Handling Byzantine plots

[limyaael]

I’m really going to try to keep myself from ranting about just political fantasy here, because gods know it’s not just political fantasies that can lose their plots.

Comments

[the_s_guy]

I roughly plotted out a movie script like this once... one Evil Overlord versus dozens, if not hundreds, of Heroes. Each of whom had been trained in the Hero Academy, or by a Wise Old Mentor, or had followed a Mysterious Apparition or Map or Amulet, or any one of a number of such cliches that kept bumping into each other. All this training and quest-fomenting was being co-ordinated by a bunch of ageing Heroes who were too caught up in their own pasts and the ideal of the Hero's Struggle Against The Evil Overlord to wonder why none of their students ever lasted more than a couple of months after graduation.

The students, of course, had heads full of Hero Tradition, which made them easy pickings for the Evil Overlord. The Overlord had indeed read the Evil Overlord List, or that world's equivalent, and even contributed a line or two himself. It wasn't the only writing he and his predecessors had done, either - after all, someone had to write all the Heroing and Mentoring Manuals.

The story, such as it was, followed one student who was failing Sidekick classes, and his discovery of a very slim, plain-bound, boring-looking book being used to prop up a wobbly desk in the library...