My group just started HoHR this past weekend, and it's pandemonium already! I went for option #3 in the Body Thief scenario, and enlisted on of the PC's ahead time, in this case, a Paladin of Helm.
During the bar encounter, things did not go according to plan: the party rogue was wont to go out carousing at night, and not return until morning. Well, on this night, shortly after he left, the second doppelganger walked back in disguised as the rogue and promptly stabbed the innkeeper. He then tried to run for it, but the PC's were too quick, and ultimately cornered him. He surrendered, at which point the city watch showed up and arrested him, thinking they were actually arresting the party rogue. During the night, the doppelganger was freed from jail by his cronies in the city watch.
The next morning, when the real rogue returned, the other PC's told him what had happened, then took him down to the jail house to show that he was set up. Imagine their surprise when they were told the prisoner escaped last night, and it was good of him to show up and turn himself in again. So...now the real rogue gets arrested. Well, this time the party "paladin" volunteers to stay in the jail house with the rogue until his name can be cleared. Lo and behold, another contingent of doppelganger guards shows up the next night for a "prisoner transfer." The rogue is blind-folded, and then the "paladin" voices his objections to the transefer, to no avail. Long story short, the rogue gets taken to Sodden Hold. The PC's are now there, having taken the key off of the original doppelganger, but they still have no idea of the traitor in their midst. Meanwhile, as far as the city watch is concerned, the rogue, an attempted murderer, has now escaped custody twice, and a massive man hunt is under way. Fun, fun!!
LOL! Nice work, especially enlisting the player to assist you in the deception! I look forward to the updates :D
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That's awesome. And mighty good planning on your part. I hope my group has just as fun of a time with it.
I'm getting ready to go down this same path next game. Anybody else got any experiences like this to share? I'm a little anxious about recruiting a player to work against the team.
I think you just have to make sure you can do a resonable switch, which depends on your group's classes etc. When I ran it, I didn't feel I had a PC that a doppleganger could actually impersonate successfully - two PC's are major spellcasters (looks pretty dumb if they suddenly decide to stop casting spells), another is an Ogre (too big to impersonate), leaving only the Paladin and I thought even she would be too hard to impersonate because the players would notice the lack of her abilities or even worse ask her for healing or similar that she could not deliver. But on reflection, I probably could have switched the Paladin, as she's a follower so tends to get forgotten sometimes anyway, and the player could have probably done a good job of bluffing his way out of any sticky questions anyway ("you want healing, sure, have this potion, I'm saving my own healing for an emergency").
But even without the switch, it was still pretty fun, even though nobody beleived for a second that all these doubles were the real thing (they figured the dopplegangers were a bit stupid, especially trying the same sort of tricks three times over). I still had my group encounter themselves tied up, it's just that all of them were dopplegangers.
I have been considering an odd approach to it. Assuming that one PC had been replaced, but not actually doing anything with it until the PCs get to the room with the real PC. Upon entering, the PCs find duplicates of the entire party, bound and without equipment. One of this number is the real person, the others are all doppelgangers. In the confusion, some conflict is inevitable. Basically, just a 'let the survivors be the right ones' approach. If all of the equipmentless characters die....then they were all doppelgangers trying to pull one over with the goal of at least one of them making it over to the group. I figure either way, they'll be off balance by the end of the encounter...
When I ran this encounter, I recruited the rogue in the group. The Rogue(played by my wife)is the only female in the group. She and an NPC/PC that I run sorta have something going on... but nothing serious. (They are half brother in sister in real life - but she doesn't know that - she's a half drow, he's a half orc)
Well... needless to say after all the characters had gone to their rooms (I had them each in their own rooms) I had them roll listen checks. I told those that made their checks that they heard nose coming from the rogues room, it sounded like pounding. Well the characters assumed that the NPC that I run and the rogue were having a "good ole time". But in reality, the rogue was trying to defend herself against three dopplegangers that had snuck into her room. There was a scuffle (the sound the characters heard), and she was knocked out, and replaced. Way too easy.
The next night, after the characters had all gone to bed, I set into motion the plans of the "other" doppleganger. He took on the guise of the Paladin's cohort. He then came downstairs and stabbed the tavern owner. Before anyone could react he ran upstairs. Naturally this upset many of the loyal tavern patrons. The doppleganger quickly changed his appearance to that of a merchant. He claimed he saw someone running into the Paladin's room.
An angry mob demanded that the cohort explain his actions. Well naturally the cohort had no idea what was going on, and the Paladin wasn't sure if he could trust the cohort at this point. Ultimately at some point (after diplomacy failed) a fight broke out. The other characters opened their doors to see what was going on, even the "replaced" rogue. Eventually the merchant/doppleganger was killed before he could escape. The patrons were shocked when he reverted to natural form. The gnome was saved from bleeding to death and the characters got a free month of free rent at the inn.
Sodden Hold was a bit of fun - I purposely had the dopplegangers never attack her, and the characters didn't even notice. Ultimately she appeared in the mirrored room. They were a little shocked to see each of themselves tied to chairs. At this point the rogue positioned herself to take out the mage in the group, however he he unknowingly foiled her plan when he went invisible and moved into the room. A grand melee broke out and ended with both "rogues" declaring that they were the true one. Eventually they discovered who the real rogue was and untied her and took care of the imposter.
Keep 'em coming - this is a big help to me! I've recruited the party's rogue player, and he's gung-ho for it. The stats aren't too much different, so if he keeps his rolls to himself (and I roll a lot of the players' rolls for them), we should be able to pull this off.
I mentioned that somewhere else in this board but because it just fitrs the thread:
I enlisted my partys rogue/bard who is a Changeling (race with minor shapechange abilities). I gave the player nearly most of the maps and information on the hideout and let him "guide" the party in each and every nastie that was available. As it is the rogues job, he scouts a´head and rolled some Search, Spot and LIsten checks and reports back to the party "no nothing ahead - the road is safe" - later - "what? a trap? must have had a very high DC" he he
I used our party rogue and had him replaced before the group met back up at the crooked house after taking care of thier business for a couple weeks. In the crooked house I used the party dwarven barbarian/fighter who had too much to drink and went to bed early. The patrons and party saw him stab the bartender and run upstairs out of sight. It worked out quite nicely since that player was litterally asleep on the couch while we were doing this encounter. We woke him up and told him that he is being woken up by banging on his door. Members of the party chased the fake version of him upstairs and were trying to bang down his door to get him. It was awsome because he was so incoherent and knew nothing of what was currently happening in game. Perfect roleplaying in my opinion.