I had pulled off a cool trick and I thought I would share. I have a group which sometimes metagames a bit so I thought I would take advantage of it for a plot twist...
In the Lotus Dragon Area my intrepid swashbucklers set off to the cave area first. After handily dispatching the Rhagodessas they totally missed the ixits. So when they re-entered the water the people who spotted them in time bailed and left one PC in the water who got shredded to little bits of chum.
That player (Brian) started telling everyone about a great new concept for a Dwarven Swashbuckler. The other players looked at their rough map (from a captured Lotus) and meta-gamed they would likely find a "trustworthy" prisoner in the prison cells that would then turn out be the new dwarven PC.
Well, it turns before the next session Brian calls me to tell that he has changed his mind and want to play a kobold (insprired by "Churtle" here and "Mepo" from another campaign) swashbuckler instead, so I got an idea and we hatched a plot...
They decided to take out the Lady Lotus before hit the prison. I took Brian's new kobold character and placed him in the area with the chained Rhagodessa (barely out of its reach.) Once they took care of the rhagodessa (they had figured out the chain mechanism and later used the best to take out the zombie bugbear, some lotus dragons and even hurt the fell dragon) I introduced the kobold as an NPC.
He had gained their trust by the time they fought Rowyn so I let the "bored player without a character" control the NPC kobold (which was actually was his new PC.) They were taking their time making it to the prison cells so they kept teasing him about being stuck with a kobold as his new PC.
I knew they had never bothered to gather information on Kersh so they knew nothing about him. So I had decided to change him to a dwarf and wrote him up on a standard character sheet but put the name Brian was going to use for his Dwarf character on it... <Insert evil laugh here>
Once they "rescued" Kersh from the guest room, I took control of the "NPC" kobold again and Brian revealed the Kersh character sheet and started to play him. Everyone naturally assumed that he now had his own character and they made lots of jokes like "You look like a trustworthy sort!" and immediately armed and equipped him.
I was playing it up that the kobold did not like this new guy and did not trust him. The group blew it off and just assumed the kobold just hated dwarves in general (and metagamed that I was just making an excuse so the party did not have too many character in it for game balance.)
The fell drake had survived and escaped after Rowyn got away. So when it ambushed the party again Kersh showed his true colors. After the first strike Brian handed Kersh to me and revealed his real character sheet for the kobold. You should have seen the faces on the rest of the players...
Heh it looks like for April fool's they added a "talk like a P I R A T E" filter to new posts...
Nice work. Players are brutal for that kind of meta gaming, so hearing that story brings a little tear to my eye. The bastards had it coming.
Heh it looks like for April fool's they added a "talk like a P I R A T E" filter to new posts...
That's pretty funny. I browsed a few posts before reading this and was impressed at how well everyone was doing the pirate manner of speech.