Is this cliche enough for you?

Heroes, the -insert name here- has taken over the -location-, and must be -verb-. The only way to do this is to travel to the -location- and retrieve the magical mcguffin, which is the source of his powers. Then you must take it to -location- where you can destroy it.

But beware, you must pass through -3 locations- each guarded by a fearsome enemy. You must meet with -person- in the next town to -get quest/team up- he will know what do do. (he betrays you later)

In your head it doesn’t sound like this, but to your players, it does. Many gamers know Monty Python, and have played every RPG that comes out, you aren’t going to pull the wool over their heads using a story that you could change all the verbs and nouns out to create a completely different one.

Everything seems to have been done already, so how do you avoid being cliche? There are two tools that will help, the first is Lamp shading, referring to the cliche on your own, possibly mocking it. The other is to really plan out your game from the villain’s point of view.

If you were an all powerful being who had an item as the source of all of their power, where would you hide it?

A: The smoldering pits of despair.
B: The unlikely hovel in the middle of a forest.
C: In a room in your castle you designed yourself, that is not in any plans, with no doors to enter, secret or not, double reinforced and have your whole castle rigged to set off an alarm if any walls anywhere are damaged.

You guessed it, the invincible powerhouse is better able to defend the source of his own power than any underling. Don’t advertise that this item is the source of all of his power, and certainly don’t tell anybody about the room.

The heroes shouldn’t know about the item of power until they have found the artifact’s resting place. “whoever last touched this artifact will have unparalleled power over fire” Wait, the overlord uses fire, he must have this artifact, we need to get it from him!

Secondly, if your source of power could be destroyed in a particular location, would you really let that place live? Instead of saying outright that said artifact needs destroying in Elfland, why not have Elfland burned to the ground, leave a few thousand soldiers to destroy and guard the place, that gives the players a hint that there’s something important about the place without giving it away completely from the start.

A little comic relief never hurts, pick one of your more stuck up players and build a bitter but ineffectual childhood rival. Have him show up out of nowhere, the player doesn’t know who he is, which means the character won’t remember the person. This character can do those petty revenge crimes like stealing from the party, or changing signposts that would be too small time for your main villain to pull.

Instead of scripting each NPC, try just jotting down their personality, vital information, the numbers to score to get that information, and actually conversing with the players rather than making it a simple roll to see what preset line they say. You can add points for real tact on top of their roll, to really motivate your players to roleplay.

As you can probably tell by now, its not about the story, it is about presentation. Even the best stories can seem cliche on the surface but your players will overlook it much more easily if you give it to them something to piece together, rather than a large chunk to pick apart.