Here are some ideas I've been cooking up for a fantasy RPG-style story. The game won't be an RPG exactly, but the story is heavily in the vein of RPGs and maybe JRPGs in particular. The setting is more of a classic RPG setting - not medieval, but few or no modern, futuristic, or steampunk elements.

The main character is Sian (all names are placeholders), a ~17yo boy who lives with his father and 21yo brother in a small town in the kingdom of Shorum. Sian and his father farm a small plot of land, while his brother is training to become a soldier so is away at the training academy for much of the year. Glen is Sian's best friend since childhood and lives in the same town along with his father, Ganly.

Ganly is an older adventurer and war veteran who tells tales of his exploits, but seems to harbor some secrets. He's made some mistakes in his past and made a few enemies. He's the owner of a magical sword with fire-based powers, but he shares this fact only with a few individuals to avoid attracting the attention of power-seeking individuals who want it for themselves. He's deeply racist against the Western Veksha people, mostly due to his bad experiences with them. He's bitter enemies and rivals with a prolific Western Veksha warrior.

The catalyst for the adventure occurs when the town is attacked by Gwelds, a vicious race of beasts that eat people and leave towns in ruins. Ganly goes to find his magic sword, which he put away in his basement, but finds it's been stolen. In the conflict, Sian's brother dies trying to save Sian. When all seems lost, a Western Veksha appears out of nowhere to join the fight and severely injures the Gweld that's commanding the horde, triggering a retreat. After the battle, the Veksha is greeted with distrust by the townspeople, and by Ganly in particular, which causes some tension between him and Sian. Sian loses a bit of respect for Ganly, who in turn warns Sian that his naivete will bite him in the ass someday. The Veksha soon departs without a word.

Ganly leaves town to look for his lost sword and won't tell anyone exactly where he plans to look. In the meantime, Sian finds out that his father's wounds from the battle have become infected, and he will likely die without a remedy. Someone needs to go to the next town over to get the remedy, and as no one else will go under the circumstances, Sian sneaks out of town to get it, against his father's wishes. His friend Glen figures out his plan and insists on going with him, despite Sian's protests. They make it to the town without any run-ins with Gwelds, and get the remedy. As they leave the town they bump into Ganly, who's furious with them for leaving town alone in such dangerous times, but somewhat understanding once they explain the situation. As Ganly escorts them back to their hometown, they're confronted by the Gweld commander from the earlier attack, his injuries seemingly healed overnight. He offers to let them live if they can give him any information on the Veksha that hurt him. To kill two birds with one stone, Ganly offers the name and hometown of the Veksha who is his personal enemy and has done terrible things (not the same Veksha as the one who saved the town, although I could do it that way too).

On their journey back ,the trio hears screams from a nearby village and rush to their aid. They're under attack by Gwelds, although less powerful and numerous than the ones that attacked their hometown.

I'm too tired to continue. I'll post more tomorrow about some of the characters, the world and lore, and the rest of the plot. But feedback is welcome.

Hiya. Since Sain is the main character, it would be nice to know what his goal is (and a hint of who the main antagonist would be nice too). You need to grab people's attention fast! In the paragraph starting with "The catalyst..", I can almost get a feel of his hate towards the Gwelds. If Sain vows to avenge his bro, that paragraph might be a good place to put it. And since he doesn't want to lose his last family member, I can understand why he would want to get the meds for his dad. So far (in my opinion), it just seems like Sain is dragged along in the story. I would like to see him make a crazy decision to change the world. :P If all this stuff was gonna go in your next post, then my bad ;) Other than that, the story sounds fine to me so far.

"The setting is more of a classic RPG setting - not medieval, but few or no modern, futuristic, or steampunk elements." - it's too generic and too mixed up, I for example have no clue how this world looks like.

I just mean the technology is mostly primitive, there are moderately sized towns made out of stone, brick and wood. But it's not stylized after medieval Europe, nor is it rooted in European mythology. I haven't entirely pinned down the stylistic direction yet.

My brother, you are sinning. One shall not write this way. Save your soul and abandon cliche narrative or the flames of ethernal pain will consume your writing career

I wrote that without even even realize it was cliche, LOL. I always begin my plot ideas with something getting stolen, someone close to the protagonist getting killed or kidnapped, etc. But I guess I need to broaden my mind.

One, you don't seem to have a target audience, is this game for small kids or adults? The story seems like the most cliche jRPG which is probably a bad thing unless you make it for consoles (and I doubt you have the resources for this platform).

I guess the target audience is older teens and adults, because I want to make the mechanics fairly complicated. You think the story's appeal (if we can call it that) skews young due to the cliches? I don't want to create something filled with ham-fisted cliches, but I do want it to have more of a JRPG feel to it, because that style appeals to me.

None of my ideas are set in stone, I can throw it all out and start fresh if need be. But coming up with something truly creative and interesting is a challenge.

I see two basic issues. First, why do I care? Ok, my friend's dad's cool sword was stolen. "item stolen" as a quest starter is a little overdone, but that's fine. It's that way because it works. As an example of it done reasonably well, "The Protector" a martial arts flick starring Tony Jaa jumped to mind: He played some sort of semi-monastic elephant trainer/warrior: the elephants would fight battles, and these elite guards would fight off enemies trying to attack the elephants legs. His elephant pair is kidnapped by poachers and he goes off to rescue them.

Same basic idea: weapon is stolen and needs retrieval, but there's an emotional relationship involved, an interesting backstory, a unique setting, an interesting juxtaposition of this ancient style of warfare and the modern world.

The second is inconsistency. The Gwelds destroy villages, Ganly sounds like a seasoned grognard, but he leads his son and a farmer boy into a battle? And Sian the farmer boy marches happily into some other village's battle despite the strong risk that if he's even just injured he might not get back with his father's medicine in time? When apparently these things are so dangerous everybody else would let a local man die rather than risk sneaking to the town over?

I don't think any of your cliche's are so bad they need to be avoided, they just need a little better motivation.