…What’s new?
Has anyone ever liked to play the one being saved for once by your gasp!!! Love Interest in shining outfit (armor or what not, it really depends on the timeline), or someone else besides your RO?
I know there are works that play this trope into some effect, but you inevetably save the story in the end.
Can’t it be on someone else’s hands for once
if my MC were to be saved , it’s because it was in a way incapacitated . Not completely helpless waving her arms around and babbeling nonsense lol . And once it’s freed , butt kicking for goodness will happen .
That happens everytime you get incapacitated (exempt those times you don’t focus on combat stats or choose to be defeated for an achievement)
But I shan’t dispute too much, kicking ass is good.
Damn you Kratos! You did that to me!
As an otome player, I would actually be more interested in being the woman knight who save the day and get the guy.
The “damsell in distress” is an overdone trope in games/stories with a female protagonist.
But if is a situation where my RO and my MC friends work together to save her, like in KotoR, Dragon Age Origins (fort Drakon) or KotoR2 (where our character is being rescued while she was actually saving herself) I’m good.
Saaaassssss!!!
I kinda like imagining it that actions speak louder than words and when he/she kisses you and then fireworks, then that means more meaningful love (I blame yaoi, sorry).
I like where the MC looks like a damsel but destroys everything later.
Like the female city-elf story in DA:O, you are abducted in your wedding dress and about to be given to some human nobles but get a sword and slaughter the whole mansion. It felt really epic
I used to like that! Till it became too overdone in most games (especially here), now I am searching to just lay back and let someone else do the work for once.
Strange thing though, I can’t stand being the damsel in distress in books… CoG though, I guess it has to do with the fact you chose to be the damsel in distress.
Would there be a posibility of a true ‘Damsel in Distress’ trope though? I mean here in CoG most Mc are hardasses, though the WiP Seven Heirs of Ophaeseia or Heir to the throne (especially with the charm your Mc has, maybe I can do a Helen of Troy there?) presents a reasonable amount of possibility.
I gotta admit that was epic, and yeah in most mainstream games I would not enjoy being a Damsel in distress, the effects would be wasted if my epic sword-waving were not present (Imagine sitting in the sidelines in Skyrim, nope, cannot resist).
I think a game where you’re the “damsel in distress” could be pretty interesting! A game where you can try to escape, either by your charm and wit or your strength and cunning, and then a possible RO comes to save you and you can work together to escape. I’d play that! It might be a short game, though, unless it’s just a plot point in a larger story.
I mean…it depends on what kind of saving and how common it is? I don’t want to play for a whole game the one having to be saved (also because it often forces one to play a terrible incompetent MC what is really a huge turn off for me in a game), but I like it if saving each other is established as a way to show development/trust between characters, like “yeah this time I save you, next time you save me, we have each others back”.
Or a MC that stubbornly wants to protect others and carry all the burdens alone and needs to be saved from that by the NPCs’/RO’s support.
So…no, not really, that doesn’t fit the definition of Damsel in distress.
Even though I like my MC being save once in a while, I wouldn’t like it to be a recurring theme in a CoG/HG story since I find it annoying and what’s the use of stats if my MC need to be save every time.
It won’t work in any RPG type of game simply because the plot wouldn’t match the gameplay (cause you can’t have a gameplay of doing nothing) but it can work in things like Visual Novels or in text games like here
There is this free game for example where you start as a Damsel. You don’t have much powers, 3 guys are protecting you, you lost your memory and you even get kidnapped at some point. Eventually you do end up saving the kingdom though.
Ahem, that would be gentleman in distress, thank you very much!
I agree with @Sammysam probably not for a whole game and my mc would need to have something he’s badass at, but that doesn’t have to be combat.
So I suppose I’d be up for a/some good distress scenes, but not to point my character would become “the load” of the game, that sort of thing just isn’t fun.
That’s probably the best way to it. Damn, I think that could actually be a really fun dynamic to have with a game like “the Beast Within” for the prince/bodyguard romance/relationship. So long as the distress scenes and situations are distributed more or less equally.
I certainly wouldn’t mind being saved by a cute boyfriend for once… But it would have to be only part of the story; just waiting around to be rescued would be kinda boring. Maybe we can alternate between saving each other?
I was actually thinking of a game where what you do leads up to the moment of captivity, and depending on what kind of damsel you are, you are saved, you save yourself, people come to save you only to realize it is a trap ( or some other reason) and they would then be the ones needing to be saved, or you are not saved at all.
Maybe a game where you interact first with the world, make decisions, focus on combat or friendship, and see how that impacts the results of your captivity.
I could honestly think of ways that a game where you’re the damsel in distress could be fun but, most of the time, you couldn’t really be them the whole game.
Maybe a game that starts with you being rescued and then you have to get used to the outside world again. Or the game is all about the rescue, even once you escape the castle/prison/lab whatever and you and the character who saved you still need to make a huge trek to return home with the villian still chasing you down.
Still, the important thing is that people like to have control so the MC can’t be completely useless. They need to have their own agency and, really, it just depends how the game in handled.
But it would have to be only part of the story; just waiting around to be rescued would be kinda boring. 
Maybe we can alternate between saving each other? 