots of guns.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

They are, yes. Ivory Tower, Gray Area, Uncanny Valley, Friend Zone...

I think the ivory tower one works best because it is both literally and metaphorically an ivory tower.