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(Or, How I Learned To Capitalize Every Word In A Thread Title And Love The Bomb)
Talking with my group earlier this week, we found ourselves reminiscing about old campaigns that we'd run, and it came up that most of the group really loves it when I run a game, because there's always some interesting twist in the adventure that they never see coming. Whether it's Boba Fett hunting the party across four separate adventure plots, only to finally corner them on the Luxury World of Thera Sur, at gun point, just to deliver a birthday present to the Noble from his estranged parents - including singing a birthday song and then wandering off muttering "I really need to change my bounty requirements," or the discovery that the Heroes have really been the Villains the entire time (that was a fun one), I tend to come up with some interesting twists that folks find memorable.
One of the best loved twists was a Planescape game I ran, in which Xin Qi, the fussy, gold-threaded robes wearing, dragon-motif emblazoned Fire Mage hired the party to find "Something of great import," and offered to pay them in rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other valuable gemstones as large as a human fist.
Through the entire story line, the players were absolutely convinced that Xin Qi was a Gold Dragon in Human form. Even though they never saw him cast a spell over 2nd Level, and he never actually entered into any dangerous situations with them (he'd run and hide and shout in pseudo-Chinese at their enemies to run away because "They are powerful warriors! You'd best flee!"), and was shown repeatedly to be of frail constitution and cowardly nature. Absolutely convinced that he was a Gold Dragon.
At the end of the story-arc, it was revealed the Xin Qi was actually the Improved Familiar of a Juvenile Gold Dragon, who'd realized that life on The Great Wheel was dangerous, and he needed more help than a raven or toad could provide. And since Summoning on The Wheel tends to always go a bit jumbly, the nearest, most appropriate candidate for the spell was good old Xin Qi. The looks on the players faces when they rescued a caged, beaten, battered, but still very regal Gold Dragon from an Orichalcum cage in the mountain fortress of the Oni general Tsu Ji Xun The Black Eyed Storm... priceless.
PC Wizard: "Wait... the DRAGON is the Wizard? That means..."
Xin Qi: "Yes. Noble Astral Regent Of The Morning Meadow is my Master. I am but his humble servant."
PC Wizard: "You're his FAMILIAR, aren't you?"
*players at table give a collective "Whaaaaaa?" as suddenly all of Xin Qi's actions start to make perfect sense*
That was the same campaign where several of the PC's had to find gates through time as well as space, make their way back to their home plane, steal (as they would find out near the end of the campaign) their own souls - the act of doing so ended up turning their now soulless bodies into the perfect receptacles for three evil entities who would go on to become the absolute overlords of their Prime world - then ensure that their souls wound up on the proper planes for them to be molded into their current selves. Through the doing of this, they gained enough experience, moral conviction, and knowledge to confront the Great Dark Three and put an end to their cycle of tyranny, destruction, and domination - thus freeing their Prime world from a cycle of evil that had dominated it for thousands of years. So, in the end, the PC's themselves were the villains and the heroes of the piece. They never saw it coming, thinking only that they'd been initially hired by the Proxies of a trio of Fate Gods to save a few innocent lives and put those same kids on the path to vengeance - only realizing at the end what they'd truly accomplished.
So...
What are some twists that you threw in that your players never saw coming, and still talk about to this day? Let's hear 'em.
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Wow. Uh... I've never done anything quite as in-depth as that, but a while back I ran the Age of Worms campaign, and there's a point where the players find a piece of the Rod of Seven Parts, which they are encouraged to give to a powerful NPC they meet shortly afterwards (he's given a different name for the sake of the adventure, but it's Tenser). In return, the powerful NPC gives each player a powerful magic item, which the DM is encouraged to tailor for each specific PC. I had a lot of fun with this one.
I had three PCs, both of which I had been playing with for years (one of them I taught how to play, the other two had been playing a heavily homebrewed version of 2nd edition since they were little kids). The two that had been playing the 2nd edition game had mentioned little tidbits about some of their previous characters at one point or another- one of them mentioned how he had a character who had an axe that would summon Bahamut on a crit (dealing some ridiculous amount of damage), and his previous character was a descendant of Bahamut or something weird like that. (His current character was a very unintelligent Barbarian/Cleric who wielded an axe and was a complete beast in combat.) The second player mentioned he had played a character with an emerald sword, but I was never really able to get much more info beyond that.
Long story short, I started planning this at the beginning of the campaign. When we got to that point in the story, I gave to each player an item that they had each had in a previous campaign- the first player had his axe transform into an axe that looked like a dragon that could summon Bahamut on a crit (on a natural 20, he could choose to either deal normal critical damage or instead deal normal non-critical damage to every enemy in a 20-foot radius), the second player got an emerald sword that gave him the knowledge of every person who had wielded it (he was arguably the weakest character in the group, and he was heavily multiclassed, so I gave him a sword that would allow him to treat each of his classes as five higher for purposes of spells, class abilities, and anything level-dependant, because otherwise he'd never reach a high enough level in any particular class to get the really effective abilities he wanted), and the third player (the one I had taught how to play several years before) was given an intelligent Lawful Good Rust Gauntlet named Ironclaw that I had rolled for randomly in a previous campaign (that his previous character had taken and made good use of).
Not a single person saw it coming (even though I had spoken with them each individually in secret to ask about what I should give the other players), and each one of them practically fell out of their chair when they found out what I was giving them. It was great, and it was one of those moments that really made me proud to be the DM.
As a GM, I've never been able to pull anything that monumental off. I think my friends know me too well :)
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I was DMing a one-on-one campaign in 3.0, in which the player played some members of the party, and I "DMPCed" others, including the party cleric. I've learned that when my player makes a request, it makes for a good hook. For example, I might say "You want such-and-such a magic item? You heard that there is one in such-and-such a place," thus providing the adventure hook.
So when the player found my dwarven cleric character annoying, and asked me to replace him, I said "OK. I'll write a little adventure. If you succeed in the adventure, you'll find the replacement PC. If not, you're stuck with the dwarf." The player agreed to this.
As I prepared the character and the adventure, which involved rescuing a little girl who had been captured by goblins and taken to a temple of Maglubiyet, I worried. Seeing me consult a PC sheet would give away who the replacement character was.
So I tried to throw the player off, by having the PCs fight a Bugbear fighter, using a Bugbear PC sheet that I had used in another campaign (which hadn't involved the player.) This didn't fool the player for a moment. He KNEW that wasn't the replacement.
Resigning myself to being predictable, I ran the final battle. The PCs burst into a room to find a bunch of goblins conducting a religious ritual, with the girl lying on an altar. They were just in time to see the goblin priest, wearing a symbol of Maglubiyet, plunging a knife into the unconscious girl's chest. Blood gushed from the wound. The PCs fought the goblins, and during the battle, the priest did nothing but meditate over the girl's body. At one point, one goblin fighter called to the priest "Get your butt over here and help us!" Afraid that the priest would do so, a PC sent some damage-dealing spell (possibly Magic Missile?) his way. The priest woke up and healed himself.
Polishing off the rest of the goblins, the PCs headed over to the priest to engage him in melee. They fully expected the girl to rise as some undead I-don't-know-what in any round.
Well, the girl got up, all right. And she called "Stop! Don't hurt him! He saved my life! He told me to play possum, while he did THIS." She then took the knife out of her chest and "pierced" the altar, showing that it was a fake knife whose blade slid into its handle, releasing the blood inside.
The party was astonished. "But... you follow Maglubiyet! You were helping the other goblins!"
The goblin priest replied "I had to pretend, or they would have killed me! I don't worship Maglubiyet! I worship Pelor!" And he promptly smashed his holy symbol, revealing it to be hollow, with a Pelor symbol inside. He said "Please, take me away from here. I can't live this lie any longer!"
The player was surprised. He hadn't seen this coming at all. The goblin cleric then joined the party. His name? Grist.
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The party hearing of attacks to the north of this city, inside the city and to the south of the city decide to leave the little village the have been assisting to go investigate.
What was going on was three different situations not a 1 tied to the other.
South of the city, over 80 people have been found torn to pieces. The only witness to survive says it was a monstress beast covered in fur, with large claws and fangs.
Going to the City they fine the the killings seem to be orginized and very Jack-the-Ripper like in nature. Prostitutes that worked on their own.
They hear stories of the attacks of the north and it sounds like the same beast in the south, large, covered i n fur, with huge fangs and teeth.
So the party infestigates the south but goes to 1 of the cities 6 ruling council members. He at first is not so helpful, but then grants them the go-head to seek out the beast in the south but to report to him. In the town the party makes friends with 2 priests of one of the parties faith and a wizard who teaches at the local university.
The attacks seem to be growing in numbers and the faith is growing in leaps and bounds because people fear the beasts and want protection and safety in the city. The faith is pleasded with this as coffers and the congregation grows
The party heads south on a beast hunt, investigating everything they can and in a short time they find a shack in the woods with smoke coming out of it. Upon investigation they find a woodsman who attackes them and escape beneath the tunnels below his cabin. He has set traps as he escapes and releases his beast, which so happens to be a Dire Hyena. The party kills the beast and wounds the woodsman and tracks him back to the city. While the find the man they find him visiting one of the priests of one party members faith. The party finds this priest to actually using the beast to try and gain followss (Think Brotherhood of the wolf which is based on a real factual event in France). The party fights the priest but he escapes and they lose him.
The report back to the councilman what they found and get a reward, but hear of attacks still occuring north of the city, and yet another prostitute comes up dead.
One night as the party decideds that the councilman is hidding something from them they investigate his home. In doing so he discovers them and attacks them and is killed. they find a dagger of exteme evil made of a substance they have discovered in past adventures that controls and twists you to it's will.
Having now stopped two of the three issues they make peace with the rest of the council and inform them of the dead councilmans evil plans to kill them all and take control for himself.
Making good they head north to hunt down the other kills only to face off with a werewolf, who was actually a ranger they meet while gathering information about the beast of the south. As they find she was killing loggers invading her forests and cutting down tree's.
At the end of this the rogue in the party made the head of the thieves guild and ends up fleeing town being hunted for his treachery to them.
So in all of this, the party had been conversing with three people who where all responsible for the savage murders and even working with them.
They did not suspect a thing until the last moment and once they made 1 good die roll to know something was not right.
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Most of my biggest attempts for a major plot twist get picked up early by my players (the curse of playing with the same folks for so long). However, I have had a couple of twists that grew out of player actions that were quite memorable.
I had one group decide to not investigate a plume of thick smoke during their travels (which was going to be that night's adventure). Instead they kept on their way and I did a complete free style session without the players being aware of it until late in the session. The result of their not investigating the smoke resulted in the demons who came through the portal accidentally created by an unfortunate mage gained a foothold and a demonic "carnival" (think Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes) began making its way through the countryside, leaving death, insanity and missing people in its wake.
The PCs encountered the carnival several sessions later after encountering a couple towns left in their wake. Turned into an epic battle and quite entertaining.
Another campaign, back in the 2E days, had the party get thrown back in time almost 800 years. They did realize what had happened (we were running with a homebrewed skills system and one of the PCs ... as well as the player ... was a history buff). Instead of being careful not to make any significant changes, they threw a wrench into the world's timeline.
The campaign did have gunpowder present, but it had only been in existence for a couple centuries (from the view of their point of origin). The PCs introduced gunpowder more than 500 years before it was intended (teaching the process of making the substance to a count's alchemist). Ultimately they managed to return to what should have been their own time.
However, I spent the time from when they said they were sharing the secret of gunpowder (an action that actually made my jaw drop) rewriting the history of the world from the point of divergence. Because of the change, the nations and heroes who were to join forces to defeat and imprison a lich king did not exist. The end result was a land not made up of nations, but individual city states and the undead walking the land. When they stepped through the portal that was to take them home and emerged in the ruins of a city surrounded by undead, they were surprised. When they found out what they had done, they were shocked.
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It wasn't exactly a plot twist, but one GM we ran with in a high level 2nd ed campaign (10th-12th), had the big melee guy of the group (a ranger) die in a solo combat (during downtime while all of us fixed up fortresses, etc.)with a doppleganger and replaced around 9th lvl. There was a little while where the character was acting funny, but the player had crazu stuff going on IRL as well so we thought it was just bleedover. Anyway, for like 3 levels no one knew he was a doppleganger. Like a years playing time!! The GM promised him a way to get rezzed and mega exp if he would play along. Of course when it started, no one knew it would take so long to discover the ploy. Needless to say, all of us freaked out when he was finally discovered.
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Running Shackled City for the second time, and my party has been dealing with the Siege of Redgorge, written by our fellow forum-goer Delvesdeep.
Having rescued the lost paladin Alek Terceval, and defused the trigger for this whole military action, the party is still having trouble convincing Lord-Captain Skellerang to abort his crusade. Constant diplomacy has been used on the captain and the leaders of Redgorge, as well as the Blue Duke, leader of the mercenaries employed in the endeavor. Lots of running back and forth, scouting, and talking.
Despite all their efforts, the army arrives at Redgorge, significantly sooner than expected. Discussing how to approach the opposing force, they mention going to talk to the Blue Duke again, within earshot of their questionable ally Kaurophon.
Ol' Special K had helped them out in getting back to town with Alek, but wasn't entirely trusted yet. Having knowledge of the group behind events the party has been dealing with, and having not attacked the party yet, they've let him tag along.
Hearing them mention the Blue Duke, he speaks up...
Cue 'Oh Crap' faces all around.
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There was a game we played with so... many... twists... or at least call-backs. It was pretty awesome.
EDIT: this is only a few off the top of my head - I ran out of time to get 'me all!
Player playing a succubus who'd lost her memory, due to a narrowly escaped (and only hazily recalled) assassination attempt that had trapped her in a dimensionally-locked room under a collapsed roof; surviving literally only by accepting a Calling to serve a summoner from a power seemingly greater than the lock (the player thought it was weird, but went with it). The idea was to play through the basics of the backstory to get her from chaotic evil to lawful good (player's request).
In the course of the adventure, she discovers that the girl was taken through a one-way portal to a demiplane. There, she found some trapped mercenaries who'd taken her... but only because their (now-dead) boss had commanded them to, which he'd done just on the off chance that her half-Elven blood could unlock some secrets (it could not).
The mercy were now run by a demon (a yochol - they knew only that it looked like a creepy half-Orc that terrified all of them), and we're stuck in a demiplane filled with undead. Their mascot was a wicked aberration called a Runehound (from whence they derived their name): the succubus immediately squealed with delight, adopted it as her own, no declared it her "ugly puppy".
The succubus PC befriended the fellow demon via charm (both of which shared a bit of bemoaning the state of being conjured and bound) claimed the girl (the demon had kind of wanted to turn her into a drider, or something, but... meh, it would be expensive and time-consuming and she mostly just wanted control of this realm, and letting a succubus have a girl to gain help fighting a dead genius would be perfect). Thus, the little girl was placed into a makeshift backpack, hopped up on a bunch of buffs, and brought along.
The two demons did well against the dead, but, due to a combination of poor planning, bad (and good) luck, and a moment of forgetfulness on the PC's part, at the very end of the game (upon defeating the boss), the girl died from: wraith's CON loss, wight's energy drain, shadow's strength drain, ghoul fever, and poison... when the PC dispelled the super-large buffs that were the only things preventing the girl from succumbing to those effects.
This is when the father's "contingencies" came into play, and the broken man from before showed up in a blinding explosion of righteousness that destroyed the yochol and finished off the (already defeated, just not quite destroyed) bad guys, and only barely left the succubus alive (by a good save).
... which is when the story of who the man was, and how this whole thing had been set up in the first place was revealed.
Then, in a plot to gain political power with a long-term goal of corrupting a nation, he (disguised as an upstanding citizen) got married to a young and beautiful noble woman. Unfortunately for his plots, the ring his (previously despised) wife gave him - an "heirloom passed down through generations" - seemed entirely unmagical... but branded him in the midst of their ceremony and transformed the chaotic evil Mage into a lawful good one.
Struggling with his new outlook, he'd come to love his wife, and had put into plot far-ranging designs to destroy his former mistress while looking like he was helping her (or else his new family would be destroyed and his soul eaten)*.
Thus, he'd used her own dagger (now a +2 cold iron dagger, but previously a minor artifact...) as a weapon to destroy her, tricking one of her servitor succubi into subconscious programming to be an assassin.
The assassination attempt occurred, was a success, but the "contingency" the succubus' previous lover had prepared (before shed devoured him) went off, and she was saved from obliteration (though reduced in power and not teleported to safety), and the killer was cursed with dwindling magic and life force via epic spell.
Shortly thereafter, his daughter had been kidnapped. No longer able to save her himself, he went to his sealed storage rooms, finding his last candle of invocation...
The player shed some tears, accepted the full shift to lawful good, used a soul pact (3.5 variant thing) with the Mage to save the last remnants of his soul from being obliterated forever, and grant his wish to bring his daughter back to life, promising to take care of her (though the succubus kind of had to fudge a bit and used the dead yochol's essence and some undead spirit remnant to "fill in the gaps" as it were that we're missing due to how the girl died - basically the same thing, really, being soul-stuff and all...)
Similarly, a flame skull she had no real way of permanently destroying that also had no real way of harming her came to an agreement. The two of them used the various villains' body parts (culminating with the flame skull) to construct a flesh golem with the villain's brain... hypothetically hoping to being him back. Instead, due to chicanery, the succubus also secretly created a control amulet and inserted the soul gem of the girl's father into the golem, hoping to raise the father back (or at least what was left of him). Neither quite worked exactly right, but it was close enough for all parties to be satisfied, and the little girl had a massive, emotionless "daddy" that remembered everything from her childhood. So that was a thing.
* During his plotting, his wife died in childbirth while he was away supposedly working on a mission for the demon lord, but actually planting the seeds of her destruction. He never forgave himself or the nascent demon lord for that.
She was then sent back to the demiplane with a few ideas of where (and when) to try to bring the mercs, the golem, and her "daughter" back to the world. She proceeded to indoctrinate all of the living creatures into the tenets of law, good, and the importance of family and community, as well as the reverence of Arazni and Aroden.
They eventually arrived in Cheliax, in the freshly-minted newest capitol city, Westcrown. There, they lived (the half-elf daughter accidentally gaining near immortality and taking a looooooooong time to grow up due to some ioun stone shenanigans) shocked and mourning Arazni's death, delighted at Iomedae's ascension, and worried about Aroden's death. She sat on the jury at Dundel Ruel's trial (and was instrumental in the persuasion that "he has a good point"), made her living as an exotic dancer occasionally of quite some repute (despite keeping her immortality and private life secret, but once having even the Drovenge family paint a lavish portrait after a particularly mythic performance), delighted in being a minor force for good during the nighttime streets, as well as having to struggle to keep her (technically under-age, technically waaaaayyyyy over-age) daughter from signing up do the Pathfinders right now as the dashing hero Donatalus Bisby smiled and winked at her, signing a shirt of the girl's. She laughed at the pomposity of it all with Ilnerik, the nearby chronicler. She decided that keeping her daughter living was more important than staying in Cheliax and went south to Absalom when the Chelish civil war hit. After her daughter finally grew up and moved out, the player decided the character would look for something to do, so she became a monk in service to Iomedae for a decade, becoming part of the Children of the Upper Reach movement and learning that style.
About anyone who's played Council of Thieves recognizes a lot of the names in that last paragraph. The Player did not. Cue Council of Thieves. Lots of mind-blowing revelations awaited.
It was especially amusing when they found Vassindio Drovenge's "art collection" ... including an ancient portrait of Angel (he'd had a pretty massive crush on that portrait of her when he was younger).
Eventually, she even became moderately involved with deities, to the point that Erastil eventually sent three emissaries (three archons) for her to select from... one of whom was the soul of the Runehound she'd transformed, redeemed, and loosed into the world so long ago. Pretty epic shock! And delight!
(She did not choose between them, using the assistance of Spirit of Adoration to sway them to a very alternate marriage style.)
(By the way: I recognize this is a necro, but it seemed like a good thread to do it to. :)
Well it was years ago. :D
EDIT: added a smiley that I forgot to add previously. :D
By all means DO necro this thread. I think it's got a lot of potential, just needs more love. :)
I agreed! :D
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When, after a year of game/real time, the former lover of the ranger in the party returned as a wight because he swore he would "love her beyond life". She had to kill her ex-lover to save her own life. The party never saw that little surprise coming because the year before he'd sacrificed himself to let them escape a horde of undead.
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I was on the receiving end of this one...
We were playing a modern-day urban fantasy game, using GURPS. My character was a technomage, and one of his quirks was "Star Trek fanboy". He was also the only magic-using character in the group.
One of the major plotlines was the search for this ancient Egyptian magical artifact that can do all kinds of weird stuff with dreams. We're having an epic boss battle with the bad guy that has the artifact, and my character successfully uses magic to wrest it away from her. He then uses the powers of the artifact against her. There's a brilliant flash of light, when we all hear hear the voice of one of our NPC allies (the owner of a Wiccan supply shop) come out of nowhere.
"Captain needed on the bridge."
One of the other players said, "Freeze program" and the entire fight scene with the bad guys stopeed as if the "pause" button had been pushed. Except for the other PCs.
One of the other players turned to me and said, "Captain, should we all head up?" The third other player said, "That was lousy timing. Computer. Save program. Exit." The GM described everything disappearing, and that the four of us were standing in a square room, walls and floor painted black, with yellow gridlines painted across all six sides, all about one yard apart. Metal doors appeared in one wall and slid open with an audible "Woosh."
That's when all of the other players took out their character sheets for the Star Trek: The Next Generation role-playing game. And the GM handed one to me for my character. It said, "Captain [PC's name]" The GM then put the GURPS rulebook away and took out his ST:TNG RPG book.
I looked around dumbfounded, and the players and GM all burst out laughing. The GM had clued in the other players that if I got my hands on the artifact and used it, we all fell into a a Star Trek reality where our regular GURPS game was a holonovel we liked to play on our down-time. Only my character thought that the game was the real world-- the other characters thought that the Star Trek world was real.
We ended up playing three sessions in Star Trek before my character was able to figure out what had happened (the artifact pulled my character's mind into a fantasy world), and then return to the real world.
(That session also turned out to be a "back door pilot" to a Star Trek: TNG campaign that the GM was thinking of running. Like many back-door pilots, that one didn't pan out.)
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That sounds pretty mindblowing. Awesome.
That was one of the best moments of my RPG career. That game ran circa 2001 or so. That GM is currently one of the players in my Pathfinder game.
I did something kind of similar a couple of years ago in my "Rise of the Runelords" game. The GM of the "Star Trek Freak-Out" game above was a player in my Runelords game. After we'd completed Burnt Offerings, he told me that he was dissatisfied with his character and wanted to know if he could change.
That's when it hit me to mess with the other players.
With his permission, I had his character get killed off-camera by The Skinsaw Man, and replaced by a faceless stalker. The stalker adventured with the party for three sessions, and then turned on them! The other five players were TOTALLY freaked out!
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Damn, when you can both totally f+&! with, and have an amazing time with your players like that, and mix two systems, that is just f&#+ing epic.
I was on the receiving end of this one...
We were playing a modern-day urban fantasy game, using GURPS. My character was a technomage, and one of his quirks was "Star Trek fanboy". He was also the only magic-using character in the group.
One of the major plotlines was the search for this ancient Egyptian magical artifact that can do all kinds of weird stuff with dreams. We're having an epic boss battle with the bad guy that has the artifact, and my character successfully uses magic to wrest it away from her. He then uses the powers of the artifact against her. There's a brilliant flash of light, when we all hear hear the voice of one of our NPC allies (the owner of a Wiccan supply shop) come out of nowhere.
"Captain needed on the bridge."
One of the other players said, "Freeze program" and the entire fight scene with the bad guys stopeed as if the "pause" button had been pushed. Except for the other PCs.
One of the other players turned to me and said, "Captain, should we all head up?" The third other player said, "That was lousy timing. Computer. Save program. Exit." The GM described everything disappearing, and that the four of us were standing in a square room, walls and floor painted black, with yellow gridlines painted across all six sides, all about one yard apart. Metal doors appeared in one wall and slid open with an audible "Woosh."
That's when all of the other players took out their character sheets for the Star Trek: The Next Generation role-playing game. And the GM handed one to me for my character. It said, "Captain [PC's name]" The GM then put the GURPS rulebook away and took out his ST:TNG RPG book.
I looked around dumbfounded, and the players and GM all burst out laughing. The GM had clued in the other players that if I got my hands on the artifact and used it, we all fell into a a Star Trek reality where our regular GURPS game was a holonovel we liked to play on our down-time. Only my character thought that the game was the...
That's fantastic! I love it!
I did something similar in a Cybergeneration game, where all of the players were in on the fact that the "mutant kid with funky metal limbs" was actually a patient in an intense immersive neuro-stimulation virtual world being used to get to the root of his psychosis in a safe and harm-free environment.
Basically the horrible, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk world the kid lived in was all in his imagination and the "Edgerunners" assigned to keep him safe and alive as the "master key" cyber-evolved were all of his doctors and case workers, plugged into the simulation.
You'd think he would have noticed something was up when, every time he said "Yeah, with our luck (x) will happen next," it actually happened next.
But man, Haladir, you won the grand prize with that one.
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I used to have super powers, until my therapist took them away...
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When I ran Kingmaker ages ago, one of my players wanted to be a dwarven druid who had received a vision from a goddess instructing him to travel up to the Stolen Lands to "find his destiny".
I decided to
The look on the player's face at the end of Book 5, when he found out who he'd been working for and trusting completely since Book 1 was priceless.
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<jaw drops>
That... is awesome.
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I don't have any huge twists, but this was the last time I was able to flabbergast a player. And my wife pretty much knows all my tricks, since we've been playing together for over 25 years. But I got her.
In my homebrew, the kingdom the PCs are based in (Venn) is being invaded by a foreign prince, who is the son-in-law (and cousin once removed) of the current king. The invader had wide support among the nobles of Venn, and the invasion progresses pretty far, pretty fast.
My wife is playing a rogue who comes from a family of rogues. In an effort to distance herself from her roots, she left off thieving for a while, until the call to adventure compelled her to travel. In her first visit to the city that is the religious center of the kindgom, she was mistaken for her twin sister by a priest of the high temple and given a key to his private apartments. She returned it, telling the priest that he had the wrong woman. However, from this she knew her sister was in town. She ran into her later, and her sister was wearing very expensive clothing. She said she just finished a job and was leaving town, and that things might get hot for someone who looked like her. From this, my wife concluded that her twin sister had just stolen a large sum of money.
Cut to: months later in game world time, the prince advances his invasion to the religious center of Venn. It has become known that the invader claims that an ancient prophecy in the seat of the church of Venn would prove his birthright as the rightful ruler. When he arrives, he gets the high priest to access the vault and retrieve the prophecy, thereby turning a lot of people against the current king. The prophecy is verified, sages deem it a legitimate writing of a known prophet, whose writings have been held in the church vault for centuries.
Shortly after that, my wife's character is in the capital city of Venn, which has not been attacked yet, and is reverse-pickpocketed by a halfling rogue who had been pretending to be a human child lost in the streets. When another PC calls my wife by name, the halfling "child" says a very bad word and jumps out of her arms, and disappears into the streets. My wife's character finds a black dragon scale in her money pouch.
Since she knew it was intended for her sister, she finds her again and shows her. The sister goes pale, and becomes frantic to pack and get out of town. The scale is part of an agreement of courtesy between the guilds. Guilded rogues may not be targeted for hits by guilded assassins unless their guild is paid off for that member's life, and the guildmember herself is then given a token of warning 24 hours before any assassination attmepts are made.
Twin sister doesn't take long to piece it together. "It's Ilrael [the invading prince]! I'm a loose end! Look, I just did the job for the money. If I'd known how much trouble it was going to cause I'd never have agreed to put that prophecy in the vault!"
Jaw drop. Silence. Then she grabbed my shirt and pulled me in and practically yelled in my face, "WHAT! .... OH! MY! GOD! Oh, you got me."
Good for a satisfying jab, but not a huge game-changer. What it did do is make the players decide they need to take on the assassin's guild, and from their planning, it gave me ideas. My wife said "The Blackscale Knives... I bet their leader is a black dragon." Uh... yeah... yeah he is... now.
(Sometimes I'm so glad my players don't read this board.)
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My wife said "The Blackscale Knives... I bet their leader is a black dragon." Uh... yeah... yeah he is... now.
NEVER give the GM ideas.
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My wife said "The Blackscale Knives... I bet their leader is a black dragon." Uh... yeah... yeah he is... now.
There have been many times where I've changed things in reaction to player speculation. Sometimes because they guessed the plot twist I was planning (requiring me to either play it straight or put a twist to the twist). Other times because what they speculated was better than what I'd planned!
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One of the players was a Dhampir that had some homebrewed bloodlust/feeding mechanic. When in town, she'd regularly sneak out at night to some of the seedier parts of town to snack on some victims. She was careful most of the time, but eventually got sloppy and failed to properly dispose of a couple of the bodies.
The next morning, the party awoke to a stern knocking at the door. The Dhampir answered it and found herself face-to-face with the city guard.
"We have a few questions for you. You were seen down in Strumpet's Alley in the Red Lamp District at 0100 last night. Is this true?"
"Um...yes..."
"Bodies drained of their blood were also found in that alley this morning."
"Uh..."
"So we were hoping you'd help us track down the chupacabra that's clearly behind the attacks!"
The entire party laughed and groaned. Funny joke, right?
A few days later, another party member was attending to unrelated business in the same part of town. As he wanders down an alley, a creature pounces from behind some rubbish piles and attacks him.
The creature? A chupacabra!
It was a minor twist, but it was my favorite instance of the "turning a gag into something real" thing that I've managed to pull off.
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How did the player take it? Was he overjoyed at the ride upon which you'd taken him, or angry at what he perceived was a betrayal of the character he'd been playing all that time?
I was worried that he might be upset by it, but he actually loved it. I believe his exact words were "it doesn't matter how much the plot screws you, as long as it's engaging". :)
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Long time ago (the 90s), I was running a Birthright campaign. Player A brought in a human fighter with a bloodline, father unknown. Player B and I were talking one night about this, and noticed that Character A's bloodline was exactly half of Character B's, which meant it was possible that Character A could be the son of B (half-elf), and their ages were appropriate, too. He and I agreed to keep this a secret. We even joked among the rest of the group about revealing Character B's also-unknown father in a Darth Vader-style reveal.
Sooner or later, the group meets a dryad who'e been living in this area for a long time, and she agrees to answer some Questions. Character A asks, "Who is my father, and where is he?"
"Why don't you ask him, he's standing right next to him?"The look on A's face? Priceless. "N-No. Just... no."
That's brilliant, Lee.
Heh. I was going to post all of the big reveals of a 4E game I ran... and realized that it was way, way too many. So much so, that it took several printed pages to build up and pay off. So, uh, working on pairing it down to a few awesome ones...