Show us your Rat Bastardry!

I am a bit foggy on details, but basically @Jan van Leyden 's characters oncle was in prison, where he went from quirky to a tad crazy.
The group rescued him from a prison transport, which made them outlaws.

I played the uncle so annoying, belittling the other characters, being a know-it-all and sometimes kicking the others shins. The plan was to bring him back home, which took the party months (in real time). At the end everyone hated the uncle and was sooooo glad to get rid of him. Sadly the party wiped before I could bring him back to annoy them more.

Oh and at one point, a ghost tied the uncle to his nephew's head in their sleep.

Now my players avoid putting their family into their background stories ^^

I have a trick I absolutely love. I only use it when my players have done something that throws me off and I need time to regroup, and even then I only use it sparingly.

"You open the door and see a 30ft by 30ft room. The floors are solid stone and the walls are brick. There is a heavy wooden door directly in front of you with no lock. The moment you enter the room, the door behind you closes."

That's it. That's all that's in the room. But if you've trained your players right, you've got at least 20-30 minutes of them trying increasingly ridiculous things to "find the trap" before they open that other door to catch your breath and brainstorm.

Made the villain the noble mother of one of the characters.

Want to find her son a wife...kidnapped a princess and blackmailed the king to hire her son's adventuring group.
Did not like the group, hired assassins to kill them.
Did a number of things to promote her son by adventures.

Hand of Evil said:

Made the villain the noble mother of one of the characters.

Want to find her son a wife...kidnapped a princess and blackmailed the king to hire her son's adventuring group.
Did not like the group, hired assassins to kill them.
Did a number of things to promote her son by adventures.

Click to expand...

Did they ever discover her identity?

Abstruse said:

I have a trick I absolutely love. I only use it when my players have done something that throws me off and I need time to regroup, and even then I only use it sparingly.

"You open the door and see a 30ft by 30ft room. The floors are solid stone and the walls are brick. There is a heavy wooden door directly in front of you with no lock. The moment you enter the room, the door behind you closes."

That's it. That's all that's in the room. But if you've trained your players right, you've got at least 20-30 minutes of them trying increasingly ridiculous things to "find the trap" before they open that other door to catch your breath and brainstorm.

Click to expand...

I've done something similar, but... The door doesn't close behind them. The only trick is that, like an airlock, the door ahead won't open unless the door they came in is closed. You'd be surprised how often adventurers forget to close doors behind them.

SkidAce said:

Did they ever discover her identity?

Click to expand...

yes and could not kill her, she was part of the back story off and on for as long as the campaign went on. There was a lot of in party fighting on killing her.

Hand of Evil said:

Made the villain the noble mother of one of the characters.

Want to find her son a wife...kidnapped a princess and blackmailed the king to hire her son's adventuring group.
Did not like the group, hired assassins to kill them.
Did a number of things to promote her son by adventures.

Click to expand...

I like the premise here. Could you detail some of the shenanigans that went on?

Rune said:

I like the premise here. Could you detail some of the shenanigans that went on?

Click to expand...

It all started with background, I ask my players a number of questions and not their answers, standard stuff, almost like security questions these days...where were you born, describe your father, your mother, family members, how did you meet the other members of the party, etc. One player set himself as a Rogue / gambler, third and last son of minor noble, he had left home for adventure as the first son would inherit and the second was off becoming a cleric and all that was left for him was an arranged marriage, like his parents.

It was about the 4th session when the player noticed that is home was not that far from their location and so took the group home to pick up supplies. It was at this point I had to come up with the NPCs of his family and as such felt I should come up with questions to player, mom questions...Are you seeing anyone? Are they from a good family? You need to be thinking about your future? Can you make a living as an adventurer? That planted the seed and I was lucky a new player was joining the game.

First - Make a name for her son. Hire a bard/spy (the new player) to spin the songs and stories as if the character was the leader and driving force in the adventures. Basically the bard would write the stories and song and send them to the mother who would have them published. The party would start seeing them about, the character would be asked to tell the stories and for autographs, the party was being called The Gambler's Deck, the name of the flyers. This was happening in the background.

Second - Arrange an adventure that would set the stage for an arranged marriage. The mother's very loyal servant became middle man to hire thugs to kidnap a princess from a party. The mother claimed help from her son as it was a party she help arranged and felt it was her fault, even proving information leading to the hideout.

Follow-up adventure were removing a high ranking noble from a posting by making like he was supporting a bandit ring. This was done by her providing forged documents to the bandits. No one brother to check to see if they were forged.

She hired an assassin to kill the Paladin in the party. Would turn up every now and then and try and take him out.

The party took what they thought would be a short expedition into a swamp to find lost treasure. Their guide, the only survivor of a previous adventure, promised to lead them to the secret burial mound. Unfortunately, the guide turned out to be an unlikable coward who bragged about his noble blood. So when some lizard men demanded that the party turn the guide over to face punishment for his crimes against the tribe, the players just shrugged and said "Sure".

The party realized they were deep within a swamp without a guide. Nobody had wilderness skills, so they ended up wandering in circles for days and getting attacked by trolls, giant toads and swarms of hornets. Someone finally found a trail out of the swamp thanks to a lucky roll and no one died. But they were definitely a lot more cautious for the rest of the campaign.

So I have this adventure I wrote for Con games called "Up From Darkness" (available from RPGNow if you want to give it a look) that I have run now for two years and its my favorite thus far to run as a one shot.

True to the name of the adventure, the PCs wake up in darkness, buried at the bottom of a dungeon, with no memories (as a one shot, the amnesia factor is easy to pull off), and no equipment other than white silk kimonos, and they must climb their way up from the darkness. As they do so, they slowly regain memories discovering why they were there and who they are. While that sounds pretty basic, the manner in which it plays out is delicious.

In both games I ran of it this year at Origins, I had five deaths in each game. In one game there was a PC suicide, a PC who was ritually sacrificed by the others, one death by massive falling rock, and two PCs killed by monsters. And, though there were only five players, and five PC deaths, two of the PCs made it through without dying at all (which, in the context of the adventure makes sense). In the other game this year, there was a PC who bled to death at the bottom of a spiked pit trap (the spikes were barbed causing bleed damage), a death by spear trap, a death by falling, a death by fireball trap, and one monster kill. In that adventure, in the sacrifice room, one of the PCs was begging the other PCs to sacrifice him, but the action was prevented by another PC who found the idea rather disturbing.

The adventures internal ability to allow the GM to go after the PCs hard is very fun and the dungeon is full of lethal traps. The last monster has a poison which, when the save is failed, strikes the character blind and more than one PC has left the dungeon permanently blind, with a minimum of hit-points and felt good about having done that well.

The best thing about the adventure, however, is not the lethality but the subtle nature of the memories that slowly come to the PCs (using a mechanic that they gain a small memory [prescripted] when they achieve a certain goal or whenever they roll a natural 1 or 20; and a large memory at preset points in the dungeon). Quotes like, "I am beginning to remember things, and I don't think I am a very good person," or "I am starting to wonder whether or not we are actually dead and in some sort of hell," are typical with the adventure. And when the last reveal is made and the players realize who they are and why they were in the dungeons, there have been a plethora of good quotes at various games. One of my favorites is my wife (who playtested), saying, "That was very disturbing." My son ran the game at Origins this year, and one of the players came over to my table afterwards to shake my hand, saying, "Well Done." When you can write an adventure in which you regularly, over the course of 4 hours, kill, mutilate, blind, cripple, burn, and otherwise hurt the PCs (eight PC deaths is my current record with the adventure), there are PC suicides and PCs begging other PCs to sacrifice them on a black altar, and they still at the end, thank you for the experience, I have to think you have done well. I'm kinda proud of this one.