"Fantasy scenarios with truely fantasy elements?" Topic

I am looking for a discussion on adding true fantasy elements to scenarios . What I mean is… I have noticed that most fantasy games , both Wargames and RPGs rely on tried and tested tropes or real world style objectives and motivations. I would love to play games that are not just historical style conflicts with fantasy sounding names tacked on. :)
I'd love to hear some suggestions and ideas for adding objectives in fantasy games that might not make perfect sense in the real world but are not so far out there or silly sounding as to leave your players scratching their heads in confusion .
Suggestions for faction motivations besides " wipe the others out because of race/ alinement/ piece of real estate.
What have you used?
What ideas do you like but have not tried yet?

The most famous is "Empire of the Petal Throne": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tékumel

I know GoT has its admirers here, but to my mind, the TV show anyway, is a good example of "historical style conflicts with fantasy sounding names."

I once ran a multiplayer skirmish scenario in which the goal was to form circle of dancers and dance to gain the favor of the moon goddess.

The game began as normal with units trying to seize open ground, but after each unit was activated a token was flipped – some were blank, six moons meant the moon had finally risen and it was time to start dancing.

Units behind the lines tended to be the ones to form into circles, the more figures the larger the circle and the more favor it attracted. Of course there was great effort made to raid and disrupt the opponents' circles.

Portals on the table spewing random beasties …

Hostile terrain features that moved and/or attack figures …

Racing to secure a macguffin that spontaneously teleports around the battlefield …

Just a few ideas off the top of my head. I still like a good old fashioned fantasy clash with dragons and dwarves and goblins and whatnot.

Just finished reading Michael Moorcock's Swords trilogy. Poor old Corum-The Eternal Champion spends the books flashing from plane to plane. He finds many enemies that he has no prior knowledge of,but has allies of great power who help him to win against a triumvirate of Chaos.

As a wargame it could be like a tournament. One side keeps their core heroes but has a random fantastical auxiliary. The enemy is led by a known personage but their forces are randomly drawn.

Think:

Mediaevals against gargoyle host,Hope they have archers, Fighting on a burning plain.

Gallic types against undead in an endlessly shifting city scape.

Flying boats against ancient flame-cannoned city.Find the Chaos ruler and dispel them.

The Heroes live or die, are taken prisoner and need rescuing from another plane or are flung into another world in the middle of a another battle at random.

In Corum's case he can summon all the enemies he destroyed in the previous battle to aid him.

Fantasmagorical terrain would help creating bizarre battle grounds to fight over.

Good books worth the read. And then there is Elric's world.

Chaos ships that sail through dry land.

Yes, great stuff, keep it coming :) I just bought the six books of the complete Elric Saga. Great odd stuff in there to work with. Looking for more workable weirdness

Try any of the Age of Sigmar books. The scenarios in there are just what people are describing. There is one that takes place between two realms with a gate way in between.

Others you are trying to destroy a portal to another world while hordes of enemy come through and on and on.

Great scenarios.

I've looked at some of the Age of Sigmar stuff and some of the ideas for battles are good. I do find the writing a bit hard to engage with. I don't care for all the Skullnosher/ Bloodsquirter silliness but in truth I never cared for any of GWs chaos pantheon stuff. But I digress, there might indeed be some good we scenario material there.
How about some oddly plausible motivations for fantasy factions which could alter their game play and giving them things they must do or cannot do in a given situation?
The moon goddess dance game is a cool idea.
I ran a game once where a opposing faction was not permitted to kill or seriously harm the player characters but the players never really caught on and happily slew whoever got in their way without even asking why the others behavior was odd.

Several dragon eggs are on the battlefield, just about to hatch. The newborn dragons will be very … annoyed … that two armies are fighting nearby. Who will they attack first?