d8 Inverted Fairy Tale Hooks

    Are you feeling subversive? Have you been reading a lot of fairy tales, or derivatives thereof, and want to introduce them into your games? Do you just need some inspiration for your next adventure, and want to trick your players a little bit? Roll below, and find some topsy-turvy versions of stories we all know and love.

1 Princess in the Tower. To invert this tale, the imprisoning creature (usually a dragon) is actually doing it for the safety of the kingdom. The princess was born a powerful arcanist, whose volatile emotions caused outbursts that ended in conflagration. The royals, fearing for the safety of the kingdom, conscripted a dragon to sequester her in a far corner. The princess managed to get a message out, luring the PCs under the guise of a damsel in distress... To twist the adventure further, make the dragon’s tale ambiguous. Are they telling the truth, or hoarding the princess away for themself?

2 The Evil Stepmother and Prince Charming. Prince Charming is an undead monster, a warlord slouching across the earth. He knows of a sorceresses’ child who he could infect with the touch of unlife, and add a lich-bride to his army. The sorceress must perform a ritual to put her daughter in a coma and seal her daughter on another plane, where the warlord cannot convert her, but to do so, she needs special components and herbs from the distant woods. Enter the PCs...

3 Monstrous Transformation for Love. In the classic version, someone transforms into a monster as a result of their lust for another. In this version, they morph because they wanted to repulse their partner. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t work, and their partner wants to make it work anyways. The monster pleads the PCs to help end their relationship, and perhaps rid them of their curse.

4 The Starcrossed Lovers. Two families, feuding for ages, are finally holding a marriage for the youngest of their clan, lauded to be lovers for the ages. However, the two teenagers despise each other with a burning passion. The whole ordeal was orchestrated by the patriarchs of the families, seeking to unite for political gain (or perhaps they are in love). The PCs are hired by the patriarchs to keep the wedding going smoothly, but are bribed by the young spouses-to-be to make the wedding go awry.

5 The Lost Children and the Witch. Two children who live on the periphery of the woods leave homes each day in the morning to head to a hut in the center of the forest. Their parents are worried, and hire the PCs as witch hunters to end the enchantment luring their children before they’re eaten. The twist is the woman living in the hut also doesn’t know why the children scratch at her locked door each day. There are wendigo spirits infesting the children, and they’re actually hunting the woman.

6 A Hero Lost at Sea. The legendary warrior, after the greatest war the world has known, begins to return to his home. However, over the course of the war, his home country’s values had changed, and they sought to cleanse their history of this hero, who they now saw as a senseless butcherer. They hire the PCs to waylay this hero’s travels with trials and tribulations until they can rally a navy with which to take him down.

7 The Chosen Hero’s Blade. In the original myth, this hero is the one destined to wield the blade. In this version, they will be the one to destroy it. A great ruler wields the greatest blade of the age, but a knight clad in gold in black begins an assault on their castle. The sage advises the ruler that if the knight so much as touches the weapon, it will crumble to dust. The PCs could be allies of the knight or the ruler, or perhaps even be the ones destined to destroy the weapon...

8 The Chosen Wizard. A small child is declared to be a great wizard-to-be, whisked away by a wizard of great repute (whose name no one seems to recall) to an arcane academy in the distant mountains. This is a fey plot- the child is a mundane one, the castle is an illusion, and this is a routine scam used to whisk away children for nefarious purposes. For extra fun, the PCs might be these non-magical children investigating the “academy”, and one among them the actual chosen one.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.